The icons in his blood began to work again,
He had taken leave of Russia and himself.
The Mexican skull beneath his face
Spoke Aztec poems to the east,
Laughing out the Day of the Dead.
Emotions and senses
Were taking him over,
The deliberate atheist
Painted blue for sacrifice.
He wanted to love the crowds,
The faces of strange brothers and sisters,
People without the law.
Once more a child,magicked and seduced
Into wild ecstatic knowledge,
He mounted images and rode them away;
All the centuries were happening at once,
Around him,impossible to take in,
Dreams and nightmares commingling.
Pencil in hand, he sketched
Epiphanies,vivid as the folk tales
And myths in the cradle,-
Everything was preternaturally alive
Yet skeletal, already dead.
This country was whatever he could imagine,
Remember, create.
The torero,blessed before the corrida,
He carried dark saints on his shoulders,
Through the blood-fiesta;
It did not have to be Utopia or Eden.
Just an unofficial communion,
A minute or an hour of pure love.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Remnants of Outremer
Shortlived are all the kingdoms of this world:
So God has disposed and what right has man
To argue his precedence and desire?
As long as there is land, there will be war.
Covered passages and ruined houses
In the Genoese quarter of Akko,
Handsome ashlar vaults built to endure,
Molten light and shadow melding.
Their bread absorbed the flavour
Of the Saracen sun; olive presses bled
Elixir such as Jesus had once supped,
And water-mills churned the light.
A twelfth-century scythe lies in the dirt,
Crescent moon of a thousand years ago;
The hardened hand that made it sing
Trembled also at the touch of rose petals.
The Frankish dead, in shallow graves,
Stretch out on their backs from east to west,
Stone-pillowed heads propped ,gazing
Sunsetwise,arms across their chests.
So God has disposed and what right has man
To argue his precedence and desire?
As long as there is land, there will be war.
Covered passages and ruined houses
In the Genoese quarter of Akko,
Handsome ashlar vaults built to endure,
Molten light and shadow melding.
Their bread absorbed the flavour
Of the Saracen sun; olive presses bled
Elixir such as Jesus had once supped,
And water-mills churned the light.
A twelfth-century scythe lies in the dirt,
Crescent moon of a thousand years ago;
The hardened hand that made it sing
Trembled also at the touch of rose petals.
The Frankish dead, in shallow graves,
Stretch out on their backs from east to west,
Stone-pillowed heads propped ,gazing
Sunsetwise,arms across their chests.
Screen
No prayers, no Masses, no good works,
Just suffering carefully examined;
I see Christ in every cheap action film,
The Madonna on billboards and magazine covers.
Pontius Pilate with a remote control,
I restlessly change channels.
My eyes accept the sacrament:
Incarnations within a screen.
Pictures reunite me with the world,
Re-acquaint me with myself.
I have sensed God more in cinemas than churches.
Can I overcome superstition,
Transcend idolatry?
I am here to bear witness.
To prepare a revelation in the dark.
An oracular object is presented to me:
The head of John the Baptist,
Orpheus,
Hussein.
I allow the darkness power over me
For what it may teach me
In exultation and hurt.
What is eternal life
If not this instant now,
Before and behind the screen?
All that remains of my rational world
Is these images, these signs.
Just suffering carefully examined;
I see Christ in every cheap action film,
The Madonna on billboards and magazine covers.
Pontius Pilate with a remote control,
I restlessly change channels.
My eyes accept the sacrament:
Incarnations within a screen.
Pictures reunite me with the world,
Re-acquaint me with myself.
I have sensed God more in cinemas than churches.
Can I overcome superstition,
Transcend idolatry?
I am here to bear witness.
To prepare a revelation in the dark.
An oracular object is presented to me:
The head of John the Baptist,
Orpheus,
Hussein.
I allow the darkness power over me
For what it may teach me
In exultation and hurt.
What is eternal life
If not this instant now,
Before and behind the screen?
All that remains of my rational world
Is these images, these signs.
Everyday Man (Rudiments of Tuesday)
Days require techniques.
Mostly it is waiting.
Deviant conformist,
Backstage, in an armchair,
I scribble a shopping list,
As tame as they come.
I safari through suburbia,
And join another queue,
Shuffling to and fro,
As I watch out for lawbreakers.
Is anybody listening to me?
I don’t listen much myself.
Innumerable faces blur into one,
African masks on English streets.
Weighing up costs and benefits,
I cast spells with a voodoo doll marked “love”.
My eyes fix on nothing,
Embarrassed to stare,to enquire.
Incompetent performances are my forte,
Always ready with an encore;
So hard to learn the script,
And remember my lines.
I think I may have left my life
On the mantelpiece, a kitsch souvenir
From a place half-invented half-forgotten.
The Benedictine horarium
Tells me what time to be.
Periodicity.Tempo.Synchronisation.
Duration.Sequence.
“What did you do at the weekend?”
Diseases of the heart and liver,
I must have had them all...
But what if the patient does not wish to get better?
Mostly it is waiting.
Deviant conformist,
Backstage, in an armchair,
I scribble a shopping list,
As tame as they come.
I safari through suburbia,
And join another queue,
Shuffling to and fro,
As I watch out for lawbreakers.
Is anybody listening to me?
I don’t listen much myself.
Innumerable faces blur into one,
African masks on English streets.
Weighing up costs and benefits,
I cast spells with a voodoo doll marked “love”.
My eyes fix on nothing,
Embarrassed to stare,to enquire.
Incompetent performances are my forte,
Always ready with an encore;
So hard to learn the script,
And remember my lines.
I think I may have left my life
On the mantelpiece, a kitsch souvenir
From a place half-invented half-forgotten.
The Benedictine horarium
Tells me what time to be.
Periodicity.Tempo.Synchronisation.
Duration.Sequence.
“What did you do at the weekend?”
Diseases of the heart and liver,
I must have had them all...
But what if the patient does not wish to get better?
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Count Cagliostro in the Papal Prison of San Leo, 1791-1795
Immured here,damned,abandoned to die...
The furthest-fallen man in Christendom,
Greatest angel in the echoing abyss.
All Europe once spoke my name in awe
And responded to my mesmeric passes.
Why must men destroy what they cannot understand?
I strove to bring them truth and ritual,
To awaken them to their own forgotten powers.
Heal and rejuvenate mankind? Why,of course,
That could never be allowed.
I saw into their souls,a gift not easily forgiven.
They are not yet ready to return to Egypt
Nor read the Book of the Dead.
How childish is man in his understanding,
Eager for toys and entertainment-
Thus they tried to reduce my magic
To games and pastimes for fashionable soirées
And when I refused called me impostor.
Fools’ envy has been my misfortune.
The mind is God and the mind is light.
By words,herbs and stones I moved the world,
Healed thousands with my hands and eyes,
And manufactured the elixir of immortality;
The griffin-guarded liquid gold was mine!
Curse the Inquisitors for robbing me
Of my Serpent Seal-the snake with an apple
In its mouth,pierced by an arrow-
The Aleph of spirit and life,the Arcanum,
Signature of liberty,power and duty.
This fetid verminous oubliette is all I have
Of the world-tortured more by betrayals
Than by thumbscrews and rack-
And so on its dank walls I paint
With rust flakes and my own urine
Alchemical symbols of transmutation
And shout through the bars to villagers below
The horrid prophecies I see in dreams.
Slaves of the church, do not pray for me,
My soul needs no false salvation-it is free
Already,even as this screaming body rots
Back into the prima materia...
Kind tormentors,I proffer you my skull
That you should drink its alembroth
And be wise!My thanks for this quarantine,
In which I achieve the pentagon.
The Martian iron is in me,the force of art;
The gold and silver sword of Solomon
Fits my hand perfectly,-en garde!
The furthest-fallen man in Christendom,
Greatest angel in the echoing abyss.
All Europe once spoke my name in awe
And responded to my mesmeric passes.
Why must men destroy what they cannot understand?
I strove to bring them truth and ritual,
To awaken them to their own forgotten powers.
Heal and rejuvenate mankind? Why,of course,
That could never be allowed.
I saw into their souls,a gift not easily forgiven.
They are not yet ready to return to Egypt
Nor read the Book of the Dead.
How childish is man in his understanding,
Eager for toys and entertainment-
Thus they tried to reduce my magic
To games and pastimes for fashionable soirées
And when I refused called me impostor.
Fools’ envy has been my misfortune.
The mind is God and the mind is light.
By words,herbs and stones I moved the world,
Healed thousands with my hands and eyes,
And manufactured the elixir of immortality;
The griffin-guarded liquid gold was mine!
Curse the Inquisitors for robbing me
Of my Serpent Seal-the snake with an apple
In its mouth,pierced by an arrow-
The Aleph of spirit and life,the Arcanum,
Signature of liberty,power and duty.
This fetid verminous oubliette is all I have
Of the world-tortured more by betrayals
Than by thumbscrews and rack-
And so on its dank walls I paint
With rust flakes and my own urine
Alchemical symbols of transmutation
And shout through the bars to villagers below
The horrid prophecies I see in dreams.
Slaves of the church, do not pray for me,
My soul needs no false salvation-it is free
Already,even as this screaming body rots
Back into the prima materia...
Kind tormentors,I proffer you my skull
That you should drink its alembroth
And be wise!My thanks for this quarantine,
In which I achieve the pentagon.
The Martian iron is in me,the force of art;
The gold and silver sword of Solomon
Fits my hand perfectly,-en garde!
Medieval Colours
In the thirteenth century the red dyers, anxious that the colour blue was becoming so popular and threatening their profits,went and begged the stained-glass artists to start portraying the Devil as blue and make that hue reviled.Their pleas were ignored.
To unite the four elements,
They blended precious essences in harmony,
Following the planets and seasons,
Pursued dyes,pigments and metals around the world.
Heaven and earth must be synchronised.
Body,soul and spirit must accord
Through love and strife.
To make a black ink worthy of transcribing the Qur’an
Quadi Ahmad described a recipe requiring fourteen ingredients,
Inlcuding hemp-oil soot,henna,indgo and aloe,saffron and rosewater,
Cyprus alum,Indian salt,Egyptian sugar and Tibetan musk.
The very substance of God.
Ultramarine they extracted from lapis lazuli,
From the lands of Paradise,in the orient,
Heaven’s stone contaminated with earth’s impurities;
Patiently,laboriously,it must be purified,
Obedient to its sympathies and gods.
By the sacred marriage of mercury and sulphur
Vermilion was prepared,the red elixir,
The wedding of Hades and Persephone,
A union of fire and water,heaven and earth.
The Easter egg, skilfully incubated.
They dreamed of chimeras, of making Spanish gold,
Melding red copper,human blood,vinegar and basilisk ash,
They concocted miraculous hues from ideas,
Weaving planetary rays into tapestries of light.
They codified the rusts of iron,copper,lead and silver,
And the rusts of mercury and tin;
They quantified mixtures of darkness and light.
From the blood of elephants and dragons
Who had killed one another in combat,
Under the tree at the centre of the world
The artists mixed dragonsblood;
The snake had but a moment to squeeze
Through theStrait Gate,leaving its skin behind;
The Argo,navigating the Clashing Rocks,
Lost its stern in the struggle,passing the test.
Armenian red was harvested at the foot of Ararat,
At the meeting place of East and West;
Cochineal they collected on the Baptist’s feast day,
At the solstice,the midpoint of the year.
In Hagia Sophia pilgrims gazed
Upon the Virgin Mary’s robe:
White wool dyed with Tyrian purple,
The sea snail’s yellow juice transmuted
By the sun,a truth that would never wash out.
To unite the four elements,
They blended precious essences in harmony,
Following the planets and seasons,
Pursued dyes,pigments and metals around the world.
Heaven and earth must be synchronised.
Body,soul and spirit must accord
Through love and strife.
To make a black ink worthy of transcribing the Qur’an
Quadi Ahmad described a recipe requiring fourteen ingredients,
Inlcuding hemp-oil soot,henna,indgo and aloe,saffron and rosewater,
Cyprus alum,Indian salt,Egyptian sugar and Tibetan musk.
The very substance of God.
Ultramarine they extracted from lapis lazuli,
From the lands of Paradise,in the orient,
Heaven’s stone contaminated with earth’s impurities;
Patiently,laboriously,it must be purified,
Obedient to its sympathies and gods.
By the sacred marriage of mercury and sulphur
Vermilion was prepared,the red elixir,
The wedding of Hades and Persephone,
A union of fire and water,heaven and earth.
The Easter egg, skilfully incubated.
They dreamed of chimeras, of making Spanish gold,
Melding red copper,human blood,vinegar and basilisk ash,
They concocted miraculous hues from ideas,
Weaving planetary rays into tapestries of light.
They codified the rusts of iron,copper,lead and silver,
And the rusts of mercury and tin;
They quantified mixtures of darkness and light.
From the blood of elephants and dragons
Who had killed one another in combat,
Under the tree at the centre of the world
The artists mixed dragonsblood;
The snake had but a moment to squeeze
Through theStrait Gate,leaving its skin behind;
The Argo,navigating the Clashing Rocks,
Lost its stern in the struggle,passing the test.
Armenian red was harvested at the foot of Ararat,
At the meeting place of East and West;
Cochineal they collected on the Baptist’s feast day,
At the solstice,the midpoint of the year.
In Hagia Sophia pilgrims gazed
Upon the Virgin Mary’s robe:
White wool dyed with Tyrian purple,
The sea snail’s yellow juice transmuted
By the sun,a truth that would never wash out.
Notes on the Weimar Republic
The maimed and broken on every street.
Wheelchairs.Masks over missing faces.
Dark glasses to conceal blinded eyes.
Smooth,pastel and starkly elegant,
The Einstein Tower spirals up among trees,
From the mind of a frontline soldier,
Beauty he had dreamed of in the trenches,
To stimulate and soothe.The revolution
Has no borders,no limits,no states;
All peoples play as one, like children.
A princely observatory for the study
Of light. Perfect equation of energy and mass.
Light and geometry merge in the lens,
Moholy-Nagy leaning out of a high window
To photograph the street below.
In the cabarets regimented lines of girls
Dance with Prussian paradeground precision,
Kicking their long muscled legs in unison.
Naked male gymnasts exercise by the lake,
Proud descendants of the ancient Greeks,
Purged and affirmed by sun and water.
Wheelchairs.Masks over missing faces.
Dark glasses to conceal blinded eyes.
Smooth,pastel and starkly elegant,
The Einstein Tower spirals up among trees,
From the mind of a frontline soldier,
Beauty he had dreamed of in the trenches,
To stimulate and soothe.The revolution
Has no borders,no limits,no states;
All peoples play as one, like children.
A princely observatory for the study
Of light. Perfect equation of energy and mass.
Light and geometry merge in the lens,
Moholy-Nagy leaning out of a high window
To photograph the street below.
In the cabarets regimented lines of girls
Dance with Prussian paradeground precision,
Kicking their long muscled legs in unison.
Naked male gymnasts exercise by the lake,
Proud descendants of the ancient Greeks,
Purged and affirmed by sun and water.
Flanders
A vague land of uncertain boundaries
Suits my nature well enough,
Conducive to unlikely musings.
