The ice.Always the ice.The dark mother.
So little grain from the brief season.
The peasants suspicious and grumbling,
Hating the merchants’ rapacity.
What might come riding out of the plains,
Tatars from the east, Germans from the west?
The backward, the resentful, the disillusioned
Have a special wisdom.
Why must there always be a false utopia
To yearn for, to leap at- and fail?
Perhaps contradictions need not be resolved.
Let them be, let them breed, and be free.
Empire and chaos hold sway
Over the serfs, always crumbling back
Into the dirt,as thunderclouds mass
In the steppe heavens,and hunters
Kiss their lucky charms,setting out.
Whatever they may say, the people
Favour the black horse over the white.
This struggle,futile and fatiguing,leading
Through catastrophe,again and again,
Will never be abandoned,for the damned
Are romantics and believers to the end.
Friday, May 21, 2010
The Potter's Wheel
I throw my life upon the wheel,
Not at the centre of anything,
But part of the movement,
The rhythm and the noise...
The wheel is gathering momentum
And the clay domes in my hands;
You can feel every change
Right in the fingertips.
Again and again on the treadle,
As the shape grows,
Catching ambient sound
In its hollow,
Resonating like a seashell.
Hunched and twisted,
I suffer the torments
When the euphoria is gone.
Here, there is no thinking,
Only doing,
All I am is what my hands know,
What they remember.
Not at the centre of anything,
But part of the movement,
The rhythm and the noise...
The wheel is gathering momentum
And the clay domes in my hands;
You can feel every change
Right in the fingertips.
Again and again on the treadle,
As the shape grows,
Catching ambient sound
In its hollow,
Resonating like a seashell.
Hunched and twisted,
I suffer the torments
When the euphoria is gone.
Here, there is no thinking,
Only doing,
All I am is what my hands know,
What they remember.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Fascination
So beautiful is the illusion
Why should one wish for the real ?
Elements forever in commotion,
Repelling or attracting,
Have no choice but to create.
Where parallels join,beyond the horizon,
Infinite triangles irradiate.
And,in the cathedral,
Caught in the rose window’s tractor beam,
You automatically start walking
Eastwards,into sunrise,
Anchored yet free…
Fire,earth,air and water
Combine in the glass,
Colours changing ceaselessly ;
This world which you must leave
Is fascination.
Why should one wish for the real ?
Elements forever in commotion,
Repelling or attracting,
Have no choice but to create.
Where parallels join,beyond the horizon,
Infinite triangles irradiate.
And,in the cathedral,
Caught in the rose window’s tractor beam,
You automatically start walking
Eastwards,into sunrise,
Anchored yet free…
Fire,earth,air and water
Combine in the glass,
Colours changing ceaselessly ;
This world which you must leave
Is fascination.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Alfred Wegener
Pangaea breaking up
a raindrop forming
ice crystal halo arcs appearing opposite the sun
a man
crossing hundreds of miles
of Greenland snow and ice
You maintain equilibrium
by isostasy
feeling the ground
move beneath your feet
blue-eyed Viking raider of the sky
Savaged by critics and enemies
listening totheir sarcastic tirades
he sits silently
without responding
smoking his pipe
They found him dead
lying on a reindeer skin
inside his tent
on the Greenland icecap
face calm and peaceful
almost smiling
and over him his friends
raised an ice mausoleum
Japanese Aesthetics
From nothingness to nothingness
the waves the waves
the simple weathered things I love
imperfect
impermanent
incomplete
that which comes and goes I cherish
discernible only to a cultivated eye
a quiet mind
What makes these tears start
out of nowhere?
Year after year
the karateka practises the kata
until suddenly one day
the unnatural becomes natural
the rehearsed becomes spontaneous
The ikebana artist
cuts a flower
precisely in order to make it live
to return it to itself
The Nō actor
slides his raised-toe foot along the stage
then abruptly cuts off the movement
lowering his toes to the floor-
a pause between inhalation and exhalation-
and at the exact same instant
his other foot slides forward
The poet’s brush
strikes a cut
between two images
in a haiku
walling in a rock garden
of white gravel and black stones
where the only motion
is shadows cast by sun and moon
The Singing Fish of Sri Lanka
To the shores of Serendib a lonely sailor
With words and worlds to trade...
Gondwanaland:my mind!
A dancer’s movement-
Just the slightest gesture of a hand-
Sets worlds spinning , in space.
A firewalker’s balance
Holds the planets in orbit.
From here to Paradise,they say,is just forty miles;
One can hear the sound of its fountains.
Broken orange pekoe fumes rich malty coppery tones
As I lift the chipped cup.
Like a colossal stone Buddha
I lie down on my side to sleep,
Ready for my next unenlightened incarnation.
On April full moon nights the fish are said to sing
Off the coast of Batti;
One must stick an oar into the water
And hold the other end to one’s ear.
With words and worlds to trade...
Gondwanaland:my mind!
A dancer’s movement-
Just the slightest gesture of a hand-
Sets worlds spinning , in space.
A firewalker’s balance
Holds the planets in orbit.
From here to Paradise,they say,is just forty miles;
One can hear the sound of its fountains.
Broken orange pekoe fumes rich malty coppery tones
As I lift the chipped cup.
Like a colossal stone Buddha
I lie down on my side to sleep,
Ready for my next unenlightened incarnation.
On April full moon nights the fish are said to sing
Off the coast of Batti;
One must stick an oar into the water
And hold the other end to one’s ear.
From the Reign of Shah Abbas
The world’s embassies and caravans converge on alchemical Isfahan.A style and a kingdom united;one purpose in politics and art.
Shah Abbas’s sabre:a broad single-edged damascus blade,with walrus ivory hilt,and watered steel mounts adorned with gold inlay;signed in the cartouche “Abbas the slave of the Lord of Holiness”,with the lion-sun motif.
Conversant with all mechanical crafts, the Shah loved making scimitars,arquebuses and saddles. Encouraged by “The Mirror of Princes” he had read as a boy,he proudly emulated the workshops of Timur and Uzan Hasan.
Inside the Shaykh Lutfullah Mosque:walls and dome on fire with blue,yellow,white and turquoise tiles,all intricate arabesques,cartouches and geometric designs;light on light,light within light,luminescence self-reflecting into infinity, the wordless serene.
A golden album page of calligraphy (breathed onto the paper by an assassinated poet), and carpets of silk and gold;such crafts are prized by the wise.
Golden dome,golden minaret,golden portal of the Imam Riza Shrine at Mashhad,illuminated in the malachite night:time and again the Shah came here to worship, kiss the holy ground and weep and pray, giving thanks for victories won and beseeching Allah for fresh conquests.
An elegant brass ewer, incised with palmette arabesques, intertwining vines and cypresses, blossoms and trefoils, the long slender neck and the bulbous body,-all the feminine volume of the earth is shaped into function.
A watercolour portrait of Shah Abbas as an old man,being served wine by an adolescent boy,almost embracing,-he, great king and conqueror,who had killed or blinded his own sons, still craved affection from young men.
