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.
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