Snake-eyed days evoke an odd mystique.
Sand,salt and mud are the currencies
I trade for clouds and sounds.
Puppets and giants toll the bells
Of churches emerging from sea-mist
And life is carried like a retable
Through streets that reek beer and chips.
Reinaert the Fox is up to his tricks,
Trapping foes with their own vices;
His cruel resourcefulness as sharp
As a fallen knight’s spur.
To slip the noose and pursue the Grail
In Ghent or Antwerp, through carnivals
And crucifixions,I will sing,sing like a finch
In an old man’s hands,the slave of the Virgin.
Magpie towns,hooded like beguines,
I weave them all,the rivers and trees
Into each other,with shuttling mind,
And,like a swan-cloaked Duke of Burgundy,
Stuff the world into my purse.
Regimental badges,scraps of cloth
And bone-shards: all that remains
Of a nameless man-at-war,billeted
In Hades,with all the useless dead,
Around Ypres,the thrifty earth loath
To let them go.For centuries, the townsfolk
Threw live cats from the belfry
To propitiate the chuckling Devil.
Each evening at eight
Two buglers meet
To sound the Last Post.
They pull up on their bicycles
Snap to attention,
Wait for the police to stop the traffic,
Then sound their notes
Against the walls
Of the Menin Gate-
Job done,they climb back on their bicycles
And ride away
As the traffic starts racing again.
Suits my nature well enough,
Conducive to unlikely musings.
Snake-eyed days evoke an odd mystique.
Sand,salt and mud are the currencies
I trade for clouds and sounds.
Puppets and giants toll the bells
Of churches emerging from sea-mist
And life is carried like a retable
Through streets that reek beer and chips.
Reinaert the Fox is up to his tricks,
Trapping foes with their own vices;
His cruel resourcefulness as sharp
As a fallen knight’s spur.
To slip the noose and pursue the Grail
In Ghent or Antwerp, through carnivals
And crucifixions,I will sing,sing like a finch
In an old man’s hands,the slave of the Virgin.
Magpie towns,hooded like beguines,
I weave them all,the rivers and trees
Into each other,with shuttling mind,
And,like a swan-cloaked Duke of Burgundy,
Stuff the world into my purse.
Regimental badges,scraps of cloth
And bone-shards: all that remains
Of a nameless man-at-war,billeted
In Hades,with all the useless dead,
Around Ypres,the thrifty earth loath
To let them go.For centuries, the townsfolk
Threw live cats from the belfry
To propitiate the chuckling Devil.
Each evening at eight
Two buglers meet
To sound the Last Post.
They pull up on their bicycles
Snap to attention,
Wait for the police to stop the traffic,
Then sound their notes
Against the walls
Of the Menin Gate-
Job done,they climb back on their bicycles
And ride away
As the traffic starts racing again.
Lines
Walking, weaving,gesticulating,singing,storytelling
my lines through spacetime,sometimes losing
my thread, I spider dissolving traces in the blue,
everything is moving,the dots get joined up,
this calligraphy of breath is all I know,
drawing,writing,groping with my fingers
ahead or round,not always sure which direction,
but somehow I am altering the world.
Pathfinder,work your way forward,smell out the prey,
notating the music any way you can,
flesh has its martyrdoms but the voice,
cannot, for all its sins, be nailed down.
The air’s amanuensis,I finger this flute
to variable effect,improvising all that is,
Amazonian tribesman of the suburbs,
embroidering textiles with waves,
painting skin and pots with oracular signs.
The line is my flint, my cutting chipping tool.
I must keep on making these quipus,
tying knots in memory,treading step by step
through the grass,across the fields
my forefathers walked before me.
Cracks in breaking ice,dead wood,dried mud,
creases in my palms,wrinkles round my eyes,
all the streaks,stripes and flows in nature,
acupunctural meridians of the body,
I stitch into the lacework, the fishing net.
In the square in Luoyang,each day at dusk,
people come with paintbrushes and water
and write huge characters on the pavement
watching them evaporate almost instantly,
their minds and bodies relaxed,serene,
containing all the rhythms in the world.
A Chukchi shaman sketches a map
of the paths in the underworld,
potholes and tunnels wandered by the dead.
Cleave to the contours and feel the spaces
married to the edges,proof against demons,
be it Celtic knotwork, or Tamil kolam,
Abelam designs from strips,strings and fronds,
Navajo blankets woven mathematically.
These lines we inscribe on the skin,
Footprints of a mysterious new bird.
Solemnly a New Guinean chief fingers
the knotted crocodile cord,reliving
his tribe’s primeval migration,like a ghost
wayfaring vigilantly to the other world.
An Aborigine elder draws with his finger
in the sand, tracing the lines and vortices
of Dreamtime journeys his forbears made.
And on a Micronesian beach a seafarer
Lays out coconut-leaf ribs to illustrate
the ocean swells and currents to his apprentice.
my lines through spacetime,sometimes losing
my thread, I spider dissolving traces in the blue,
everything is moving,the dots get joined up,
this calligraphy of breath is all I know,
drawing,writing,groping with my fingers
ahead or round,not always sure which direction,
but somehow I am altering the world.
Pathfinder,work your way forward,smell out the prey,
notating the music any way you can,
flesh has its martyrdoms but the voice,
cannot, for all its sins, be nailed down.
The air’s amanuensis,I finger this flute
to variable effect,improvising all that is,
Amazonian tribesman of the suburbs,
embroidering textiles with waves,
painting skin and pots with oracular signs.
The line is my flint, my cutting chipping tool.
I must keep on making these quipus,
tying knots in memory,treading step by step
through the grass,across the fields
my forefathers walked before me.
Cracks in breaking ice,dead wood,dried mud,
creases in my palms,wrinkles round my eyes,
all the streaks,stripes and flows in nature,
acupunctural meridians of the body,
I stitch into the lacework, the fishing net.
In the square in Luoyang,each day at dusk,
people come with paintbrushes and water
and write huge characters on the pavement
watching them evaporate almost instantly,
their minds and bodies relaxed,serene,
containing all the rhythms in the world.
A Chukchi shaman sketches a map
of the paths in the underworld,
potholes and tunnels wandered by the dead.
Cleave to the contours and feel the spaces
married to the edges,proof against demons,
be it Celtic knotwork, or Tamil kolam,
Abelam designs from strips,strings and fronds,
Navajo blankets woven mathematically.
These lines we inscribe on the skin,
Footprints of a mysterious new bird.
Solemnly a New Guinean chief fingers
the knotted crocodile cord,reliving
his tribe’s primeval migration,like a ghost
wayfaring vigilantly to the other world.
An Aborigine elder draws with his finger
in the sand, tracing the lines and vortices
of Dreamtime journeys his forbears made.
And on a Micronesian beach a seafarer
Lays out coconut-leaf ribs to illustrate
the ocean swells and currents to his apprentice.
Yiddish
Then.Always then.
Voodoo tongue of the dispossessed,
The unpossessable.
Here,in exile,somewhere,
The dog lies buried.
Smallpox and measles
We have already had.
And you-who are you?
With you I herded pigs?
Into the dying man’s open mouth
The Angel of Death tosses
A gall-drop from his sword-tip
To finish off the job.
Grousing and kvetching and lamenting
Are my only joys on earth-
What divine mercy there is
In bitter protests and furious curses!
All this flailing at shadows
And straining at stool...
Gut-groan rises like a prayer,
A klezmer note,
A rush of breath.
Six hundred and thirteen commandments
And a lifetimeto fall short!
From under the tombstone tongue
Arises a ghost-kaddish.
Controversies within quarrels
Within disputes within debates
Are the stuff of me-
Endless bellyache.
The dybbuk will never let me go.
Every right is wrong.
Disharmony-my mother tongue!
Bury me with my nouns,
Let me turn into my proper name.
Oh I have so much to argue about,
And I shall take my time,like the Messiah.
Nine hundred and thirty kinds of death
Are lining up to give me their business cards.
Voodoo tongue of the dispossessed,
The unpossessable.
Here,in exile,somewhere,
The dog lies buried.
Smallpox and measles
We have already had.
And you-who are you?
With you I herded pigs?
Into the dying man’s open mouth
The Angel of Death tosses
A gall-drop from his sword-tip
To finish off the job.
Grousing and kvetching and lamenting
Are my only joys on earth-
What divine mercy there is
In bitter protests and furious curses!
All this flailing at shadows
And straining at stool...
Gut-groan rises like a prayer,
A klezmer note,
A rush of breath.
Six hundred and thirteen commandments
And a lifetimeto fall short!
From under the tombstone tongue
Arises a ghost-kaddish.
Controversies within quarrels
Within disputes within debates
Are the stuff of me-
Endless bellyache.
The dybbuk will never let me go.
Every right is wrong.
Disharmony-my mother tongue!
Bury me with my nouns,
Let me turn into my proper name.
Oh I have so much to argue about,
And I shall take my time,like the Messiah.
Nine hundred and thirty kinds of death
Are lining up to give me their business cards.
Turks and Caicos Islands
I am not the man to mock a quest
Nor belittle a dreamer like Ponce de León-
Ruthless bastard though he may have been-
Seeking all his years the Fountain of Youth.
Ocean’s heights-sky’s abyss!
Horizonless life-all dimensions at once-
Infinite reflections receding
In the smoke-and-mirrors blur...
Constellations of shipwrecks call to me
Through the annihilating afternoons...
An iguana shrugs off its worn-out skin
And steps free,regenerated,
Greedy for seven-year apples.
Humpback whales are singing
Their way through the passage,
Whistling and rumbling intricate jazz.
Cross-currents and sea monsters
Bedevil the pirate blue.
Time sounds the queen conch shell.
Orpheus’s harp is playing in the night sky.
Cave-born, the Tainos swam
Over the heart’s secret coral reef;
The two-faced world-
A too-clever twin-child-
Played with yes and no,
With manioc and hurricane.
Nor belittle a dreamer like Ponce de León-
Ruthless bastard though he may have been-
Seeking all his years the Fountain of Youth.
Ocean’s heights-sky’s abyss!
Horizonless life-all dimensions at once-
Infinite reflections receding
In the smoke-and-mirrors blur...
Constellations of shipwrecks call to me
Through the annihilating afternoons...
An iguana shrugs off its worn-out skin
And steps free,regenerated,
Greedy for seven-year apples.
Humpback whales are singing
Their way through the passage,
Whistling and rumbling intricate jazz.
Cross-currents and sea monsters
Bedevil the pirate blue.
Time sounds the queen conch shell.
Orpheus’s harp is playing in the night sky.
Cave-born, the Tainos swam
Over the heart’s secret coral reef;
The two-faced world-
A too-clever twin-child-
Played with yes and no,
With manioc and hurricane.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
The Mesopotamian Campaign, 1914-18
Duststorms.Flies.Mirages.
So hot the wounded would crawl
To the Tigris to drink the putrid water,
While pi-dogs and treacherous Arabs
Picked over the corpses.
The vast bare mapless plain had seen
The deaths of myriads before;
Distance and logistics
Killed as surely as guns;
Soon each horse’s every rib
Could be counted.
Truly Satan had commandeered
The land of Adam and Eve.
Bully beef and hardtack
Instead of forbidden fruit.
Prisoner and slave, they learned,
Were synonyms in the Turks’ tongue.
Barefoot,ragged,sick and starved,
“The Sultan’s honoured guests”
Stumbled on, whipped through
The jeering Baghdad bazaar,
As movie cameras hissed
To record the glorious victory.
In Berlin, the Kaiser,Defender of Islam,
Chuckled to himself-how easily
The Ottoman savages had swallowed
His propaganda, ready to acclaim him
A descendant of the Prophet!
So hot the wounded would crawl
To the Tigris to drink the putrid water,
While pi-dogs and treacherous Arabs
Picked over the corpses.
The vast bare mapless plain had seen
The deaths of myriads before;
Distance and logistics
Killed as surely as guns;
Soon each horse’s every rib
Could be counted.
Truly Satan had commandeered
The land of Adam and Eve.
Bully beef and hardtack
Instead of forbidden fruit.
Prisoner and slave, they learned,
Were synonyms in the Turks’ tongue.
Barefoot,ragged,sick and starved,
“The Sultan’s honoured guests”
Stumbled on, whipped through
The jeering Baghdad bazaar,
As movie cameras hissed
To record the glorious victory.
In Berlin, the Kaiser,Defender of Islam,
Chuckled to himself-how easily
The Ottoman savages had swallowed
His propaganda, ready to acclaim him
A descendant of the Prophet!
Gospel Zodiac
Zodiacal symbols on the Temple veil
the seven lamps before the altar
the twelve loaves upon the table
Spring equinox initiates
ram-headed Jesus
the fire-chrismed prophet
on the seasons’ cusp
serious and thirty
at Saturn’s return
ready to take up the sword
and behead the foe.
Aries rules the tribe of Reuben;
headstrong captains lead the exodus
in the hour of confrontation
Seeded on the Bull’s shoulder
The Pleiades beacon the ploughman
as he treads the furrow’s bounds;
stone and earth call the builder
to shape clay thoughts and desires.
Buddha’s mind is the May full moon,
Sudden above the trees.
St Paul sets sail
On the Castor and Pollux
Under mercurial skies;
the mutable man is on his way
to communicate with foreigners
and broker a new age.
Where do they meet,
the parallel lines?
Jesus was born with the waxing sun,
John with the waning
At the toppling of the sun,
When the Crab’s claws grab the Earth.
Silly cowardly creature,man,
Retreating fearfully when he should advance!
Sea-brothers in white,
Jesus and John were spawned together
And swam as one
With the moon’s tides.
When Sirius gyres up to its zenith
the sons of the Lion, hearts inflamed,
the tribe of Judah,pharaohs all,
race their chariots across the desert
for honour and fame.
Jesus,Moses and Elijah
Each raise a tabernacle beneath
the stations of the sun.
As the August sun leaves Leo
and prowls towards Virgo,
its radiance quite annihilates
the Virgin’s faint stars;
and in September she is reborn,
Visible once more at dawn.
Children,little star-shepherds,
bakers of delicious bread,
harvest the days with invincible force.
At the fulcrum of the year
The tribe of Issachar are sheep-dipped
In thickening darkness,in the fall;
perilous counterpoise of souls
yoked between extremes.
The evening star conducts
A perfect marriage in the air,
While terrible Jerusalem
contrives omens of the Passion.
Plough the dead vegetation back
into the earth to putrefy
in the month of All Souls;
sublime poison seethes
in Scorpio’s sting.
Swallowing strychnine,
the snake-handler yells
redemption to the coffin-lid sky.
Sagittarius rules the long journey,
the horse’s mouth,all oracles
and jests,as the archer’s bolt
shoots high beyond expression.
Into false Jerusalem,astride
a colt,he rides, the man
misunderstood,condemned
by hosannas and praises.
Northward from its southerly limit
turns the sun,flying the banners
of Naphtali.Caesar paces
up and down,performing
his works through Saturn’s offices.
Which authority should one
turn to, which scripture to believe?
Skeletons in winter’s boneyard,
teach the ignorant flesh.
