Michael Hofmann
The Case for Brexit
for Frederick Seidel
I dropped my new shoes in the stream, thinking perhaps
They would get there before me, like two drowned Jews
Trundling along the seabed to Jerusalem. My immigrant
parents lost patience and thrashed me.
The best thing that ever happened to me was on the boat.
I’ve no idea what it was. Then Tilbury. Or Harwich.
Or Southampton.
I got eggshells crushed with lemon juice for the calcium
and its better absorption.
I got buttered bread with a little bitter chocolate grated
over it.
I got glabrous soured milk with cinnamon and sugar.
I got kohlrabi and celeriac and other nonexistent
vegetables,
Like so many chimeras and hippogriffs.
I got Kinderkaffee from malted barley, and Katarzynki
from Mr. Continental, but only on Thursdays.
I got vermilion worm medicine, with bitter lemon
That didn’t begin to take away the color or the taste.
The four of us round the table. We all had to do it.
It was like a suicide pact.
It was the winter of ’63, the Plath winter. I barked for
months.
I juggle the numbers, the way I sang my times tables
On the swing. (They are all I have in the world.)
The sevens, the nines.
They mostly begin with the scalene 19—. I swing them
around, sling them and swing them.
Lennon and Kennedy and punk and the Wall and the
moon.
Big numbers, jagged numbers, like someone with very
heavy weights.
I invented sepia. Sepia came for me. Something
discolored
Behind me, in my past, like a hobbled Clovis ad.
Our charlady smelled so terrible,
My father smoked a pipe ("Fair Play") after she was
gone. My young mother still giggled.
She and my father played badminton on the street at
night.
You could read the Times past eleven. (You could read
the Times.)
School uniforms, playground fights. Goalposts. Polar
ghosts. British bulldogs.
I should have liked to be called Roger or Arthur. The
bully Brian Lorry pummeled and pummeled.
All Trutex or Aertex. Caps. Striped ties and the striped
elastic belt with the snake-mouth hook.
Melrose, RHS, Loretto, George Watson's, Boys' and
Girls'—all mauled us.
I was at bat for days without scoring a run.
Practically everything was a shibboleth. Harwich was a
trick.
Berwick was a trick. Worcester was a trick. Geoffrey
was a trick. I didn't know Sundays were no-go.
My home German was compared to a serendipitous
knowledge of Welsh;
I knew better: it was less. My only friend, McVicar, had
a Greek mother. Maybe Clytemnestra.
They moved further north, so that he could be with
Prince Charles.