Shah Abbas’s sabre:a broad single-edged damascus blade,with walrus ivory hilt,and watered steel mounts adorned with gold inlay;signed in the cartouche “Abbas the slave of the Lord of Holiness”,with the lion-sun motif.
Conversant with all mechanical crafts, the Shah loved making scimitars,arquebuses and saddles. Encouraged by “The Mirror of Princes” he had read as a boy,he proudly emulated the workshops of Timur and Uzan Hasan.
Inside the Shaykh Lutfullah Mosque:walls and dome on fire with blue,yellow,white and turquoise tiles,all intricate arabesques,cartouches and geometric designs;light on light,light within light,luminescence self-reflecting into infinity, the wordless serene.
A golden album page of calligraphy (breathed onto the paper by an assassinated poet), and carpets of silk and gold;such crafts are prized by the wise.
Golden dome,golden minaret,golden portal of the Imam Riza Shrine at Mashhad,illuminated in the malachite night:time and again the Shah came here to worship, kiss the holy ground and weep and pray, giving thanks for victories won and beseeching Allah for fresh conquests.
An elegant brass ewer, incised with palmette arabesques, intertwining vines and cypresses, blossoms and trefoils, the long slender neck and the bulbous body,-all the feminine volume of the earth is shaped into function.
A watercolour portrait of Shah Abbas as an old man,being served wine by an adolescent boy,almost embracing,-he, great king and conqueror,who had killed or blinded his own sons, still craved affection from young men.
Victor Segalen
The discovery of difference
Requires intensive practice;
Apprehension is refined by its limits.
The human is always and everywhere
Primitive and exotic.
One colonises sadly,sure to be one day overthrown.
In nightmares he could see the uniform hordes
Marching in sexless lifeless lock step,
Democratic serfs, sophisticated cretins.
He built his own Forbidden City,
Bridges, temples and pavilions aligned
With the heavens and earth.
Hiking in the Breton forest,
He fell, badly injured,to lay for days,alone,
And when his dead body was found
A copy of Hamlet lay open beside him.
Requires intensive practice;
Apprehension is refined by its limits.
The human is always and everywhere
Primitive and exotic.
One colonises sadly,sure to be one day overthrown.
In nightmares he could see the uniform hordes
Marching in sexless lifeless lock step,
Democratic serfs, sophisticated cretins.
He built his own Forbidden City,
Bridges, temples and pavilions aligned
With the heavens and earth.
Hiking in the Breton forest,
He fell, badly injured,to lay for days,alone,
And when his dead body was found
A copy of Hamlet lay open beside him.
The Madeleines of Georges de la Tour
The light, the candlelight and the shadow,
The shadow and the light,the shadow,
The candlelight.
Night is the time for secrets,
Revealed and unrevealed.
Do not mistake these glimpses
For irrefutable insights,
Do not speak of epiphanies,
Do not speak.
I love only the silent, the silent and grave.
Do not speak of redemption,
No, do not speak.
She turns to the mirror,
Finding a reflection and a flame.
To see what no-one else can see,
What no-one else has seen,
What may or may not even be there,
Such is the secret.
I love only the sorrowful and resigned.
I love the speechless witness.
The shadow and the light,the shadow,
The candlelight.
Night is the time for secrets,
Revealed and unrevealed.
Do not mistake these glimpses
For irrefutable insights,
Do not speak of epiphanies,
Do not speak.
I love only the silent, the silent and grave.
Do not speak of redemption,
No, do not speak.
She turns to the mirror,
Finding a reflection and a flame.
To see what no-one else can see,
What no-one else has seen,
What may or may not even be there,
Such is the secret.
I love only the sorrowful and resigned.
I love the speechless witness.
Maps
Someone drew a line in the dirt with his finger,
Then another,and another,
Making magic.
And the line became his master.
Somewhere in the Congo,
A Luba initiate
Is led into the meeting house
To memorize the wall maps drawn by the elders
Depicting the guardian spirits’ houses
And the ancestral migratory paths.
Then he is shown the memory board,
And,studying its beads and cowrie shells,
Witnesses spirit capitals,
Migratory routes and chieftaincies.
And the elders sing their way round the board,
Celebrating the king and his journeys
And the sites of holy trees and lakes.
Suddenly, I am gone,
Leaving only
A bark painting or a sand sculpture
In the middle of Australia.
Then another,and another,
Making magic.
And the line became his master.
Somewhere in the Congo,
A Luba initiate
Is led into the meeting house
To memorize the wall maps drawn by the elders
Depicting the guardian spirits’ houses
And the ancestral migratory paths.
Then he is shown the memory board,
And,studying its beads and cowrie shells,
Witnesses spirit capitals,
Migratory routes and chieftaincies.
And the elders sing their way round the board,
Celebrating the king and his journeys
And the sites of holy trees and lakes.
Suddenly, I am gone,
Leaving only
A bark painting or a sand sculpture
In the middle of Australia.
The Portuguese Cartographer
It was the year Columbus crossed the Atlantic,
The year the Jews were expelled from Spain.
Alone, in Lisbon,in a sea-lit room,
A man of whom nothing much is known
Sat and drew a map such as the world had never seen,
Tracing the coasts of Europe and the Mediterraean,
The Black Sea and West Africa.
With sinuous rococo arabesques,
He voyaged about shores compassed together
From fragments,his mariner’s hand
Carried on mysterious currents,
Through secret tempests and wrecks,
Undulating all around the parchment.
And when he had finished, he wrote upon it:
“Jorge de Aguiar made me in Lisbon
In the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1492.”
Who was he? A sea captain? Or perhaps a Sephardi?
Navigating southward the African coast,
One manoeuvred against the winds and waves,
Puzzling out the contours of dreams and terrors.
He had found his own magnetic north
And must sail to the limits of faith and reason,
Damned to new diseases,and the avarice
In merchants’ and slavers’ eyes.
The year the Jews were expelled from Spain.
Alone, in Lisbon,in a sea-lit room,
A man of whom nothing much is known
Sat and drew a map such as the world had never seen,
Tracing the coasts of Europe and the Mediterraean,
The Black Sea and West Africa.
With sinuous rococo arabesques,
He voyaged about shores compassed together
From fragments,his mariner’s hand
Carried on mysterious currents,
Through secret tempests and wrecks,
Undulating all around the parchment.
And when he had finished, he wrote upon it:
“Jorge de Aguiar made me in Lisbon
In the year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1492.”
Who was he? A sea captain? Or perhaps a Sephardi?
Navigating southward the African coast,
One manoeuvred against the winds and waves,
Puzzling out the contours of dreams and terrors.
He had found his own magnetic north
And must sail to the limits of faith and reason,
Damned to new diseases,and the avarice
In merchants’ and slavers’ eyes.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Surfing
Feel what the wave is doing, saying,
Let it go, go with it.
Everything breaks, is rising and breaking
All the time, all over,
To the shore.
Life, savagely gentle,recalls you
To a place you never truly left.
The circles, the circles.
Do we have to believe in limits
To be followers of the Law?
