Stripes of the angelfish,
Stripes of the zebra,
Undulations of sand dunes,
Branching of trees and rivers,
Rococo shapes of radiolarians,
Dinoflagellates and coccolithophores...
Spiral waves and concentric rings of Belousov-Zhabotinsky reactions,
Exquisite transitions of Liesegang bands...
My heartbeat:
With each pulse an electrical wave
Surges through the tissue
From out of the sinoatrial node,
Opening up tiny molecular channels,
To let charged ions flow through the membrane
And the muscle contracts.
The sperm joins with the ovum
And waves of calcium ions
Pulse over the surface of the egg,
Priming the explosion.
The prey and the predator,
The parasite and the host-
Oscillations synchronized
With mathematical beauty.
Ants are building cemeteries,
Disposing of their dead with neurotic orderliness,
Compelled by mechanisms they do not understand.
Buckles and ridges of my fingertips,
Wrinkled like seed pods, like butterfly eggs,
I am still the foetus of that goetic hour,
Wombed in my mother’s devotion.
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Flow
Leonardo,
starting little, and finishing even less,
all those plans made and never realised
taunted by nature wherever he turned,
-he sits and contemplates water,
and the water contemplates him.
How could he not feel its vortices
in his own?
Upstream,
Downstream,
I hardly know where I am,
Just watching the eddies,
Minute by minute.
See the microcyclone
disappear down the plughole;
the tornado gyring across the prairie.
Other weird formations may appear
Like the dunes on Mars.
Swirling of interstellar gas and dust.
Convection of a lifetime:
Some uncanny order
Conjuring itself
From turbulence,
Shaping the flow.
Writhing boggling chain
of water from a tap;
insoluble equations,
too much going on.
starting little, and finishing even less,
all those plans made and never realised
taunted by nature wherever he turned,
-he sits and contemplates water,
and the water contemplates him.
How could he not feel its vortices
in his own?
Upstream,
Downstream,
I hardly know where I am,
Just watching the eddies,
Minute by minute.
See the microcyclone
disappear down the plughole;
the tornado gyring across the prairie.
Other weird formations may appear
Like the dunes on Mars.
Swirling of interstellar gas and dust.
Convection of a lifetime:
Some uncanny order
Conjuring itself
From turbulence,
Shaping the flow.
Writhing boggling chain
of water from a tap;
insoluble equations,
too much going on.
The Tears of Odysseus
Why did he weep,
the tough old soldier,
the voyager who had seen so many things,
hiding his face with his cloak
out of shame?
Why did he sob
as the bard sang of Achilles,
in the court of King Alcinous,
one night far from home?
Only the crushed can be so tender,so strong,
the dead so alive.
Can you breathe at all,
are you still here,or there,
in the place we call the world?
You have only come
so that I can lose you;
that is your purpose,
all ends and endings,
sensed without comprehension
till the silence has its way.
the tough old soldier,
the voyager who had seen so many things,
hiding his face with his cloak
out of shame?
Why did he sob
as the bard sang of Achilles,
in the court of King Alcinous,
one night far from home?
Only the crushed can be so tender,so strong,
the dead so alive.
Can you breathe at all,
are you still here,or there,
in the place we call the world?
You have only come
so that I can lose you;
that is your purpose,
all ends and endings,
sensed without comprehension
till the silence has its way.
Jesus in the West Country
A builder’s hands. A sailor’s hands.
Crowned with the bull’s horns of Albion,
He walked into the druid wind
All over the western hills’ circles,
Mining the sky for minerals.
Their ship anchored in the Camel’s mouth,
Jesus and his uncle stepped ashore
To touch the white island’s stones.
Israel, your son has come home!
Oracular, the Mendips swallets
Groaned into his soles, all the underground streams
Full of the voices of the dead and unborn
Crying out from the ox-skull-hills,
The star-shafts tonguing carillons
Into the whirlpool of Sheol.
Stonehenge labyrinth drew him in,
Flogged by the sun’s bull-pizzle
In the season of horses and love.
The cows womb birthed him into wisdom,
Stepson of the boneland,
Across the chalk plain’s altar he came
To the bull’s eye, the place of killing.
Demons’ and giants’ dancefloor,
Signed by the royal axe,
Governed by spectres and shadows.
He came,and shooting stars
Flew to destruction over Salisbury Plain.
He came, to lay down like Jacob
With his head upon the stone.
The ministry of rain,stone and sky
Baptized him in the western retreat;
A sermon in the marrow would grow
To an oak tree’s stormy height
And fall as rain on Palestine.
Crowned with the bull’s horns of Albion,
He walked into the druid wind
All over the western hills’ circles,
Mining the sky for minerals.
Their ship anchored in the Camel’s mouth,
Jesus and his uncle stepped ashore
To touch the white island’s stones.
Israel, your son has come home!
Oracular, the Mendips swallets
Groaned into his soles, all the underground streams
Full of the voices of the dead and unborn
Crying out from the ox-skull-hills,
The star-shafts tonguing carillons
Into the whirlpool of Sheol.
Stonehenge labyrinth drew him in,
Flogged by the sun’s bull-pizzle
In the season of horses and love.
The cows womb birthed him into wisdom,
Stepson of the boneland,
Across the chalk plain’s altar he came
To the bull’s eye, the place of killing.
Demons’ and giants’ dancefloor,
Signed by the royal axe,
Governed by spectres and shadows.
He came,and shooting stars
Flew to destruction over Salisbury Plain.
He came, to lay down like Jacob
With his head upon the stone.
The ministry of rain,stone and sky
Baptized him in the western retreat;
A sermon in the marrow would grow
To an oak tree’s stormy height
And fall as rain on Palestine.
Turin and the Gates of Hell
No-one believes in Hell any more,
Except the exorcists.
And no-one but his demons believes in the Devil.
Walking narrow streets beneath anguished stone heads,
On the Forty-fifth Parallel,
I hold in my hands the two triangles, black and white,
The intersections of occult cities,
The benignity of Turin-Lyon-Prague,
The malignity of Turin-London-San Francisco.
Two-hearted city, battlefield of angels and demons:
I am walking over the grasping hands of the dead,
Hearing the white heart of Piazza Castello beating,
And the black heart of Piazza Statuto.
So you come to Satan’s Door,
Brass goat’s head two-tongued with intertwining snakes;
Baroque bank of ill thoughts and intentions.
“Money,” comes a whisper, “is the rubbish of the Devil.”
Between two rivers, the Po and the Dora Riparia,
The male and the female,
A son of Isis founded this city,
Temple of the sun.
In Piazza Statuto,
I am in the black heart,
The vallis occisorum
Sacred to executions and burials,
Baleful west of the setting sun,
Gallows of the soul;
Here -the entrance to the sewers,
The Gate of Hell….
In Piazza Solferino –
You come to the Fontana Angelica,
Said to be the Gate of Infinity:
In the space between the two male figures
Is a magical door
To an unknown dimension,
A realm that holds the solutions
To the alchemical mysteries of the world.
Piazza Castello, white heart of the city,
Empowered by the Holy Shroud,
In whose linen the four elements are mingled--
Grail of enlightenment,
Baphomet of the Templars!
Give proof of God,
We need miracles and signs,
Cry the faithful,
Desperate for the spectre
Of divine man,
Their Christian cult demanding
Both too little and too much,
Bewildered into sophistry
By a child’s questions.
Lucifer,prince of this world,
Most beautiful of the angels,
Has fallen past the Alps
Into a Turin square.
Devils are coming out of the walls,
Straining their chains to break free.
They are everywhere, the possessed,
Spewing curses and ancient tongues,
Levitating and falling back.
While Satanists rob churches of the Host
And hallowed bones,
To desecrate in Black Masses.
At the foot of the steps
Of Gran Madre di Dio church
The statue of Faith stands holding
A chalice in her hand,
As she gazes towards the hidden location
Of the Holy Grail.
Except the exorcists.
And no-one but his demons believes in the Devil.
Walking narrow streets beneath anguished stone heads,
On the Forty-fifth Parallel,
I hold in my hands the two triangles, black and white,
The intersections of occult cities,
The benignity of Turin-Lyon-Prague,
The malignity of Turin-London-San Francisco.
Two-hearted city, battlefield of angels and demons:
I am walking over the grasping hands of the dead,
Hearing the white heart of Piazza Castello beating,
And the black heart of Piazza Statuto.
So you come to Satan’s Door,
Brass goat’s head two-tongued with intertwining snakes;
Baroque bank of ill thoughts and intentions.
“Money,” comes a whisper, “is the rubbish of the Devil.”
Between two rivers, the Po and the Dora Riparia,
The male and the female,
A son of Isis founded this city,
Temple of the sun.
In Piazza Statuto,
I am in the black heart,
The vallis occisorum
Sacred to executions and burials,
Baleful west of the setting sun,
Gallows of the soul;
Here -the entrance to the sewers,
The Gate of Hell….
In Piazza Solferino –
You come to the Fontana Angelica,
Said to be the Gate of Infinity:
In the space between the two male figures
Is a magical door
To an unknown dimension,
A realm that holds the solutions
To the alchemical mysteries of the world.
Piazza Castello, white heart of the city,
Empowered by the Holy Shroud,
In whose linen the four elements are mingled--
Grail of enlightenment,
Baphomet of the Templars!
Give proof of God,
We need miracles and signs,
Cry the faithful,
Desperate for the spectre
Of divine man,
Their Christian cult demanding
Both too little and too much,
Bewildered into sophistry
By a child’s questions.
Lucifer,prince of this world,
Most beautiful of the angels,
Has fallen past the Alps
Into a Turin square.
Devils are coming out of the walls,
Straining their chains to break free.
They are everywhere, the possessed,
Spewing curses and ancient tongues,
Levitating and falling back.
While Satanists rob churches of the Host
And hallowed bones,
To desecrate in Black Masses.
At the foot of the steps
Of Gran Madre di Dio church
The statue of Faith stands holding
A chalice in her hand,
As she gazes towards the hidden location
Of the Holy Grail.
The Bullfighter on the Beach
An old man is fighting an invisible bull
Down on the deserted beach,
Making passes with his invisible cape,
Pointing his invisible sword
Like a wizard’s wand.
Once again,his old body moves
Like a young man’s,
And he hears the acclamation
Of the crowd
Above the sound of the sea.
The bulls are running in his blood;
Wherever he goes, he can never escape them.
Does one have to be ironic and detached,
Observing life with a cynical smirk,
Ready always to say “I told you so”
Or “I never really cared that much anyway”?
So cautious and apprehensive,
Afraid to live, afraid to die…
From my seat in a Seville cafe,
I watch the barman, so bored and grumpy,
Polishing glasses ,one after another,
With the stuffed bulls’ heads behind him on the wall.,
Each with a plaque announcing its name,
The weight and breed,
And the day of its death,
And the matador who slew him.
Cry the fear and poison out of your blood,
Weep over the bones of your parents and brothers,
They are gone, gone, gone!
And yours is the fate of every soul that ever lived,
Born into suffering, loss and dismay,
With only dreams to ward off suicide.
In the bullring the matador,
Straight and tensed to the bone,
Draws the wounded bull in ever closer,
Its dark blood sweating onto the sand;
Can fate truly be so commanded?
Can skill and courage
Redeem the usual folly and waste?
No bull’s horns ever hurt a man
As much as the attacks and lies
Of venal lovers and false allies.
The sun aims its fine bright sword
Directly through the heart.
Evening falls over the deserted beach.
The old man stands quiet, exhausted,
The invisible bull dead at his feet.
He turns and trudges back across the sand,
With his sword and his cape.
Down on the deserted beach,
Making passes with his invisible cape,
Pointing his invisible sword
Like a wizard’s wand.
Once again,his old body moves
Like a young man’s,
And he hears the acclamation
Of the crowd
Above the sound of the sea.
The bulls are running in his blood;
Wherever he goes, he can never escape them.
Does one have to be ironic and detached,
Observing life with a cynical smirk,
Ready always to say “I told you so”
Or “I never really cared that much anyway”?
So cautious and apprehensive,
Afraid to live, afraid to die…
From my seat in a Seville cafe,
I watch the barman, so bored and grumpy,
Polishing glasses ,one after another,
With the stuffed bulls’ heads behind him on the wall.,
Each with a plaque announcing its name,
The weight and breed,
And the day of its death,
And the matador who slew him.
Cry the fear and poison out of your blood,
Weep over the bones of your parents and brothers,
They are gone, gone, gone!
And yours is the fate of every soul that ever lived,
Born into suffering, loss and dismay,
With only dreams to ward off suicide.
In the bullring the matador,
Straight and tensed to the bone,
Draws the wounded bull in ever closer,
Its dark blood sweating onto the sand;
Can fate truly be so commanded?
Can skill and courage
Redeem the usual folly and waste?
No bull’s horns ever hurt a man
As much as the attacks and lies
Of venal lovers and false allies.
The sun aims its fine bright sword
Directly through the heart.
Evening falls over the deserted beach.
The old man stands quiet, exhausted,
The invisible bull dead at his feet.
He turns and trudges back across the sand,
With his sword and his cape.
Prisoner of Bangkok
Pandemonium and rot of the city:
Sweating nightwalker rummaging the moon’s juju market
For treasures I cannot keep,
I breathe the river’s green putrescence
With melancholy relish.
Lust-grief is my one true bedmate.
No Buddhist am I, for all my bullshit.
Too prone to the 108 known passions of mankind.
Ugly beauty, beautiful ugliness-
City of the self-exiled, the abandoned!
Insidious languor takes me over,
And a wheedling voice in my head:
I am not a pervert, I am not a pervert…
This is love, whatever the experts say,
Amphetamine compassion of skin and bone,
Offered in witness and hope.
The preserved corpses of serial killers,
In the Forensics Museum
Float along the fetid canals of my mind;
The condemned man stands,
A flower placed between his bound hands,
And a single bullet directed
Through a hole cut in a length of silk
Transverberates his heart.
Has a tiger sympathy?
Has a gecko loving-kindness?
To be happy in unhappiness,
Neither this nor that,
Content with mere pleasure-
That is the trick.
Like the dogs that hang around the river temples at night.
All these houses and yards in ruins,
Waves breaking underneath,
And the reek of sex,food and decay.
The mysterious ritual with hookers,
Always the same, yet different,
Simple, fantastical and sad.
A self without a self.
Alone but never alone.
A mind that only exists
In connection with other minds.
Suffering, all suffering.
I will look to my own salvation, as the Buddha said,
And try not to live as a puppet any more.
Amuse yourself, amuse yourself among the sham.
Drink down the scorpion wine.
At the beginning of the world
There was a man, a woman
And a hermaphrodite,
And the hermaphrodite slew the man
Out of jealousy
When he saw the woman loved him.
All of us, having been the three sexes,
In different bodies, different times.
Your pride,your confusion…
The sucker at the table.
At the stadium you watch
Two Muay Thai fighters
Batter each other bloody,
Preferring death to defeat.
Sweating nightwalker rummaging the moon’s juju market
For treasures I cannot keep,
I breathe the river’s green putrescence
With melancholy relish.
Lust-grief is my one true bedmate.
No Buddhist am I, for all my bullshit.
Too prone to the 108 known passions of mankind.
Ugly beauty, beautiful ugliness-
City of the self-exiled, the abandoned!
Insidious languor takes me over,
And a wheedling voice in my head:
I am not a pervert, I am not a pervert…
This is love, whatever the experts say,
Amphetamine compassion of skin and bone,
Offered in witness and hope.
The preserved corpses of serial killers,
In the Forensics Museum
Float along the fetid canals of my mind;
The condemned man stands,
A flower placed between his bound hands,
And a single bullet directed
Through a hole cut in a length of silk
Transverberates his heart.
Has a tiger sympathy?
Has a gecko loving-kindness?
To be happy in unhappiness,
Neither this nor that,
Content with mere pleasure-
That is the trick.
Like the dogs that hang around the river temples at night.