The Water-Bearer lives in the act
of pouring;silently,he serves,
releasing a river,a waterfall,
a rainbow.The Temple
was not entirely destroyed;
one can leave a message
in the Wailing Wall.
The ointment is poured out
onto the Master’s head
and feet.
Pisces is the sign of Joseph,
the martyred king,a salmon leaping
upstream to his birthing-place;
Ash Wednesday promises
that death is but the medium
and the executioner a friend.
Look,the gift vouchsafed you:
a ring found in the belly of a fish.
the seven lamps before the altar
the twelve loaves upon the table
Spring equinox initiates
ram-headed Jesus
the fire-chrismed prophet
on the seasons’ cusp
serious and thirty
at Saturn’s return
ready to take up the sword
and behead the foe.
Aries rules the tribe of Reuben;
headstrong captains lead the exodus
in the hour of confrontation
Seeded on the Bull’s shoulder
The Pleiades beacon the ploughman
as he treads the furrow’s bounds;
stone and earth call the builder
to shape clay thoughts and desires.
Buddha’s mind is the May full moon,
Sudden above the trees.
St Paul sets sail
On the Castor and Pollux
Under mercurial skies;
the mutable man is on his way
to communicate with foreigners
and broker a new age.
Where do they meet,
the parallel lines?
Jesus was born with the waxing sun,
John with the waning
At the toppling of the sun,
When the Crab’s claws grab the Earth.
Silly cowardly creature,man,
Retreating fearfully when he should advance!
Sea-brothers in white,
Jesus and John were spawned together
And swam as one
With the moon’s tides.
When Sirius gyres up to its zenith
the sons of the Lion, hearts inflamed,
the tribe of Judah,pharaohs all,
race their chariots across the desert
for honour and fame.
Jesus,Moses and Elijah
Each raise a tabernacle beneath
the stations of the sun.
As the August sun leaves Leo
and prowls towards Virgo,
its radiance quite annihilates
the Virgin’s faint stars;
and in September she is reborn,
Visible once more at dawn.
Children,little star-shepherds,
bakers of delicious bread,
harvest the days with invincible force.
At the fulcrum of the year
The tribe of Issachar are sheep-dipped
In thickening darkness,in the fall;
perilous counterpoise of souls
yoked between extremes.
The evening star conducts
A perfect marriage in the air,
While terrible Jerusalem
contrives omens of the Passion.
Plough the dead vegetation back
into the earth to putrefy
in the month of All Souls;
sublime poison seethes
in Scorpio’s sting.
Swallowing strychnine,
the snake-handler yells
redemption to the coffin-lid sky.
Sagittarius rules the long journey,
the horse’s mouth,all oracles
and jests,as the archer’s bolt
shoots high beyond expression.
Into false Jerusalem,astride
a colt,he rides, the man
misunderstood,condemned
by hosannas and praises.
Northward from its southerly limit
turns the sun,flying the banners
of Naphtali.Caesar paces
up and down,performing
his works through Saturn’s offices.
Which authority should one
turn to, which scripture to believe?
Skeletons in winter’s boneyard,
teach the ignorant flesh.
The Water-Bearer lives in the act
of pouring;silently,he serves,
releasing a river,a waterfall,
a rainbow.The Temple
was not entirely destroyed;
one can leave a message
in the Wailing Wall.
The ointment is poured out
onto the Master’s head
and feet.
Pisces is the sign of Joseph,
the martyred king,a salmon leaping
upstream to his birthing-place;
Ash Wednesday promises
that death is but the medium
and the executioner a friend.
Look,the gift vouchsafed you:
a ring found in the belly of a fish.
John Milton
English obstinacy and Latin extravagance
Behind the pale prim face;
Emotions’ polity exercised his guile.
What was freedom,after all,
That it could so pain and kill?
To read was to act; ungovernable truth
Founded wild Americas
In his garden,among the wet roses
And hidden snakes;solitary there,
He recalled lost friends,the touch
Of men,that dangerous scripture
Delicately censored in the dark.
Neither God nor nation could keep
The heart from self-destruction.
He translated with his hands the fire
Of New Troy;the Tiber flowed
Into the Thames; Athens now was London;
The ancient world’s battles were re-fought
In muddy northern fields.
Appetite had his head on the block,
A laughing regicide in the republic
Of desire.Eden’s painted savage
Englished into a civil man.
Saturn presided over the masque;
Centaurs’ hooves beat the bounds
Of his verses,singing out psalms
To devious concupiscent Jehovah.
What trespass had he committed
That God had confiscated the light
From his eyes? Nonetheless he parsed
The signs in nature and attended
That secret parliament within.
The covenant,unbroken, authored
Immense designs from memory
And hope.Like a troublesome daughter,
Language tyrannised the old man,
Horned viper words envenoming
His veins,under the evening star.
Where else but in hell could he feel?
Behind the pale prim face;
Emotions’ polity exercised his guile.
What was freedom,after all,
That it could so pain and kill?
To read was to act; ungovernable truth
Founded wild Americas
In his garden,among the wet roses
And hidden snakes;solitary there,
He recalled lost friends,the touch
Of men,that dangerous scripture
Delicately censored in the dark.
Neither God nor nation could keep
The heart from self-destruction.
He translated with his hands the fire
Of New Troy;the Tiber flowed
Into the Thames; Athens now was London;
The ancient world’s battles were re-fought
In muddy northern fields.
Appetite had his head on the block,
A laughing regicide in the republic
Of desire.Eden’s painted savage
Englished into a civil man.
Saturn presided over the masque;
Centaurs’ hooves beat the bounds
Of his verses,singing out psalms
To devious concupiscent Jehovah.
What trespass had he committed
That God had confiscated the light
From his eyes? Nonetheless he parsed
The signs in nature and attended
That secret parliament within.
The covenant,unbroken, authored
Immense designs from memory
And hope.Like a troublesome daughter,
Language tyrannised the old man,
Horned viper words envenoming
His veins,under the evening star.
Where else but in hell could he feel?
Could It Be You're Already Dead?
Feel the solar system drifting through the ellipsis
Further and further away from the core,
The earth’s orbit, tilt and wobble
Through magnetic fields and seasons of fire;
Time’s rhythms and cycles are working
Through you, through me,
A zodiac of possibilities.
Space,time and dreams are distorted;
Body-minds warp with the fields;
I feel,in an instant,all the forms, the calligraphy of God-
Geometric spendour of a virus,
And the sandripples on the beach,no two identical,
The logarithmic spiral of a mollusc shell,
Honeycomb of bubbles in a saucepan of boiling water,
Spiral waves in the heart,like the patterns in banded agate,
The vortices in a colony of bacteria,
The hierograms on a jaguar’s pelt,
The signs,vivid as Russian Easter eggs,of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction,
The exoskeletons of radiolarians and coccolithophroes,
The bifurcations and segmentation in my arm bones,
The arboreal phyllotaxis of my lungs, the Burning Bush,
The crystalline metal branch conjured in electrodeposition,
The cracks and ridges of the San Andreas fault,
The fractal network of the Paris metro.
Further and further away from the core,
The earth’s orbit, tilt and wobble
Through magnetic fields and seasons of fire;
Time’s rhythms and cycles are working
Through you, through me,
A zodiac of possibilities.
Space,time and dreams are distorted;
Body-minds warp with the fields;
I feel,in an instant,all the forms, the calligraphy of God-
Geometric spendour of a virus,
And the sandripples on the beach,no two identical,
The logarithmic spiral of a mollusc shell,
Honeycomb of bubbles in a saucepan of boiling water,
Spiral waves in the heart,like the patterns in banded agate,
The vortices in a colony of bacteria,
The hierograms on a jaguar’s pelt,
The signs,vivid as Russian Easter eggs,of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction,
The exoskeletons of radiolarians and coccolithophroes,
The bifurcations and segmentation in my arm bones,
The arboreal phyllotaxis of my lungs, the Burning Bush,
The crystalline metal branch conjured in electrodeposition,
The cracks and ridges of the San Andreas fault,
The fractal network of the Paris metro.
Activator-Inhibitor
Rooms.I live in rooms.Different rooms.
Each with its character and function.
Sinister technologies are ours to practise.
Time, spiralling, folding and pleating,
Compressing and rarefying,
Works me over with its torsion.
Change and chance are the ventures I invest in;
Meticulous Masorete of my own Bible,
I eke out letters with agonized love.
Unhappy and defiant,
Restless for God knows what,
I thrash about through anxious days,
Wondering what it all adds up to,
And what the balance sheet will read in the end.
Diffidence and indifference
Are the lead in my shoes.
I find entrances to Hell
On ordinary streets,
Rusty old doors, open pipes and manholes,
Fence-holes and disused wells
Cemetery crypts and grafittied city walls…-
Their secret names cry out to me,
Their powers lead me in.
And when you die
People will ask: how did you live?
With what spirit and passion and pride?
Each with its character and function.
Sinister technologies are ours to practise.
Time, spiralling, folding and pleating,
Compressing and rarefying,
Works me over with its torsion.
Change and chance are the ventures I invest in;
Meticulous Masorete of my own Bible,
I eke out letters with agonized love.
Unhappy and defiant,
Restless for God knows what,
I thrash about through anxious days,
Wondering what it all adds up to,
And what the balance sheet will read in the end.
Diffidence and indifference
Are the lead in my shoes.
I find entrances to Hell
On ordinary streets,
Rusty old doors, open pipes and manholes,
Fence-holes and disused wells
Cemetery crypts and grafittied city walls…-
Their secret names cry out to me,
Their powers lead me in.
And when you die
People will ask: how did you live?
With what spirit and passion and pride?
Private Garden
Some kind of order there has to be;
Refuge from history and philosophistry.
I try, if I can, to avoid the Medusa’s head.
I prefer the bearable, the beautiful,even.
In spite of everything,I cultivate
A small plot,a place of healing.
The Isles of the Blessed;Epicurus’s School;
You can keep them.The weather still falls,
All the same.
My hands are my vocation: what they feel
Is true.
Gilgamesh found his way to Dilmun,
Beyond the seas and mountains,
But immortal life was denied him;
The world still had work for his hands.
This soil I crumble between thumb
And finger is all the nations and cultures
Ever to root in the earth.
Nothing here is meant to last,
Transience its glorious quintessence.
And yet there is slow ceremony;
Enchanted recollection fixes me
To the spot,connected, alone.
The hunter-gatherer’s ritual persists:
Art is this,which cannot be captured
Or accommodated,life’s pure excess,
Too various to keep hold of,
Bright mercury changing state.
Here I can befriend my weird self,
Peasant-prince in an endangered dominion,
Revisiting stories in my head.
To see what is right before you:-
The mission, the gardener’s tools.
Refuge from history and philosophistry.
I try, if I can, to avoid the Medusa’s head.
I prefer the bearable, the beautiful,even.
In spite of everything,I cultivate
A small plot,a place of healing.
The Isles of the Blessed;Epicurus’s School;
You can keep them.The weather still falls,
All the same.
My hands are my vocation: what they feel
Is true.
Gilgamesh found his way to Dilmun,
Beyond the seas and mountains,
But immortal life was denied him;
The world still had work for his hands.
This soil I crumble between thumb
And finger is all the nations and cultures
Ever to root in the earth.
Nothing here is meant to last,
Transience its glorious quintessence.
And yet there is slow ceremony;
Enchanted recollection fixes me
To the spot,connected, alone.
The hunter-gatherer’s ritual persists:
Art is this,which cannot be captured
Or accommodated,life’s pure excess,
Too various to keep hold of,
Bright mercury changing state.
Here I can befriend my weird self,
Peasant-prince in an endangered dominion,
Revisiting stories in my head.
To see what is right before you:-
The mission, the gardener’s tools.
Full Body Burn
When the others are turning right,
Turn left.
Duck and dodge.
Disappear.
Throw your pursuers off the scent.
It wasn’t working,
Whatever you were doing,
So try something different.
Find a place where no one knows you,
A place you do not understand.
Make others’ talents your own.
Superb technologies are at hand.
Be assured:
Curiosity did not kill the cat.
If he is dead, he must have killed himself.
Turn left.
Duck and dodge.
Disappear.
Throw your pursuers off the scent.
It wasn’t working,
Whatever you were doing,
So try something different.
Find a place where no one knows you,
A place you do not understand.
Make others’ talents your own.
Superb technologies are at hand.
Be assured:
Curiosity did not kill the cat.
If he is dead, he must have killed himself.
Tattoo Girls
The scars of bad character,
The criminal symbols:
Ink.
Here,at the border,danger and excitement
Whisper:nothing is sacred,
Everything is sacred.
Touches and traces
Merge with the gaze
In the skin-game.
Looking is wanting,
Lacking,
Locking.
The tattoo girls invite you to the fair:
Come see the fire-eaters,
The freaks and daredevils,
The mythical animals in cages.
The needle stitches pure events
Into the flesh.
Miracles.
Monstrosities.
The tattoo girls refuse all categorisation.
They dictate the spectacle,
Disrupt the show.
And the voyeur’s eyes are turned back,
Repelled with Amazon force.
The criminal symbols:
Ink.
Here,at the border,danger and excitement
Whisper:nothing is sacred,
Everything is sacred.
Touches and traces
Merge with the gaze
In the skin-game.
Looking is wanting,
Lacking,
Locking.
The tattoo girls invite you to the fair:
Come see the fire-eaters,
The freaks and daredevils,
The mythical animals in cages.
The needle stitches pure events
Into the flesh.
Miracles.
Monstrosities.
The tattoo girls refuse all categorisation.
They dictate the spectacle,
Disrupt the show.
And the voyeur’s eyes are turned back,
Repelled with Amazon force.
Mondrian's Trees
In the immaculate white studio
Stands a vase
With a single artificial tulip,
Leaves painted white.
Silent in his laboratory smock,
The artist, pale and calm,
Peers through his glasses
At the latest experiment.
He loathes the colour green,
Cannot bear to look at trees.
Once he painted them,
Singular,isolated,
Architectural oddities.
Watchtowers.
Tree:
Shellburst
Of twisting torments
Surging outwards
In ecstasy.
Rapt.
Titanic evolution
In an instant.
Concentrated
Agonisingly,
Held together
Against all odds.
Lines of force:
Branches, twigs.
Ferocious tension
Of equations,
Pluses and minuses
Battling.
All objects are monstrous.
They hurt you
With separateness,
Doomed.
Stands a vase
With a single artificial tulip,
Leaves painted white.
Silent in his laboratory smock,
The artist, pale and calm,
Peers through his glasses
At the latest experiment.
He loathes the colour green,
Cannot bear to look at trees.
Once he painted them,
Singular,isolated,
Architectural oddities.
Watchtowers.
Tree:
Shellburst
Of twisting torments
Surging outwards
In ecstasy.
Rapt.
Titanic evolution
In an instant.
Concentrated
Agonisingly,
Held together
Against all odds.
Lines of force:
Branches, twigs.
Ferocious tension
Of equations,
Pluses and minuses
Battling.
All objects are monstrous.
They hurt you
With separateness,
Doomed.
Ottoman Arts
After noise,heat and dust,an enclosed garden,
A place of contemplation, cool, serene,
With watersound and treeshade to delight;
Austere exteriors hide glorious flourishes,
The sudden rich glow within grey walls.
