Worlds & Lives (AQA GCSE English Literature)

‘With Birds You’re Never Lonely’

I can’t hear the barista

over the coffee machine.

Spoons slam, steam rises.

I catch the eye of a man

sitting in the corner

of the cafe reading alone

about trees which is, incidentally,

all I can think about

since returning.

Last week I sat alone

on a stump, deep in Zelandia forest

with sun-syrupped Kauria trees

and brazen Tui birds with white tufts

and yellow and black beaks.

They landed by my feet, blaring so loudly

I had to turn off my hearing aids.

When all sound disappeared, I was tuned

into a silence that was not an absence.

As I switched sound on again,

silence collapsed.

The forest spat all the birds back,

and I was jealous—

the earthy Kauri trees, their endless

brown and green trunks of sturdiness.

I wondered what the trees

would say about us?

What books would they write

if they had to cut us down?

Later, stumbling from the forest I listened

to a young Maori woman.

She could tell which bird chirped,

a skill she learned from her grandfather

who said with birds you’re never lonely.

In that moment I felt sorry

for any grey tree in London,

for the family they don’t have,

the Gods they can’t hold.

Raymond Antrobus

‘pot’

so big — they said you shouldn’t really be moved

so fragile you might break

you could be from anywhere pot

styles have travelled just like terracotta

you could almost be an english pot

but I know you’re not.

I know half of the story pot

of where you come from

of how you got here

but I need you to tell me the rest pot

tell me

did they say you were bought pot

a looter’s deal done

the whole lot

sold to the gentleman in the grey hat

or 

did they say you were lost pot

finders are keepers you know pot

or 

did they say they didn’t notice you pot

must have slipped onto the white sailing yacht

bound for england.

someone 

somewhere 

will have missed you pot

gone out looking for you pot

because 

someone 

somewhere 

made you

fingernails 

pressed 

snake patterned you pot

washed you pot

used you pot

loved you pot

if I could shatter this glass

I would take you back myself pot.

you think they wouldn’t recognise you pot

say diaspora

you left now

you’re not really one of us.

pot I’ve been back to where my family’s from

they were happy

to see me

laughed a lot

said I was more asian than the asians pot

I was pot

Imagine.

the hot sun on your back

feel flies settle on your skin

warm grain poured inside

empty pot

growl if you can hear me

pot? 

pot? 

Shamshad Khan