If you fear drowning,
If you fear it,
Do not go out to sea at all.
A body,
All you are is a body,
And yet this body
Is not you at all.
Enter the wave,
Roll with the moment,
With no beginning and no end.
No more eternal, no more fixed.
Sympathy will see you through,
Sympathy for everything.
Live the intuition,
The sensation
Of air and water in motion.
From conduction
To convection
To turbulence,
You fall into the flow,
Always turning into something else.
There is nothing you cannot negotiate
With perfect manoeuvres,
Feeling what is right. what works.
It is all about differences,
Gradations of pressure and temperature,
Nuances of mind.
Desire will lead you
To no desire.
Let it go, go with it.
Everything breaks, is rising and breaking
All the time, all over,
To the shore.
Life, savagely gentle,recalls you
To a place you never truly left.
The circles, the circles.
Do we have to believe in limits
To be followers of the Law?
If you fear drowning,
If you fear it,
Do not go out to sea at all.
A body,
All you are is a body,
And yet this body
Is not you at all.
Enter the wave,
Roll with the moment,
With no beginning and no end.
No more eternal, no more fixed.
Sympathy will see you through,
Sympathy for everything.
Live the intuition,
The sensation
Of air and water in motion.
From conduction
To convection
To turbulence,
You fall into the flow,
Always turning into something else.
There is nothing you cannot negotiate
With perfect manoeuvres,
Feeling what is right. what works.
It is all about differences,
Gradations of pressure and temperature,
Nuances of mind.
Desire will lead you
To no desire.
Master Pinzel
He may have come from Bohemia,or Silesia, or Bavaria,
Or Italy,even. Was he Swiss, Ukrainian, or Polish?
Gradually, he became a country of his own,
As weird and influential as the moon.
He belonged to the periphery,
To the streets of Lviv,
His face the face of everyone in the crowd,
The preachers,scoundrels,criminals,craftsmen,,
Heretics, spies,lotharios and plain decent folk.
The deviants of the north and south.
Might he have been as exteme as any Sarmatian,
Or made himself a Masonic lodge of one?
Nothing is so occult as the self.
He saw angels in Venetian carnival masks,
The beatific smile turning instantly
Into a macabre grin.
Hypertrophied irony was the mountebank in his head.
He had no use for marble
When wood felt so true in his grasp,
A living dying thing,
Convulsive, gesticulating,twisting
Through ellipses and vortices.
Those remote half-heathen provinces of belief
Held him to the grace of sacrilege,
Sarcastically loving, tenderly hating.
Or Italy,even. Was he Swiss, Ukrainian, or Polish?
Gradually, he became a country of his own,
As weird and influential as the moon.
He belonged to the periphery,
To the streets of Lviv,
His face the face of everyone in the crowd,
The preachers,scoundrels,criminals,craftsmen,,
Heretics, spies,lotharios and plain decent folk.
The deviants of the north and south.
Might he have been as exteme as any Sarmatian,
Or made himself a Masonic lodge of one?
Nothing is so occult as the self.
He saw angels in Venetian carnival masks,
The beatific smile turning instantly
Into a macabre grin.
Hypertrophied irony was the mountebank in his head.
He had no use for marble
When wood felt so true in his grasp,
A living dying thing,
Convulsive, gesticulating,twisting
Through ellipses and vortices.
Those remote half-heathen provinces of belief
Held him to the grace of sacrilege,
Sarcastically loving, tenderly hating.
The End of Genghis Khan
The Mongol hordes overrun Khurasan,
Burning crops, razing cities, slaughtering populations.
Returning home along the path of his invasion,
Genghis Khan pauses to erect a stone pillar
And dictate the inscription:
“I turn to simplicity; I turn again to purity.”
Jebe Noyan and Subedei Bahadur
Dine on a box-shaped table in camp,
The Prince of Kiev suffocating to death inside it.
At winter’s onset, in peacetime, the Great Hunt begins:
The entire army, at a signal from the Khan,
Canters forward, in battle array,
For three months on horseback,
Driving the game relentlessly before them.
Bone-chafed, weather-drenched and sore,
The army’s wings advance in harmony,
Slowly closing to encircle the prey,
Until the two ends meet, and the circle contracts
Like a whitehot horsehoe quenched in water.
Terrified animals by the thousand
Are herded together, trapped in the killing zone,
Not a single beast, big or small, permitted to escape,
On the last day, seeking to outdo one another
In the eyes of their comrades, and their Khan,
Men fight with sword or hunt on foot,
And throw themselves into danger,
So that some even die wrestling tigers barehanded.
Troubled by ill omens, the Great Khan
Sets out to avenge himself on the insolent Tanguts.
Out hunting, during the campaign,,
He tumbles from his mount,
But carries on, hiding the haemorrhage pain in his guts.
Weaker and weaker, through narrowed eyes,
He watches his soldiers lay waste to the land,
Soothed, as always, by the smell of destruction.
On the frozen banks of the flooded Yellow River,
The Tangut cavalry, charging headlong,
Slide haywire, crashing, jumbled in heaps,
Taken in the flank and massacred
By the dauntless Mongols, their horses shod with felt,
And lavish crimson smears the ice.
Shrouded in furs, huddled, shivering in his tent,
Genghis, delirious and despairing,
Cries out to any who will hear:
“My descendants will wear gold
And eat the choicest meats;
They will ride the finest horses,
Hold in their arms the loveliest women,
Forgetting to whom they owe it all.”
He repeats to his sons the fable
Of the snake with many heads that argued amongst themselves;
He reminds them that one arrow is easily broken,
But a bundle of arrows never.
Soon afterwards he died.
In fertile mountains, where three rivers start,
In a few years the great leader’s grave was overgrown and forgotten,
And who now even remembers which peak it was on?
Burning crops, razing cities, slaughtering populations.
Returning home along the path of his invasion,
Genghis Khan pauses to erect a stone pillar
And dictate the inscription:
“I turn to simplicity; I turn again to purity.”
Jebe Noyan and Subedei Bahadur
Dine on a box-shaped table in camp,
The Prince of Kiev suffocating to death inside it.
At winter’s onset, in peacetime, the Great Hunt begins:
The entire army, at a signal from the Khan,
Canters forward, in battle array,
For three months on horseback,
Driving the game relentlessly before them.
Bone-chafed, weather-drenched and sore,
The army’s wings advance in harmony,
Slowly closing to encircle the prey,
Until the two ends meet, and the circle contracts
Like a whitehot horsehoe quenched in water.
Terrified animals by the thousand
Are herded together, trapped in the killing zone,
Not a single beast, big or small, permitted to escape,
On the last day, seeking to outdo one another
In the eyes of their comrades, and their Khan,
Men fight with sword or hunt on foot,
And throw themselves into danger,
So that some even die wrestling tigers barehanded.
Troubled by ill omens, the Great Khan
Sets out to avenge himself on the insolent Tanguts.
Out hunting, during the campaign,,
He tumbles from his mount,
But carries on, hiding the haemorrhage pain in his guts.