Remember the Karatay Medrese in Konya,
The patterned porch of rippling stone
And then the interior,the pyrotechnic dome
Shimmering with stars and suns in a heaven
Of turquoise and black tiles,supported
On four fanning bursts of squinches.
The Sultan Han portal’s pounced and fretted
Framework of carved stone,its zigzag pillars
And stalactite niche,fantastical vision
After a day’s hard journey,the caravan
Arriving safe at last from perilous roads.
The small simple Hacı Özbek mosque
In Iznik,built in the reign of Orkhan,
A dome raised on a rectangle,quintessence
And oracle of Ottoman futures in stone.
In the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent,
The Iznik factories developed tiles
Never equaled in splendor,on fire
With a new viscous red,the wild tulip,
Shining out against white backgrounds,
Everywhere a new confidence
Possessed the arts; the surfaces of jugs,bowls
And plates flame with curling stems
Of carnation,hyacinth and tulip,
All supple line and exuberant hue.
Paradisal rooms designed with such skill
And intricacy that the baffled eye
Can scarcely comprehend it all,
As it jolts across walls,doorways,windows,
Never exhausting the patterns and tones,
The clambering and cascading plants
And flowers,green,red,black and blue
Against white gleam,supernatural forever.
The age was tensed like a bowstring;
Like the sultan’s calligraphic monogram,
Taut sweeps of the pen laying down lines
With delicate spiraling webs of tiny blooms
Around and between,executed with bravura,
Demanding blank space to resonate in.
In Venice a stupendous gold helmet
Was created for Süleyman,flaunting
Rubies,diamonds,emeraldsand pearls,
Topped by a multicoloured aigrette,
A wonder of uninhibited ostentation.
The Green Mosque in Bursa- a new style,
A new accord! Its designer,Ali,had been
To Samarkand,and studied its buildings;
On his way home he had stopped at Tabriz
And recruited craftsmen to execute
The ceramic glory of his planned masterpiece,
A grand concept, of harmonious proportion,
Its mosaic kiosks exuding luxurious repose,
Geometrical patterns composed like music,
And the mihrab’s shimmering expanse
Of vivid faience,like a Persian pavilion,
The blues,whites and yellows of the tiles
So intermingled in hallucinatory richness
That the eye can barely trace the motifs.
Up the steps, higher on the hillside, sits
The Green Tomb,where the Sultan’s coffin
Stands on a platform ablaze with blue
And yellow inscriptions,while the lamp
Hangs between twin tapers, the soul
Of Mehmed the First in state,imparadised
Amid profuse blooms,and pillared silence.
In Bursa Murad II built his garden-cemetery:
His stark creamcoloured tomb,open
To the sky,inviting rain to replenish the earth
In which he lay,surrounded by half-wild gardens,
The other tombs like open summerhouses,
Gracious amid cypresses,planes and oleanders,
Tangled shrubs and late-flowering roses.
In afternoon sunlight.
The four minarets of Edirne Mosque,
Each different in height and patterning
Of chequerwork,lozenges and twisting
Strips of reddish-pink stone,thrusting
Higher skyward than any building before,
Staking out the courtyard,its red and white arches
Reached through high exhilarating doorway.
With percipient eye,on Istanbul’s crests,
Mehmed the Conqueror,as judiciously as armies,
Set the domes and minarets of his capital:
In the grounds of the Seraglio Point palace
Stands the Tiled Kiosk,sensuous and elegant,
The warrior sultan’s secret oasis expressed
In bright rooms with high-arched windows,
Contrasted with dark glazed walls of tiles
Alternating blue and black,tone and undertone.
Carpets of rich luminous colour combined
With restricted angular motifs;prayer-rugs
Suggesting the lamp-lit mihrab niche;
How bold and simple the carpetmakers
Fashioned their works,lit from within
By deep lambent colour,a world away
From the efflorescence of the Persians.
So,too,with the miniatures made for Mehmed III,
Factual and earthy,full of harsh wit,
So unlike the Persians’ poetic refinement;
The pages glow bold,brilliant and direct,
Favouring nature over rarefied fancy.
The Süleymaniye mosque on high
Above the Golden Horn-colossus of Islam,
Supremely self-assured,never out of sight,
Four hundred domes ranged around
The central one,-from a military architect
Throwing bridges across rivers,
Sinan had come to this-the sheer cliffs
Of greywhite masonry,the austere
Courtyard so immense,and the doorways
So thrillingly lofty to walk through,
To enter the vertiginous plain void
And disappear at the centre
Of all things.
Yet never did Sinan build anything
Finer than the Selimye mosque
In Edirne:that warm yellow sandstone,
The fluting of the needle-thin minarets,
The tiers of light many-windowed walls,
And,inside,the pinkish scintillating light
Washing through,a titanic wave
That carries you up,exulting,
To the very dome,surrounded
By a serene crystal sphere,-
Tiles shimmer all over,from zigzags
To forests to individual trees,
Leaf and blossom exploding
In triumph,the entire profusion
As calculated as any single tile.
A place of contemplation, cool, serene,
With watersound and treeshade to delight;
Austere exteriors hide glorious flourishes,
The sudden rich glow within grey walls.
Remember the Karatay Medrese in Konya,
The patterned porch of rippling stone
And then the interior,the pyrotechnic dome
Shimmering with stars and suns in a heaven
Of turquoise and black tiles,supported
On four fanning bursts of squinches.
The Sultan Han portal’s pounced and fretted
Framework of carved stone,its zigzag pillars
And stalactite niche,fantastical vision
After a day’s hard journey,the caravan
Arriving safe at last from perilous roads.
The small simple Hacı Özbek mosque
In Iznik,built in the reign of Orkhan,
A dome raised on a rectangle,quintessence
And oracle of Ottoman futures in stone.
In the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent,
The Iznik factories developed tiles
Never equaled in splendor,on fire
With a new viscous red,the wild tulip,
Shining out against white backgrounds,
Everywhere a new confidence
Possessed the arts; the surfaces of jugs,bowls
And plates flame with curling stems
Of carnation,hyacinth and tulip,
All supple line and exuberant hue.
Paradisal rooms designed with such skill
And intricacy that the baffled eye
Can scarcely comprehend it all,
As it jolts across walls,doorways,windows,
Never exhausting the patterns and tones,
The clambering and cascading plants
And flowers,green,red,black and blue
Against white gleam,supernatural forever.
The age was tensed like a bowstring;
Like the sultan’s calligraphic monogram,
Taut sweeps of the pen laying down lines
With delicate spiraling webs of tiny blooms
Around and between,executed with bravura,
Demanding blank space to resonate in.
In Venice a stupendous gold helmet
Was created for Süleyman,flaunting
Rubies,diamonds,emeraldsand pearls,
Topped by a multicoloured aigrette,
A wonder of uninhibited ostentation.
The Green Mosque in Bursa- a new style,
A new accord! Its designer,Ali,had been
To Samarkand,and studied its buildings;
On his way home he had stopped at Tabriz
And recruited craftsmen to execute
The ceramic glory of his planned masterpiece,
A grand concept, of harmonious proportion,
Its mosaic kiosks exuding luxurious repose,
Geometrical patterns composed like music,
And the mihrab’s shimmering expanse
Of vivid faience,like a Persian pavilion,
The blues,whites and yellows of the tiles
So intermingled in hallucinatory richness
That the eye can barely trace the motifs.
Up the steps, higher on the hillside, sits
The Green Tomb,where the Sultan’s coffin
Stands on a platform ablaze with blue
And yellow inscriptions,while the lamp
Hangs between twin tapers, the soul
Of Mehmed the First in state,imparadised
Amid profuse blooms,and pillared silence.
In Bursa Murad II built his garden-cemetery:
His stark creamcoloured tomb,open
To the sky,inviting rain to replenish the earth
In which he lay,surrounded by half-wild gardens,
The other tombs like open summerhouses,
Gracious amid cypresses,planes and oleanders,
Tangled shrubs and late-flowering roses.
In afternoon sunlight.
The four minarets of Edirne Mosque,
Each different in height and patterning
Of chequerwork,lozenges and twisting
Strips of reddish-pink stone,thrusting
Higher skyward than any building before,
Staking out the courtyard,its red and white arches
Reached through high exhilarating doorway.
With percipient eye,on Istanbul’s crests,
Mehmed the Conqueror,as judiciously as armies,
Set the domes and minarets of his capital:
In the grounds of the Seraglio Point palace
Stands the Tiled Kiosk,sensuous and elegant,
The warrior sultan’s secret oasis expressed
In bright rooms with high-arched windows,
Contrasted with dark glazed walls of tiles
Alternating blue and black,tone and undertone.
Carpets of rich luminous colour combined
With restricted angular motifs;prayer-rugs
Suggesting the lamp-lit mihrab niche;
How bold and simple the carpetmakers
Fashioned their works,lit from within
By deep lambent colour,a world away
From the efflorescence of the Persians.
So,too,with the miniatures made for Mehmed III,
Factual and earthy,full of harsh wit,
So unlike the Persians’ poetic refinement;
The pages glow bold,brilliant and direct,
Favouring nature over rarefied fancy.
The Süleymaniye mosque on high
Above the Golden Horn-colossus of Islam,
Supremely self-assured,never out of sight,
Four hundred domes ranged around
The central one,-from a military architect
Throwing bridges across rivers,
Sinan had come to this-the sheer cliffs
Of greywhite masonry,the austere
Courtyard so immense,and the doorways
So thrillingly lofty to walk through,
To enter the vertiginous plain void
And disappear at the centre
Of all things.
Yet never did Sinan build anything
Finer than the Selimye mosque
In Edirne:that warm yellow sandstone,
The fluting of the needle-thin minarets,
The tiers of light many-windowed walls,
And,inside,the pinkish scintillating light
Washing through,a titanic wave
That carries you up,exulting,
To the very dome,surrounded
By a serene crystal sphere,-
Tiles shimmer all over,from zigzags
To forests to individual trees,
Leaf and blossom exploding
In triumph,the entire profusion
As calculated as any single tile.
Minoan Crete
Seismic island-
A kosmos, a genesis, a muster of men!
Mazy palaces, centrifugal-asymmetrical,
Chiaroscuro of light-wells, porticoes and courts…
Long corridors lead to sudden epiphanies,
Vivid frescoes in bright spacious rooms,
Where man and nature unite-
The veins in a rock;
The details in birds’ wings;
Blue apes playing in gardens;
Flying fish above the waves.
The octopus’s ecstasy
And the dolphin’s shout of joy!
Painted on a limestone sarcophagus:
An animal tethered for sacrifice.
Three longrobed women approach
From the left, to the sound of the pipes;
A priestess in animal skins places
Her hands on the altar of fruit and libations.
A tall pole rises, surmounted by labrys,
Upon which perches a bird,
And nearby a shrine with sacred tree
And horns of consecration.
On the other side, a dead man stands
Before his tomb, receiving offerings
-Two calves and a model boat.
The lyrist plays, and two women
Pour libations into a vessel.
A bull’s head rhyton in black serpentine,
Carved in one piece, intricately etched
By those with the wisdom of snakes,
Able to engrave microscopic scenes
Into precious stones
The moon drops poppy dust into her eyes.
The huntress.The dancer.
A kosmos, a genesis, a muster of men!
Mazy palaces, centrifugal-asymmetrical,
Chiaroscuro of light-wells, porticoes and courts…
Long corridors lead to sudden epiphanies,
Vivid frescoes in bright spacious rooms,
Where man and nature unite-
The veins in a rock;
The details in birds’ wings;
Blue apes playing in gardens;
Flying fish above the waves.
The octopus’s ecstasy
And the dolphin’s shout of joy!
Painted on a limestone sarcophagus:
An animal tethered for sacrifice.
Three longrobed women approach
From the left, to the sound of the pipes;
A priestess in animal skins places
Her hands on the altar of fruit and libations.
A tall pole rises, surmounted by labrys,
Upon which perches a bird,
And nearby a shrine with sacred tree
And horns of consecration.
On the other side, a dead man stands
Before his tomb, receiving offerings
-Two calves and a model boat.
The lyrist plays, and two women
Pour libations into a vessel.
A bull’s head rhyton in black serpentine,
Carved in one piece, intricately etched
By those with the wisdom of snakes,
Able to engrave microscopic scenes
Into precious stones
The moon drops poppy dust into her eyes.
The huntress.The dancer.
Bangkok
Great City of Angels,
Supreme Repository of Divine Jewels,
The Great Land Unconquerable,
The Royal Capital Full of Nine Noble Gems,
The Divine Abode of Reincarnated Spirits…
Tiny,on his mighty pedestal,
The Emerald Buddha presides over the cosmos,
Lightning-born and glowing with stormclouds,
While myriads of nagas swim through the air
And the right hand calls down rain,
The left is cupped to catch it.
Male and female kites
Chase across the March sky,above crowded parks,
Trying to snare and wrestle one another
To the finishing line.
Avalokitesvara,
Bronze bodhisattva,sinuous and sublime,
Outliving the Srivijayan empire,
The grace that human hands
And imperfect human minds
Can wrest from darkness.
Under the whirling planets and years,
People kneel and offer flowers
To the lak muang,
The lotus-crowned tree
Rooted in the city’s birth,
The fruiting horoscope.
Tiny amulet of a tamarind seed
Around a girl’s neck,
Silver case inscribed with a yantra.
In Chinatown’s dark alleys,
Funeral shops sell paper replicas
Of houses,cars,clothes and money
To be burned with the dead
And equip them in the afterlife.
At Erawan shrine
People buy captive finches
To see them released from their cages,
Shedding merit from their wings.
Patpong after dark:
The neon go-go bars
And the dead-eyed sirens cajoling passers-by
While inside fluorescent girls dance onstage
For the bleary eyes of men,
Slumped over their drinks,
And upstairs the curtain rises
On another sex show.
In the market hawkers sell fake watches,
Fake designer bags and T-shirts,
And prostitutes slouch at café tables,
Faces weary from boredom,drugs and disease,
Penniless country girls earning more in one night
Than a month in the rice fields.
The masseur uses hands,feet,knees and elbows
To press upon the body’s acupuncture points,
Unblocking the channels,the flow,
Stretching the limbs into yogic postures,
Balancing fire,earth,air and water.
Supreme Repository of Divine Jewels,
The Great Land Unconquerable,
The Royal Capital Full of Nine Noble Gems,
The Divine Abode of Reincarnated Spirits…
Tiny,on his mighty pedestal,
The Emerald Buddha presides over the cosmos,
Lightning-born and glowing with stormclouds,
While myriads of nagas swim through the air
And the right hand calls down rain,
The left is cupped to catch it.
Male and female kites
Chase across the March sky,above crowded parks,
Trying to snare and wrestle one another
To the finishing line.
Avalokitesvara,
Bronze bodhisattva,sinuous and sublime,
Outliving the Srivijayan empire,
The grace that human hands
And imperfect human minds
Can wrest from darkness.
Under the whirling planets and years,
People kneel and offer flowers
To the lak muang,
The lotus-crowned tree
Rooted in the city’s birth,
The fruiting horoscope.
