lists & such

After reading Eileen's new shopping blog, I remembered this poem from around 1974 & decided it might be an appropriate post.

THE SHOPPING LIST
for Nigel Roberts

Searching through the chest of drawers
for a map of australia / for jon silkin
i have so far discovered, in just one drawer,

assorted hare krishna & divine light fliers,
a railway timetable, photos of terence stamp
& dostoievsky, photos of myself at various ages
between seventeen & thirtythree, catalogues
of pornography from the netherlands (visual) & from
france (verbal), eighteen months of rolling stone
that have gathered some mould though no moss,
lost poems, found poems, rejection slips & letters
of acceptance, a thousand letters from my mother
ninehundred & ninetynine of which say 'please write'
& the other saying 'thankyou for writing', &
several foolscap notebooks, amongst which is a

forgotten journal dating back two years that contains
quotes from j.g.ballard, rider haggard, cocteau,
h.p. lovecraft, charles olson, etc., together with
the beginnings of five s.f. novels & three plays,
captions for obscene cartoons, thoughts for poems,
poems, words to look up & meanings of those already
looked up, bibliographies & lists of books to buy,
ideas for movies, images from movies that moved me,
ideas, images, entries of the 'dear diary' variety,
epigrams such as THE MARQUIS DE SADE DREAMS
HE IS AN ANGEL & GOLDA MEIR IS LBJ IN DRAG,
&, in extremely small letters on an otherwise empty page,
an anonymous note that says

                                 there is a poem           
                                 in everything.