Weaker and weaker, through narrowed eyes,
He watches his soldiers lay waste to the land,
Soothed, as always, by the smell of destruction.
On the frozen banks of the flooded Yellow River,
The Tangut cavalry, charging headlong,
Slide haywire, crashing, jumbled in heaps,
Taken in the flank and massacred
By the dauntless Mongols, their horses shod with felt,
And lavish crimson smears the ice.
Shrouded in furs, huddled, shivering in his tent,
Genghis, delirious and despairing,
Cries out to any who will hear:
“My descendants will wear gold
And eat the choicest meats;
They will ride the finest horses,
Hold in their arms the loveliest women,
Forgetting to whom they owe it all.”
He repeats to his sons the fable
Of the snake with many heads that argued amongst themselves;
He reminds them that one arrow is easily broken,
But a bundle of arrows never.
Soon afterwards he died.
In fertile mountains, where three rivers start,
In a few years the great leader’s grave was overgrown and forgotten,
And who now even remembers which peak it was on?
Cumbria
Water and stone. Water is stone is water.
Stone jutting, thusting in pinnacles.
Stone quivering in fragments on shilly-beds.
Stone gouged and chiselled by glaciers,
Weathered into grotesques.
Stone hewn and hauled into sacred circles.
Stone packed into walls and roads.
Handled by generations of dalesmen
For sheepfolds, farmsteads, bridges, churches, mills.
Stones in tranquil valley bottoms.
Stones clustered on ledges and in gulleys.
Crouched in millions on stormy summits.
Skygazing as seasons pass.
England’s landscape garden
Is a masterpiece of trompe l’oeil.
A spread map conjures Nordic gutturals:
Fells, becks, gills and tarns,
Brant slopes and flou brooks,
Slacks, hauses, grains and scars.
Somewhere, a sheep, binked on a ledge,
Sends loose pebbles skittering,
And an overfeagued hiker, blister-hirpled,
Toils, stark-thewed, through clotted mist.
Nineteenth-century Tourists circulate,
Browsers in a gallery, comparing
Pictures and frames.
They fill notebooks with classical allusions,
And aim Claude-glasses tinted to an antique glow,
Shrinking unwieldy views to Lilliputian perfection.
Regattas resound on the meres,
Cannon salvoes from mock naval battles
Echoing among the peaks.
Near Gosforth the Esk and Mitre
Coalesce in a sad estuary,
Stillness slashed by seabirds’ cries,
Sand, sky and water melting into silver-amber blur.
Enter into the sand-dunes, the sere grass hummocks,
The long glisk of firth beyond.
Blink at the black ships approaching in line,
Riding low and flatbacked, prows reared high,
Sea-dragons charging to battle.
In Gosforth churchyard an Anglo-Viking cross
Rises, Christ-tree and Yggdrasil,
Its roots deep in the ocean’s floor,
Girdled by the coils of the Midgardsworm
That catches its own tail in its teeth.
One wolf swallows the Moon, another the Sun.
Loki writhes, bound, the adder round his neck,
Punished for his dirty tricks and jibes.
“An axe age, a sword age,
Shields shall be cloven,
A wind age, a wolf age,
Ere the world sinks...”
Odin on Sleipnir, upside-down,
Gallops down to Mimir’s well to consult the oracle.
The Magdalene gazes upwards
At her crucified love,
Dying at the juncture of two worlds;
Underneath, two wolf-headed ogres
Thrash in mortal combat.
Stone jutting, thusting in pinnacles.
Stone quivering in fragments on shilly-beds.
Stone gouged and chiselled by glaciers,
Weathered into grotesques.
Stone hewn and hauled into sacred circles.
Stone packed into walls and roads.
Handled by generations of dalesmen
For sheepfolds, farmsteads, bridges, churches, mills.
Stones in tranquil valley bottoms.
Stones clustered on ledges and in gulleys.
Crouched in millions on stormy summits.
Skygazing as seasons pass.
England’s landscape garden
Is a masterpiece of trompe l’oeil.
A spread map conjures Nordic gutturals:
Fells, becks, gills and tarns,
Brant slopes and flou brooks,
Slacks, hauses, grains and scars.
Somewhere, a sheep, binked on a ledge,
Sends loose pebbles skittering,
And an overfeagued hiker, blister-hirpled,
Toils, stark-thewed, through clotted mist.
Nineteenth-century Tourists circulate,
Browsers in a gallery, comparing
Pictures and frames.
They fill notebooks with classical allusions,
And aim Claude-glasses tinted to an antique glow,
Shrinking unwieldy views to Lilliputian perfection.
Regattas resound on the meres,
Cannon salvoes from mock naval battles
Echoing among the peaks.
Near Gosforth the Esk and Mitre
Coalesce in a sad estuary,
Stillness slashed by seabirds’ cries,
Sand, sky and water melting into silver-amber blur.
Enter into the sand-dunes, the sere grass hummocks,
The long glisk of firth beyond.
Blink at the black ships approaching in line,
Riding low and flatbacked, prows reared high,
Sea-dragons charging to battle.
In Gosforth churchyard an Anglo-Viking cross
Rises, Christ-tree and Yggdrasil,
Its roots deep in the ocean’s floor,
Girdled by the coils of the Midgardsworm
That catches its own tail in its teeth.
One wolf swallows the Moon, another the Sun.
Loki writhes, bound, the adder round his neck,
Punished for his dirty tricks and jibes.
“An axe age, a sword age,
Shields shall be cloven,
A wind age, a wolf age,
Ere the world sinks...”
Odin on Sleipnir, upside-down,
Gallops down to Mimir’s well to consult the oracle.
The Magdalene gazes upwards
At her crucified love,
Dying at the juncture of two worlds;
Underneath, two wolf-headed ogres
Thrash in mortal combat.
Sumo
Three white-robed referees step into the ring,
Where seven wands lie in zigzag pattern.
The solemn chief pronounces:
“Everlasting life to heaven, long life to earth,
And may the winds and rains be seasonable.”
Lucky emblems in an earthenware pot
Lie blessed and buried in the middle.
The ring is consecrated with salt and sake,
And three circuits the attendants march,
Lacquered drums suspended from poles.
First quarter of the new moon:
River spirits will fasten on bathers
And wrestle them down to their deaths.
Kites are flying, horses running,
Sumo wrestlers wobble to the clash.
On the Day of the Chrysanthemum, the Double Sun,
At the Kamo shrine two large circles are traced in dust.
The male-crow priest hops to the sand-mound at one circle’s centre
And the female-crow priest hops to her circle’s centre,
Three times with three hops, there and back,
They journey to and from their little mountains,
Bearing a mat, a bow and arrow, a sword and a fan.
The male crow on the left calls to the female on the right;
Three times he calls and she responds.
Three times clockwise round the left mound
Boy sumo wrestlers circle;
Counterclockwise round the other their opponents troop.
It is time for the rice to be planted.
A sumo wrestler stands in the ring,
Before the sacred ricefield at the shrine.
He stamps his feet, rinses his mouth with water,
Scatters salt, crouches then stands up,
Circumambulates the ring widdershins,
Straining against an invisible foe.