Tiny amulet of a tamarind seed
Around a girl’s neck,
Silver case inscribed with a yantra.
In Chinatown’s dark alleys,
Funeral shops sell paper replicas
Of houses,cars,clothes and money
To be burned with the dead
And equip them in the afterlife.
At Erawan shrine
People buy captive finches
To see them released from their cages,
Shedding merit from their wings.
Patpong after dark:
The neon go-go bars
And the dead-eyed sirens cajoling passers-by
While inside fluorescent girls dance onstage
For the bleary eyes of men,
Slumped over their drinks,
And upstairs the curtain rises
On another sex show.
In the market hawkers sell fake watches,
Fake designer bags and T-shirts,
And prostitutes slouch at café tables,
Faces weary from boredom,drugs and disease,
Penniless country girls earning more in one night
Than a month in the rice fields.
The masseur uses hands,feet,knees and elbows
To press upon the body’s acupuncture points,
Unblocking the channels,the flow,
Stretching the limbs into yogic postures,
Balancing fire,earth,air and water.
Vodou
Brother slaves, we are going home.
Serve the spirits, and be happy.
I stand before you as Saint Gerard,
Among skulls and lilies,
Holding thunderstones.
Dahomey, the slave ships are leaving,
The kings sell their people for weapons and booze.
Brother slaves of Africa,
I am Fon and Yoruba,
Serve the spirits,
Be good like water, like earth.
This is Ginen,
The realm of the dead,
On the far side of the world,
Where souls attain their purity,
Made immortal and all-knowing.
Poor mortal, take guard.
Which spirit crouches on your head, fool,
And watches with big eyes?
Beware, who seeks to enlists evil spirits:
Though they may be flattered and cajoled
And assist the sorcerer in his works,
As suddenly will they turn on you
And devour you alive, without mercy,
Sucking the life from your flesh.
Danbala the serpent
Glides into my dreams,
Whispering omens,
And a rainstorm falls from the trees.
At the beginning of time,
The Great Serpent protected the earth
From sinking into the waters
By twining itself around the earth and into the sky,
And scattered stars,
Pushed up mountains,
Hollowed out riverbeds.
From its deepest core it released rain
To seed the earth,
And as the first showers fell,
A rainbow lit up the sky,
And the Serpent took her as his wife.
The black goat’s blood
I pour over your altar,
I am Baron Samedi in the boneyard,
Raising the dead with a cackle,
Putting my key in the door of death.
I caper like a goat
In top hat and frock coat,
Smoke tobacco with the spirits,
Shake my walking stick at the sky.
I change men into animals,
Make zombies of the living.
From the coffin of my phallus,
From the black cross of my body,
From the moon of my skull,
I come forth.
On All Souls’ Day black-and-purple people
Crowd into the graveyards,
Bringing victuals and tobacco for the spirits,
Pouring libations of rum and coffee
At the feet of their family crosses,
Adorning them with marigolds, candles and skulls.
Devotedly, they kneel and clean beloved tombs,
Swill rum and carouse with abandon,
Chanting lewd songs and dancing like lunatics,
Horses mounted by laughing spirits,
Ridden to exhaustion, round and round.
Spirits strut and jig around the boneyards,
Hurling bawdy jokes and ribald gestures,
Flirting and cursing and pranking,
Brandishing wooden phalluses,
As they rub themselves with lust.
The thunderstone speaks.
My finger traces a vever in the ground.
At the cemetery gates sits Baron Samedi, grinning,
In frock coat and tails and top hat,
Eyes hidden behind sunglasses,
Twirling his walking stick
And blowing smoke rings out through his ears,
“You want to make a zombie, yes?
You want to change into an animal?”
Serve the spirits, and be happy.
I stand before you as Saint Gerard,
Among skulls and lilies,
Holding thunderstones.
Dahomey, the slave ships are leaving,
The kings sell their people for weapons and booze.
Brother slaves of Africa,
I am Fon and Yoruba,
Serve the spirits,
Be good like water, like earth.
This is Ginen,
The realm of the dead,
On the far side of the world,
Where souls attain their purity,
Made immortal and all-knowing.
Poor mortal, take guard.
Which spirit crouches on your head, fool,
And watches with big eyes?
Beware, who seeks to enlists evil spirits:
Though they may be flattered and cajoled
And assist the sorcerer in his works,
As suddenly will they turn on you
And devour you alive, without mercy,
Sucking the life from your flesh.
Danbala the serpent
Glides into my dreams,
Whispering omens,
And a rainstorm falls from the trees.
At the beginning of time,
The Great Serpent protected the earth
From sinking into the waters
By twining itself around the earth and into the sky,
And scattered stars,
Pushed up mountains,
Hollowed out riverbeds.
From its deepest core it released rain
To seed the earth,
And as the first showers fell,
A rainbow lit up the sky,
And the Serpent took her as his wife.
The black goat’s blood
I pour over your altar,
I am Baron Samedi in the boneyard,
Raising the dead with a cackle,
Putting my key in the door of death.
I caper like a goat
In top hat and frock coat,
Smoke tobacco with the spirits,
Shake my walking stick at the sky.
I change men into animals,
Make zombies of the living.
From the coffin of my phallus,
From the black cross of my body,
From the moon of my skull,
I come forth.
On All Souls’ Day black-and-purple people
Crowd into the graveyards,
Bringing victuals and tobacco for the spirits,
Pouring libations of rum and coffee
At the feet of their family crosses,
Adorning them with marigolds, candles and skulls.
Devotedly, they kneel and clean beloved tombs,
Swill rum and carouse with abandon,
Chanting lewd songs and dancing like lunatics,
Horses mounted by laughing spirits,
Ridden to exhaustion, round and round.
Spirits strut and jig around the boneyards,
Hurling bawdy jokes and ribald gestures,
Flirting and cursing and pranking,
Brandishing wooden phalluses,
As they rub themselves with lust.
The thunderstone speaks.
My finger traces a vever in the ground.
At the cemetery gates sits Baron Samedi, grinning,
In frock coat and tails and top hat,
Eyes hidden behind sunglasses,
Twirling his walking stick
And blowing smoke rings out through his ears,
“You want to make a zombie, yes?
You want to change into an animal?”
Roman Afternoon
In the city of women
I too worship.
Look:
An Etruscan perfume bottle,
Recovered from a tomb,
Perhaps still a hint
Of the scent,
Commending souls
To the gods.
In the Museo delle Anime dei Defunti,
I mark the interventions of the dead,
Prayer books and scraps of cloth
With fingerprints burned into them,
Made to prove their souls’ existence
And drive us sinners to Mass.
Pray for us,pray for our souls
To be released from Purgatory!
And I step outside onto the riverside
To the bars and cafes
And the beautiful women.
I too worship.
Look:
An Etruscan perfume bottle,
Recovered from a tomb,
Perhaps still a hint
Of the scent,
Commending souls
To the gods.
In the Museo delle Anime dei Defunti,
I mark the interventions of the dead,
Prayer books and scraps of cloth
With fingerprints burned into them,
Made to prove their souls’ existence
And drive us sinners to Mass.
Pray for us,pray for our souls
To be released from Purgatory!
And I step outside onto the riverside
To the bars and cafes
And the beautiful women.
Secret Police
They may come by night,
They may come by day,
In a quiet spot, or in a crowded street.
When your time has come,
They will appear.
No-one will even notice you are gone,
It will all be over in an instant,
No witnesses,
No questions asked,
As if it had never happened at all.
No-one will think or feel anything,
It will all be quite normal,
Simply routine.
And your fate will be decided
Like a parking ticket,
Torn off
And added to the pile.
And then there will be nothing
But the eye at the peephole,
The black hood
And the torturer’s clubs:
“Liberty”, “Democracy”,
“Constitution”, and “Human Rights”.
Ready yourself for unfamiliar sensations:
The broken bottle shoved up the arse,
The heated brand,
The ingenious variations of beating,
The lighted cigarette applied to the skin,
The ice room,
The tiny dark box,
The dogs attacking,
The drugs, and no sleep,
The electric shocks,
The crucifixion,
The revolver in the mouth,
The screams of other prisoners,
The fastening and unfastening of door bolts,
The walls,
The noise, the intolerable noise,
The rapes,
The firing squad with rifles levelled,
The squatting for hours in impossible positions,
The drowning in shit,
The burning with acid,
The pliers brusquely extracting your teeth,
The lies, the lies, the incessant all-pervading lies.
They may come by day,
In a quiet spot, or in a crowded street.
When your time has come,
They will appear.
No-one will even notice you are gone,
It will all be over in an instant,
No witnesses,
No questions asked,
As if it had never happened at all.
No-one will think or feel anything,
It will all be quite normal,
Simply routine.
And your fate will be decided
Like a parking ticket,
Torn off
And added to the pile.
And then there will be nothing
But the eye at the peephole,
The black hood
And the torturer’s clubs:
“Liberty”, “Democracy”,
“Constitution”, and “Human Rights”.
Ready yourself for unfamiliar sensations:
The broken bottle shoved up the arse,
The heated brand,
The ingenious variations of beating,
The lighted cigarette applied to the skin,
The ice room,
The tiny dark box,
The dogs attacking,
The drugs, and no sleep,
The electric shocks,
The crucifixion,
The revolver in the mouth,
The screams of other prisoners,
The fastening and unfastening of door bolts,
The walls,
The noise, the intolerable noise,
The rapes,
The firing squad with rifles levelled,
The squatting for hours in impossible positions,
The drowning in shit,
The burning with acid,
The pliers brusquely extracting your teeth,
The lies, the lies, the incessant all-pervading lies.
Perverted Clowns
Lugubriously they love and serve
The invisible zero,
The hidden void.
They believe,and do not believe,in sin.
They are faithful,but have no faith.
The art of annihilation is their carnival.
There is no consummation,
Only festivals of pain
And sad siestas.
You are here.You are not here.
You are alive.You are not alive.
The sailors returning,
Older and stranger,
Report that the earth is, once more, flat.
The invisible zero,
The hidden void.
They believe,and do not believe,in sin.
They are faithful,but have no faith.
The art of annihilation is their carnival.
There is no consummation,
Only festivals of pain
And sad siestas.
You are here.You are not here.
You are alive.You are not alive.
The sailors returning,
Older and stranger,
Report that the earth is, once more, flat.
Kiev in January
High above the Dnieper, titanium Motherland towers,
Raising the sword in her right hand,
Classical goddess on the heathen steppe.
Vladimir I, washerwoman’s son,
Took Kiev by treachery and fratricide.
Winter burns with a terrible fire
No summer can match,
A peppery draught of horilka,scalding the throat.
The taxi driver grins, teeth missing:
“You want women? Very beautiful.And clean.”
Out on the frozen river, a lone fisherman
Stares down into his little ice-hole,
Waiting, waiting..
Raising the sword in her right hand,
Classical goddess on the heathen steppe.
Vladimir I, washerwoman’s son,
Took Kiev by treachery and fratricide.
Winter burns with a terrible fire
No summer can match,
A peppery draught of horilka,scalding the throat.
The taxi driver grins, teeth missing:
“You want women? Very beautiful.And clean.”
Out on the frozen river, a lone fisherman
Stares down into his little ice-hole,
Waiting, waiting..
Clothed Nudes
Chaste flesh,
the African fetish.
All we have is curiosity.
Apophatic shiver,
Ripple in a puddle...
Luxurious and hopeless,
Bodies that are touched
but undiscovered,
taken and discarded
for the hell of it.
What kind of knowledge is possible
for the affluent and ignorant
whose suffering is venal,
whose minds are avoided by thought?
Which is more truthful,
The presence or the absence,
The body or its memory,
The object or the word?
the African fetish.
All we have is curiosity.
Apophatic shiver,
Ripple in a puddle...
Luxurious and hopeless,
Bodies that are touched
but undiscovered,
taken and discarded
for the hell of it.
What kind of knowledge is possible
for the affluent and ignorant
whose suffering is venal,
whose minds are avoided by thought?
Which is more truthful,
The presence or the absence,
The body or its memory,
The object or the word?
The Ornamented Woman
I never saw colours before I saw you.
I never saw light.
Love is so precise;
It misses nothing.
All before was mere pastiche.
And now is viraha
To the sitar player.
Rapture breaking up
Into absolute loss.
The fact that you are wearing
Glasses somehow changes
Everything,
Accentuates it
With ineffable nuances.
And there is so much
Playing with time,
Prolonging pauses,
Manipulating hesitations-
Pulses of an exotic music
To which the ear must be attuned-
Like hearing Persian hymns
For the first time.
You have stepped out
Of a Rajput miniature
Into the crowded
Oblivious street.
Stance,gesture and speech
Are one mystery;
Desire is the teacher,
Laughing behind its hands.
I never saw light.
Love is so precise;
It misses nothing.
All before was mere pastiche.
And now is viraha
To the sitar player.
Rapture breaking up
Into absolute loss.
The fact that you are wearing
Glasses somehow changes
Everything,
Accentuates it
With ineffable nuances.
And there is so much
Playing with time,
Prolonging pauses,
Manipulating hesitations-
Pulses of an exotic music
To which the ear must be attuned-
Like hearing Persian hymns
For the first time.
You have stepped out
Of a Rajput miniature
Into the crowded
Oblivious street.
Stance,gesture and speech
Are one mystery;
Desire is the teacher,
Laughing behind its hands.
Cinephilia
The sad do not write about sadness.
The deaf-mute goes about her business,
That compassionate sister at your shoulder,
The keeper of secrets
Who teaches philosophy.
Distance was always my mistress,
Approaching and receding
With comical inflections.
I do not understand people
Who claim they do not like films.
Emotions in quarantine,
I study the effects of separation.
A grief is calling me
To merge.
Death five million times a day,
Each instant
Unmourned.
I take the world in my arms,
Bewildered,
Desperate to love it all
Before it is gone.
Afraid to lose
What is already lost,
I keep my vigil
Before the screen
And take these signs
Into my body.
The deaf-mute goes about her business,
That compassionate sister at your shoulder,
The keeper of secrets
Who teaches philosophy.
Distance was always my mistress,
Approaching and receding
With comical inflections.
I do not understand people
Who claim they do not like films.
Emotions in quarantine,
I study the effects of separation.
A grief is calling me
To merge.
Death five million times a day,
Each instant
Unmourned.
I take the world in my arms,
Bewildered,
Desperate to love it all
Before it is gone.
Afraid to lose
What is already lost,
I keep my vigil
Before the screen
And take these signs
Into my body.
Syria
Springfire and the air is dizzy
With jasmine and damask rose.
I carry my lives about with me,
Fossil molluscs from under the Thetys Sea,
Scattered across the desert.
Stare into black basalt’s grains,
And know that the world is nothing
But a donkey’s droppings.
The hurried perish, and the patient endure.
After forty years the Bedouin took revenge,
Remarking, “I have been quick about it.”
Eagles circle over the Cities of the Dead,
Over abandoned houses and churches,
In the limestone ghost-hills,
While waterwheels on the Orontes
Turn and turn, ploughing the river.
Thirty-six years the Stylite roosted
On his pillar,among the pines,
Meticulously counting each prayer
Offered to the magnesium sky.
