Shoe porn

I went into my local independent bookshop for Tony Harrison's Selected Poems (they'll have to order it) and came out with this shoe calendar.
It was sitting right there on the counter. I had a fistful of book tokens (this is how you get paid for Radio New Zealand book reviews and my power supplier seems to find them unacceptable payment) and I said to the nice young man, "I don't suppose I can spend these on that, can I." But I could, and promptly did.
Each separate glossy page is displayed in an upright stand and every morning you move yesterday's page to the back to reveal a new delight.

This was my first - for January 10. Gray and black goat suede. And so delicious I could eat it.







And this, in case you're curious, is a poem by Tony Harrison.

Book ends


Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead
we chew it slowly that last apple pie.

Shocked into sleeplessness you're scared of bed.
We never could talk much, and now don't try.

You're like book ends, the pair of you, she'd say,
Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…

The 'scholar' me, you, worn out on poor pay,
only our silence made us seem a pair.

Not as good for staring in, blue gas,
too regular each bud, each yellow spike.

At night you need my company to pass
and she not here to tell us we're alike!

You're life's all shattered into smithereens.
Back in our silences and sullen looks,

for all the Scotch we drink, what's still between 's
not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.

II

The stone's too full. The wording must be terse.
There's scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it--

Come on, it's not as if we're wanting verse.
It's not as if we're wanting a whole sonnet!

After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker
(I think that both of us we're on our third)

you said you'd always been a clumsy talker
and couldn't find another, shorter word

for 'beloved' or for 'wife' in the inscription,
but not too clumsy that you can't still cut:

You're supposed to be the bright boy at description
and you can't tell them what the fuck to put!

I've got to find the right words on my own.
I've got the envelope that he'd been scrawling,

mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling
but I can't squeeze more love into their stone.



Tony Harrison