Suddenly his legs are seized-he is thrown!
He staggers up, valiantly grapples the air again,
And is toppled to the ground.
Where seven wands lie in zigzag pattern.
The solemn chief pronounces:
“Everlasting life to heaven, long life to earth,
And may the winds and rains be seasonable.”
Lucky emblems in an earthenware pot
Lie blessed and buried in the middle.
The ring is consecrated with salt and sake,
And three circuits the attendants march,
Lacquered drums suspended from poles.
First quarter of the new moon:
River spirits will fasten on bathers
And wrestle them down to their deaths.
Kites are flying, horses running,
Sumo wrestlers wobble to the clash.
On the Day of the Chrysanthemum, the Double Sun,
At the Kamo shrine two large circles are traced in dust.
The male-crow priest hops to the sand-mound at one circle’s centre
And the female-crow priest hops to her circle’s centre,
Three times with three hops, there and back,
They journey to and from their little mountains,
Bearing a mat, a bow and arrow, a sword and a fan.
The male crow on the left calls to the female on the right;
Three times he calls and she responds.
Three times clockwise round the left mound
Boy sumo wrestlers circle;
Counterclockwise round the other their opponents troop.
It is time for the rice to be planted.
A sumo wrestler stands in the ring,
Before the sacred ricefield at the shrine.
He stamps his feet, rinses his mouth with water,
Scatters salt, crouches then stands up,
Circumambulates the ring widdershins,
Straining against an invisible foe.
Suddenly his legs are seized-he is thrown!
He staggers up, valiantly grapples the air again,
And is toppled to the ground.
Aztec Gods
Huitzilopochtli, Southern Hummingbird, aloft, aloft,
Patron lord of the Mexica,-
We who trekked in exodus to the site foretold,
The eagle perched on a cactus,
Small birds feathers scattered around-
Make us a rainbow!
Fallen warriors escort the risen sun,
Beating their wings to frisk the skies for rain.
Come, strict fruition, in strife and immolation,
Implacable daystar, be nourished with blood,
The red of sacred terror in men’s veins...
Tlazolteotl, excremental goddess,
Hears confessions from the dying,
Their evil whispered in her ear.
Spare us, spare us- we who believe!
The rabbit moon leaps. The pulque-gods seethe.
Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror,
Sleek black jaguar padding across the heavens,
Our sorcerers will feed your maw
With trembling incantation.
New Fire is unsheathed on the Hill of the Star,
Fire-drill swivelled in the sacrifice’s breast;
A slash, a yank and a live throbbing heart
Is offered to the saviour flame.
The Flayed God sniffs the iron reek,
The Sunstone revolves, world after world
Destroying themselves in hopeless succession.
Whittled jaguar-bone in hand, the ruler
Gladly stabs his own ears and thighs,
Red flowers blooming for his people.
A comet scorches the heavens. A temple burns.
On a calm day the lagoon seethes like a cauldron.
Phantasmal women wail beneath the moon,
Prophesying unavoidable disaster.
Hunters come before Moctezuma,
Bringing a wondrous, unnameable fowl,
A circular speculum set in its head.
Peering therein, the Emperor sees
The stars by day, and, looking again,
A bizarre fearsome horde, drawn up
In squadrons, advancing to war,
Creatures half-man, half-deer.
A runner comes up, babbling of a mountain
In the sea, erupting in fiery monition.
The white god has returned from the east,
Not seen on these shores since the Toltecs’ demise.
Aztec envoys, coming down to the harbour,
Place the turquoise serpent mask upon
The face of a hard-bitten Spanish hidalgo.
Quetzalcoatl throws a thunderbolt from his hand,
-A cannon fired in brisk ceremonial salute,-
And the Aztec deputation fall, terrified, to the ground.
Picking them up, the bemused Spaniards
Restore these ridiculous little creatures with wine.
What witchcraft is this, the Aztecs ask themselves,
Clutching their heads, feeling their souls
Imprisoned, so sluggish, befuddled, dehumanised.
Patron lord of the Mexica,-
We who trekked in exodus to the site foretold,
The eagle perched on a cactus,
Small birds feathers scattered around-
Make us a rainbow!
Fallen warriors escort the risen sun,
Beating their wings to frisk the skies for rain.
Come, strict fruition, in strife and immolation,
Implacable daystar, be nourished with blood,
The red of sacred terror in men’s veins...
Tlazolteotl, excremental goddess,
Hears confessions from the dying,
Their evil whispered in her ear.
Spare us, spare us- we who believe!
The rabbit moon leaps. The pulque-gods seethe.
Tezcatlipoca, Smoking Mirror,
Sleek black jaguar padding across the heavens,
Our sorcerers will feed your maw
With trembling incantation.
New Fire is unsheathed on the Hill of the Star,
Fire-drill swivelled in the sacrifice’s breast;
A slash, a yank and a live throbbing heart
Is offered to the saviour flame.
The Flayed God sniffs the iron reek,
The Sunstone revolves, world after world
Destroying themselves in hopeless succession.
Whittled jaguar-bone in hand, the ruler
Gladly stabs his own ears and thighs,
Red flowers blooming for his people.
A comet scorches the heavens. A temple burns.
On a calm day the lagoon seethes like a cauldron.
Phantasmal women wail beneath the moon,
Prophesying unavoidable disaster.
Hunters come before Moctezuma,
Bringing a wondrous, unnameable fowl,
A circular speculum set in its head.
Peering therein, the Emperor sees
The stars by day, and, looking again,
A bizarre fearsome horde, drawn up
In squadrons, advancing to war,
Creatures half-man, half-deer.
A runner comes up, babbling of a mountain
In the sea, erupting in fiery monition.
The white god has returned from the east,
Not seen on these shores since the Toltecs’ demise.
Aztec envoys, coming down to the harbour,
Place the turquoise serpent mask upon
The face of a hard-bitten Spanish hidalgo.
Quetzalcoatl throws a thunderbolt from his hand,
-A cannon fired in brisk ceremonial salute,-
And the Aztec deputation fall, terrified, to the ground.
Picking them up, the bemused Spaniards
Restore these ridiculous little creatures with wine.
What witchcraft is this, the Aztecs ask themselves,
Clutching their heads, feeling their souls
Imprisoned, so sluggish, befuddled, dehumanised.
Pathfinders
These are the maps, the palimpsests,
Criss-cross routes congealing into lands.
Imaginary dialogues with potential objects
Hasten the explorer through his expanded self.
The itinerant cartographer, subtly violent,
Draws metaphors into his passage,
Bringing the invisible into focus.
He cherishes occasions,
Places that are means to travel more,
Experiments in ignorance and knowledge.
The centre is everywhere and nowhere.
These places are not their names,
Nor are their names translations.
Following dumb unlettered rivers,
Seeking out their sources,
The pathfinders surrender to a new syntax.
Armed with ambiguous terminology,
They slowly assemble landscapes,
Yielding to the lie of the language.
Naming, they inaugurate a history,
A sense of centres, edges and vectors;
Everywhere they tread is borderland.