What does the head of John the Baptist-
The head of Al-Hussein-
Prophesy,buried in the Great Umayyad Mosque?
Temple of Jupiter, Temple of Hadad,
Continuity of sacrifice,
Suras in stone and flesh.
(Can that day be far off when Jesus
Will descend from his watchtower here
To do battle with the Antichrist?)
Through Paradise itself the Barada river
Flows,through orchards and groves,
With bridges and pavilions built
By Byzantine and Syrian craftsmen.
There lies Saladin in his tomb,
That man of honour and justice
Who never fought unless he had to
And accumulated no fortune for himself.
No sooner was his body in the grave
Than his empire was squandered, divided,lost.
In the Medical Museum,observe
The hanging pipes whose soothing sounds
Were used to pacify the lunatics;
What tune will you play upon Al-Farabi’s lute?
From which mountaintop will you launch yourself
In Ibn Firnas’s flying machine?
Mosaics from Apamea,
Wondrous as the five hundred fighting elephants
Who were slaughtered,all of them,in the end,
As part of a peace treaty :
Socrates presides over his own Last Supper,
Six disciples seated round him
As he holds up his right hand to bless;
Amazons on horseback gallop,
Hunting tigers with superb élan.
Krak des Chevaliers.Walls never breached
But taken,eventually,by trickery.
Ages of ingenuity, labour and faith
Invested in conquest and war!
Saracen and Christian, exchanging blood,
Sacrificed to the same God,
Yehovah, Allah, Baal, Shamash.
With jasmine and damask rose.
I carry my lives about with me,
Fossil molluscs from under the Thetys Sea,
Scattered across the desert.
Stare into black basalt’s grains,
And know that the world is nothing
But a donkey’s droppings.
The hurried perish, and the patient endure.
After forty years the Bedouin took revenge,
Remarking, “I have been quick about it.”
Eagles circle over the Cities of the Dead,
Over abandoned houses and churches,
In the limestone ghost-hills,
While waterwheels on the Orontes
Turn and turn, ploughing the river.
Thirty-six years the Stylite roosted
On his pillar,among the pines,
Meticulously counting each prayer
Offered to the magnesium sky.
What does the head of John the Baptist-
The head of Al-Hussein-
Prophesy,buried in the Great Umayyad Mosque?
Temple of Jupiter, Temple of Hadad,
Continuity of sacrifice,
Suras in stone and flesh.
(Can that day be far off when Jesus
Will descend from his watchtower here
To do battle with the Antichrist?)
Through Paradise itself the Barada river
Flows,through orchards and groves,
With bridges and pavilions built
By Byzantine and Syrian craftsmen.
There lies Saladin in his tomb,
That man of honour and justice
Who never fought unless he had to
And accumulated no fortune for himself.
No sooner was his body in the grave
Than his empire was squandered, divided,lost.
In the Medical Museum,observe
The hanging pipes whose soothing sounds
Were used to pacify the lunatics;
What tune will you play upon Al-Farabi’s lute?
From which mountaintop will you launch yourself
In Ibn Firnas’s flying machine?
Mosaics from Apamea,
Wondrous as the five hundred fighting elephants
Who were slaughtered,all of them,in the end,
As part of a peace treaty :
Socrates presides over his own Last Supper,
Six disciples seated round him
As he holds up his right hand to bless;
Amazons on horseback gallop,
Hunting tigers with superb élan.
Krak des Chevaliers.Walls never breached
But taken,eventually,by trickery.
Ages of ingenuity, labour and faith
Invested in conquest and war!
Saracen and Christian, exchanging blood,
Sacrificed to the same God,
Yehovah, Allah, Baal, Shamash.
On Some Drawings By Seurat
Just what the hand can gesture at, not grasp,
The always-escaping tantalising line,
Bare and pure...
The artist, left to his own devices.
The solitary pencil.
What can four fingers and a thumb
Cut out of the air?
Hand, shaper of flints,
Spear-launcher,
Feeling, appreciating
Nothingness.
This is devotion.
Stroking and honing
Light to dark to light,
Working with the paper’s tooth,
The texture of shadow.
Figures coalesece, emerge
Out of the black whiteness,
Tone on tone,
Without edges,
Modulating a music
Finer and lighter than life.
A Möbius strip.
Particles colliding in space,
Substance shading out...
Is this evidence of substance
Or emptiness?
Marks on paper,
Waves in water,
In sand.
The always-escaping tantalising line,
Bare and pure...
The artist, left to his own devices.
The solitary pencil.
What can four fingers and a thumb
Cut out of the air?
Hand, shaper of flints,
Spear-launcher,
Feeling, appreciating
Nothingness.
This is devotion.
Stroking and honing
Light to dark to light,
Working with the paper’s tooth,
The texture of shadow.
Figures coalesece, emerge
Out of the black whiteness,
Tone on tone,
Without edges,
Modulating a music
Finer and lighter than life.
A Möbius strip.
Particles colliding in space,
Substance shading out...
Is this evidence of substance
Or emptiness?
Marks on paper,
Waves in water,
In sand.
Portbou
A small unassuming place to make an exit.
A cuckoo’s nest of histories.
A tunnel into the sky.
The dead of Europe, who can count them?
To each a reason, a fate.
At the border, lots are drawn,
Destinies negotiated.
So many secrets in unmarked graves.
The shell game never ends.
The living have one duty:
To lay stones on the graves of the dead.
Who now holds the anxious fortress?
Besiegers and besieged
All post their prayers to the same sky.
There is no-one on this earth without a name.
A cuckoo’s nest of histories.
A tunnel into the sky.
The dead of Europe, who can count them?
To each a reason, a fate.
At the border, lots are drawn,
Destinies negotiated.
So many secrets in unmarked graves.
The shell game never ends.
The living have one duty:
To lay stones on the graves of the dead.
Who now holds the anxious fortress?
Besiegers and besieged
All post their prayers to the same sky.
There is no-one on this earth without a name.
French Leave
To every man a country of the mind,
a realm that can never be definitively mapped,
a truth you feel absolutely or not at all…
In the choir of St-Denis Cathedral,
caught like a spider under glass
in the vast windows’ glow
I thrill to the pointed arch
like a tuning fork,
the ribbed vault and half-column shafts
rising from pillar to roof,
a new Atlantis
breaking the waves…
The cemeteries of the Somme:
tens of thousands
of identical crosses,
name, rank and regiment
or no name at all…
In Charleville,
during the festival of puppets,
I stand at Rimbaud’s grave,
quayside of his childhood’s paper boat-
here he is,
after all his voyages,
back in the place he most hated
but could never escape,
the farmyard of human mediocrity.
Out in the forest
wild boar,proud as Celtic chieftains,
root through mushroomed undergrowth
above the twisting river,
while stupid hunters hack about,
desperate for something to shoot at…
Winding among the Carnac menhirs,
With the spirits of the land and sea,
I compass a snake-way to the stars,
Lighting mind-fires for the dead.
In the gloomy château of Angers,
The Tapestry of the Apocalypse is spread:
The Whore of Babylon appears,
Mounted on the seven-headed Beast,
As the Word of God rides out to challenge her,
Galloping his horse into battle,
Chasing Satan’s legions into the fiery lake
That Jerusalem be established anew in heaven.
Canoe-plashing river-drifting light-and-shade summer days on the rivers of proud slow artful France, mushrooming sun-blasted cloud-castles of verse into the atmosphere,as blue fire skis over your face and skin, and sculls into the blood.Sensuous intellect, essay another adventure!Hilarious passion, dragonfly on the…
Like the duc de Condé, I expect to be reincarnated as a horse.
a realm that can never be definitively mapped,
a truth you feel absolutely or not at all…
In the choir of St-Denis Cathedral,
caught like a spider under glass
in the vast windows’ glow
I thrill to the pointed arch
like a tuning fork,
the ribbed vault and half-column shafts
rising from pillar to roof,
a new Atlantis
breaking the waves…
The cemeteries of the Somme:
tens of thousands
of identical crosses,
name, rank and regiment
or no name at all…
In Charleville,
during the festival of puppets,
I stand at Rimbaud’s grave,
quayside of his childhood’s paper boat-
here he is,
after all his voyages,
back in the place he most hated
but could never escape,
the farmyard of human mediocrity.
Out in the forest
wild boar,proud as Celtic chieftains,
root through mushroomed undergrowth
above the twisting river,
while stupid hunters hack about,
desperate for something to shoot at…
Winding among the Carnac menhirs,
With the spirits of the land and sea,
I compass a snake-way to the stars,
Lighting mind-fires for the dead.
In the gloomy château of Angers,
The Tapestry of the Apocalypse is spread:
The Whore of Babylon appears,
Mounted on the seven-headed Beast,
As the Word of God rides out to challenge her,
Galloping his horse into battle,
Chasing Satan’s legions into the fiery lake
That Jerusalem be established anew in heaven.
Canoe-plashing river-drifting light-and-shade summer days on the rivers of proud slow artful France, mushrooming sun-blasted cloud-castles of verse into the atmosphere,as blue fire skis over your face and skin, and sculls into the blood.Sensuous intellect, essay another adventure!Hilarious passion, dragonfly on the…
Like the duc de Condé, I expect to be reincarnated as a horse.
Sweeney Todd
On the Temple Bar boundary,
Where the monarch stops in his progress
To perform the ritual of the pearl-handled sword,
The sacrificial altar becomes a barber’s chair.
Depraved diseased despicable murderous drink-sodden London,
My poxy old prison tart!
How many times,as a boy,
I would visit the Tower
To watch the lions feeding in the zoo
And stare at the torture instruments,
The rack and thumbscrews, the iron gauntlets
And the Scavenger’s Daughter.
The city tried to kill me
But my cunning and resource were too strong.
Fleet Street, with its gibbets and freak shows,
And the savage giants of St Dunstan’s clock,
Striking the hours with their clubs;
The crook and the writer
Foster their wits here;
The killer and the bookseller
Practise their trades.
At Mrs Salmon’s Waxworks
You can look in wonder
At the execution of Charles the First,
The rites of Moloch
And the Turkish Seraglio.
A razor of the finest steel
Fits so snugly in my hand;
It calls to me like God.
Cut, cut, cut…
In the kitchen
Love is busy making pies….
Where the monarch stops in his progress
To perform the ritual of the pearl-handled sword,
The sacrificial altar becomes a barber’s chair.
Depraved diseased despicable murderous drink-sodden London,
My poxy old prison tart!
How many times,as a boy,
I would visit the Tower
To watch the lions feeding in the zoo
And stare at the torture instruments,
The rack and thumbscrews, the iron gauntlets
And the Scavenger’s Daughter.
The city tried to kill me
But my cunning and resource were too strong.
Fleet Street, with its gibbets and freak shows,
And the savage giants of St Dunstan’s clock,
Striking the hours with their clubs;
The crook and the writer
Foster their wits here;
The killer and the bookseller
Practise their trades.
At Mrs Salmon’s Waxworks
You can look in wonder
At the execution of Charles the First,
The rites of Moloch
And the Turkish Seraglio.
A razor of the finest steel
Fits so snugly in my hand;
It calls to me like God.
Cut, cut, cut…
In the kitchen
Love is busy making pies….
The Cult of the Serpent
Ruined Adam, red man blooded in war
And ignorance, not the perfect creature
First released from Yahweh’s hand!
It is man, the winged serpent, the devious seraph.
Subtle is the Arch-enemy, so wily
As to corrupt rather than obliterate faith,
So that in the battle between truth
And error, man’s mind might be utterly
Confounded and debased,
Venerating what it should abhor.
Allegiance divided,we call both good and evil divine,
-Hail the Babylonian serpent,
Symbol,talisman, oracle and god!
Apollyon, Abaddon,
The battle standards of Assyria
Fly the dragon through Asia,
And the ensigns of Persia,
The sign of the serpent,
Governor of the universe.
Two fanging serpents contend for the world-egg,
Standing upon their tails.
In the netherworld,scorpions and snakes
Attack the feet of the damned.
8
At the fire-altar the god sits enthroned,
A serpent girdling his waist.
Circles and serpents of the landscape
Avebury
Stonehenge
Ophite hierograms in stone
Ophel
Apollo
In the caves of Hindustan
The god Sani stands,encircled by two snakes,
Their heads meeting over his,
Saturn’s ring.
On a rock by the Ganges
Vishnu reclines on the coiled serpent,
Sleeping between two worlds.
Parvati, come,
Snakes about your neck and waist!
Egyptian hieroglyph:
Two serpents intersect at right angles
Upon a globe
Solstitial colures
Drink the snake’s blood,
Eat his heart and liver,
And gain his wisdom.
The adder,
druid minister of the great god Hu,
the dragon-ruler of the universe
watches the sun slough across the sky
reading its helix
like the sons of Canaan
the serpent’s kiss
for an Ophite
the blessing of the eucharist
and the mysteries of Bacchus
snakes carried in baskets
with cakes and bread for the votaries
Cneph
the architect of the universe
the serpent with the egg in its mouth
seventh letter of the alphabet
sign of Thoth
The asps of Isis
come to drink from her chalice
the Egyptian gnostics of the school of Basilides
with their abraxas amulets
graven with the snake
the Tau-cross marked on my brow
the hawk-headed serpent
The divining cup of Joseph
its lid engraved with snakes
The serpents of Ouidah and the Congo
slide through the temples
possessing the will and imagination
Europa Europa
the solar serpent
Cadmus and Harmonia did not die
but were changed into vipers
Spiral line on the omphalos
spiral line on the megaliths of Newgrange
the serpent’s coil
the tripleheaded serpent on the breastplate of Agamemnon
and the viper shield of Menelaus
the Pythia of Apollo at Delphi
pronounces the oracle
seated on her tripod
the tripleheaded serpent of brass
the serpent’s fountain in Palestine
and the priest of Apollo’s stream atColophon,in Ionia,
and the holy stupefaction in the cave of Trophonius...
the fire in the dragon’s mouth of Mexico
burns also in the fields and villages of Britain
Enter the dracontium
the snake-stones’ avenues
leading to knowledge
to death
And ignorance, not the perfect creature
First released from Yahweh’s hand!
It is man, the winged serpent, the devious seraph.
Subtle is the Arch-enemy, so wily
As to corrupt rather than obliterate faith,
So that in the battle between truth
And error, man’s mind might be utterly
Confounded and debased,
Venerating what it should abhor.
Allegiance divided,we call both good and evil divine,
-Hail the Babylonian serpent,
Symbol,talisman, oracle and god!
Apollyon, Abaddon,
The battle standards of Assyria
Fly the dragon through Asia,
And the ensigns of Persia,
The sign of the serpent,
Governor of the universe.
Two fanging serpents contend for the world-egg,
Standing upon their tails.
In the netherworld,scorpions and snakes
Attack the feet of the damned.
8
At the fire-altar the god sits enthroned,
A serpent girdling his waist.
Circles and serpents of the landscape
Avebury
Stonehenge
Ophite hierograms in stone
Ophel
Apollo
In the caves of Hindustan
The god Sani stands,encircled by two snakes,
Their heads meeting over his,
Saturn’s ring.
On a rock by the Ganges
Vishnu reclines on the coiled serpent,
Sleeping between two worlds.
