1
Wendy Cope says you can write something beautiful
About toads or toenails. So, ever dutiful
And in perennial doubt about what beauty is, is not, or is not yet
And whether it can be carried in rhyme
Or in the tripping metre of accelerating line, every time,
I’ll embrace the challenge set.
2
Amphibians can be darting, chromatic and dramatic
But Larkin nailed that toads just squat
And he was most emphatic:
Perfect metaphor for work, or so he thought.
But underneath his outstretched arm he realised quite late
That toadishness was comforting: his toad became a mate.
His relationship to work had slowly changed. Though uninspired,
It came to pass as middle-class: no eating flies required.
And as copper resigns to verdigris besieged by time and weather
The glistening autumnal anaxyrus brings together
Eloxea, leaf-fall, lily pad and campfire ash
Slipping below the pond’s green curtain slyly with no splash.
3
Lost in the sea, in an Ionian rock pool
Bilston’s jetsam toenail he imagined as a jewel
Splendid and mysterious, its ugliness maligned
Transformed by Neptune’s minions to a prized beachcomber’s find.
And in every weary centre of a post-industrial town
While national chains are boarded up, and pubs are closing down
A-glitter in the debris, a-twinkling at its heart
You’re sure to find a nail-bar’s fingertip and toenail art
Where integuments exhausted by hard scratching to survive
Gain a burnished coruscation that they’re glad to be alive
And curated soft abrasions send the artless world a message
That those digits are for touching, and perhaps a little kissage.
And on nights like this, remembering a soft Aegean breeze
Wafting whisper-lightly along the bayfront leaves
And gentle as that gust, the ghost of feeling the allusion
Of your toenail on my calf, and the tingle of confusion
As to what it meant then, and what it means now
And what was snipped away, and how
And whether like nails, there’s something keeps growing
After the end, and what remains of all art’s knowing?
.
Stephen A. Linstead
.