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!
Friday, April 10, 2009
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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