Parvati, come,
Snakes about your neck and waist!
Egyptian hieroglyph:
Two serpents intersect at right angles
Upon a globe
Solstitial colures
Drink the snake’s blood,
Eat his heart and liver,
And gain his wisdom.
The adder,
druid minister of the great god Hu,
the dragon-ruler of the universe
watches the sun slough across the sky
reading its helix
like the sons of Canaan
the serpent’s kiss
for an Ophite
the blessing of the eucharist
and the mysteries of Bacchus
snakes carried in baskets
with cakes and bread for the votaries
Cneph
the architect of the universe
the serpent with the egg in its mouth
seventh letter of the alphabet
sign of Thoth
The asps of Isis
come to drink from her chalice
the Egyptian gnostics of the school of Basilides
with their abraxas amulets
graven with the snake
the Tau-cross marked on my brow
the hawk-headed serpent
The divining cup of Joseph
its lid engraved with snakes
The serpents of Ouidah and the Congo
slide through the temples
possessing the will and imagination
Europa Europa
the solar serpent
Cadmus and Harmonia did not die
but were changed into vipers
Spiral line on the omphalos
spiral line on the megaliths of Newgrange
the serpent’s coil
the tripleheaded serpent on the breastplate of Agamemnon
and the viper shield of Menelaus
the Pythia of Apollo at Delphi
pronounces the oracle
seated on her tripod
the tripleheaded serpent of brass
the serpent’s fountain in Palestine
and the priest of Apollo’s stream atColophon,in Ionia,
and the holy stupefaction in the cave of Trophonius...
the fire in the dragon’s mouth of Mexico
burns also in the fields and villages of Britain
Enter the dracontium
the snake-stones’ avenues
leading to knowledge
to death
Argentina
Through a horse’s eyes,
Mournful horizons curve into themselves;
Thunderous distances drum creole
Into the Atlantic mariner’s reverie.
Death can gain no purchase here
Against sheer heights of pride.
In the Museum of Natural Science,
Megafauna skeletons
Glum obscenely in glass cases;
Gliptodon, megatherium,toxodon,macrauchenia.
Fantastic superbly designed lords of creation,
Production lines cancelled and abandoned
Three million years ago,
No longer economical, alas.
The fearful face of an Inca child
Sacrificed and mummified,
Knocked dead with a blunt weapon,
Then abandoned on a peak.
Words, Jesuit missions
On the savage pampa,
Work to reduce the wild.
Black priest of the Vatican,
I plant a peach orchard
Under the alien sky.
Mournful horizons curve into themselves;
Thunderous distances drum creole
Into the Atlantic mariner’s reverie.
Death can gain no purchase here
Against sheer heights of pride.
In the Museum of Natural Science,
Megafauna skeletons
Glum obscenely in glass cases;
Gliptodon, megatherium,toxodon,macrauchenia.
Fantastic superbly designed lords of creation,
Production lines cancelled and abandoned
Three million years ago,
No longer economical, alas.
The fearful face of an Inca child
Sacrificed and mummified,
Knocked dead with a blunt weapon,
Then abandoned on a peak.
Words, Jesuit missions
On the savage pampa,
Work to reduce the wild.
Black priest of the Vatican,
I plant a peach orchard
Under the alien sky.
The Despot
That was a long time ago, his father’s frown:
What difference could it possibly make now?
All the medals on his chest,
The palaces, aeroplanes and yachts,
And fawning courtiers ready to kill for him.
Stepfathered by poverty and shame,
He must punish the enemy,
Avenge the beaten child.
Uncertainty was the killer,
Cruel to a fault, refined through pain,
Homing in on resentments and fears
To exploit for purposes of state;
As if his madness could purge
The mundane madness of all.
Was he not an artist in his field,
His restless hands crafting the masses
Into a voodoo doll?
No-one could touch him now,
Least of all himself.
What difference could it possibly make now?
All the medals on his chest,
The palaces, aeroplanes and yachts,
And fawning courtiers ready to kill for him.
Stepfathered by poverty and shame,
He must punish the enemy,
Avenge the beaten child.
Uncertainty was the killer,
Cruel to a fault, refined through pain,
Homing in on resentments and fears
To exploit for purposes of state;
As if his madness could purge
The mundane madness of all.
Was he not an artist in his field,
His restless hands crafting the masses
Into a voodoo doll?
No-one could touch him now,
Least of all himself.
Utamaro
In 1804, at the height of his success, the artist Kitagawa Utamaro was put under house arrest for fifty days for making prints of the military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi enjoying the pleasures of the “floating world.”
A lifetime’s diligent study
Will not suffice the lover or the artist.
We speak not of lust and commerce,
But of glamour,romance and desire.
The movements of brush and fan
Nuance the night with mysteries;
Which touch is more tender,
The geisha’s or the painter’s?
As a dragonfly’s clinging to a stalk,
So a courtesan’s motions I study.
All things are imagined,
Or they do not exist at all.
Midnight is the hour of the rat,
When a lighted taper in the hand
Throws shadows on a screen;
The red folds of the silk
On an outstretched arm
And the sake cup, deep and dark.
The long stem of a narcissus
Leads the eye to the petals;
Then devotion’s gestures sway all
Until the dawn bell’s call.
In the hour of the dragon,
When the daylight world awakes,
The night people gladly retire,
Weary,and always a little sad.
A lifetime’s diligent study
Will not suffice the lover or the artist.
We speak not of lust and commerce,
But of glamour,romance and desire.
The movements of brush and fan
Nuance the night with mysteries;
Which touch is more tender,
The geisha’s or the painter’s?
As a dragonfly’s clinging to a stalk,
So a courtesan’s motions I study.
All things are imagined,
Or they do not exist at all.
Midnight is the hour of the rat,
When a lighted taper in the hand
Throws shadows on a screen;
The red folds of the silk
On an outstretched arm
And the sake cup, deep and dark.
The long stem of a narcissus
Leads the eye to the petals;
Then devotion’s gestures sway all
Until the dawn bell’s call.
In the hour of the dragon,
When the daylight world awakes,
The night people gladly retire,
Weary,and always a little sad.
Cameroon
A tale of migrations,
A history of skins.
Feel the clay being shaped
In the potter’s hands,
And words like cowrie shells
Passed from brow to brow.
Curve of bronze and wood,
This is life itself.
Can you read a gorilla’s fingerprints
And decipher the turaco’s cry?
The fat world crouches in water,
A lone goliath frog.
On the black sands beneath the mountain,
Naked wrestlers tussle.
The sky poises on a whim,
An orchid from the lava.
“Come,” says the mountain’s protector ,
“But take care not to remove anything”.
All the birds of Cameroon
Take me up in their wings;
The white-breasted nigrita
And the chattering cisticola,
The olive-bellied sunbird,
The red-vented malimbé...
Come,brown illadopsis,
Shining drongo,
Mountain boubou,
Willcock’s honeyguide
And Bonelli’s warbler!
Come, variable indigobird!
A history of skins.
Feel the clay being shaped
In the potter’s hands,
And words like cowrie shells
Passed from brow to brow.
Curve of bronze and wood,
This is life itself.
Can you read a gorilla’s fingerprints
And decipher the turaco’s cry?
The fat world crouches in water,
A lone goliath frog.
On the black sands beneath the mountain,
Naked wrestlers tussle.
The sky poises on a whim,
An orchid from the lava.
“Come,” says the mountain’s protector ,
“But take care not to remove anything”.
All the birds of Cameroon
Take me up in their wings;
The white-breasted nigrita
And the chattering cisticola,
The olive-bellied sunbird,
The red-vented malimbé...
Come,brown illadopsis,
Shining drongo,
Mountain boubou,
Willcock’s honeyguide
And Bonelli’s warbler!
Come, variable indigobird!
The Hitler Salute
Rapidly, all too easily,
The ritual became obligation.
A salutation. A stab at salvation.
“Hail” and “heal”.”Close” and “mend.”
That craving to obey had the upper hand.
What now in place of custom and love?
How could they communicate
But through the destroyer’s jargon?
Face to face, they shared the void.
So weary of science and reason,
They wanted to believe again
In something, anything,
So they held out their hands in the air
To take the mysterious gift.
Always out of reach.
The ritual became obligation.
A salutation. A stab at salvation.
“Hail” and “heal”.”Close” and “mend.”
That craving to obey had the upper hand.
What now in place of custom and love?
How could they communicate
But through the destroyer’s jargon?
Face to face, they shared the void.
So weary of science and reason,
They wanted to believe again
In something, anything,
So they held out their hands in the air
To take the mysterious gift.
Always out of reach.
The Fatal Mountains: The Austro-Italian Front,1915-18
The high alps
the bone mountains
we kill each other coldly
for the nameless are not real
we cannot read the letters tucked next to their hearts
Anonymous
we share the void
death is our brother
we live in the vertical
Italian infantry on the attack
scramble over rocks,over corpses,
screaming,brandishing their rifles uselessly,
as the Austrian machinegunners above
annihilate rank on rank.with ease,
until,at last, even the Austrians are sickened,
and call out, “Italians!Stop!Go back!
We don’t want to massacre you!”
D’Annunzio bellows swooning blood-incantation
over the heads of the masses;
the adolescent superman
his greyhounds in Hermès livery,
wears war like a carnation in his buttonhole.
the empire of the ego his to expand
Rock.Wind.Rain.
The horned viper’s hunting ground
You could scrape with your spade
for a hundred years
and not make a dent.
How will you even dig your grave here?
“Attack, you cowards, you stupid dogs!
Battles are not won from the trenches!”
General Cadorna rants at his troops.
He remembers his father dying,
raising a clenched fist.
Advance,advance,always advance,
with will and energy to conquer all;
it is the age of action as wisdom,
violence as religion.
General Conrad assures his Italian mistress,
“I much admire your people’s racial characteristics”
Yet hers is a lesser race, the congenital foe,
to be crushed.
The empire is doomed, he knows,
but better to perish honourably
than surrender without a fight.
A hopelss struggle,but it must be pursued,
for an ancient monarchy
cannot perish ingloriously.
The weather:
the third army
the legions of the dead
The Italian soldiers know an attack is imminent
when the military police mount their machineguns
behind the trench,
ready to shoot down their own countrymen
if they loiter when the battlecry “Savoy!” goes up.
Decimation for “deserters”.
Ten men chosen by lot
Against a cemetery wall.
Skylarks above the maizefields.
The firing squad aim.
Smell of thyme on the limestone ridges
snow gleaming blue under the moon
constellations overhead
the ecstasy of war
never more alive
than in death’s mountains
the bone mountains
we kill each other coldly
for the nameless are not real
we cannot read the letters tucked next to their hearts
Anonymous
we share the void
death is our brother
we live in the vertical
Italian infantry on the attack
scramble over rocks,over corpses,
screaming,brandishing their rifles uselessly,
as the Austrian machinegunners above
annihilate rank on rank.with ease,
until,at last, even the Austrians are sickened,
and call out, “Italians!Stop!Go back!
We don’t want to massacre you!”
D’Annunzio bellows swooning blood-incantation
over the heads of the masses;
the adolescent superman
his greyhounds in Hermès livery,
wears war like a carnation in his buttonhole.
the empire of the ego his to expand
Rock.Wind.Rain.
The horned viper’s hunting ground
You could scrape with your spade
for a hundred years
and not make a dent.
How will you even dig your grave here?
“Attack, you cowards, you stupid dogs!
Battles are not won from the trenches!”
General Cadorna rants at his troops.
He remembers his father dying,
raising a clenched fist.
Advance,advance,always advance,
with will and energy to conquer all;
it is the age of action as wisdom,
violence as religion.
General Conrad assures his Italian mistress,
“I much admire your people’s racial characteristics”
Yet hers is a lesser race, the congenital foe,
to be crushed.
The empire is doomed, he knows,
but better to perish honourably
than surrender without a fight.
A hopelss struggle,but it must be pursued,
for an ancient monarchy
cannot perish ingloriously.
The weather:
the third army
the legions of the dead
The Italian soldiers know an attack is imminent
when the military police mount their machineguns
behind the trench,
ready to shoot down their own countrymen
if they loiter when the battlecry “Savoy!” goes up.
Decimation for “deserters”.
Ten men chosen by lot
Against a cemetery wall.
Skylarks above the maizefields.
The firing squad aim.
Smell of thyme on the limestone ridges
snow gleaming blue under the moon
constellations overhead
the ecstasy of war
never more alive
than in death’s mountains
The Millennium of Doctor Faustus
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Saddle their steeds and ride.
Tales are heard of monstrous births,
Downpours of blood and milk,
And a triple moon appears in the German skies.
Pestilence decimates Europe,
A thunderbolt strikes the Vatican,
Knocking the Pope from his throne.
War and insurrection
Laugh through the bones of the soon-to-be-dead.
The Devil’s agents are everywhere.
And the Prince of Necromancers appears among men,
To turn earth into water,water into air,
Air into fire,-and see the crow’s head,
The ashes of Hermes’ tree.
Haloed with the planets’ orbits,
He strolls in a castle garden,
Blooming in winter
And plots invocations
For the victory of his Emperor’s armies.
Saddle their steeds and ride.
Tales are heard of monstrous births,
Downpours of blood and milk,
And a triple moon appears in the German skies.
Pestilence decimates Europe,
A thunderbolt strikes the Vatican,
Knocking the Pope from his throne.
War and insurrection
Laugh through the bones of the soon-to-be-dead.
The Devil’s agents are everywhere.
And the Prince of Necromancers appears among men,
To turn earth into water,water into air,
Air into fire,-and see the crow’s head,
The ashes of Hermes’ tree.
Haloed with the planets’ orbits,
He strolls in a castle garden,
Blooming in winter
And plots invocations
For the victory of his Emperor’s armies.
Titian's End
No longer did he finish anything;
Day after day in the large draughty studio,
Reworking the canvases over and over,
Never quite completing a single one,
Terrified to end, to let go.
For months he would leave a painting,
Scarcely even glancing at it,
Then return to the battle,
Glaring with mortal rage,
Digging in with his fingers.
He had outlived them all, his so-called peers,
There was no one left to defeat now,
No-one to work for but himself;
Eyes failing, but his spirit savage,
Desperate against the darkness,
Spewing paint like blood.
(A young bravado’s lust still, tempered
By an old man’s guile, he knew
Precisely how much truth to mix
With untruth on his palette.
Curse the world for forcing him
Into venal conniving and grovelling
To vainglorious patrons, who disdained
To pay on time for his precious labours
So that he must whine and importune
With magniloquent flattery to wheedle
His dues from those avaricious hands).
Blackclad and monk-gaunt,
Gnarled, feisty, skullcapped and hook-nosed,
He toiled on, while burning corpses’ stench
Fogged over the Venice Lagoon,
Mingling with shit-reek and slime;
Ceaselessly, the plague boats called
From house to house, along fetid canals,
Hired brutes smashing down doors
To pillage the rooms of the dead.
God was visiting his wrath upon the city
For inveterate sins; as parents abandoned
Their own sick children, husbands their wives,
And Titian raised his brush once more
To cut another stroke into the scene;
Marsyas was hanging upside down,
Accepting his punishment serenely,
Initiated into the highest heavens of pain;
Where diagonals connected in a star.