Criss-cross routes congealing into lands.
Imaginary dialogues with potential objects
Hasten the explorer through his expanded self.
The itinerant cartographer, subtly violent,
Draws metaphors into his passage,
Bringing the invisible into focus.
He cherishes occasions,
Places that are means to travel more,
Experiments in ignorance and knowledge.
The centre is everywhere and nowhere.
These places are not their names,
Nor are their names translations.
Following dumb unlettered rivers,
Seeking out their sources,
The pathfinders surrender to a new syntax.
Armed with ambiguous terminology,
They slowly assemble landscapes,
Yielding to the lie of the language.
Naming, they inaugurate a history,
A sense of centres, edges and vectors;
Everywhere they tread is borderland.
A Meeting In The Arctic
August 10, 1818
Commander John Ross and Lieutenant William Parry,
Officers of the Royal British Navy,
Stand resplendent in cocked hats and tailcoats,
White-gloved, with swords at their belts,
Buckled shoes sinking into the snow
As they stand meeting a band of Eskimos
In Melville Bay, Greenland,
Their two square-rigged ships at anchor behind,
As they shiver in regulation wool and broadcloth.
The icebound sea coruscates with palaces
And castles, weird statues and phantom monuments,
Slightly out of focus, perhaps only a dream,
Emerald, azure, indigo and alabaster.
The Englishmen and the Eskimos stand staring,
Equally amazed at each other,
And the Eskimos ask, in a dialect so obscure
The interpreter can barely understand it:
“Where are you from? The sun or the moon?”
Then they address the ships as living beings
For they have seen their wings move.
They spit out the biscuit they are offered,
And shrink from their reflections in a hand-mirror,-
What kind of monster is this?
Shown a watch, they wonder if it is alive,
And is it good to eat?
The interpreter makes them doff their caps
In deference to the Englishmen,
And they obey cheerfully, mystified by the ritual.
Meanwhile, the navy men, wandering round,
Find themselves drawn hypnotically
To certain stones in view, bewildered
When what seems half a mile away
Turns out to be a minute’s stroll.
Pink blush of a hard frost, and pastel shades
Of the northern heavens, where the aurora
Showers, trickles and pulsates down the darkness,
Huge illuminations streaming and shooting,
Silently rushing...
Icebergs seem to float in mid-air,
Other icebergs upside-down on top of them,
Protean apparitions proliferate on all sides.
Ships float in the concave of a vast sphere
And doppelgangers wander through the mind.
Whirlwinds shoot skyward from hilltops,
Spraying white clouds into the air.
Solid foam-masses lash the capes,
Breaking over icebergs, fogging the sea,
Rising and falling with each gust.
Commander John Ross and Lieutenant William Parry,
Officers of the Royal British Navy,
Stand resplendent in cocked hats and tailcoats,
White-gloved, with swords at their belts,
Buckled shoes sinking into the snow
As they stand meeting a band of Eskimos
In Melville Bay, Greenland,
Their two square-rigged ships at anchor behind,
As they shiver in regulation wool and broadcloth.
The icebound sea coruscates with palaces
And castles, weird statues and phantom monuments,
Slightly out of focus, perhaps only a dream,
Emerald, azure, indigo and alabaster.
The Englishmen and the Eskimos stand staring,
Equally amazed at each other,
And the Eskimos ask, in a dialect so obscure
The interpreter can barely understand it:
“Where are you from? The sun or the moon?”
Then they address the ships as living beings
For they have seen their wings move.
They spit out the biscuit they are offered,
And shrink from their reflections in a hand-mirror,-
What kind of monster is this?
Shown a watch, they wonder if it is alive,
And is it good to eat?
The interpreter makes them doff their caps
In deference to the Englishmen,
And they obey cheerfully, mystified by the ritual.
Meanwhile, the navy men, wandering round,
Find themselves drawn hypnotically
To certain stones in view, bewildered
When what seems half a mile away
Turns out to be a minute’s stroll.
Pink blush of a hard frost, and pastel shades
Of the northern heavens, where the aurora
Showers, trickles and pulsates down the darkness,
Huge illuminations streaming and shooting,
Silently rushing...
Icebergs seem to float in mid-air,
Other icebergs upside-down on top of them,
Protean apparitions proliferate on all sides.
Ships float in the concave of a vast sphere
And doppelgangers wander through the mind.
Whirlwinds shoot skyward from hilltops,
Spraying white clouds into the air.
Solid foam-masses lash the capes,
Breaking over icebergs, fogging the sea,
Rising and falling with each gust.
Arctic Circles
Malemutes stretch taut their leashes,
Brown eyes ensorcelled by the master’s legerdemain,
Leaping to snatch hunks of meat in mid-flight-
A clack of the mandibles, one gulp, all gone.
The head dog stands apart, calmly waiting,
Reprimanding his fellows with tactical nips.
Summer’s smoke soon drifts away.
Fishing-lines sink in salmon torrents.
Children gather huckleberries by the handful.
Seabirds are crying, preparing to leave.
Languid boys stretch out on springy tundra,
Watching clouds in a suspended world.
Offshore, glacier and rock blend in blue expanse.
One freakish night transfigures the world with white,
Iron earth thuds underfoot.
The mountain resounds with harsh inhuman yelps.
A fox trots along the crest, tail extended,
Pace even and brisk, a thing possessed.
He sits and perks triangular ears,
Pointed little head alert to all vibrations,
And, hoarsely, with double-triple quavers,
Calls to his mate, to the empty tundra and the wind...
Sand and stone. Rocks through fractured earth.
Space...space...white pebble valleys...desolate peaks...
Tawny slopes freaked with snow...
Glacier gleaming, king of the wilderness...
Emptiness thrills to odd noises-
Creaks, wingbeats, gullshrieks, muffled crunching,
Gunshot crack of icebergs calving.
An Inuit shaman intones in his igloo,
Fidgets, frets, grimaces, grunts and trembles,
Cries out , panting, in a strange jerky tongue,
Petitioning the stealthy powers of the air.
Down he buckles, a dead heap, dreaming,
Swimming with the goddess under the ice,
Caressing her, untangling her tresses,
Wedded in the holy sight of the dead.
How long, he asks her, will the warm spell last?
When will seals leave and narwhals return?
Happy smell of animal skins and grease...
Thawing earth steams. Excited birds circle.
Obsidian sea without a ripple shimmers
From iceberg to iceberg, mesmeric mirages.
Cheery, the hunters recite each landmark:
Here, one set his traps for triumph;
There, another made love under a tent.
The kayak takes after a red-eyed walrus,
One Eskimo imitating its cry...
One-two-strike! The harpoon shudders,-
A widening blood-circle on the water...
Days draw shorter. The flushed sun, bidding adieu,
Tracks along the dazzle-cliff, sinking at last.
Fleeting twilight. Horizon, emerald-white,
Flares orange-purple. Southwest is yellow sky,
Translucent clouds and weird shadows on cliffs.
Hibernal wind corrugates ferruginous screes.
The ocean contracts in black gelatinous paste.