All these houses and yards in ruins,
Waves breaking underneath,
And the reek of sex,food and decay.
The mysterious ritual with hookers,
Always the same, yet different,
Simple, fantastical and sad.
A self without a self.
Alone but never alone.
A mind that only exists
In connection with other minds.
Suffering, all suffering.
I will look to my own salvation, as the Buddha said,
And try not to live as a puppet any more.
Amuse yourself, amuse yourself among the sham.
Drink down the scorpion wine.
At the beginning of the world
There was a man, a woman
And a hermaphrodite,
And the hermaphrodite slew the man
Out of jealousy
When he saw the woman loved him.
All of us, having been the three sexes,
In different bodies, different times.
Your pride,your confusion…
The sucker at the table.
At the stadium you watch
Two Muay Thai fighters
Batter each other bloody,
Preferring death to defeat.
Arcana
Ziggurats of Europe -Monte d’Accoddi on Sardinia, and the hill of Ulaca in Spain-I climb you like a five-sunned Aztec, recalling the Peak of Arar in Iran, its roots binding the waters below and the sun above; Yggdrasil, nourished by the well of Urd, and tended by the Norns, but perpetually gnawed by the giant rodent Ratatosk. One day, Yggdrasil will topple, and with it the world.
Where Mt Torro rises at the centre of Menorca, taula sanctuaries were hefted up to invoke the Horned God, huge megalithic Tau-pedestals rising from the isle of tornados and torrents,where the bull’s life-force throbs through the world; from the Horns of Consecration at Knossos to the Grampian stone circles’ horned altars; and in the bullrings of Spain the matador prances, crowned with the Phrygian cap of Mithras.
At the Roche aux Fées in Brittany, hunched in grand sullen reverie, mythical beast skeleton, in this landscape of architectural rigour, signed by stone axe and shepherd’s crook, I feel the music in the hands of the avital builders who loved and understood and collaborated with this land. Here stands the prehistoric maker I am, the lover of life and the world!
Among the graves at Lindholm Høje in Jutland, the crossing-place,the ford of souls,with the dead in their triangles,squares, and ovals, their ships on whatever voyages the night brings,I tread a path of my own,and that is all.
Where Mt Torro rises at the centre of Menorca, taula sanctuaries were hefted up to invoke the Horned God, huge megalithic Tau-pedestals rising from the isle of tornados and torrents,where the bull’s life-force throbs through the world; from the Horns of Consecration at Knossos to the Grampian stone circles’ horned altars; and in the bullrings of Spain the matador prances, crowned with the Phrygian cap of Mithras.
At the Roche aux Fées in Brittany, hunched in grand sullen reverie, mythical beast skeleton, in this landscape of architectural rigour, signed by stone axe and shepherd’s crook, I feel the music in the hands of the avital builders who loved and understood and collaborated with this land. Here stands the prehistoric maker I am, the lover of life and the world!
Among the graves at Lindholm Høje in Jutland, the crossing-place,the ford of souls,with the dead in their triangles,squares, and ovals, their ships on whatever voyages the night brings,I tread a path of my own,and that is all.
Mary, Mother of God
The little girl
dancing on the Temple steps,
too joyful to stand still.
Beloved little hands
that I see ageing through the years,
compassionate indefatigable workers,
weavers of the veil,
-my mother’s hands!
Mother,
my Constantinople,
my Rome!
My ancient little church
on an Irish shore,
cold black sea breaking below.
Candlefire procession
through Cistercian cloister-
the rose garden calls
monk and troubadour.
In the skull castle
chessplayers battle
while nightingales sing
through the valley below.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
The Hurricane Season
On a Cuban Beach
We have flown a thousand miles to find the beginning.
The pirate treasures we did not locate, the blue marlins we did not catch.
In the hotel there are too many mirrors; wherever you turn, you confront that queer familiar apparition. Just you. Alone. And the same themes as a billion men before you.
Some time, maybe, I will make my peace with life. But not soon. Not yet.
Cinnamon scent of piña colada: Debussy sonata riddled with Golden Sections and impossible melancholy.
The hotel lobby: aquarium of circling souls. Exotic animals,all dangerous glamour and banality, when will you exhaust your appetites?
No more tales of Hemingway and Old Havana; no more drinking stories;no more jeep safaris; no more lies by the swimming pool; no more mojitos and daiquiris; no more weary conversations in the cocktail lounge; no more “paradises” and “perfect days”; no more revolutions,reforms or status quo...
A hurricane is coming, across the Atlantic;feared and craved in equal measure;an avenger, born on the African coast, its huge centrifuge starting to turn, its uncompromising Wheel of Karma.
And I’m left here, a Christian Muslim Jewish Buddhist pagan atheist son of a bitch. A pair of eyes in the dark.
The brighter the light outside, the darker it is inside me. A day without fear, what would that be like? Serpent’s kiss of the tropical sun, send us another Eden to spoil.
We have flown a thousand miles to find the beginning.
The pirate treasures we did not locate, the blue marlins we did not catch.
In the hotel there are too many mirrors; wherever you turn, you confront that queer familiar apparition. Just you. Alone. And the same themes as a billion men before you.
Some time, maybe, I will make my peace with life. But not soon. Not yet.
Cinnamon scent of piña colada: Debussy sonata riddled with Golden Sections and impossible melancholy.
The hotel lobby: aquarium of circling souls. Exotic animals,all dangerous glamour and banality, when will you exhaust your appetites?
No more tales of Hemingway and Old Havana; no more drinking stories;no more jeep safaris; no more lies by the swimming pool; no more mojitos and daiquiris; no more weary conversations in the cocktail lounge; no more “paradises” and “perfect days”; no more revolutions,reforms or status quo...
A hurricane is coming, across the Atlantic;feared and craved in equal measure;an avenger, born on the African coast, its huge centrifuge starting to turn, its uncompromising Wheel of Karma.
And I’m left here, a Christian Muslim Jewish Buddhist pagan atheist son of a bitch. A pair of eyes in the dark.
The brighter the light outside, the darker it is inside me. A day without fear, what would that be like? Serpent’s kiss of the tropical sun, send us another Eden to spoil.
Surinam
To travel too much can only make you sad.
Escape exacts a revenge.
A capuchin monkey in the rainforest-
Me in my head.
Nature is so full of its own obscenity,
Vicious superlatives hunting you down,
Fighting,fornicating,rotting away,
Accursed jungle ready to kill you
And shrink your head into a trophy.
Nature thinks only of itself,
Perfecting its means in herbal dreams.
The deeper you penetrate,
The more the curse infests you,
Sticking parasitically to your blood and bones.
A Maroon sits under a tree,
Cutting the skin of his gnarled penis-root
And inserting little balls
To boost his manhood and please his woman.
Nearby, a forktailed woodnymph
Alights on a starfruit tree.
Blue and venomous as the okopipi frog,
I sit with a drink,
Knowing that everything happens soon enough,
It happens in its own time,
Happens when it happens.
A deed performed three hundred years ago
Is as potent as anything this moment,
Dark chigger lodged under skin.
Avital wrongs howl through the blood,
Demanding to be avenged.
Mercury rains blow across the earth.
In a rotting shack,
With a few chickens and pigs outside,
And mangy dogs lying in the sun,
Mr and Mrs Lopez proudly sell their teenage daughters
To drunken diseased gold miners,
Every Friday night.
Escape exacts a revenge.
A capuchin monkey in the rainforest-
Me in my head.
Nature is so full of its own obscenity,
Vicious superlatives hunting you down,
Fighting,fornicating,rotting away,
Accursed jungle ready to kill you
And shrink your head into a trophy.
Nature thinks only of itself,
Perfecting its means in herbal dreams.
The deeper you penetrate,
The more the curse infests you,
Sticking parasitically to your blood and bones.
A Maroon sits under a tree,
Cutting the skin of his gnarled penis-root
And inserting little balls
To boost his manhood and please his woman.
Nearby, a forktailed woodnymph
Alights on a starfruit tree.
Blue and venomous as the okopipi frog,
I sit with a drink,
Knowing that everything happens soon enough,
It happens in its own time,
Happens when it happens.
A deed performed three hundred years ago
Is as potent as anything this moment,
Dark chigger lodged under skin.
Avital wrongs howl through the blood,
Demanding to be avenged.
Mercury rains blow across the earth.
In a rotting shack,
With a few chickens and pigs outside,
And mangy dogs lying in the sun,
Mr and Mrs Lopez proudly sell their teenage daughters
To drunken diseased gold miners,
Every Friday night.
Debussy in the Bois de Boulogne
Raindrops puddleripple,
Detonating miniature ground zeroes…
How many musics the rain has gifted me!
Pleasure and instinct walk with me,
Like twin poodles, coiffed and jacketed!
A soul is not a soul that is not secret.
My tale is all memory and sighing regret,
Too little manly action in the world-
For what is real to me? What is actually there?
A devilish collector of passions am I-
Always charging towards the next frustration,
The next refinement of disappointment.
Only art has saved me from frivolity
In this shabby shoddy world;
And only frivolity has saved me from art.
What has saved me from suicide, I don’t know!
(I confess, I freely cheat at cards…
No need to be a loser, in order to suffer-
I do that well enough as it is!)
The hours consumed in spacing a chord,
Seducing obstinate vastness into shapes,
Relieves me from the devious selfish coward,
The self-pitying cantankerous swine.
The unresolved, the unfinished,-
That is my bizarre seductive Orient!
Disintegrate: is that my vocation?
The promise of crisis works through me,
Achieving occult ends in the world.
I forget nothing- such is my curse!
None are so ferocious as the timid,
Charged with the horned god’s burden.
Spendthrift sailor of precarious voyages,
Given to shipwrecks and marooning,
And exotic liaisons on South Sea isles,
I prove myself another Columbus,
Doomed to discover accursed shores.
All Paris, like a Javanese dancer,
Sways before me to the gamelan’s rush,
Balanced with hummingbird poise.
O, water-sprites, full of rainbows,
Transport me with shades and timbres,
Your cascading eddying tones!
Detonating miniature ground zeroes…
How many musics the rain has gifted me!
Pleasure and instinct walk with me,
Like twin poodles, coiffed and jacketed!
A soul is not a soul that is not secret.
My tale is all memory and sighing regret,
Too little manly action in the world-
For what is real to me? What is actually there?
A devilish collector of passions am I-
Always charging towards the next frustration,
The next refinement of disappointment.
Only art has saved me from frivolity
In this shabby shoddy world;
And only frivolity has saved me from art.
What has saved me from suicide, I don’t know!
(I confess, I freely cheat at cards…
No need to be a loser, in order to suffer-
I do that well enough as it is!)
The hours consumed in spacing a chord,
Seducing obstinate vastness into shapes,
Relieves me from the devious selfish coward,
The self-pitying cantankerous swine.
The unresolved, the unfinished,-
That is my bizarre seductive Orient!
Disintegrate: is that my vocation?
The promise of crisis works through me,
Achieving occult ends in the world.
I forget nothing- such is my curse!
None are so ferocious as the timid,
Charged with the horned god’s burden.
Spendthrift sailor of precarious voyages,
Given to shipwrecks and marooning,
And exotic liaisons on South Sea isles,
I prove myself another Columbus,
Doomed to discover accursed shores.
All Paris, like a Javanese dancer,
Sways before me to the gamelan’s rush,
Balanced with hummingbird poise.
O, water-sprites, full of rainbows,
Transport me with shades and timbres,
Your cascading eddying tones!
Beauty
This quality permits no indifference.
Beauty demands its due.
A paragraph from Chekhov,
Simple and right.
I show and control,
A lover of witchcraft,
An actor.
My mortal folly
Contains its own remedy,
Anti-venom
To the viper’s bite.
Dante sits writing a letter
To Can Grande della Scala,
Explaining the levels of allegory
In his Commedia.
Above his head, in the night sky,
The Pleiades spark into sight.
The last movement
Of Beethoven’s Eroica-
Silences.
Stillnesses.
It moves
Yet does not move.
To lose all,
That is the game.
Beauty demands its due.
A paragraph from Chekhov,
Simple and right.
I show and control,
A lover of witchcraft,
An actor.
My mortal folly
Contains its own remedy,
Anti-venom
To the viper’s bite.
Dante sits writing a letter
To Can Grande della Scala,
Explaining the levels of allegory
In his Commedia.
Above his head, in the night sky,
The Pleiades spark into sight.
The last movement
Of Beethoven’s Eroica-
Silences.
Stillnesses.
It moves
Yet does not move.
To lose all,
That is the game.
Exorcist
Fools, you have opened the door to demons,
Again.
The Old Adversary, once he gets his toe in,
Is not easy to evict.
It requires a bailiff of extraordinary force and guile.
A man pure in heart.
For what did Lucifer and his angels fall?
For believing they could be as God,
For believing they could win eternal joy through their own will.
Do not, in your fear, overestimate the Devil’s might:
He, too,was created, and limited, as we are,
His miracles but the facsimile of miracles,
His psychic powers merely superior observation.
He can do only what God allows him.
Bestial growls and curses fright the air,
And savage hate bruises my mind,
But I hold onto the crucifix, I do not let it drop.
Mary stands before me,
Face half-veiled in gold and white,
Her eyes filled with tears.
I adjure you, Satan,deceiver of the human race,
Know the Spirit of truth and of grace,
Who drives off your snares and confounds your lies,
Depart from this creature of God.
And this,
This haggard visage in the glass,
Grey with exhaustion and dread,
Having looked too often
Into the Devil’s eyes,
Is this I?
How far now from that laughing child,
Longing to dress up in a priest’s vestments
And strut about the puppet theatre
With censer in hand.
Again.
The Old Adversary, once he gets his toe in,
Is not easy to evict.
It requires a bailiff of extraordinary force and guile.
A man pure in heart.
For what did Lucifer and his angels fall?
For believing they could be as God,
For believing they could win eternal joy through their own will.
Do not, in your fear, overestimate the Devil’s might:
He, too,was created, and limited, as we are,
His miracles but the facsimile of miracles,
His psychic powers merely superior observation.
He can do only what God allows him.
Bestial growls and curses fright the air,
And savage hate bruises my mind,
But I hold onto the crucifix, I do not let it drop.
Mary stands before me,
Face half-veiled in gold and white,
Her eyes filled with tears.
I adjure you, Satan,deceiver of the human race,
Know the Spirit of truth and of grace,
Who drives off your snares and confounds your lies,
Depart from this creature of God.
And this,
This haggard visage in the glass,
Grey with exhaustion and dread,
Having looked too often
Into the Devil’s eyes,
Is this I?
How far now from that laughing child,
Longing to dress up in a priest’s vestments
And strut about the puppet theatre
With censer in hand.
The Murders in Florence
The hills are my hunting ground.
I am out there, a fox among the trees,
So stealthy you never see me approach,
Never hear me breathing.
You look for my face?
It is every face you pass in the street.
Only those in the know have power;
The keepers of secrets,
The dealers and doers.
Whatever is visible and obvious
Cannot be the truth.
The sun is setting over the hills;
Church bells toll the hour,
Honeysuckle carries on the twilight air.
The dying day carries secrets to the grave.
Winter. The Arno boils over,
Carrying trees, cars,dead cattle,
Into the streets,
Invading the buildings,
Leaving all covered in muck.
The palaces are streaked with damp,
The cobbled streets stink of shit
And grim walls forbid the eye.
Our speech is sick,
And no-one listens.
Can no-one hear my soul
And acknowledge its cry?
I blackmail the silence with blood.
When the damned scream,
It is my voice screaming.
The bodies of fornicators
I lay at my altar;
The diabolical vulva
My Eucharist.
The sacrifice most pleasing
To the demons
Is at the moment of orgasm
When power is released.
So I cull the depraved
As they spew their lust,
Avenging virtue on vice.
Seeing her bare her left breast
For her lover,
I strike.
A young girl,
A wicked beauty.
The smell of blood draws more evil;
The clever,the ambitious,the beautiful
Rush to dabble their hands and make their mark.
