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Tag: Introspection

Robert and the poem

The Book Keeper3 Comments on Robert and the poem

There is a poem called Introspection (by Chris Wallace Crabbe) taped to the wall here. It’s been taped up there for about three years. Today Robert turned around and looked at it, then moved closer and read it all the way through. Out loud.

It starts:

Have you ever seen a mind

Thinking?

It’s like an old cow

Trying to get through the pub door

Carrying a guitar in its mouth;

When Robert got to the word “guitar” he gave a bark of laughter, loud enough to startle a browser on the next shelf.  

He kept on reading out loud, and twice turned around to laugh at me with his eyes shut. He said, ‘That’s good, that’s good.’

When he got to the last line:

It’s harder with a piano.

He barked even more sharply, and I was pleased because I knew that he would. He repeated the last line twice and laughed, high pitched and vibrant and delighted and one man politely left the shop, but Robert didn’t notice.

It’s harder with a piano: The old couple who read a poem out loud

The Book Keeper11 Comments on It’s harder with a piano: The old couple who read a poem out loud

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Have you ever seen a mind thinking?

A couple read this line out loud from a poem I have taped to the wall in the shop, bobbing about, delighted to find a poem on the wall and looking at each other with amazed, hilarious eyes.

(They are side by side, leaning in, shoulders touching, experienced and fearless).

Out loud, they read it to each other:

Have you ever seen a mind

Thinking?

It’s like an old cow

Trying to get through the pub door

Carrying a guitar in its mouth;

Who are they reading it to? Not to me. They haven’t even noticed me. It’s to each other. They sway about and laugh and keep reading: HA, HA, HA, this is brilliant!

I agree; it’s Chris Wallace-Crabbe, and it is brilliant. It’s just that nobody ever noticed it before. They turned around, and said to me, we like your bookshop!

Have you ever seen a mind

thinking?

It’s like an old cow

trying to get through the pub door

carrying a guitar in its mouth;

old habits keep breaking in

on the job in hand;

it keeps wanting

to do something else:

like having a bit of a graze,

for example…

And they keep reading, down, down, and down, dropping through the poem, which, being Chris Wallace-Crabbe, is astonishing and endless, right to where the cow gets through the door but doesn’t know how.

Because, how do minds (with guitars) get through doors?

Anyway, the cow has to know that it’s harder with a piano.

It’s harder with a piano.

When they read this, the delicious middle line, the wife shrieks, and says, briiiiiilliant. She looks at her husband: oh, don’t you remember? I do.

 

 

Introspection by Chris Wallace-Crabbe

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