People languish, morose, enraged over niggles.
Hysterical, a woman runs riot with a knife,
Boggle-eyed with superhuman wrath.
A crazed hound yelps and zigzags, staring blindly,
Collapses, spitting froth, jaw agape.
A sledge flies smoothly along,-gallant malemutes!
Brothers to the Eskimo, their skullbones alike,
The pack united by quarrels and amours-
This bitch venting her menstrual potion,
That dog running his flatulence out...
Polar night. The dogs on their haunches
Tilt their heads towards the moon, eyes half-closed,
And yowl in unison, modulating some desperate
Propitiatory appeal.
Far away, to the south,
A pale solar halo arises. Men moving about
Are silhouettes darker than dark.
Day explodes in multicoloured space,
The ocean unshackled, carousing,
Heated birds shuttling to and fro.
Now let the blood thaw in venery’s season!
The storyteller’s eyes gaze inwards,
Voice grave as he draws listeners
Into the iceblink dream, their secrets
Inscribed on the air.
All men are shapeshifters,
Genies made of ice.
Agile hands flutter in a string game,
Knotting little pictures to tease the air;-
See,-a penis embedded in a tight vagina;
And now-a defecating woman venting a fart.
The strong deride the weak. The lazy are damned.
The winning wrestler pisses on his victim.
A hunter returns, snorting, coughing, saying nothing,
Unharnesses the team, the dogs whimpering with pleasure,
Flattering him with a show of female weakness.
He works alone, weary but proud,
Then trudges to his place amid feigned indifference,
Cherishing his mystery intact within,
He stretches out, putting on a solemn face,
As his canny wife simply hands him a bowl of water.
He slurps, wipes his mouth on his sleeve,
And only then, eyes lowered, does he utter,
Allowing his tale to run forth like a sledge,
Gathering speed on bumpy ice,
As he recalls aloud all the details of his journey,
The changing colours of the land and sky,
And all he saw thought and felt...
A mother licks her newborn child
That cries out to be recognised and named.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry,
The big black crow will peck out your eyes...”
The men, clustered together, laugh as they discuss
The women’s vaginas: whose is the best shape,
Which one is best lubricated,
How well this or that one fits.
Meanwhile, their wives, gathered elsewhere,
Gossip about the men just the same,
Scorning this one’s “maggot”, that one’s ineptitude.
The people sniff the breeze, the peaty summer earth,
Appraise the ice-crack’s intonation,
The snow-pile’s dampness, the animals’ moods,
Lunar haloes and the plucked strings of the air...
To be vigilant and furtive, not to force anything,
But serve the moment, part of whatever one witnesses-
That is the way to succeed.
Morbid anxieties haunt the sleeper as he wakes,
Nightmares of sickness, debility and starvation,
Baleful spirits’ machinations...
A man has died and the village dogs are howling,
Muzzles all pointed like guns at the empty sky...
A corpse lies buried, sewn up in a skin,
Head turned towards the sun.
Relatives rotate with the heavens around him,
Fearing vengeful visitations;
Uneasy minds recall slighted taboos,
Murders and malicious tricks, calumnies, deceptions...
These are dangerous days, a blizzard of conscience,
When the heart may lose all pleasure in living.
Expectant, the air hums with spring’s inception;
Fertile steam puffs from ice-breaches,
Slipped rocks thud, jockeying ice-slabs crunch,
Muffled echoes come from precarious snow-slopes.
Barnacle geese cackle down the coast,
Seagulls’ throbbing whistle resonates.
Leprous snow gutters, rivulets trickling, massing,
Diaphanous radiance swells and spangles the air.
Incendiary blossoms flare up all over,
Saxifrage and campion and cochlearia.
White hares caper on a talus.
Sinuous, a polar bear sneaks up on an indolent seal,
Smashes its skull with one immaculate wallop.
A barking, bobbing Eskimo hunter edges
Towards the colony, lulling the plump black prey
As they slumber, too slow to recognise him as a man.
Bluegreen moonlight. Shadows steal over hummocks.
Parallel snow-lashes pummel the quaking ground.
Whirlwinds tower up in white-fumed darkness.
The tragic wind hisses and rattles its grief,
Making free with eerie screens and ballistic rocks.
As the hunter returns from long absence,
The village children greet him with the ritual phrase:
“Are you a spirit or a man?”
Brown eyes ensorcelled by the master’s legerdemain,
Leaping to snatch hunks of meat in mid-flight-
A clack of the mandibles, one gulp, all gone.
The head dog stands apart, calmly waiting,
Reprimanding his fellows with tactical nips.
Summer’s smoke soon drifts away.
Fishing-lines sink in salmon torrents.
Children gather huckleberries by the handful.
Seabirds are crying, preparing to leave.
Languid boys stretch out on springy tundra,
Watching clouds in a suspended world.
Offshore, glacier and rock blend in blue expanse.
One freakish night transfigures the world with white,
Iron earth thuds underfoot.
The mountain resounds with harsh inhuman yelps.
A fox trots along the crest, tail extended,
Pace even and brisk, a thing possessed.
He sits and perks triangular ears,
Pointed little head alert to all vibrations,
And, hoarsely, with double-triple quavers,
Calls to his mate, to the empty tundra and the wind...
Sand and stone. Rocks through fractured earth.
Space...space...white pebble valleys...desolate peaks...
Tawny slopes freaked with snow...
Glacier gleaming, king of the wilderness...
Emptiness thrills to odd noises-
Creaks, wingbeats, gullshrieks, muffled crunching,
Gunshot crack of icebergs calving.
An Inuit shaman intones in his igloo,
Fidgets, frets, grimaces, grunts and trembles,
Cries out , panting, in a strange jerky tongue,
Petitioning the stealthy powers of the air.
Down he buckles, a dead heap, dreaming,
Swimming with the goddess under the ice,
Caressing her, untangling her tresses,
Wedded in the holy sight of the dead.
How long, he asks her, will the warm spell last?
When will seals leave and narwhals return?
Happy smell of animal skins and grease...
Thawing earth steams. Excited birds circle.
Obsidian sea without a ripple shimmers
From iceberg to iceberg, mesmeric mirages.
Cheery, the hunters recite each landmark:
Here, one set his traps for triumph;
There, another made love under a tent.
The kayak takes after a red-eyed walrus,
One Eskimo imitating its cry...
One-two-strike! The harpoon shudders,-
A widening blood-circle on the water...
Days draw shorter. The flushed sun, bidding adieu,
Tracks along the dazzle-cliff, sinking at last.
Fleeting twilight. Horizon, emerald-white,
Flares orange-purple. Southwest is yellow sky,
Translucent clouds and weird shadows on cliffs.
Hibernal wind corrugates ferruginous screes.
The ocean contracts in black gelatinous paste.
People languish, morose, enraged over niggles.
Hysterical, a woman runs riot with a knife,
Boggle-eyed with superhuman wrath.
A crazed hound yelps and zigzags, staring blindly,
Collapses, spitting froth, jaw agape.
A sledge flies smoothly along,-gallant malemutes!