Rumour and accusation
Hex the city.
The dead stand denouncing the living.
Perseus holds aloft
The Medusa’s head,
Blood pouring from the neck.
I am out there, a fox among the trees,
So stealthy you never see me approach,
Never hear me breathing.
You look for my face?
It is every face you pass in the street.
Only those in the know have power;
The keepers of secrets,
The dealers and doers.
Whatever is visible and obvious
Cannot be the truth.
The sun is setting over the hills;
Church bells toll the hour,
Honeysuckle carries on the twilight air.
The dying day carries secrets to the grave.
Winter. The Arno boils over,
Carrying trees, cars,dead cattle,
Into the streets,
Invading the buildings,
Leaving all covered in muck.
The palaces are streaked with damp,
The cobbled streets stink of shit
And grim walls forbid the eye.
Our speech is sick,
And no-one listens.
Can no-one hear my soul
And acknowledge its cry?
I blackmail the silence with blood.
When the damned scream,
It is my voice screaming.
The bodies of fornicators
I lay at my altar;
The diabolical vulva
My Eucharist.
The sacrifice most pleasing
To the demons
Is at the moment of orgasm
When power is released.
So I cull the depraved
As they spew their lust,
Avenging virtue on vice.
Seeing her bare her left breast
For her lover,
I strike.
A young girl,
A wicked beauty.
The smell of blood draws more evil;
The clever,the ambitious,the beautiful
Rush to dabble their hands and make their mark.
Rumour and accusation
Hex the city.
The dead stand denouncing the living.
Perseus holds aloft
The Medusa’s head,
Blood pouring from the neck.
The Elders of Sardinia
Over the fields and mountains they come,
The old ones, the great ones,the unbeaten,
Watched over by the nuraghe on the hilltops,
To drink deep from the springs and fountains
Of blazing water and thunderous red wine.
The old gods love and fight in their blood;
Carrying hundreds of years on their backs
Like sacks of potatoes, they hold the earth
In their hands,brethren to boar and bear,
Fearing no grave and forgetting no pleasure.
In tumbledown villages on mountainsides
They sit and play cards in dusty cafes,
Oblivious to the busy bewildered world;
Or herd sheep over stony gnarled slopes,
Small dark gnomes, wise without instruction,
Wearing black poverty as a widow’s weeds,
With earned grace.No less than at youth’s
Festival, they are lovers, dancers, fighters,
Gathering the wild herbs of the heart
From under the spiky wind’s crow-beak.
Wormwood isle of the sardonic! Stout souls
Who loved the Sunday dance after church
As their true Mass! They revel in an Africa
Of memories and songs,conquering all
Conquerors with the force of their eyes.
This aura has been with them since birth:
The sage and myrtle and juniper charisma
Of the macchia,where witches’ houses
Guard the sources of dialect in their rocks,
Words, as rich and various as bread.
The old ones, the great ones,the unbeaten,
Watched over by the nuraghe on the hilltops,
To drink deep from the springs and fountains
Of blazing water and thunderous red wine.
The old gods love and fight in their blood;
Carrying hundreds of years on their backs
Like sacks of potatoes, they hold the earth
In their hands,brethren to boar and bear,
Fearing no grave and forgetting no pleasure.
In tumbledown villages on mountainsides
They sit and play cards in dusty cafes,
Oblivious to the busy bewildered world;
Or herd sheep over stony gnarled slopes,
Small dark gnomes, wise without instruction,
Wearing black poverty as a widow’s weeds,
With earned grace.No less than at youth’s
Festival, they are lovers, dancers, fighters,
Gathering the wild herbs of the heart
From under the spiky wind’s crow-beak.
Wormwood isle of the sardonic! Stout souls
Who loved the Sunday dance after church
As their true Mass! They revel in an Africa
Of memories and songs,conquering all
Conquerors with the force of their eyes.
This aura has been with them since birth:
The sage and myrtle and juniper charisma
Of the macchia,where witches’ houses
Guard the sources of dialect in their rocks,
Words, as rich and various as bread.
Between My Ears
“Wash your mouth out with soap and water,”
That’s what my parents used to tell me
When I was a kid.
I never did.
I never did.
I carried on cursing
And I still love to curse.
Monday to Friday
I take my mind for a walk
Like a man with his dog,
Tossing sticks and balls to chase,
Barking commands.
I love to disappear.
One minute I’m there,
The next I’m gone.
And nobody knows where.
I’m a man not easy to find,
Not easy to grasp,
Should you wish to find me,
Should you care to grasp.
Go on, go on,
Keep travelling.
You will find a Lithuania of the soul
And there, under rocks, hills and rivers,
Uncover what you will.
That’s what my parents used to tell me
When I was a kid.
I never did.
I never did.
I carried on cursing
And I still love to curse.
Monday to Friday
I take my mind for a walk
Like a man with his dog,
Tossing sticks and balls to chase,
Barking commands.
I love to disappear.
One minute I’m there,
The next I’m gone.
And nobody knows where.
I’m a man not easy to find,
Not easy to grasp,
Should you wish to find me,
Should you care to grasp.
Go on, go on,
Keep travelling.
You will find a Lithuania of the soul
And there, under rocks, hills and rivers,
Uncover what you will.
Cosimo de' Medici
The taciturn one,his few words pithy and cryptic,
Cosimo shuns the ostentatious, the indiscreet,
For the secrecy of profitable purpose.
His dead twin stands behind him in the mirror,
Watches as his hand signs another document,
Ambition and caution equally immense.
Born with the soul of a hundred-year-old,
He takes the diamond as his emblem,
And patiently prudently crafts a domain
Physical and metaphysical, eternal and doomed.
He makes money as shamans make rain.
Accused of tyranny,avarice,usury and all,
Of seeking to turn republic into princedom,
And elevating his dynasty above the city.
He sits and thinks, in his fortress palazzo,
Never troubling to defend himself,assured
That he is loved as much as resented,
Indispensable father to a fractious brood.
Can the world be healed with florins and ducats?
The excellent qualities of money are such
That it can work miracles and teach in parables
And even, with right ceremony,raise the dead.
To God Himself the banker lends with interest,
Trading marble and mosaic for salvation,
The humble black-clad rider on a mule,
Half-hidden in the entourage of the Magi.
Beauty’s commodity serves all in different kinds;
The patron,making play with piety and glory,
The Church gladly counting its receipts.
Gold pays for prayers;for talismanic magic,
Precious and rare as the rhinoceros horn.
Old,sick,crying out in gout’s hell at least touch,
Cosimo sits propped up in his private chapel,
Alone in candle-haloed dark,hearing Mass
Beneath the altar with its costly art and relics,
And the secret tunnel to escape down
Should some audacious assassin dare strike.
There is still time to commission a translation
Of Plato, and buy,perhaps, a little more life,
Do a deal,reach a compromise,strike a bargain.
Cosimo shuns the ostentatious, the indiscreet,
For the secrecy of profitable purpose.
His dead twin stands behind him in the mirror,
Watches as his hand signs another document,
Ambition and caution equally immense.
Born with the soul of a hundred-year-old,
He takes the diamond as his emblem,
And patiently prudently crafts a domain
Physical and metaphysical, eternal and doomed.
He makes money as shamans make rain.
Accused of tyranny,avarice,usury and all,
Of seeking to turn republic into princedom,
And elevating his dynasty above the city.
He sits and thinks, in his fortress palazzo,
Never troubling to defend himself,assured
That he is loved as much as resented,
Indispensable father to a fractious brood.
Can the world be healed with florins and ducats?
The excellent qualities of money are such
That it can work miracles and teach in parables
And even, with right ceremony,raise the dead.
To God Himself the banker lends with interest,
Trading marble and mosaic for salvation,
The humble black-clad rider on a mule,
Half-hidden in the entourage of the Magi.
Beauty’s commodity serves all in different kinds;
The patron,making play with piety and glory,
The Church gladly counting its receipts.
Gold pays for prayers;for talismanic magic,
Precious and rare as the rhinoceros horn.
Old,sick,crying out in gout’s hell at least touch,
Cosimo sits propped up in his private chapel,
Alone in candle-haloed dark,hearing Mass
Beneath the altar with its costly art and relics,
And the secret tunnel to escape down
Should some audacious assassin dare strike.
There is still time to commission a translation
Of Plato, and buy,perhaps, a little more life,
Do a deal,reach a compromise,strike a bargain.
Empire
In Hispaniola, things went not well:
Precious little gold for all our efforts;
The natives idle, barbarous and dull.
Between love and fear, we choose fear.
The Empire takes,controls and destroys,
Installs cruel hierarchies everywhere.
How would we survive without the dominators?
Our angry masters hold the universe together.
They teach us all human knowledge and culture.
These tales of greed and violence
Are our pride; but,haughty one,remember,
In Hispaniola, things went not well.
Precious little gold for all our efforts;
The natives idle, barbarous and dull.
Between love and fear, we choose fear.
The Empire takes,controls and destroys,
Installs cruel hierarchies everywhere.
How would we survive without the dominators?
Our angry masters hold the universe together.
They teach us all human knowledge and culture.
These tales of greed and violence
Are our pride; but,haughty one,remember,
In Hispaniola, things went not well.
Melancholia
I weather the evenings,writing a field guide
To the forms of melancholy,
My pen a raven’s feather
Charged with noxious ink.
There is always another poem to befriend me.
A handful of sunflower seeds.
I find myself in a country like Tibet,
Supping purest blue from the sky’s skull-cup.
The philosopher’s disease has cursed my blood
Since the coils of adolescence.
A shapely ingenious spirochete.
There is no vaccination against it.
No proof against the woeful wanderings
Of a mind unsatisfied with itself.
Pianist,play the minor chords for me;
Stroke the twilight body of autumn
Like a lover hurt into praise and scorn.
Saturn’s cycles regulate my ill-starred days.
I need blood and warmth to counter the darkness.
Or maybe I should draw the square of Jupiter.
The discontented temper that drives me
Defines the human in these shadowed eyes.
Disposition or disorder? One can only surmise.
The disproportionate is my element,
Acedia and tristitia my monastic sins,
Prone as I am to witchcraft and wordcraft.
A dire star presides over the shore,
Dark ocean waves riding over the driftwood day
And loveliness in the changing light.
And so to dance a Finnish tango
Beneath the Northern Lights, without a smile
Or word,-only music, sorrow, truth.
To the forms of melancholy,
My pen a raven’s feather
Charged with noxious ink.
There is always another poem to befriend me.
A handful of sunflower seeds.
I find myself in a country like Tibet,
Supping purest blue from the sky’s skull-cup.
The philosopher’s disease has cursed my blood
Since the coils of adolescence.
A shapely ingenious spirochete.
There is no vaccination against it.
No proof against the woeful wanderings
Of a mind unsatisfied with itself.
Pianist,play the minor chords for me;
Stroke the twilight body of autumn
Like a lover hurt into praise and scorn.
Saturn’s cycles regulate my ill-starred days.
I need blood and warmth to counter the darkness.
Or maybe I should draw the square of Jupiter.
The discontented temper that drives me
Defines the human in these shadowed eyes.
Disposition or disorder? One can only surmise.
The disproportionate is my element,
Acedia and tristitia my monastic sins,
Prone as I am to witchcraft and wordcraft.
A dire star presides over the shore,
Dark ocean waves riding over the driftwood day
And loveliness in the changing light.
And so to dance a Finnish tango
Beneath the Northern Lights, without a smile
Or word,-only music, sorrow, truth.
Versions of Shangri-La
Me and the other mythomaniacs,
Reeling from the altitude sickness of words…
There has to be some force in the atom
To midwife me a second birth.
Where the maps end, the journey begins.
The only evidence is in my heart.
The absence of desire.
I am walking,taking step after step,
Towards the neither-here-nor-there,
Certain never to arrive.
My goal is that hidden valley
Where men live young and free forever,
Miraculous plants and animals thrive,
And all drink wisdom from the streams.
A place inaccessible to all but the pure in heart,
Unrevealed until the propitious hour.
In this age of Kali, so far from God,
Under the tyranny of unrighteous rulers,
Avaricious, cruel and corrupt,
When brother is set against brother,
And man against the earth,
I look to the Himalayan mountains,
For exhilaration and hope.
Seven peaks are my constellation:
Rakaposhi,Kailash,Kangchenjunga,
Chomolhari,Kawakarpo and Jambeyang.
And Chomolungma.
The light mulling over the mountains and forests,
The wind stalking the lakes of Yading;
Smell of pine,larch and cypress,
And the mind’s blue glaciers, advancing and retreating…
Hunters climb to the alpine grasslands in spring
To dig up the caterpillar fungus
That remedies all ills.
The three white bodhisattvas hold me in their gaze,
And autumn trees glow red, yellow and green,
Prayer scarves of fog swathe the monastery,
Suspended on time’s edge,
And placid yaks graze in scarlet meadows
Where golden barley undulates in the breeze.
Cold lucent water cupped in my hands,
All the energy,wisdom and compassion in the cosmos
Burns in your molecules,and feeds me…
My eyes are full of tears,
The eyes of the thirteenth Dalai Lama.
Reeling from the altitude sickness of words…
There has to be some force in the atom
To midwife me a second birth.
Where the maps end, the journey begins.
The only evidence is in my heart.
The absence of desire.
I am walking,taking step after step,
Towards the neither-here-nor-there,
Certain never to arrive.
My goal is that hidden valley
Where men live young and free forever,
Miraculous plants and animals thrive,
And all drink wisdom from the streams.
A place inaccessible to all but the pure in heart,
Unrevealed until the propitious hour.
In this age of Kali, so far from God,
Under the tyranny of unrighteous rulers,
Avaricious, cruel and corrupt,
When brother is set against brother,
And man against the earth,
I look to the Himalayan mountains,
For exhilaration and hope.
Seven peaks are my constellation:
Rakaposhi,Kailash,Kangchenjunga,
Chomolhari,Kawakarpo and Jambeyang.
And Chomolungma.
The light mulling over the mountains and forests,
The wind stalking the lakes of Yading;
Smell of pine,larch and cypress,
And the mind’s blue glaciers, advancing and retreating…
Hunters climb to the alpine grasslands in spring
To dig up the caterpillar fungus
That remedies all ills.
The three white bodhisattvas hold me in their gaze,
And autumn trees glow red, yellow and green,
Prayer scarves of fog swathe the monastery,
Suspended on time’s edge,
And placid yaks graze in scarlet meadows
Where golden barley undulates in the breeze.
Cold lucent water cupped in my hands,
All the energy,wisdom and compassion in the cosmos
Burns in your molecules,and feeds me…
My eyes are full of tears,
The eyes of the thirteenth Dalai Lama.
The Summer of 1911
Music cartwheels across country house lawns
And the susurrus of lemonade poured over ice
Promises another phosphorus day to come
And,perhaps,by late afternoon, a thunderstorm.
Champagne flutes are raised to the light
By pallid ladies under white parasols
And strawhatted beaux reclining in hammocks;
Breathing the smell of roses and verbena,
They chase one another round temples and grottoes.
The cricketers stroll out and take their positions.
A child floats,drowned,in the village pond,
Lured there by the Aztec sun.
Gentlemen lounge all day at their London clubs,
While ladies consult with the cook over the dinner menu,
Arranging eight courses with care.
At 10 p.m.,in Mayfair houses,sweet musk of lilies
Censes the candlelit hallways,where polished guests
Indolently ascend grand staircases in regal pairs,
Angels on a Jacob’s ladder of lies.
Young Winston Churchill stands at the fireplace,
Holding forth to a salon gathering,
Addressing himself in the mirror
With grandiloquent periods and rehearsed bon mots.
The buccaneer. The wild card. The traitor.
From ball to ball she dances,Lady Diana Manners,
Now a black swan, now a Spanish infanta,
Afraid to stop for a moment lest the daybreak
Catch her and turn her to stone.
