The former judo champion brings a touch of spring to his generous vision of a man strolling with flowers in a Liverpool park
"Where are the songs of spring?" John Keats asked in To Autumn, last week's Poem of the Week. In this week's choice, Man walking, from the debut collection Otherwise Unchanged, Owen Lowery restores the season, if not the songs. An anonymous passer-by, male, middle-aged, ordinary, becomes a kind of gender-bending urban Persephone, bringing the gift of spring in the bunch of flowers he carries – even in his very action of carrying flowers.
Lowery's subtitle, "by Stanley Park, Liverpool", is specific about the location, and the second line adds detail while delicately pitching the walk as emblematic, bounded by both park and cemetery. It's too long since I visited Liverpool, but a little map-reading suggests that the cemetery in question is Anfield Cemetery, which lies north-east of the historic, Grade II-listed Stanley Park. The latter was founded in 1870 as an amenity for the working people of the city, and is the birthplace of Liverpool football. That working-class social dimension is important to the poem's consciousness of universal human value.
After the close-up "wrap of flowers" (the word "wrap" implying a certain protectiveness and privacy), a geometrical metaphor extends the frame of the poem to reveal a triangle of participants. Besides the walking man, the focal point, there are the speaker and another person watching alongside the speaker: the plural pronoun, "we" shows us that this is a shared observation, and the man centres the "convergence" of their gazes. That the bouquet "lifts" the man is part metaphor, showing him raised to significance, and also evokes a faintly Chagall-like image of someone "walking on air".
"The point he makes/ of early morning" is a spatial concept, but in the colloquial sense "point" can mean "purpose", and that also resonates here. The man's presence perhaps seals some bond between the watchers; additionally, it reflects their own achievement, explained in the second stanza, in having "made/ something of the journey". The slowly moving cross-stanza sentence takes the reader's mind and eye on a winding route from the particular to the philosophical, until it ends on an unexpected note of scepticism: in the "great scheme" (an ironical abbreviation) the man, and, by implication, his observers, are "nothing". There may be a dry humour at work here: the man who's "really nothing" is at the same time "heroic/ in his middle-age". Yet the poem isn't ridiculing him.
On the contrary: to have reached middle age at all implies courage and doggedness. Carrying the bouquet represents a small brave act of self-unwrapping in a macho culture. In the lines, "bearing/ some of what's inside/ for all the road and its morning/ to see", the verb "bearing" doesn't simply mean "carrying": it includes a suggestion of endurance and possibly a pun on "soul-baring".
That surreal flicker at the start of the poem ("A wrap of flowers lifts him…") reappears in the third stanza. Now, rather than a literal description of the flowers, Lowery gives us a near-metaphysical bouquet, which itself "seems to be/ spring". The picture enlarges with "the swathe/ and breath of blossom, fruit/ and may", the canopies of the cherry trees visible above the wall, and, unexpectedly and marvellously, "the timing/ of the parked cars". In this generous vision, the movement is from the natural to the designed to the wholly man-made. The cars are already parked, but the word "timing" seems to take us back a stage to the act of parking, and the finesse and courtesy which, at best, it exhibits.
The sense of "destination" follows on naturally, but again, the poem is making one of its shifts into metaphor: the man's real destination is emotional, since it would be confirmed "by a fall of petal on the dark/ of his back or his shoulder". We might think first of a chance, breeze-borne scattering from the cherry-trees which earlier were "dusting/ the green of the park" but the stronger association is with confetti. Such an anointing would complete his transformation – or almost. A final, new thought adds "a kiss/ for us to remember him by" as consummation. Is it the kiss bestowed by the man's imaginary bride, or by a lover who has greeted him, perhaps also with flowers? Or could it be that of the two people who stood together, observing him?
The poem's diction is precise but pleasantly casual. Short, irregular lines, flowing in unemphatic enjambment, tend to subdue accentual stress-patterns – and their emotional counterpart. Careful and deliberately prosaic, the versification de-romanticises the poem, yet keeps a casually joyous lightness in its step. Lowery, whose career as a British judo champion was curtailed by a severe spinal injury in 1987, is influenced by Keith Douglas and the war poets, and even in love poems, his speakers favour an objective, outward-looking view.
Otherwise Unchanged is a remarkable collection, combining technical poise and an expansive intellectual range. While Man walking is a happy place to begin, the collection represents a many-faceted journey worth sharing with Lowery from cover to cover.
Man walking
by Stanley Park, Liverpool
A wrap of flowers lifts him
from pavement and cemetery wall
to convergence at the point he makes
of early morning, our seeing
each other see him
at the same time, and our letting on
we have, like him, made
something of the journey to which,
in the great scheme, he's really
nothing. A man, heroic
in his middle-age, and his bearing
some of what's inside
for all the road and its morning
to see. His bouquet seems to be
spring, a reflection of the swathe
and breath of blossom, fruit
and may, ornamental
peaks of cherry dusting
the green of the park, the timing
of the parked cars. A sense,
then, of destination
only wants confirming
by a fall of petal on the dark
of his back or his shoulder, a kiss
for us to remember him by.
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