Day after day in the large draughty studio,
Reworking the canvases over and over,
Never quite completing a single one,
Terrified to end, to let go.
For months he would leave a painting,
Scarcely even glancing at it,
Then return to the battle,
Glaring with mortal rage,
Digging in with his fingers.
He had outlived them all, his so-called peers,
There was no one left to defeat now,
No-one to work for but himself;
Eyes failing, but his spirit savage,
Desperate against the darkness,
Spewing paint like blood.
(A young bravado’s lust still, tempered
By an old man’s guile, he knew
Precisely how much truth to mix
With untruth on his palette.
Curse the world for forcing him
Into venal conniving and grovelling
To vainglorious patrons, who disdained
To pay on time for his precious labours
So that he must whine and importune
With magniloquent flattery to wheedle
His dues from those avaricious hands).
Blackclad and monk-gaunt,
Gnarled, feisty, skullcapped and hook-nosed,
He toiled on, while burning corpses’ stench
Fogged over the Venice Lagoon,
Mingling with shit-reek and slime;
Ceaselessly, the plague boats called
From house to house, along fetid canals,
Hired brutes smashing down doors
To pillage the rooms of the dead.
God was visiting his wrath upon the city
For inveterate sins; as parents abandoned
Their own sick children, husbands their wives,
And Titian raised his brush once more
To cut another stroke into the scene;
Marsyas was hanging upside down,
Accepting his punishment serenely,
Initiated into the highest heavens of pain;
Where diagonals connected in a star.
The True Cross
Into the Holy Sepulchre they process,
The Franciscan monks, then the Armenians,
To sing their chants in rivalrous polyphony.
In the hushed chapel they celebrate Mass;
Below their feet is the bare rough crypt
Of silent prayer and meditation,
Hewn from Golgotha’s rock,
Where the Empress Helena,her long journey
Blessed at last,breathlessly seized
The wooden fragments of the True Cross,
The tree grown from the seed cast in Eden.
The old Empress, cantankerous, implacable,
Stood, holding the trophy in her hands,
And ecstasy possessed her ailing limbs
And guilty mind, as the years of sinful struggle
Fell away in eternal victory and endless empire.
History and faith conspire
In places, memories, eyewitness reports,
In us, seen and touched
By what we see and touch,
Taking religion into the body
As if knowledge and belief could be one
In the city of the real invincible symbol
Where map and compass are offered
To the wanderer, if he will only hope.
The Franciscan monks, then the Armenians,
To sing their chants in rivalrous polyphony.
In the hushed chapel they celebrate Mass;
Below their feet is the bare rough crypt
Of silent prayer and meditation,
Hewn from Golgotha’s rock,
Where the Empress Helena,her long journey
Blessed at last,breathlessly seized
The wooden fragments of the True Cross,
The tree grown from the seed cast in Eden.
The old Empress, cantankerous, implacable,
Stood, holding the trophy in her hands,
And ecstasy possessed her ailing limbs
And guilty mind, as the years of sinful struggle
Fell away in eternal victory and endless empire.
History and faith conspire
In places, memories, eyewitness reports,
In us, seen and touched
By what we see and touch,
Taking religion into the body
As if knowledge and belief could be one
In the city of the real invincible symbol
Where map and compass are offered
To the wanderer, if he will only hope.
Gabon
The words of a traveller:
The words of every man who went before him.
Africa had been waiting for me
All along, menacing, absurd.
That moment when Paul du Chaillu
Came face to face with a gorilla,
The first white man to do so,
Standing transfixed in awe
At the monster so long imagined,
Raising his rifle only when the beast
Approached too near
And throwing its head back
And beating its chest
Quaked the forest with its roar.
He killed it with a single shot.
In 1861 British readers hastened
To purchase his book,and fold out
The frontispiece etching
Of the gorilla,his genitals covered
With a fig leaf to spare female readers.
The gorillas steal local women and girls
And molest them, the people swear.
Gorillas mate but once a year,
Sometimes face to face,embracing
Like humans, tenderly, alone in the forest.
Friend, come near, share my simple meal of words.
I will trade you my misfortune for yours.
Is not one sorrow worth another in the end?
We are nightbirds all in this forest.
Every man before you has felt it,
This same dread, scouring out the heart,
In the night-time, forbidding sleep,
So you can only sing the lullabies
Your lost mother taught you.
There is no quinine against this evil,
As even the gentlest are tempted
Into violence and degradation.
Explorers,missionaries,followers of rivers,
They lost their minds here,one by one,
Minds and bodies finally exhausted,
Seeking not to find.
In the forest,far from the eyes of men,
A circle of naked women dances
Lewd and glorious around a catfish,
Singing in praise of the penis and vulva,
Until the young maidens must kneel
And lick between their elders’ thighs
As the teacher-mothers chant
“Eat the poison!Eat the poison!”
Before the white men came,
The Fang used to make a mask
With four faces:father,mother,
Son and daughter;
Life and suffering,birth and death;
Spinning, interchanging as they danced.
The words of every man who went before him.
Africa had been waiting for me
All along, menacing, absurd.
That moment when Paul du Chaillu
Came face to face with a gorilla,
The first white man to do so,
Standing transfixed in awe
At the monster so long imagined,
Raising his rifle only when the beast
Approached too near
And throwing its head back
And beating its chest
Quaked the forest with its roar.
He killed it with a single shot.
In 1861 British readers hastened
To purchase his book,and fold out
The frontispiece etching
Of the gorilla,his genitals covered
With a fig leaf to spare female readers.
The gorillas steal local women and girls
And molest them, the people swear.
Gorillas mate but once a year,
Sometimes face to face,embracing
Like humans, tenderly, alone in the forest.
Friend, come near, share my simple meal of words.
I will trade you my misfortune for yours.
Is not one sorrow worth another in the end?
We are nightbirds all in this forest.
Every man before you has felt it,
This same dread, scouring out the heart,
In the night-time, forbidding sleep,
So you can only sing the lullabies
Your lost mother taught you.
There is no quinine against this evil,
As even the gentlest are tempted
Into violence and degradation.
Explorers,missionaries,followers of rivers,
They lost their minds here,one by one,
Minds and bodies finally exhausted,
Seeking not to find.
In the forest,far from the eyes of men,
A circle of naked women dances
Lewd and glorious around a catfish,
Singing in praise of the penis and vulva,
Until the young maidens must kneel
And lick between their elders’ thighs
As the teacher-mothers chant
“Eat the poison!Eat the poison!”
Before the white men came,
The Fang used to make a mask
With four faces:father,mother,
Son and daughter;
Life and suffering,birth and death;
Spinning, interchanging as they danced.
Danton Awaiting Trial, 1794
Unless a man will overstep the mark,
He might as well stay at home.
Call me Gargoyle, Cyclops, Tatar,
Call me what you will, but this monster
Has the measure of the world,
And, like a crafty tailor, cut my suit
To fit. How else should a captain
Of revolution impress the world
Butt through the boldest action?
Insurrection is man’s very nature.
It is ogres such as I buy your freedom!
No pettifogging clerk ever won the mob.
My only sin is to love France too much,
Reckless in her service,
Risk all for her, even reason itself,
Because I had to hold her up
When she fell, and carry her free;
Whatever the loss of blood.
And now the loud bull is led out
To slaughter, too rich a prize to miss!
All I am is a voice, a voice in the night.
Should I condemn myself for excesses
Committed in good faith, for all?
Seeking to do justice, I have welcomed
Injustice in the door; fighting tyranny,
I have made myself its dupe.
The fear I scorn and abhor within
I have turned upon the world.
In the end I am sick of it all,
Sick of men and their passions,
Sick of liberty itself, our mistress,
Furious and impossible in her demands,
Goading us till we are traitors
To ourselves; there is no happy end
To this harvest we have begun.
The Revolution must punish dissent,
And one day we all become dissenters.
Enemies to be eliminated.
Now the fools make a religion
Of the nation, an idol of the people!
If they had my balls, they would not feel
The need of such pure souls!
He might as well stay at home.
Call me Gargoyle, Cyclops, Tatar,
Call me what you will, but this monster
Has the measure of the world,
And, like a crafty tailor, cut my suit
To fit. How else should a captain
Of revolution impress the world
Butt through the boldest action?
Insurrection is man’s very nature.
It is ogres such as I buy your freedom!
No pettifogging clerk ever won the mob.
My only sin is to love France too much,
Reckless in her service,
Risk all for her, even reason itself,
Because I had to hold her up
When she fell, and carry her free;
Whatever the loss of blood.
And now the loud bull is led out
To slaughter, too rich a prize to miss!
All I am is a voice, a voice in the night.
Should I condemn myself for excesses
Committed in good faith, for all?
Seeking to do justice, I have welcomed
Injustice in the door; fighting tyranny,
I have made myself its dupe.
The fear I scorn and abhor within
I have turned upon the world.
In the end I am sick of it all,
Sick of men and their passions,
Sick of liberty itself, our mistress,
Furious and impossible in her demands,
Goading us till we are traitors
To ourselves; there is no happy end
To this harvest we have begun.
The Revolution must punish dissent,
And one day we all become dissenters.
Enemies to be eliminated.
Now the fools make a religion
Of the nation, an idol of the people!
If they had my balls, they would not feel
The need of such pure souls!
Innamorata
A world of gestures-
an amorous world-
cloud chamber of collisions.
I am the absent one;
you are the absent one;
someone must always leave;
someone must be abandoned.
The Adorable will destroy
you
eventually.
A sudden agony
from a trivium,
a nuance
that does not fit the ideal,
an imperfection in the model…
These anxieities and injuries-
passion’s contingencies-
can only flee me
away to where I am.
Who loves
loves love,
not love,
and does not love.
The Unclassifiable,
the Sui Generis,
she is my Socrates
of sex.
It is all about waiting.
Hiding.
Riding out the catastrophe.
The asteroid strike.
What hope have the ravished?
The gift is doom itself.
Infinite desire,infinite possibility!
I want so much to understand,
to feel the truth
And be compassion.
No-one in my life
has ever baffled me with so many questions,
impossible futile questions
even Einstein cold not solve.
A flayed hide tells its own story.
My eyes are heralds of pain,
Forever importing fresh miseries.
Secret rites
and votive actions
I dedicate to you
in this age of scientific superstition.
Sentimental-obscene,
a connoisseur of tears,
I practise the voodoo
of uncertain signs.
an amorous world-
cloud chamber of collisions.
I am the absent one;
you are the absent one;
someone must always leave;
someone must be abandoned.
The Adorable will destroy
you
eventually.
A sudden agony
from a trivium,
a nuance
that does not fit the ideal,
an imperfection in the model…
These anxieities and injuries-
passion’s contingencies-
can only flee me
away to where I am.
Who loves
loves love,
not love,
and does not love.
The Unclassifiable,
the Sui Generis,
she is my Socrates
of sex.
It is all about waiting.
Hiding.
Riding out the catastrophe.
The asteroid strike.
What hope have the ravished?
The gift is doom itself.
Infinite desire,infinite possibility!
I want so much to understand,
to feel the truth
And be compassion.
No-one in my life
has ever baffled me with so many questions,
impossible futile questions
even Einstein cold not solve.
A flayed hide tells its own story.
My eyes are heralds of pain,
Forever importing fresh miseries.
Secret rites
and votive actions
I dedicate to you
in this age of scientific superstition.
Sentimental-obscene,
a connoisseur of tears,
I practise the voodoo
of uncertain signs.
Jokers
I tear a hole with a serrated joke.
Jest. Gag.Blague.
I could be happy,
If it wasn’t for reality.
If it wasn’t for the expectations.
There is always another world to prefer.
Laughter is my prayer,
In which case I am quite religious.
Always feel I am watching myself in a film.
A B-movie.
And such a bad actor.
I wouldn’t buy a ticket to see this.
Scaramouche,
What is there
When the laughter dies away?
The giggling,the chuckling,
The sniggering, the tittering,
The belly laughs,
The guffaws?
Ventriloquist’s dummy
Of a mischievous Creator,
I belch and fart
The Infinite.
Jest. Gag.Blague.
I could be happy,
If it wasn’t for reality.
If it wasn’t for the expectations.
There is always another world to prefer.
Laughter is my prayer,
In which case I am quite religious.
Always feel I am watching myself in a film.
A B-movie.
And such a bad actor.
I wouldn’t buy a ticket to see this.
Scaramouche,
What is there
When the laughter dies away?
The giggling,the chuckling,
The sniggering, the tittering,
The belly laughs,
The guffaws?
Ventriloquist’s dummy
Of a mischievous Creator,
I belch and fart
The Infinite.
Spanish Guitar
It is a question of distance and touch.
Fingertips and fingernails
Palping the timbres and tones,
The breath in the wood,
From dolce to ponticelo.
Holding without clinging
To the body of the world.
Right hand, left hand,
Swimming through sound.
I live in the curve,
Interaction of two waves.
Fingertips and fingernails
Palping the timbres and tones,
The breath in the wood,
From dolce to ponticelo.
Holding without clinging
To the body of the world.
Right hand, left hand,
Swimming through sound.
I live in the curve,
Interaction of two waves.
Mayakovsky Square
To the man who hated monuments
They built a monument.
From the man who despised idols
They manufactured an idol.
How many deaths can a man die
(Not counting the least one,
The death of his body)?
Bearded priests-
Deaf to the gospel
Of the thirteenth apostle-
Charged the red corner
With broken mirrors
Tore a man from his name
And sold a caricature,
Turned poetry
Into headlines and slogans.
And a pistol shot
Drove its full stop
Into the April evening,
Into the bull elephant’s heart.
To the man who hated monuments
They built a monument.
From the man who despised idols
They manufactured an idol.
They built a monument.
From the man who despised idols
They manufactured an idol.
How many deaths can a man die
(Not counting the least one,
The death of his body)?
Bearded priests-
Deaf to the gospel
Of the thirteenth apostle-
Charged the red corner
With broken mirrors
Tore a man from his name
And sold a caricature,
Turned poetry
Into headlines and slogans.
And a pistol shot
Drove its full stop
Into the April evening,
Into the bull elephant’s heart.
To the man who hated monuments
They built a monument.
From the man who despised idols
They manufactured an idol.
Afternoon in Vilnius
Who decides what is to remembered
And what is to be forgotten?
Who distinguishes the significant
From the insignificant?
Who authorises history
And sanctions reality?
Who says what is true or untrue?
Here there is no history,
Only histories,
Words one writes
Without needless hope,
Fruitful misunderstandings.
Have you confused your memories
With knowledge?
In the court of Europe
Another speech is being made,
Another prosecution
And defence.
East and West
Are not exactly where you expect
To find them;
But everywhere,
Everywhere.
And what is to be forgotten?
Who distinguishes the significant
From the insignificant?
Who authorises history
And sanctions reality?
Who says what is true or untrue?
Here there is no history,
Only histories,
Words one writes
Without needless hope,
Fruitful misunderstandings.
Have you confused your memories
With knowledge?
In the court of Europe
Another speech is being made,
Another prosecution
And defence.
East and West
Are not exactly where you expect
To find them;
But everywhere,
Everywhere.
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