Eighteen and beautiful, everyone’s darling,
She drinks the pink champagne of life
And scandalizes the staid with rebellious excess.
Boredom and unease afflict the indolent,
Waiting,longing for something to happen,
To break the routine of wasted days
Between the tennis court and the Ouija board.
At Covent Garden Nijinsky leaps
And stops mid-air,the six-year-old boy
Chucked into the river by his father
To learn to swim;choking, drowning,
He saw a light above leading him home
Through the murk, and,surging upwards,
Shoved the water downwards around him,
To break through the surface and breathe
Grantchester. Rupert Brooke and friends
Saunter at midnight down the dusty lane
And across the meadow to the old mill pool;
Breathing the reek of wild peppermint and mud,
They strip and jump naked into the cool
And bask in the moonlight and the smell
Of freshmown hay.The sun is love,is truth.
And a glorious harvest is swelling.
And the susurrus of lemonade poured over ice
Promises another phosphorus day to come
And,perhaps,by late afternoon, a thunderstorm.
Champagne flutes are raised to the light
By pallid ladies under white parasols
And strawhatted beaux reclining in hammocks;
Breathing the smell of roses and verbena,
They chase one another round temples and grottoes.
The cricketers stroll out and take their positions.
A child floats,drowned,in the village pond,
Lured there by the Aztec sun.
Gentlemen lounge all day at their London clubs,
While ladies consult with the cook over the dinner menu,
Arranging eight courses with care.
At 10 p.m.,in Mayfair houses,sweet musk of lilies
Censes the candlelit hallways,where polished guests
Indolently ascend grand staircases in regal pairs,
Angels on a Jacob’s ladder of lies.
Young Winston Churchill stands at the fireplace,
Holding forth to a salon gathering,
Addressing himself in the mirror
With grandiloquent periods and rehearsed bon mots.
The buccaneer. The wild card. The traitor.
From ball to ball she dances,Lady Diana Manners,
Now a black swan, now a Spanish infanta,
Afraid to stop for a moment lest the daybreak
Catch her and turn her to stone.
Eighteen and beautiful, everyone’s darling,
She drinks the pink champagne of life
And scandalizes the staid with rebellious excess.
Boredom and unease afflict the indolent,
Waiting,longing for something to happen,
To break the routine of wasted days
Between the tennis court and the Ouija board.
At Covent Garden Nijinsky leaps
And stops mid-air,the six-year-old boy
Chucked into the river by his father
To learn to swim;choking, drowning,
He saw a light above leading him home
Through the murk, and,surging upwards,
Shoved the water downwards around him,
To break through the surface and breathe
Grantchester. Rupert Brooke and friends
Saunter at midnight down the dusty lane
And across the meadow to the old mill pool;
Breathing the reek of wild peppermint and mud,
They strip and jump naked into the cool
And bask in the moonlight and the smell
Of freshmown hay.The sun is love,is truth.
And a glorious harvest is swelling.
Footprints in the Snow
The Taoist master
picks up his brush
and writes the Way:
First, two dots,
two eyes,
male and female,
sun and moon,
then,underneath,a line,
the whole,
enfolding the self,
within the body,
walking,
wandering
around oneself,
around the world.
MARCUS JULIUS AGRIPPA, HEROD AGRIPPA II, LAST KING OF THE JEWS
Since that day when I sat upon the alabaster throne,
Crowned the Messiah, I have served you, Judea;
Elevated on the podium, I accepted the mission,
When Sirius spiralled high out of the invisible
And ordered the Nile to flood.
With me came the new Law, for Jew and Gentile alike.
Venus conjunct with the Sun marked my birth:
The red star rose in the halo of dawn; spring began.
That a renegade prince of a despised clan
Should be chosen to be his people’s saviour-
How else but by God’s will could this occur?
Berenice, my sister-wife, when has the East
Seen your like? When fate combines such beauty
With ambition and guile, then the world should wait
Upon wonders.
As Osiris and Isis, we rule
The two realms; through us, all may approach
The divinity within. Let this land be one, at peace,
Where every heart may search its own belief.
For every name and number in the world
The cipher is hidden.
Bull,man,lion and eagle-I am all.
Now is the time for new covenants,
For the noblest philosophy to guide the state
And reveal to humankind its true nature.
To that end, I will bend my actions hard
And force enlightenment upon the unwilling.
The sacrificial ram stands ready
Beneath the tamarisk tree, fruiting with letters
And numbers, and the four rivers flow
Through a new Eden’s cube.
Crowned the Messiah, I have served you, Judea;
Elevated on the podium, I accepted the mission,
When Sirius spiralled high out of the invisible
And ordered the Nile to flood.
With me came the new Law, for Jew and Gentile alike.
Venus conjunct with the Sun marked my birth:
The red star rose in the halo of dawn; spring began.
That a renegade prince of a despised clan
Should be chosen to be his people’s saviour-
How else but by God’s will could this occur?
Berenice, my sister-wife, when has the East
Seen your like? When fate combines such beauty
With ambition and guile, then the world should wait
Upon wonders.
As Osiris and Isis, we rule
The two realms; through us, all may approach
The divinity within. Let this land be one, at peace,
Where every heart may search its own belief.
For every name and number in the world
The cipher is hidden.
Bull,man,lion and eagle-I am all.
Now is the time for new covenants,
For the noblest philosophy to guide the state
And reveal to humankind its true nature.
To that end, I will bend my actions hard
And force enlightenment upon the unwilling.
The sacrificial ram stands ready
Beneath the tamarisk tree, fruiting with letters
And numbers, and the four rivers flow
Through a new Eden’s cube.
Hunger
So ravenous,
I could eat the world
And everything in it!
I always need something
To get my teeth into.
And you,
Dear stranger,
I could eat you alive,
A little hors d’oeuvre.
It’s dinner time again.
Knife,fork and spoon
My poet’s wands.
Pile the plate high,
Let the heat invade me…
From the first cry of need
To the last desperate sigh-
The human void…
Animal pangs
Of the mind that consumes me…
Sucking at mummy’s tit,
Bawling for pleasure,love,sex,power,
Possessions,meaning,and esteem…
Eternity belongs to bacteria:-
Precambrian Dreamtime’s
First surge of appetite.
A single slice of bread
Lies on my plate-
Immense.
My hand upon it
Is a thousand hands.
All I am
Is words,imaginings,
Stories of desire.
Possibility is the only thing
I cannot live without.
Oh please don’t let me die
On an empty stomach.
I journey towards ideas of experience,
Greater than experience itself.
The never-quite is my painful element.
I can never,never,never arrive.
Around the world,millions are starving.
But ,for me, the dinner bell tolls once again.
Give me a smile. Or a frown.
But give me something.
I could eat the world
And everything in it!
I always need something
To get my teeth into.
And you,
Dear stranger,
I could eat you alive,
A little hors d’oeuvre.
It’s dinner time again.
Knife,fork and spoon
My poet’s wands.
Pile the plate high,
Let the heat invade me…
From the first cry of need
To the last desperate sigh-
The human void…
Animal pangs
Of the mind that consumes me…
Sucking at mummy’s tit,
Bawling for pleasure,love,sex,power,
Possessions,meaning,and esteem…
Eternity belongs to bacteria:-
Precambrian Dreamtime’s
First surge of appetite.
A single slice of bread
Lies on my plate-
Immense.
My hand upon it
Is a thousand hands.
All I am
Is words,imaginings,
Stories of desire.
Possibility is the only thing
I cannot live without.
Oh please don’t let me die
On an empty stomach.
I journey towards ideas of experience,
Greater than experience itself.
The never-quite is my painful element.
I can never,never,never arrive.
Around the world,millions are starving.
But ,for me, the dinner bell tolls once again.
Give me a smile. Or a frown.
But give me something.
Venice in Winter
Looking for somewhere to kill yourself?
A nice cosy place to kill yourself?
You could do worse than Venice.
It’s all a blur,out there,in the rain,
As I sit beneath a cafe awning
With my caffé corretto,
My shivers and reveries...
Strange comfort there is in dissolution.
From every country in Europe they come,
The tasteful suicides,choosing their end
With aesthetic refinement,
Drawing the correct conclusion.
Another high tide, another falling back
Into the lagoon, the green slime;
The old are shuffling to destruction
Through another sickly season,
Markets are closing,
Doors are shut.
Mist and darkness hold the balance;
Unseen bells in hundreds
Peel and echo off the walls;
Silent silhouettes vanish
Down twisting alleyways.
Winter is a feast of fancies,
Candelight procession
From bridge to bridge;
Guises of murder and treason
Are now commedia dell’arte,
Death-masks of revellers
Making love to their lost,
Imagining abandon
Through blanked-out names.
Black cloak,black tricorn,
Whitegloved hands
And a stick to prod
And turn the patient over,
The plague doctor comes
With inquisitive beak,
To diagnose your sorrows.
A nice cosy place to kill yourself?
You could do worse than Venice.
It’s all a blur,out there,in the rain,
As I sit beneath a cafe awning
With my caffé corretto,
My shivers and reveries...
Strange comfort there is in dissolution.
From every country in Europe they come,
The tasteful suicides,choosing their end
With aesthetic refinement,
Drawing the correct conclusion.
Another high tide, another falling back
Into the lagoon, the green slime;
The old are shuffling to destruction
Through another sickly season,
Markets are closing,
Doors are shut.
Mist and darkness hold the balance;
Unseen bells in hundreds
Peel and echo off the walls;
Silent silhouettes vanish
Down twisting alleyways.
Winter is a feast of fancies,
Candelight procession
From bridge to bridge;
Guises of murder and treason
Are now commedia dell’arte,
Death-masks of revellers
Making love to their lost,
Imagining abandon
Through blanked-out names.
Black cloak,black tricorn,
Whitegloved hands
And a stick to prod
And turn the patient over,
The plague doctor comes
With inquisitive beak,
To diagnose your sorrows.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Taiwan
Ideogram brushed into the sea,
Whale’s tongue tuned to a dark wave;
Haven of the disaffected,the persecuted,
Mandarins,pirates,traders and adventurers,
Farmers and fishermen from China’s shore-
Sane men born to hunt the unicorn.
Mountains of waterdrops balance on my shoulders,
And full-moon-rivers riddle down to fingertips,
Typhoons hurtle across my invented ocean
In the season of drowned dogs.
Self’s weathers,cracks in the tortoiseshell!
This is my life,a pot of ashes
Filled with the ancestors’ breath,their voices,
And my breaking shall be my mending
If the gods so wish.
The lover’s hand and the calligrapher’s brush
Are equal in finesse;
Caressing form,they embrace emptiness.
The opera actress sits before the mirror,
Painting her face with the colours
Of the virtuous and resourceful.
Soon she will wrap the world in her sleeve,
And mime its emotions.
Before dawn an old man stands
In the park,dancing tai chi,
His arms arching slowly upward
In a giant circle,
Splitting the cosmos into yin and yang,
He moves hips,spine and limbs
In unison,breathing from the abdomen,
Absorbing the yang force
At its height.
Out from his cage the cobra is yanked
And skinned alive,
The fresh carcass writhing on a hook
As blood and meat
Are stirred into soup,
And men down cups of its bile
To fortify eyes,spines and cocks.
On Lion’s Head Mountain,
The path leads up and round
And in the stellar mane
On the Moon-Gazing Pavilion,
Any human Buddha can walk
Out into the cloud
And sup the mist-milk
To live forever.
Through the moon gates
Of my mind I climb
The twin pagodas
On Lotus Lake;
Entering by the dragon’s throat
I exit by the lion’s,
Transforming ill auspices
Into good fortune.
Bamboo girl,
Dancer on the edge of dawn,
A red envelope of kisses
For your soul’s New Year!
Whale’s tongue tuned to a dark wave;
Haven of the disaffected,the persecuted,
Mandarins,pirates,traders and adventurers,
Farmers and fishermen from China’s shore-
Sane men born to hunt the unicorn.
Mountains of waterdrops balance on my shoulders,
And full-moon-rivers riddle down to fingertips,
Typhoons hurtle across my invented ocean
In the season of drowned dogs.
Self’s weathers,cracks in the tortoiseshell!
This is my life,a pot of ashes
Filled with the ancestors’ breath,their voices,
And my breaking shall be my mending
If the gods so wish.
The lover’s hand and the calligrapher’s brush
Are equal in finesse;
Caressing form,they embrace emptiness.
The opera actress sits before the mirror,
Painting her face with the colours
Of the virtuous and resourceful.
Soon she will wrap the world in her sleeve,
And mime its emotions.
Before dawn an old man stands
In the park,dancing tai chi,
His arms arching slowly upward
In a giant circle,
Splitting the cosmos into yin and yang,
He moves hips,spine and limbs
In unison,breathing from the abdomen,
Absorbing the yang force
At its height.
Out from his cage the cobra is yanked
And skinned alive,
The fresh carcass writhing on a hook
As blood and meat
Are stirred into soup,
And men down cups of its bile
To fortify eyes,spines and cocks.
On Lion’s Head Mountain,
The path leads up and round
And in the stellar mane
On the Moon-Gazing Pavilion,
Any human Buddha can walk
Out into the cloud
And sup the mist-milk
To live forever.
Through the moon gates
Of my mind I climb
The twin pagodas
On Lotus Lake;
Entering by the dragon’s throat
I exit by the lion’s,
Transforming ill auspices
Into good fortune.
Bamboo girl,
Dancer on the edge of dawn,
A red envelope of kisses
For your soul’s New Year!
Bibliophagy
Fire is a god.Water is a god.
Books,too,are gods, with many enemies.
Demons in the hypothalamus
Or perhaps in the limbic system
Razed the libraries of Persepolis and Alexandria.
Memory is to be controlled,
Censored,looted and,if need be,destroyed.
Like an old rabbi,when my books grow sick
And die,I bury them with honour
In my secret geniza;
Thousands and thousands,in a hive of niches.
Cockroaches,termites,beetles,wasps and lice
Smell the sex of paper
And gorge their lust,
Laying evil eggs
Like supernovas.
The books of Sumer,
The first clay ziggurat words of men,
Dissolved by floods,
Burned and smashed by armies.
Books,
Invention of Nidaba,
Goddess of grain,
To whom the scribes would pray
Before and after writing.
Enmekar,king of Uruk,
Was damned to drink foul water in Hell
For not having his deeds written down.
The library of the Ramesseum,
And the House of Life at Om,
The vision of those papyri
Radioactive with fearsome knowledge…
The library is burning,
Black smoke covers the sun,
All over the city burned paper
Floats down, hot and delicate,
And for a second you can read
A fragment of text in negative,
Before it evaporates in your hand.
Books,too,are gods, with many enemies.
Demons in the hypothalamus
Or perhaps in the limbic system
Razed the libraries of Persepolis and Alexandria.
Memory is to be controlled,
Censored,looted and,if need be,destroyed.
Like an old rabbi,when my books grow sick
And die,I bury them with honour
In my secret geniza;
Thousands and thousands,in a hive of niches.
Cockroaches,termites,beetles,wasps and lice
Smell the sex of paper
And gorge their lust,
Laying evil eggs
Like supernovas.
The books of Sumer,
The first clay ziggurat words of men,
Dissolved by floods,
Burned and smashed by armies.
Books,
Invention of Nidaba,
Goddess of grain,
To whom the scribes would pray
Before and after writing.
Enmekar,king of Uruk,
Was damned to drink foul water in Hell
For not having his deeds written down.
The library of the Ramesseum,
And the House of Life at Om,
The vision of those papyri
Radioactive with fearsome knowledge…
The library is burning,
Black smoke covers the sun,
All over the city burned paper
Floats down, hot and delicate,
And for a second you can read
A fragment of text in negative,
Before it evaporates in your hand.
Amerigo Vespucci
Countries,like men,are as they make themselves,
Changed and changing from youth to old age,
Villainous and heroic,both.
How to describe my navigations,
The stars I have piloted by,
To the lands of the Cynocephali,
To marvellous cannibal shores?
