Half-Life
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About this ebook
"He writes with a controlled passion... using sophisticated effects to locate the significant and develop its larger emotional truth."
John Levett
"Compelling and moving."
Poetry Review on The Secret History
Michael Hulse was born in 1955 in England, and lived for 25 years in Germany before returning in 2002 to teach at the University of Warwick. His poetry has won the National Poetry Competition and the Bridport Poetry Prize (twice), as well as Eric Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards. His most publications are the poetry collection The Secret History (Arc, 2009) and a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Penguin Classics, 2009). He co-edited The New Poetry, the bestselling Bloodaxe anthology and GCSE set text (1993), and the Ebury anthology The 20th Century in Poetry (2011). He lives in Stafford.
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Book preview
Half-Life - Michael Hulse
Half-Life
Published by Arc Publications
Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road
Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK
www.arcpublications.co.uk
Copyright © Michael Hulse 2013
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Copyright in the present edition © Arc Publications 2013
Design by Tony Ward
Printed in Great Britain by the MPG Book Group,
Bodmin and King’s Lynn
978 1908376 19 0 (pbk)
978 1908376 20 6 (hbk)
978 1908376 21 3 (ebook)
Cover image: ‘Gethsemane’ © Tony Ward, 2011
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Poems in this book have been published in the Irish Times, Istanbul Review, Kenyon Review, London Magazine, London Review of Books, Poetry Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Sport, Yale Review and The King’s Lynn Silver Folio: Poems for Tony Ellis.
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.
Editor for the UK & Ireland:
John W. Clarke
Half-Life
Michael Hulse
Arc.TIF2013
This book is for Kathrin and Agnes
I’ve loved it all my life,
the smell of baking bread,
and now it fills the house
as my daughter, all of two,
eagerly helps her mother
and proudly tells her father,
Agnes bake it.
We break the pith and crust
and raise a glass of wine
and talk of what we have done
and what we hope to do
and all of us together
humbly tell the father,
Homo fecit.
Contents
I
Freeman
II
The Return
The Syrian Bride
A Carcass
In Sant’ Antonio di Padua
Saskatoon
Home
Burj Khalifa
Lagerfeld
Wewelsfleth
In the Peloponnese
After the Warming
From the Virtual Jerusalem
Swiss National Day in Lavigny
Rousseau in Staffordshire
To Thine Own Self Be True
Arse over Tip
Quod Scripsi Scripsi
A Virgin in Mexico City
The Half-Life of Jesus
The Swallows
Eh, Tom?
III
Foreknowledge Absolute
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
IV
The Truth of Fiction (I)
The Truth of Fiction (II)
Author’s Note
Biographical Note
I
Freeman
Freeman pulled over on the West Gate Bridge, in heavy traffic, says my friend,
with his kids in the back, the little girl, the boys,
and he walked round the car and pulled open the door
and he took out his four-year-old daughter
and lifted her and threw her off the bridge.
When he opened the door, did he hold out a hand, and speak to her reassuringly,
and smile as a father smiles when he knows there is nothing to be afraid of,
and take her, calmly, with death in his heart, and raise her, calmly, as any father
might, let’s say, when his daughter dares the slide, alone, for the very first time,
when six feet are still the Empire State – calmly, teaching her trust?
You have to imagine it, says my friend –
the whole of it happens in full view
of six lanes of