The wild Atlantic’s hazards have shaped me,
Fleeing the wrecks of hopes and desires,
To realms where only the desperate succeed.
No cause but my own could earn my allegiance;
For magic and gold I made these voyages,
Following whichever winds and currents
Came to my aid.For that there is no God
To bless or curse,only the brute ways of man.
Did we find the terrestrial paradise
Or just a page from Dante?
Changed and changing from youth to old age,
Villainous and heroic,both.
How to describe my navigations,
The stars I have piloted by,
To the lands of the Cynocephali,
To marvellous cannibal shores?
The wild Atlantic’s hazards have shaped me,
Fleeing the wrecks of hopes and desires,
To realms where only the desperate succeed.
No cause but my own could earn my allegiance;
For magic and gold I made these voyages,
Following whichever winds and currents
Came to my aid.For that there is no God
To bless or curse,only the brute ways of man.
Did we find the terrestrial paradise
Or just a page from Dante?
Crucible of Seasons
The compass rose of processes
Draws me to its centre…
Where is my way to the gold?
The dragonish earth is my transformer.
No immutable dogma,
Just what I see,feel and believe,
My body,my journey.
My every look and movement is increase.
With a sweep of the caduceus,
I crown myself the mind’s pontifex!
Symbols leap like dolphins
Over the waves,
Heralds of the sun.
Quicksilver,neither solid nor liquid,
Splits into tiny fragments
Then reforms with ease.
Midsummer’s salamander,
I clock the calcinating sun
As a black harvest gathers.
Fire,burn a new way forward
Through this forest grown around!
Solstice opens its door before me,
Half-shadow,half-light.
Courage for the year’s second birth!
I must follow the oak’s roots down.
Lammas is the tide of dissolution,
The full moon pouring into my hands,
Grains of light,rainbow globes.
The ashes are fed into the vessel
And drowned.These emotions,
Feel their power truly,then let them go.
We are water:clouds,mountains,stars.
All that waxed must now gladly wane,
As the chalice is filled from the well.
Autumn,patron saint of separation!
Seek out the poisonous lead
That weighs you down,and purge it;
In the equinox’s vesica piscis
The scales are balanced with a song..
The world is crossing my throat’s bridge,
Vibrations,angels of the ether,
I sing and tone,tuned to the trees’
And hills’ bells,conspiring in dark love.
Solar eclipse: black November is broken
Down into foul compost in the flask.
Rain,mud,gales,sleet and snow-
Sacraments of the grounded heart,
Burying the seeds it wants to grow.
Borderland falls away like wingbeats;
Slowly,humbly,the earth shoulders death,
Knuckles down to dreams’ bone-craft,
As forbears take you by the hand.
Midwinter ferments the year’s yeast:
The putrefied lead coalesces again,
Cleansed,hinting at the gold within.
The sun is returning out of the dark,
Courage to choose,to grow,to work,
The old abundance,stirring,rising
In fire-snakes and fire-wheels.
Miraculous as the fifth element,
The peacock’s tail opens its eyes.
January,February,patient distillation:
Boiling and condensing,the solution
Surges up and runs back down the glass,
Connecting,refining,transforming.
The dark moon blesses planting,
As the haloed earth waxes to the full,
Majestic as a swan on the water.
Snowdrops push up through the frost;
I carve a puissant willow wand.
The sun leaps like a hare above
-Spring! Light runs the wood paths
Jumps,laughing, from rock to rock;
Surrender to the sky!King and Queen
Are joined today,and sire an heir.
Swim,weightless,over the land,
Changing from solid to vapour
And back again;love is here,
Stepping stones across the stream.
Beltane fires!-the gold to multiply
And perfect.Joy is within,always,
Binding all it touches in a single
Expansion;the golden elixir flows
From its cave,dew of the dawn,
Overbrimming the chalice.
Disappear among the May trees,
Walk the labyrinths,spiderwebs
Of light;you are the many and the one.
Draws me to its centre…
Where is my way to the gold?
The dragonish earth is my transformer.
No immutable dogma,
Just what I see,feel and believe,
My body,my journey.
My every look and movement is increase.
With a sweep of the caduceus,
I crown myself the mind’s pontifex!
Symbols leap like dolphins
Over the waves,
Heralds of the sun.
Quicksilver,neither solid nor liquid,
Splits into tiny fragments
Then reforms with ease.
Midsummer’s salamander,
I clock the calcinating sun
As a black harvest gathers.
Fire,burn a new way forward
Through this forest grown around!
Solstice opens its door before me,
Half-shadow,half-light.
Courage for the year’s second birth!
I must follow the oak’s roots down.
Lammas is the tide of dissolution,
The full moon pouring into my hands,
Grains of light,rainbow globes.
The ashes are fed into the vessel
And drowned.These emotions,
Feel their power truly,then let them go.
We are water:clouds,mountains,stars.
All that waxed must now gladly wane,
As the chalice is filled from the well.
Autumn,patron saint of separation!
Seek out the poisonous lead
That weighs you down,and purge it;
In the equinox’s vesica piscis
The scales are balanced with a song..
The world is crossing my throat’s bridge,
Vibrations,angels of the ether,
I sing and tone,tuned to the trees’
And hills’ bells,conspiring in dark love.
Solar eclipse: black November is broken
Down into foul compost in the flask.
Rain,mud,gales,sleet and snow-
Sacraments of the grounded heart,
Burying the seeds it wants to grow.
Borderland falls away like wingbeats;
Slowly,humbly,the earth shoulders death,
Knuckles down to dreams’ bone-craft,
As forbears take you by the hand.
Midwinter ferments the year’s yeast:
The putrefied lead coalesces again,
Cleansed,hinting at the gold within.
The sun is returning out of the dark,
Courage to choose,to grow,to work,
The old abundance,stirring,rising
In fire-snakes and fire-wheels.
Miraculous as the fifth element,
The peacock’s tail opens its eyes.
January,February,patient distillation:
Boiling and condensing,the solution
Surges up and runs back down the glass,
Connecting,refining,transforming.
The dark moon blesses planting,
As the haloed earth waxes to the full,
Majestic as a swan on the water.
Snowdrops push up through the frost;
I carve a puissant willow wand.
The sun leaps like a hare above
-Spring! Light runs the wood paths
Jumps,laughing, from rock to rock;
Surrender to the sky!King and Queen
Are joined today,and sire an heir.
Swim,weightless,over the land,
Changing from solid to vapour
And back again;love is here,
Stepping stones across the stream.
Beltane fires!-the gold to multiply
And perfect.Joy is within,always,
Binding all it touches in a single
Expansion;the golden elixir flows
From its cave,dew of the dawn,
Overbrimming the chalice.
Disappear among the May trees,
Walk the labyrinths,spiderwebs
Of light;you are the many and the one.
Fred Astaire
Nigh weightless,an alien born on a planet
With scarcely any gravity,
This odd-looking angel,ridiculous and divine,
Levitates without the aid of mirrors.
High delight of mastery!-
The hours of studying and imitating
Oneself,no,the ideal self
Latent down there,under the eyelids,
Safe from all ugliness,confusion and hurt.
A dancer,
As a racehorse is a racehorse,
And nothing more.
The suit fits,
With absolute elegance,
The shoes are winged
And polished like a witch’s obsidian glass.
At night he lies awake,unable to sleep,
As the images jitter before him,
The heavenly choreography
That may,perhaps,with infinite practice,
Be realized on earth
Before death,like an English gentleman,
In black tie and tails,
Enters and extends his visiting card
With whitegloved hand.
Meticulous cloud-jockey,
Riding high in the saddle of a dream,
Every sinew and tendon tensed
To fine purpose,he renders
Endless pains sleek and kempt.
Life has such preposterous plots!-
Only the enchantment, the aplomb
Of an innocent heart
Can sidestep the vulgar
With an elfish chuckle.
Poised on the precipice
Of his own precise ease,
Little Hermes concentrates all wisdom
In a glittering trifle,
A victory,
A gift.
With scarcely any gravity,
This odd-looking angel,ridiculous and divine,
Levitates without the aid of mirrors.
High delight of mastery!-
The hours of studying and imitating
Oneself,no,the ideal self
Latent down there,under the eyelids,
Safe from all ugliness,confusion and hurt.
A dancer,
As a racehorse is a racehorse,
And nothing more.
The suit fits,
With absolute elegance,
The shoes are winged
And polished like a witch’s obsidian glass.
At night he lies awake,unable to sleep,
As the images jitter before him,
The heavenly choreography
That may,perhaps,with infinite practice,
Be realized on earth
Before death,like an English gentleman,
In black tie and tails,
Enters and extends his visiting card
With whitegloved hand.
Meticulous cloud-jockey,
Riding high in the saddle of a dream,
Every sinew and tendon tensed
To fine purpose,he renders
Endless pains sleek and kempt.
Life has such preposterous plots!-
Only the enchantment, the aplomb
Of an innocent heart
Can sidestep the vulgar
With an elfish chuckle.
Poised on the precipice
Of his own precise ease,
Little Hermes concentrates all wisdom
In a glittering trifle,
A victory,
A gift.
Intelligencers: Elizabethan Espionage
Witness the godless dominion of secrets:
From degenerate Italy,the English,bewitched,
Learn spycraft,revelling in a theatre of ghosts.
The hunted deer in the thicket would be torn
To pieces;the traitor-seducer of souls,father
Of bastard plots,-would see,on the scaffold,
His body dismembered like a fallen state,
His genitals severed and held up to the mob.
As the artist hones his style through zeal
And practice,so the torturer,busy in the dark,
Blood-wedded to his fascinating instruments.
Malocchio is everywhere,the serpentine eyes
Of devils,the scarlet Pope’s illegitimate seed,
Creeping in and out of their priest-holes.
The cipherer’s hand,lettered in diabolism,
Stirs the shadows; imps leap to the service
Of their masters,and nightmares,saddled
By unhappy squires,ride on savage quests.
From degenerate Italy,the English,bewitched,
Learn spycraft,revelling in a theatre of ghosts.
The hunted deer in the thicket would be torn
To pieces;the traitor-seducer of souls,father
Of bastard plots,-would see,on the scaffold,
His body dismembered like a fallen state,
His genitals severed and held up to the mob.
As the artist hones his style through zeal
And practice,so the torturer,busy in the dark,
Blood-wedded to his fascinating instruments.
Malocchio is everywhere,the serpentine eyes
Of devils,the scarlet Pope’s illegitimate seed,
Creeping in and out of their priest-holes.
The cipherer’s hand,lettered in diabolism,
Stirs the shadows; imps leap to the service
Of their masters,and nightmares,saddled
By unhappy squires,ride on savage quests.
The Universe in My Room
Had I been present at the Creation,I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.
Alphonse the Wise
This is the universe in my room:
Each object,precisely located,
And dark matter flooding through.
A single atom separates me
From the eleventh dimension.
Positive and negative
Are perfectly balanced at zero.
The embryo,
Absolute brief sphere of cells,
Suddenly breaks symmetry
To grow.
I walk through the left wall,
Re-emerge from the right wall;
Disappear through the front wall,
Reappear through the back wall.
The floor is the ceiling is the floor.
On every side,above and below,
Are carbon copies of this room and me,
Infinite sequence of clones
Whose faces I can never see,
Turning away as I turn to look.
Billions of years ago,
The mummy spider died;
Her fire-egg seeded the nebulae
With these elements of us.
One day it will happen:
All this will disintegrate
Into a lifeless drifting mist
Of electrons,photons and neutrinos.
Now,for all, is the human hour,
The force and guile to manipulate
Life itself,the highest destiny
Free for the taking.
And all that holds the whole together
Is the ability to be both here and there.
Alphonse the Wise
This is the universe in my room:
Each object,precisely located,
And dark matter flooding through.
A single atom separates me
From the eleventh dimension.
Positive and negative
Are perfectly balanced at zero.
The embryo,
Absolute brief sphere of cells,
Suddenly breaks symmetry
To grow.
I walk through the left wall,
Re-emerge from the right wall;
Disappear through the front wall,
Reappear through the back wall.
The floor is the ceiling is the floor.
On every side,above and below,
Are carbon copies of this room and me,
Infinite sequence of clones
Whose faces I can never see,
Turning away as I turn to look.
Billions of years ago,
The mummy spider died;
Her fire-egg seeded the nebulae
With these elements of us.
One day it will happen:
All this will disintegrate
Into a lifeless drifting mist
Of electrons,photons and neutrinos.
Now,for all, is the human hour,
The force and guile to manipulate
Life itself,the highest destiny
Free for the taking.
And all that holds the whole together
Is the ability to be both here and there.
Sothis
When the Sun is in Leo,and the Nile is in flood,
Sirius,bright bluewhite servant of Isis, spirals upward…
The first day of the first month of the year.
As when Thoth hatched the world at Hermopolis
By the sound of his voice alone.
The voice of astronomy,mathematics and magic.
The vibrations of music,writing and law.
Soth,the source of the gods,
The portal whence they descended to Earth!
Human being,speak the Words of Power,
Reach forth with the mind and connect
With the consciousness of the universe.
Tie knots in time to seed your magical way.
Out in the red desert Set and his brother Horus
Fight each other forever,grappling in fury.
I am the scribe of many years,the scientist exact in knowledge and attainment;
The adventurer,sailing my reed barque among the stars,
Having drunk from miraculous rivers in the kingdom of the dead;
Brother of snakes and scorpions;high priest of Thoth,
Who enters and leaves by the sky’s eastern doors;
Pyramid-builder and Blower on Knots;
I drink the sacred texts,the hieroglyphs,swallow the papyri whole;
I cross the horizon, rolling my life into a ball like a scarab beetle;
I am High Priest of Heliopolis,trained in the secret rooms of the House of Life,
Mantled in a starry lionskin;
It is not I who speaks but the gods,my limbs are theirs;
My actions are synchronized with the stars;
I subdue the horned viper;Re and Osiris appear as one before me;
The censer is in my hand,natron is in my mouth,
I am anointed with the number Eight;
My keys unlock the doors of heaven, I come and go as I wish;
I am the golden falcon,guided by the Eye of Horus;
With this adze I open the mouths and eyes of the dead,
Fumigate them with incense,purify them with water,
Cover them with gold and precious stones;
I fashion amulets and talismans of power,
The Papyrus Sceptre, the Serpent’s Head, the Menat,the Sem,the Shen;
I bind the knots of heaven and earth,and the human body,
Confluences of the cosmic rivers;
I write letters to the dead on the grain bowl;
In a dark room,I fill my white lamp with virgin oil from oases,
And recite prayers of adoration to the rising sun;
I am the secret sun,enthroned in the serpent’s mouth,
At the hub of aeons and universes,
Watching the curve of life;
I pour the world’s evil into a pot and smash it;
I am the man of incense,myrrh and honey,
The man of papyrus and flax;
I am the keeper of the calendar,the keeper of seals;
I chant the all-powerful numbers that move the cosmos.
I am the master of life in whom life renews itself;
My death will ignite a new star in the heavens.
From the heart all things issue;
To the heart all things return.
Sirius,bright bluewhite servant of Isis, spirals upward…
The first day of the first month of the year.
As when Thoth hatched the world at Hermopolis
By the sound of his voice alone.
The voice of astronomy,mathematics and magic.
The vibrations of music,writing and law.
Soth,the source of the gods,
The portal whence they descended to Earth!
Human being,speak the Words of Power,
Reach forth with the mind and connect
With the consciousness of the universe.
Tie knots in time to seed your magical way.
Out in the red desert Set and his brother Horus
Fight each other forever,grappling in fury.
I am the scribe of many years,the scientist exact in knowledge and attainment;
The adventurer,sailing my reed barque among the stars,
Having drunk from miraculous rivers in the kingdom of the dead;
Brother of snakes and scorpions;high priest of Thoth,
Who enters and leaves by the sky’s eastern doors;
Pyramid-builder and Blower on Knots;
I drink the sacred texts,the hieroglyphs,swallow the papyri whole;
I cross the horizon, rolling my life into a ball like a scarab beetle;
I am High Priest of Heliopolis,trained in the secret rooms of the House of Life,
Mantled in a starry lionskin;
It is not I who speaks but the gods,my limbs are theirs;
My actions are synchronized with the stars;
I subdue the horned viper;Re and Osiris appear as one before me;
The censer is in my hand,natron is in my mouth,
I am anointed with the number Eight;
My keys unlock the doors of heaven, I come and go as I wish;
I am the golden falcon,guided by the Eye of Horus;
With this adze I open the mouths and eyes of the dead,
Fumigate them with incense,purify them with water,
Cover them with gold and precious stones;
I fashion amulets and talismans of power,
The Papyrus Sceptre, the Serpent’s Head, the Menat,the Sem,the Shen;
I bind the knots of heaven and earth,and the human body,
Confluences of the cosmic rivers;
I write letters to the dead on the grain bowl;
In a dark room,I fill my white lamp with virgin oil from oases,
And recite prayers of adoration to the rising sun;
I am the secret sun,enthroned in the serpent’s mouth,
At the hub of aeons and universes,
Watching the curve of life;
I pour the world’s evil into a pot and smash it;
I am the man of incense,myrrh and honey,
The man of papyrus and flax;
I am the keeper of the calendar,the keeper of seals;
I chant the all-powerful numbers that move the cosmos.
I am the master of life in whom life renews itself;
My death will ignite a new star in the heavens.
From the heart all things issue;
To the heart all things return.
Planet Wave
Age of dragons rising:
Crisis and terror stalk the heart;
Crimes thrive under the skin;
Wars and catastrophes boil
From within to without.
These structures,these philosophies
Cannot survive their own lies.
Confused,volatile,the minds
Of the many fall into hell,
Mad to consume beyond all hope,
To purchase mere daydreams.
As we ramp on joyful meaning,
We welcome,somehow, despair,
Racked between liberty and order,
Between matter and idea.
Clocking ominous ages, the planets
Align;storms ignite,disastrous
Or reviving,with winds both malign
And beneficent,and swelling tides:
The times speak fate and power,
When the best and the worst
Play chess for the soul of man.
The agents of our minds,
The inventors of reality,
Point another destiny
We must wreak in the world.
The womb’s fruit is ours to create
Before the sperm meets the egg.
There are many ways to kill
And many ways to die before death;
Transits of Uranus and Pluto
Lead into the perilous deep.
Here,in the proving ground,
We measure ourselves against the sky.
Some are inspired;others lose their minds,
Choosing madness as if it were bliss.
The ground and the underground
Weigh us in their balance.
Festering ills and horrors rise,
Burst their disguises.
The balloon is going up...
Crisis and terror stalk the heart;
Crimes thrive under the skin;
Wars and catastrophes boil
From within to without.
These structures,these philosophies
Cannot survive their own lies.
Confused,volatile,the minds
Of the many fall into hell,
Mad to consume beyond all hope,
To purchase mere daydreams.
As we ramp on joyful meaning,
We welcome,somehow, despair,
Racked between liberty and order,
Between matter and idea.
Clocking ominous ages, the planets
Align;storms ignite,disastrous
Or reviving,with winds both malign
And beneficent,and swelling tides:
The times speak fate and power,
When the best and the worst
Play chess for the soul of man.
The agents of our minds,
The inventors of reality,
Point another destiny
We must wreak in the world.
The womb’s fruit is ours to create
Before the sperm meets the egg.
There are many ways to kill
And many ways to die before death;
Transits of Uranus and Pluto
Lead into the perilous deep.
Here,in the proving ground,
We measure ourselves against the sky.
Some are inspired;others lose their minds,
Choosing madness as if it were bliss.
The ground and the underground
Weigh us in their balance.
Festering ills and horrors rise,
Burst their disguises.
The balloon is going up...
Cryptozoology
To one who has found a yeti hair in the snow
Or a centaur’s hoofprints in the woods,
The mission is clear.
I should be hunting werewolves in the mountains of Bulgaria
Or sailing after mermaids off the Azores.
I should hoist anchor now and head for the Norwegian Deep
To do battle with the kraken.
(Beware, sailors, when you venture ashore
On that inviting isle, to light your fires,
Lest you are on the snoozing monster’s back).
My place is with the simurgh and caladrius,
The manticore, the orc.
A thousand years as an egg
Then the Chinese dragon hatches at last
And spends another five hundred years as a water snake,
Gradually developing the head of a carp;
Over the next thousand years the creature
Acquires scales, four limbs with claws
And an elongated bearded face;
It takes another five centuries to grow horns;
And,not until a whole millennium has passed,
Does it finally sprout wings
And become a mature ying-lung.
Seldom seen, they patrol the skies, hiding in clouds,
Avidly following rain and storms,
And hibernate in deep pools, rivers and the sea.
To the Emperor Fuxi
The symbols of the I Ching were revealed
By a yellow dragon,
The trigrams spelled out by patterns in its hair.
Take care when entering woodlands,
The habitat of the wyvern,
With his aquiline talons and barbed stinging tail:
Aggressive by nature, he will attack on sight
Anything that might provide a meal.
According to the bestiary,he is Satan’s agent,
Heralding war,prestilence and sin.
To the alchemists,he symbolizes base matter,
Which the worthy knight of the laboratory
Overcomes and transmutes into gold.
I read sworn reports of mermaid sightings
And imagine their voices singing above the storm,
Calling to the mariner,to drown him.
(In 1403, a mermaid was swept through a broken dike
In the Dutch town of Haarlem;
There, she lived in captivity for fifteen years,
Taught to spin wool and kneel in front of a crucifix,
But was never heard to speak
And attempted many times to escape back to the sea)
A few breeding pairs of rocs still dwell, it is said,
On the isle of Madagascar,
In the lofty Massif of Tsaratanana;
Marco Polo reports that Kublai Khan
Was presented with a roc’s feather twelve paces long.
The female lays a single vast egg on the beach,
To be incubated by the sun and hot sand;
Only when the baby roc has hatched
Does the mother transport it to its nest in the clouds.
Thenceforth the roc spends its lifetime soaring
On the highest thermals of the sky,
And only ever alights at Mount Gaf, axis of the world.
The ki-lin is very seldom glimpsed,
That rainbow-coloured body and long horn,
Extremely powerful and swift, impossible to catch or kill,
Yet so gentle it will not harm any living thing;
It will not even tread on an insect and consumes only dead grass.
Few indeed are those in China
Who have heard its melodious enchanting voice.
Once,an expedition from the court of Genghis Khan
Encountered a ki-lin in the western deserts,
And were given a message of loving peace to pass onto the Khan,
Who, when he heard it, cancelled a military campaign.
Or a centaur’s hoofprints in the woods,
The mission is clear.
I should be hunting werewolves in the mountains of Bulgaria
Or sailing after mermaids off the Azores.
I should hoist anchor now and head for the Norwegian Deep
To do battle with the kraken.
(Beware, sailors, when you venture ashore
On that inviting isle, to light your fires,
Lest you are on the snoozing monster’s back).
My place is with the simurgh and caladrius,
The manticore, the orc.
A thousand years as an egg
Then the Chinese dragon hatches at last
And spends another five hundred years as a water snake,
Gradually developing the head of a carp;
Over the next thousand years the creature
Acquires scales, four limbs with claws
And an elongated bearded face;
It takes another five centuries to grow horns;
And,not until a whole millennium has passed,
Does it finally sprout wings
And become a mature ying-lung.
Seldom seen, they patrol the skies, hiding in clouds,
Avidly following rain and storms,
And hibernate in deep pools, rivers and the sea.
To the Emperor Fuxi
The symbols of the I Ching were revealed
By a yellow dragon,
The trigrams spelled out by patterns in its hair.
Take care when entering woodlands,
The habitat of the wyvern,
With his aquiline talons and barbed stinging tail:
Aggressive by nature, he will attack on sight
Anything that might provide a meal.
According to the bestiary,he is Satan’s agent,
Heralding war,prestilence and sin.
To the alchemists,he symbolizes base matter,
Which the worthy knight of the laboratory
Overcomes and transmutes into gold.
I read sworn reports of mermaid sightings
And imagine their voices singing above the storm,
Calling to the mariner,to drown him.
(In 1403, a mermaid was swept through a broken dike
In the Dutch town of Haarlem;
There, she lived in captivity for fifteen years,
Taught to spin wool and kneel in front of a crucifix,
But was never heard to speak
And attempted many times to escape back to the sea)
A few breeding pairs of rocs still dwell, it is said,
On the isle of Madagascar,
In the lofty Massif of Tsaratanana;
Marco Polo reports that Kublai Khan
Was presented with a roc’s feather twelve paces long.
The female lays a single vast egg on the beach,
To be incubated by the sun and hot sand;
Only when the baby roc has hatched
Does the mother transport it to its nest in the clouds.
Thenceforth the roc spends its lifetime soaring
On the highest thermals of the sky,
And only ever alights at Mount Gaf, axis of the world.
The ki-lin is very seldom glimpsed,
That rainbow-coloured body and long horn,
Extremely powerful and swift, impossible to catch or kill,
Yet so gentle it will not harm any living thing;
It will not even tread on an insect and consumes only dead grass.
Few indeed are those in China
Who have heard its melodious enchanting voice.
Once,an expedition from the court of Genghis Khan
Encountered a ki-lin in the western deserts,
And were given a message of loving peace to pass onto the Khan,
Who, when he heard it, cancelled a military campaign.
Stasi
The watchers and the watched.
The watchers watched.
Us.
Allies in the obscene,
Accomplices in the unspeakable.
What unites us is forbidden truth
At last revealed,
Grievous knowledge.
Demolish one wall
And you will have to build another;
There is always a wall of some kind.
Things that once existed
Can cease to exist;
People and countries,
Words,realities,lives.
When you reach that place
Can you still feel love?
The beauty of detail…
That is our obsession,
Our art.
Files,labels,identity cards.
Your thoughts and memories
Belong to the state.
A puzzle you will never solve.
A shredded document
That may or may not contain
The answer.
One knows the reality
But prefers to ignore it,
In order to remain sane.
The streets are still as drab
And ugly as ever;
We still go to work each day;
We are getting old.
There is always a man
Behind a desk,
A tidy desk;
A man who asks questions
And makes decisions.
Certain words
Are no longer in the dictionary,
Certain words
Have been removed.
Or ,perhaps,they were never there;
Memory plays tricks.
We,who longed for purity,
Can never be clean again.
We made our own universe,
Our own hells and heavens,
And named everything within it.
Loyalty and betrayal
Was all we understood-
For a little satisfaction,
A sense of self-importance,
There is nothing a man will not do.
First there is just one enemy,
Then two,then three,
Then millions.
It is spring:
I walk the streets,
Cherryblossom falling
On my head,
The names have changed,
The faces are the same,
I have work to do.
The watchers watched.
Us.
Allies in the obscene,
Accomplices in the unspeakable.
What unites us is forbidden truth
At last revealed,
Grievous knowledge.
Demolish one wall
And you will have to build another;
There is always a wall of some kind.
Things that once existed
Can cease to exist;
People and countries,
Words,realities,lives.
When you reach that place
Can you still feel love?
The beauty of detail…
That is our obsession,
Our art.
Files,labels,identity cards.
Your thoughts and memories
Belong to the state.
A puzzle you will never solve.
A shredded document
That may or may not contain
The answer.
One knows the reality
But prefers to ignore it,
In order to remain sane.
The streets are still as drab
And ugly as ever;
We still go to work each day;
We are getting old.
There is always a man
Behind a desk,
A tidy desk;
A man who asks questions
And makes decisions.
Certain words
Are no longer in the dictionary,
Certain words
Have been removed.
Or ,perhaps,they were never there;
Memory plays tricks.
We,who longed for purity,
Can never be clean again.
We made our own universe,
Our own hells and heavens,
And named everything within it.
Loyalty and betrayal
Was all we understood-
For a little satisfaction,
A sense of self-importance,
There is nothing a man will not do.
First there is just one enemy,
Then two,then three,
Then millions.
It is spring:
I walk the streets,
Cherryblossom falling
On my head,
The names have changed,
The faces are the same,
I have work to do.
The 1920s
Al Capone summons journalists to his suite
At the Metropole Hotel in Chicago,
To announce,with a devious actor’s flair,
His retirement from public service.
His soft voice holds immense charisma,
Authority laced with menace:
“The public good is my motto.
Ninety per cent of the people of Chicago
Drink and gamble; I’ve tried to supply them
With decent liquor and square games.
But I’m not appreciated.It’s no use.
Let the worthy citizens of Chicago
Get their liquor the best way they can.
I’m sick of the job.It’s a thankless one
And full of grief.I could bear it all
If it weren’t for the hurt it brings
To my mother and my family.
They hear so much about what
A terrible criminal I am.
It’s getting too much for them.”
His fat face powdered to hide the scars,
He poses in hand-made tangerine suit,
The right pocket concealing a gun,
With his diamond cuff-links and tie pin,
And huge bluewhite diamond
On the little finger of his left hand;
On the mahogany desk sit bowls of roses,
Behind it a submachine gun is concealed;
Outside his custom-built Cadillac waits,
Steel-plated,bullet-proof,seven tonnes,
The emperor’s chariot for processions
Through the streets that pay him tribute
As he plays the role of entrepreneur,
Respectable business man and benefactor.
Eager for public approval and acclaim.
On the golf course,his plus fours held up
By a diamond-buckled belt,pockets packed
With guns and hipflasks,Capone plays
His cronies for five hundred bucks a hole;
Romping like hooligans,they use each other
As tees,wrestle,leapfrog and somersault
On the plush greens. And,at night,
It is champagne,cocaine and showgirls,
Sentimental songs in jazz clubs.
Bessie Smith,tall,buxom and stately,
Steps off the train in another town
To sing the blues,her heart pierced
By seven daggers,from dusk to dawn;
No home but the music, voodoo queen
Of song,she practises black love and loss,
And never leaves the party till all the booze
Is gone;cruel pleasure is her addiction;
Any young beauty would do for her bed,
Dancers,musicians,men and women,
As long as they were young and lively,
She swigs them down like moonshine,
Devours them like fried pigs’ feet.
Beaten and bruised,she laughs
With joyous fury at sorrow,throwing
Life over her shoulder like an ermine stole.
All the praying and shouting and groaning
Of the world is in her voice.
Flappers with silver flasks tucked
Into their stocking-tops,
And tiny gold cocaine spoons
Dangling from their necks
Go mad on the dance floor,
Bony bodies starved into submission,
Skeletons at the danse macabre.
The cocktail’s venom is sweetened
To chase the nights down.
Pola Negri wears only black or white,
Chinchilla is her chosen fur;
Each day orchid petals are strewn
Over her dressing room floor.
See her out on Sunset Boulevard,
Taking her pet tiger for a walk;
See her riding in a white Rolls-Royce,
Two white wolfhounds at her sides,
The chauffeur all in white;
“A woman that all men desire
And none can possess.”
Ultimate freedom for the price
Of a movie ticket!
“The business of America is business,”
Says Calvin Coolidge,
As liberty sells itself to prosperity;
Bankers,executives and crooks
Hustle the White House,
And bosses beat their workers down;
What higher aim could man have
Than to make as much money as he can?
Higher than statesman,philosopher or priest
Stands the businessman,paragon
And evangelist of America,
With Jesus Christ the Chairman of the Board,
Who had “picked twelve men
From the lowest echelons of business
And forged them into an organization
That had conquered the world”.
America is the passion to sell,
And every day is an occasion to buy.
Steel,glass,concrete.Manhattan altitudes:
Skyscrapers shooting up like rockets
To Mars.The age of glamorous greed
And stupidity,lives being gambled
On the makebelieve market,
The greatest racket known to man.
Cloudwindows invite the suicidal leap;
The bull charges the matador’s cape.
In slowmotion,the tidal wave rises
To its crest,teeters,slides a little
And topples in an ecstasy of grief.
At the Metropole Hotel in Chicago,
To announce,with a devious actor’s flair,
His retirement from public service.
His soft voice holds immense charisma,
Authority laced with menace:
“The public good is my motto.
Ninety per cent of the people of Chicago
Drink and gamble; I’ve tried to supply them
With decent liquor and square games.
But I’m not appreciated.It’s no use.
Let the worthy citizens of Chicago
Get their liquor the best way they can.
I’m sick of the job.It’s a thankless one
And full of grief.I could bear it all
If it weren’t for the hurt it brings
To my mother and my family.
They hear so much about what
A terrible criminal I am.
It’s getting too much for them.”
His fat face powdered to hide the scars,
He poses in hand-made tangerine suit,
The right pocket concealing a gun,
With his diamond cuff-links and tie pin,
And huge bluewhite diamond
On the little finger of his left hand;
On the mahogany desk sit bowls of roses,
Behind it a submachine gun is concealed;
Outside his custom-built Cadillac waits,
Steel-plated,bullet-proof,seven tonnes,
The emperor’s chariot for processions
Through the streets that pay him tribute
As he plays the role of entrepreneur,
Respectable business man and benefactor.
Eager for public approval and acclaim.
On the golf course,his plus fours held up
By a diamond-buckled belt,pockets packed
With guns and hipflasks,Capone plays
His cronies for five hundred bucks a hole;
Romping like hooligans,they use each other
As tees,wrestle,leapfrog and somersault
On the plush greens. And,at night,
It is champagne,cocaine and showgirls,
Sentimental songs in jazz clubs.
Bessie Smith,tall,buxom and stately,
Steps off the train in another town
To sing the blues,her heart pierced
By seven daggers,from dusk to dawn;
No home but the music, voodoo queen
Of song,she practises black love and loss,
And never leaves the party till all the booze
Is gone;cruel pleasure is her addiction;
Any young beauty would do for her bed,
Dancers,musicians,men and women,
As long as they were young and lively,
She swigs them down like moonshine,
Devours them like fried pigs’ feet.
Beaten and bruised,she laughs
With joyous fury at sorrow,throwing
Life over her shoulder like an ermine stole.
All the praying and shouting and groaning
Of the world is in her voice.
Flappers with silver flasks tucked
Into their stocking-tops,
And tiny gold cocaine spoons
Dangling from their necks
Go mad on the dance floor,
Bony bodies starved into submission,
Skeletons at the danse macabre.
The cocktail’s venom is sweetened
To chase the nights down.
Pola Negri wears only black or white,
Chinchilla is her chosen fur;
Each day orchid petals are strewn
Over her dressing room floor.
See her out on Sunset Boulevard,
Taking her pet tiger for a walk;
See her riding in a white Rolls-Royce,
Two white wolfhounds at her sides,
The chauffeur all in white;
“A woman that all men desire
And none can possess.”
Ultimate freedom for the price
Of a movie ticket!
“The business of America is business,”
Says Calvin Coolidge,
As liberty sells itself to prosperity;
Bankers,executives and crooks
Hustle the White House,
And bosses beat their workers down;
What higher aim could man have
Than to make as much money as he can?
Higher than statesman,philosopher or priest
Stands the businessman,paragon
And evangelist of America,
With Jesus Christ the Chairman of the Board,
Who had “picked twelve men
From the lowest echelons of business
And forged them into an organization
That had conquered the world”.
America is the passion to sell,
And every day is an occasion to buy.
Steel,glass,concrete.Manhattan altitudes:
Skyscrapers shooting up like rockets
To Mars.The age of glamorous greed
And stupidity,lives being gambled
On the makebelieve market,
The greatest racket known to man.
Cloudwindows invite the suicidal leap;
The bull charges the matador’s cape.
In slowmotion,the tidal wave rises
To its crest,teeters,slides a little
And topples in an ecstasy of grief.
Pisa
There’s a seductive sadness at the heart of Europe
That calls me to myself,
Probing, persisting,
Homing in on It.
Wandering through Pisa’s deserted streets after dark,
Gazing down the Arno’s curve,
I fear that I feel nothing,
Nothing at all.
October’s coming on,
The hunt begins,
And wild mushrooms thrust up from the dark.
The viper and the boar
Contest my soul.
Roman sarcophagi in the Camposanto,
Bathtubs of the dead;
(Soil of Golgotha
That will rot a corpse in twenty-four hours)
…Browsing the arcades,I wonder
At man’s need to turn every experience
Into art, and render mortality
Architectural. There is no evanescence
That cannot be made solid.
“Flawed from the start,”
Says the guidebook,
“The Leaning Tower
Would surely have toppled,
Had the Pisans not been at war
For a hundred years,
Giving the soil time to settle”.
That calls me to myself,
Probing, persisting,
Homing in on It.
Wandering through Pisa’s deserted streets after dark,
Gazing down the Arno’s curve,
I fear that I feel nothing,
Nothing at all.
October’s coming on,
The hunt begins,
And wild mushrooms thrust up from the dark.
The viper and the boar
Contest my soul.
Roman sarcophagi in the Camposanto,
Bathtubs of the dead;
(Soil of Golgotha
That will rot a corpse in twenty-four hours)
…Browsing the arcades,I wonder
At man’s need to turn every experience
Into art, and render mortality
Architectural. There is no evanescence
That cannot be made solid.
“Flawed from the start,”
Says the guidebook,
“The Leaning Tower
Would surely have toppled,
Had the Pisans not been at war
For a hundred years,
Giving the soil time to settle”.
The Tree in the Mist
Broken silhouette,
then branches,
then leaves,
as you approach…
A tree
like the sound of an oboe
in the mist.
It is only the inexplicable
that I live for.
I no longer belong to myself.
The choices that make me,
The breaths I take.
Summer in the Dolomites.
Mahler in a rowing boat
on a lake:
the first stroke of the oars
-after months of frustration-
releases a theme
the Seventh Symphony’s
first movement
across the water
into the mountains…
then branches,
then leaves,
as you approach…
A tree
like the sound of an oboe
in the mist.
It is only the inexplicable
that I live for.
I no longer belong to myself.
The choices that make me,
The breaths I take.
Summer in the Dolomites.
Mahler in a rowing boat
on a lake:
the first stroke of the oars
-after months of frustration-
releases a theme
the Seventh Symphony’s
first movement
across the water
into the mountains…
Austrian Poem
The pulpit in the Stephansdom, carved with toads and salamanders;
In the Treasury of the Teutonic Order:an adder’s tongue once used for testing food for poison; a Sumatran dagger with handle craved out of rhino horn in the shape of Buddha, with sapphire eyes and ruby eyebrows;
The Ankeruhr in Hoher Markt, each hour the gilded figurine of a celebrated Viennese, shuffling across the dial, and at noon all twelve figures slowly stagger across to a medley of organ music;
In the Schatzkammer, the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, heavy mantles broidered with gold thread, a collar of golden links, and the ram emblem, worn by the twenty-four knights at all times;
The Stiftskirche at Melk,all gold paint and red stucco, and high altar with gilded papal crown suspended above the heads of Peter and Paul, all staged by Italian theatre designers;
Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s catalogue of hunting kills (at Schloss Artstetten), the two hundred and seventy thousand wild animals bagged on expeditions round the world;
The saintly female skeletons glass-coffined either side of the nave in the pink and white Wallfahrtskirche on Sonntagberg’s summit,glittering in bejewelled costumes,skull faces veiled and quills in their bony hands;
The Krypta chamber at Stift Altenburg, where Troger’s students practised the art of the grotesque, death their exultant frescoes’ theme,skeleton archers picking off cherubs with well-aimed bolts;
The Dancing Maenad at Carnuntum, superb buttocks veiled and enhanced by the finely carved drapery,the precise lust of the sculptor etching its geometry;
The seven-thousand-pipe organ in the church at Stift St Florian, beneath which Anton Bruckner lies buried, the old bumpkin in baggy clothes forever chasing young girls and being rejected, retreating to his beloved organ to play with all his soul;
The Great War frescoes in the chapel in Lienz:Austrian infantrymen advancing under fire, pale uniforms flapping like shrouds around their limbs , an army of the dead.
In the Treasury of the Teutonic Order:an adder’s tongue once used for testing food for poison; a Sumatran dagger with handle craved out of rhino horn in the shape of Buddha, with sapphire eyes and ruby eyebrows;
The Ankeruhr in Hoher Markt, each hour the gilded figurine of a celebrated Viennese, shuffling across the dial, and at noon all twelve figures slowly stagger across to a medley of organ music;
In the Schatzkammer, the insignia of the Order of the Golden Fleece, heavy mantles broidered with gold thread, a collar of golden links, and the ram emblem, worn by the twenty-four knights at all times;
The Stiftskirche at Melk,all gold paint and red stucco, and high altar with gilded papal crown suspended above the heads of Peter and Paul, all staged by Italian theatre designers;
Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s catalogue of hunting kills (at Schloss Artstetten), the two hundred and seventy thousand wild animals bagged on expeditions round the world;
The saintly female skeletons glass-coffined either side of the nave in the pink and white Wallfahrtskirche on Sonntagberg’s summit,glittering in bejewelled costumes,skull faces veiled and quills in their bony hands;
The Krypta chamber at Stift Altenburg, where Troger’s students practised the art of the grotesque, death their exultant frescoes’ theme,skeleton archers picking off cherubs with well-aimed bolts;
The Dancing Maenad at Carnuntum, superb buttocks veiled and enhanced by the finely carved drapery,the precise lust of the sculptor etching its geometry;
The seven-thousand-pipe organ in the church at Stift St Florian, beneath which Anton Bruckner lies buried, the old bumpkin in baggy clothes forever chasing young girls and being rejected, retreating to his beloved organ to play with all his soul;
The Great War frescoes in the chapel in Lienz:Austrian infantrymen advancing under fire, pale uniforms flapping like shrouds around their limbs , an army of the dead.
Nicholas Hawksmoor at Castle Howard
His last building.The Mausoleum.
A pagan rotunda,simple and austere,
Embellished with Doric colonnade.
Pure form and ancient practice
Exalt the Whig cause
And Lord Carlisle’s aspirations,
Subjecting faith to reason,
Government to freedom.
The aged Hawsmoor hobbles
Round the summit,
His gout anaesthetized by joy
At seeing his plans realized.
Platonism and magic are declining:
Democracy can be built in stone,
Empirical and plain,
A new man, a new constitution.
Death is breathing down his neck now;
He feels it,there,continually,
Not to be chased off by faith or science.
Mason on the square of time,
He holds in his hands
The consolation of stone,
The mystery.
The seen and the unseen
Put him to work,
Reconstructing the Temple of Solomon,
The palaces of Xanadu.
A pagan rotunda,simple and austere,
Embellished with Doric colonnade.
Pure form and ancient practice
Exalt the Whig cause
And Lord Carlisle’s aspirations,
Subjecting faith to reason,
Government to freedom.
The aged Hawsmoor hobbles
Round the summit,
His gout anaesthetized by joy
At seeing his plans realized.
Platonism and magic are declining:
Democracy can be built in stone,
Empirical and plain,
A new man, a new constitution.
Death is breathing down his neck now;
He feels it,there,continually,
Not to be chased off by faith or science.
Mason on the square of time,
He holds in his hands
The consolation of stone,
The mystery.
The seen and the unseen
Put him to work,
Reconstructing the Temple of Solomon,
The palaces of Xanadu.
Just Watch Children Playing
A crooked path is what I prefer.
The indirect approach.
How can I know if I’m alive?
Is being alive the same as not being dead?
Happiness is not my aim;
Only the absence of unhappiness.
Complete concentration on one point.
Magical “No”-my dark friend!
Writing a poem is a discipline of waiting,
Being there,where it comes from.
The happiness that was there
Before reasons for happiness existed;
The infinite comedy,
The kindness of life.
I don’t need to go to India or China.
I can sit in my room and watch a blackbird
Wandering round the lawn.
No need for opinions.
No need to feel important or special.
No need.
All this time I have only been
What other people tell me.
All I have known is others’ words.
And so I go on living as others want me to live.
Repeating myself,over and over.
Pretending that everything is something else.
There is nothing wrong with me,
Nothing that needs to be improved,
Nothing wrong with the voices in my head.
Life…no,it’s not a mistake.
It’s the tree outside my window.
It’s the blackbird perching on top.
The indirect approach.
How can I know if I’m alive?
Is being alive the same as not being dead?
Happiness is not my aim;
Only the absence of unhappiness.
Complete concentration on one point.
Magical “No”-my dark friend!
Writing a poem is a discipline of waiting,
Being there,where it comes from.
The happiness that was there
Before reasons for happiness existed;
The infinite comedy,
The kindness of life.
I don’t need to go to India or China.
I can sit in my room and watch a blackbird
Wandering round the lawn.
No need for opinions.
No need to feel important or special.
No need.
All this time I have only been
What other people tell me.
All I have known is others’ words.
And so I go on living as others want me to live.
Repeating myself,over and over.
Pretending that everything is something else.
There is nothing wrong with me,
Nothing that needs to be improved,
Nothing wrong with the voices in my head.
Life…no,it’s not a mistake.
It’s the tree outside my window.
It’s the blackbird perching on top.
The London Mad (Bedlam)
The lost,driven out of their wits by demons,
Flounder,shrieking,by the muddy Thames,
Drinking the potions of bark and berries
From their desperate families’ hands,
The Romans bring cold baths and purges,
Electric eels to shock them sane,
Trepan their skulls to let the evil out.
The Saxons thrash them with whips
Of porpoise hide;call them “moon-sick”,
And hang clovewort round their necks.
The manacled lunatics,pelted
With mud, and jeered at by the crowds,
Shuffle in line through Bethlem’s gates,
To their strawbedded manger.Golgotha.
The dancing bears of Bedlam lumber
And bellow,sport for the groundlings,
Inspiration for the playwrights,
Who tour the dungeons,fascinated
By the madness of Hamlet and Lear.
Starved and robbed,
The menagerie,chained to the walls,
Breathing the stench of sewers,
Laugh,sob,wail,sing for a gin,
While the drunken keeper –quick to thrash
And curse-turns a handsome profit;
Taking from gentlemen and their ladies
A few shillings for the tour.
Thieves and cutpurses dip
Into the pockets of the gawpers,
While queans pick up some business
And hawkers flog nuts to the crowd.
A French scholar,visiting London,
Devotes a whole chapter of his latest treatise
To the English Disease,
“The propensity to melancholy and suicide,
Brought on by fogs,beef and beer,
Nonconformist religion
And the tedium of Sundays.”
Flounder,shrieking,by the muddy Thames,
Drinking the potions of bark and berries
From their desperate families’ hands,
The Romans bring cold baths and purges,
Electric eels to shock them sane,
Trepan their skulls to let the evil out.
The Saxons thrash them with whips
Of porpoise hide;call them “moon-sick”,
And hang clovewort round their necks.
The manacled lunatics,pelted
With mud, and jeered at by the crowds,
Shuffle in line through Bethlem’s gates,
To their strawbedded manger.Golgotha.
The dancing bears of Bedlam lumber
And bellow,sport for the groundlings,
Inspiration for the playwrights,
Who tour the dungeons,fascinated
By the madness of Hamlet and Lear.
Starved and robbed,
The menagerie,chained to the walls,
Breathing the stench of sewers,
Laugh,sob,wail,sing for a gin,
While the drunken keeper –quick to thrash
And curse-turns a handsome profit;
Taking from gentlemen and their ladies
A few shillings for the tour.
Thieves and cutpurses dip
Into the pockets of the gawpers,
While queans pick up some business
And hawkers flog nuts to the crowd.
A French scholar,visiting London,
Devotes a whole chapter of his latest treatise
To the English Disease,
“The propensity to melancholy and suicide,
Brought on by fogs,beef and beer,
Nonconformist religion
And the tedium of Sundays.”
Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)
Just one opera a year,no more,while the hacks
Are turning out three or four for the money
In frenetic rivalry,slaves to La Scala
And their lust for noble patrons’ largesse;
Fastidious in his ambitions, the young Sicilian,
Blue-eyed and fair-haired,hustles his way
In that foreign land, the condescending north,
As if born to the company of aristocrats,
Holding himself their natural equal,
Perfectly mannered and groomed.
Only for the highest fees will he work,
Determined to do nothing on others’ terms,
Refusing to be hurried,bullied or cajoled,
Or to settle for second-best.
Honour and pride demand no less
Than absolute victory over the also-rans,
The pack of crude vicious impostors at his heels,
Forever intriguing jealously against him
To bring him down in mid-flight.
The meandering improvised melodies,
The tension and attraction between drone and chanter
Of the bagpipers,the oscillations between major and minor,
All this he carried with him from Sicily;
To make people weep,gasp,laugh,sigh and suffer,
That alone justifies an artist’s labours:-
Recalling love and glory in the midst of sorrow,
Reaching for the heart’s inborn excess.
Grand form and majestic emotion!-
Almost-unbearable truth held straining
By subtle strictures,as an unforgettable melody
Threads the world together,realizing
That beauty and love are one.
Shunning bohemian company,
Fleeing casinos and brothels as a vampire
Runs from the crucifix and the rising sun,
Bellini walks with lordly air,his malacca cane
Held like a sceptre,announcing his nobility
And elegance to a vulgar world of fools.
Shy, discreet,he weighs the advantages
And disadvantages of every course of action,
Dreading an ill-advised marriage or hasty affair,
In case the inconvenience should outweigh
The profit,and nasty humanity devalue his repute.
Yet,nonetheless,there is this craving
To be suckled by a selfless maternal love...
Alone,he returns to simple rooms,
Frugal in habits,caring nothing for luxury
Except in his dandy’s attire;happily browsing
Through his wardrobe he selects an outfit
For every occasion,an essay in la bella figura.
Paris.To succeed there- would that not be
The crown of life! Frequenting the salons,
Bewildered amid the repartee,he fumbles
Clumsy French,all ludicrous malapropisms,
Unable to keep up with the conversation,
As he stumbles from one soiree to the next.
Surely there must be a wife for him here-
A pretty docile well-bred young girl
With a generous dowry to keep him in style,
Someone to adore him and aid his career?
At last-triumph and fame in the city of art!
The toast of Paris,young,hale and famous,
He bows,laughs and waves among fans,
Until a casual voice warns in his ear
That geniuses so seldom live long,
And,dread-stricken,he crosses himself
And makes the horn-sign with his fingers
To avert the evil eye.In vain.Shortly after,
It is all over,his cursed body half-shovelled
Into the ground already, the romantic idol
Swamped in his own shit,sweat and fear,
Murdered not by love but amoebic dysentery.
Writhing in the shrouds of a suburban room,
He clutches at melodies passing in the air,
Too miraculous and austere to be believed.
Are turning out three or four for the money
In frenetic rivalry,slaves to La Scala
And their lust for noble patrons’ largesse;
Fastidious in his ambitions, the young Sicilian,
Blue-eyed and fair-haired,hustles his way
In that foreign land, the condescending north,
As if born to the company of aristocrats,
Holding himself their natural equal,
Perfectly mannered and groomed.
Only for the highest fees will he work,
Determined to do nothing on others’ terms,
Refusing to be hurried,bullied or cajoled,
Or to settle for second-best.
Honour and pride demand no less
Than absolute victory over the also-rans,
The pack of crude vicious impostors at his heels,
Forever intriguing jealously against him
To bring him down in mid-flight.
The meandering improvised melodies,
The tension and attraction between drone and chanter
Of the bagpipers,the oscillations between major and minor,
All this he carried with him from Sicily;
To make people weep,gasp,laugh,sigh and suffer,
That alone justifies an artist’s labours:-
Recalling love and glory in the midst of sorrow,
Reaching for the heart’s inborn excess.
Grand form and majestic emotion!-
Almost-unbearable truth held straining
By subtle strictures,as an unforgettable melody
Threads the world together,realizing
That beauty and love are one.
Shunning bohemian company,
Fleeing casinos and brothels as a vampire
Runs from the crucifix and the rising sun,
Bellini walks with lordly air,his malacca cane
Held like a sceptre,announcing his nobility
And elegance to a vulgar world of fools.
Shy, discreet,he weighs the advantages
And disadvantages of every course of action,
Dreading an ill-advised marriage or hasty affair,
In case the inconvenience should outweigh
The profit,and nasty humanity devalue his repute.
Yet,nonetheless,there is this craving
To be suckled by a selfless maternal love...
Alone,he returns to simple rooms,
Frugal in habits,caring nothing for luxury
Except in his dandy’s attire;happily browsing
Through his wardrobe he selects an outfit
For every occasion,an essay in la bella figura.
Paris.To succeed there- would that not be
The crown of life! Frequenting the salons,
Bewildered amid the repartee,he fumbles
Clumsy French,all ludicrous malapropisms,
Unable to keep up with the conversation,
As he stumbles from one soiree to the next.
Surely there must be a wife for him here-
A pretty docile well-bred young girl
With a generous dowry to keep him in style,
Someone to adore him and aid his career?
At last-triumph and fame in the city of art!
The toast of Paris,young,hale and famous,
He bows,laughs and waves among fans,
Until a casual voice warns in his ear
That geniuses so seldom live long,
And,dread-stricken,he crosses himself
And makes the horn-sign with his fingers
To avert the evil eye.In vain.Shortly after,
It is all over,his cursed body half-shovelled
Into the ground already, the romantic idol
Swamped in his own shit,sweat and fear,
Murdered not by love but amoebic dysentery.
Writhing in the shrouds of a suburban room,
He clutches at melodies passing in the air,
Too miraculous and austere to be believed.
The Death of Captain Cook
The old skill and patience had gone,
The judgment that had seen him through
So many times before; away too long,
Alone on the bridge,holding the ship
Together,crossing oceans and worlds
With only the force of his mind,
He had navigated by auspicious stars.
One last voyage,one last adventure-
He could not refuse,nor imagine
That a man could learn too much
Or sail too far.
Exhausted,disappointed and sick,
He scanned the seas for happy signs
Instead of these furies in his brain,
The crew now sullen and mutinous,
Longing to be ashore,in the arms
Of hospitable Hawaiian wahinis.
Tolerance, strained past endurance,
Turned to rage;his peaceful hand,
Attuned to the mapmaker’s tools,
Would take up weapons and attack
Any fool who dared defy him.
No god was he,but a god’s death
Was allotted,a sacrifice on the shore,
His blood given back to the waves
For all men’s sins and the fateful stars,
His failure the sum of all voyages.
The judgment that had seen him through
So many times before; away too long,
Alone on the bridge,holding the ship
Together,crossing oceans and worlds
With only the force of his mind,
He had navigated by auspicious stars.
One last voyage,one last adventure-
He could not refuse,nor imagine
That a man could learn too much
Or sail too far.
Exhausted,disappointed and sick,
He scanned the seas for happy signs
Instead of these furies in his brain,
The crew now sullen and mutinous,
Longing to be ashore,in the arms
Of hospitable Hawaiian wahinis.
Tolerance, strained past endurance,
Turned to rage;his peaceful hand,
Attuned to the mapmaker’s tools,
Would take up weapons and attack
Any fool who dared defy him.
No god was he,but a god’s death
Was allotted,a sacrifice on the shore,
His blood given back to the waves
For all men’s sins and the fateful stars,
His failure the sum of all voyages.
Ghost Jihad
Imagination will be the death of us;
It tends to run to unfortunate excess.
We all need a story
To tell and be told.
Alone I entered the world,
Alone I shall leave it.
The toppled statues,
The overthrown dictators,
Smashed and hacked and torn to pieces,
The ziggurats sacked and razed,
Babylon, Baghdad,Babylon…
American soldiers in sunglasses
Patrol the streets in armoured vehicles,
Certain only that they are not in Kansas now.
They know that their God is the real God,
And everyone else’s heathen idols.
Instead of news there are gossip and rumour,
Conspiracy theories of glorious lunacy,
Black magic for the masses.
Packs of looters roam through the ruins,
The living dead possessed by alien forces from Mars,
Diligently dismantling every connection.
And the dead-well,you remember them,-
Are just the people who were so terribly alive
A few dizzy minutes ago.
There are djinns on the loose,
Spreading havoc with ecstatic laughter;
This war is being fought
In all dimensions.
All across the city
People wake up in the night,sweating,
Dreaming that they are still in prison,
The torturer’s face looming over them.
Old skeletons and fresh cadavers
Are rising from the ground everywhere
And wild dogs gather,snarling,drawn by the stench.
In the café,old men,under faded photos
Of Old Baghdad,sip lemon tea
And inhale the perfumed narghileh,
Watching madmen fight over their city
Just as they had done in the past.
Spiky cuneiform clay tablets
Listing this man’s goats and that man’s cattle;
This desert once was Eden, red Adam’s aceldama,
The wheatfields seeded by catastrophe,
Fat sun-grains tasting of eternal life,
For which men fought each other to the death.
“Garryowen” blares from loudspeakers
As the helicopters of the Seventh Cavalry
Ascend into the air,about to fly into battle;
Just so did General Custer’s pipers
Strike up the regimental anthem,
His troopers charging to destruction
In the teeming Indian camp.
On a rooftop a marine lies prone,
Squinting down the barrel of his sniper rifle,
Named after his girlfriend;
He observes distant coordinates moving,
Ready to shoot at any second,
And feel nothing.
It tends to run to unfortunate excess.
We all need a story
To tell and be told.
Alone I entered the world,
Alone I shall leave it.
The toppled statues,
The overthrown dictators,
Smashed and hacked and torn to pieces,
The ziggurats sacked and razed,
Babylon, Baghdad,Babylon…
American soldiers in sunglasses
Patrol the streets in armoured vehicles,
Certain only that they are not in Kansas now.
They know that their God is the real God,
And everyone else’s heathen idols.
Instead of news there are gossip and rumour,
Conspiracy theories of glorious lunacy,
Black magic for the masses.
Packs of looters roam through the ruins,
The living dead possessed by alien forces from Mars,
Diligently dismantling every connection.
And the dead-well,you remember them,-
Are just the people who were so terribly alive
A few dizzy minutes ago.
There are djinns on the loose,
Spreading havoc with ecstatic laughter;
This war is being fought
In all dimensions.
All across the city
People wake up in the night,sweating,
Dreaming that they are still in prison,
The torturer’s face looming over them.
Old skeletons and fresh cadavers
Are rising from the ground everywhere
And wild dogs gather,snarling,drawn by the stench.
In the café,old men,under faded photos
Of Old Baghdad,sip lemon tea
And inhale the perfumed narghileh,
Watching madmen fight over their city
Just as they had done in the past.
Spiky cuneiform clay tablets
Listing this man’s goats and that man’s cattle;
This desert once was Eden, red Adam’s aceldama,
The wheatfields seeded by catastrophe,
Fat sun-grains tasting of eternal life,
For which men fought each other to the death.
“Garryowen” blares from loudspeakers
As the helicopters of the Seventh Cavalry
Ascend into the air,about to fly into battle;
Just so did General Custer’s pipers
Strike up the regimental anthem,
His troopers charging to destruction
In the teeming Indian camp.
On a rooftop a marine lies prone,
Squinting down the barrel of his sniper rifle,
Named after his girlfriend;
He observes distant coordinates moving,
Ready to shoot at any second,
And feel nothing.
The Murder-Artist
The skilful use of tools
And the application of method
Lead to the miracle dreamt-of and planned.
You will trust me, love me,
Do as I desire.
In the April woods a naked young woman-
A prostitute-
Lies face down under a tree,
Legs pulled wide apart, arms extended forward,
Bluegray fungus spreading over her flesh,
As she merges into the compost,
The killer has planted her thus,face in the dirt,
Her backside and genitals gaping upward,
To be mocked and cursed;
Around her neck is the stocking
He strangled her with,
Tightening and relaxing the pressure
With diabolical skill
To prolong her torture and his pleasure.
Foxes have chewed her legs.
People…I love to watch them,
To figure them out.
Sometimes I feel I know them
Better than they know themselves.
I X-ray their personalities
In a minute or two.
What curious skeletons!
What virus is this
That lives in my veins,mutating,
Surviving all attempts to cure or kill?
I smell the blood-spoor
Of the wounded animal,
My desire, my prey.
Celestial movements
Conduct me to a critical alignment;
A baleful star rises to its zenith.
And the application of method
Lead to the miracle dreamt-of and planned.
You will trust me, love me,
Do as I desire.
In the April woods a naked young woman-
A prostitute-
Lies face down under a tree,
Legs pulled wide apart, arms extended forward,
Bluegray fungus spreading over her flesh,
As she merges into the compost,
The killer has planted her thus,face in the dirt,
Her backside and genitals gaping upward,
To be mocked and cursed;
Around her neck is the stocking
He strangled her with,
Tightening and relaxing the pressure
With diabolical skill
To prolong her torture and his pleasure.
Foxes have chewed her legs.
People…I love to watch them,
To figure them out.
Sometimes I feel I know them
Better than they know themselves.
I X-ray their personalities
In a minute or two.
What curious skeletons!
What virus is this
That lives in my veins,mutating,
Surviving all attempts to cure or kill?
I smell the blood-spoor
Of the wounded animal,
My desire, my prey.
Celestial movements
Conduct me to a critical alignment;
A baleful star rises to its zenith.
Grandmaster
I don’t believe in psychology.I believe in good moves.
Bobby Fischer
There is celestial beauty in these lines-
Stellar geometry of infinite complexity
And boundlessness in a bounded world.
These sixty-four squares are my destiny.
Each decision is weighed in the balance,
Each move is plotted on a graph.
How do I wish the board to look
Ten or twenty moves from now?
Strategy is all:whether to defend,
Attack or manouevre,-understanding
Oneself without fear or shame.
Victory is mine, if I ask the right questions.
Find balance in imbalance,
Transcendence in circumstance.
Before each move,consider
Your opponent’s response,and how
You,in turn,will counter his riposte,
Analyse positions,variations,chances.
More than the atoms in the universe-
The possible positions on the board.
Agile as a monkey,I must leap
Among the branches of this tree,
Discipline and imagination as one,
The sixth sense my prehensile tail.
(One boyhood Christmas,my parents gave me
A globe,a fabulous radiant blue globe,
-Oh, the constellated hours I spent sailing
The oceans and trekking across continents,
Mapping the world for the first time,
Columbus on the prow of a dream…)
Opening,middlegame,endgame:
The gods have set the limits
For us to study and transform.
Bobby Fischer
There is celestial beauty in these lines-
Stellar geometry of infinite complexity
And boundlessness in a bounded world.
These sixty-four squares are my destiny.
Each decision is weighed in the balance,
Each move is plotted on a graph.
How do I wish the board to look
Ten or twenty moves from now?
Strategy is all:whether to defend,
Attack or manouevre,-understanding
Oneself without fear or shame.
Victory is mine, if I ask the right questions.
Find balance in imbalance,
Transcendence in circumstance.
Before each move,consider
Your opponent’s response,and how
You,in turn,will counter his riposte,
Analyse positions,variations,chances.
More than the atoms in the universe-
The possible positions on the board.
Agile as a monkey,I must leap
Among the branches of this tree,
Discipline and imagination as one,
The sixth sense my prehensile tail.
(One boyhood Christmas,my parents gave me
A globe,a fabulous radiant blue globe,
-Oh, the constellated hours I spent sailing
The oceans and trekking across continents,
Mapping the world for the first time,
Columbus on the prow of a dream…)
Opening,middlegame,endgame:
The gods have set the limits
For us to study and transform.
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