Brothers to the Eskimo, their skullbones alike,
The pack united by quarrels and amours-
This bitch venting her menstrual potion,
That dog running his flatulence out...
Polar night. The dogs on their haunches
Tilt their heads towards the moon, eyes half-closed,
And yowl in unison, modulating some desperate
Propitiatory appeal.
Far away, to the south,
A pale solar halo arises. Men moving about
Are silhouettes darker than dark.
Day explodes in multicoloured space,
The ocean unshackled, carousing,
Heated birds shuttling to and fro.
Now let the blood thaw in venery’s season!
The storyteller’s eyes gaze inwards,
Voice grave as he draws listeners
Into the iceblink dream, their secrets
Inscribed on the air.
All men are shapeshifters,
Genies made of ice.
Agile hands flutter in a string game,
Knotting little pictures to tease the air;-
See,-a penis embedded in a tight vagina;
And now-a defecating woman venting a fart.
The strong deride the weak. The lazy are damned.
The winning wrestler pisses on his victim.
A hunter returns, snorting, coughing, saying nothing,
Unharnesses the team, the dogs whimpering with pleasure,
Flattering him with a show of female weakness.
He works alone, weary but proud,
Then trudges to his place amid feigned indifference,
Cherishing his mystery intact within,
He stretches out, putting on a solemn face,
As his canny wife simply hands him a bowl of water.
He slurps, wipes his mouth on his sleeve,
And only then, eyes lowered, does he utter,
Allowing his tale to run forth like a sledge,
Gathering speed on bumpy ice,
As he recalls aloud all the details of his journey,
The changing colours of the land and sky,
And all he saw thought and felt...
A mother licks her newborn child
That cries out to be recognised and named.
“Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry,
The big black crow will peck out your eyes...”
The men, clustered together, laugh as they discuss
The women’s vaginas: whose is the best shape,
Which one is best lubricated,
How well this or that one fits.
Meanwhile, their wives, gathered elsewhere,
Gossip about the men just the same,
Scorning this one’s “maggot”, that one’s ineptitude.
The people sniff the breeze, the peaty summer earth,
Appraise the ice-crack’s intonation,
The snow-pile’s dampness, the animals’ moods,
Lunar haloes and the plucked strings of the air...
To be vigilant and furtive, not to force anything,
But serve the moment, part of whatever one witnesses-
That is the way to succeed.
Morbid anxieties haunt the sleeper as he wakes,
Nightmares of sickness, debility and starvation,
Baleful spirits’ machinations...
A man has died and the village dogs are howling,
Muzzles all pointed like guns at the empty sky...
A corpse lies buried, sewn up in a skin,
Head turned towards the sun.
Relatives rotate with the heavens around him,
Fearing vengeful visitations;
Uneasy minds recall slighted taboos,
Murders and malicious tricks, calumnies, deceptions...
These are dangerous days, a blizzard of conscience,
When the heart may lose all pleasure in living.
Expectant, the air hums with spring’s inception;
Fertile steam puffs from ice-breaches,
Slipped rocks thud, jockeying ice-slabs crunch,
Muffled echoes come from precarious snow-slopes.
Barnacle geese cackle down the coast,
Seagulls’ throbbing whistle resonates.
Leprous snow gutters, rivulets trickling, massing,
Diaphanous radiance swells and spangles the air.
Incendiary blossoms flare up all over,
Saxifrage and campion and cochlearia.
White hares caper on a talus.
Sinuous, a polar bear sneaks up on an indolent seal,
Smashes its skull with one immaculate wallop.
A barking, bobbing Eskimo hunter edges
Towards the colony, lulling the plump black prey
As they slumber, too slow to recognise him as a man.
Bluegreen moonlight. Shadows steal over hummocks.
Parallel snow-lashes pummel the quaking ground.
Whirlwinds tower up in white-fumed darkness.
The tragic wind hisses and rattles its grief,
Making free with eerie screens and ballistic rocks.
As the hunter returns from long absence,
The village children greet him with the ritual phrase:
“Are you a spirit or a man?”
Belarus
Thousands and thousands, the storks are flying...
Their nests hang on rooves and birch trees,
On chapels amid the green rye.
Hushed plains tremble with the tread of bison herds.
These lands alone withstood the Tatars
And repulsed them.
Hills spiked with towns,
Humpback streets and lime groves,
The lakes resplendent on summer evenings,
Reflecting dark ursine forest upside-down.
Along the Neman ruined castles loom
Like mammoths buried, huge worn tusks
Protruding from the ground,
Ancient oaks like green thunderheads
Glower over the quiet banks...
In the east, moraine ridges and peat bogs,
Cranberries in autumn are gatehredwith scoops,
Pungent pine forests point to the sky,
the mushrooms are too numerous to gather.
in the southern swamps mating cranes
Dance in the springtime, hopping,
And gloomy forests stretch forever,
Pierced only here and there by sunbeams,
The ground steaming light vapour,
Primeval aurochs wandering in dream...
In the Dnieper lands are ancient towns
Overgrown with gnarled oaks, roses and sweetbriar,
And ducks take flight from old riverbeds.
Morning mist over the river.
splash of a beaver flopping into the water,
barking of village dogs at night...
a waterwheel murmurs as it turns
And swallows skim the fish-pond at evening.
Mistletoe’s sticky pearls hang in the woods.
The cried of wild geese pierce the soul.
The and oozes with springs, ponds and swamps,
Rivers, lakes and streams...
In spring cannonade sound above the river,
Ice floes star to shift ad crack up, clambering
Onto each other, ice castles, towers and walls
Appear and disappear instantaneously,
Ice masses battering against the banks
Desperate to bust free...
Once the villagers say they saw
A whole wooden chapel drifting on the April flood,
Celebrating Mass as it sailed away...
In the dark fir forest the wood-grouse
Utters its calls, a sound like the dripping
Of thawing snow...
In summer the orioles whistle,
The nightingales trill,
Hawks and golden eagles plane
Over the water meadows,
Cranes dance in the swamp mists,
The cuckoo foretells long life for him
Who approaches with good will...
At dawn huge pike splash among waterlilies...
Their nests hang on rooves and birch trees,
On chapels amid the green rye.
Hushed plains tremble with the tread of bison herds.
These lands alone withstood the Tatars
And repulsed them.
Hills spiked with towns,
Humpback streets and lime groves,
The lakes resplendent on summer evenings,
Reflecting dark ursine forest upside-down.
Along the Neman ruined castles loom
Like mammoths buried, huge worn tusks
Protruding from the ground,
Ancient oaks like green thunderheads
Glower over the quiet banks...
In the east, moraine ridges and peat bogs,
Cranberries in autumn are gatehredwith scoops,
Pungent pine forests point to the sky,
the mushrooms are too numerous to gather.
in the southern swamps mating cranes
Dance in the springtime, hopping,
And gloomy forests stretch forever,
Pierced only here and there by sunbeams,
The ground steaming light vapour,
Primeval aurochs wandering in dream...
In the Dnieper lands are ancient towns
Overgrown with gnarled oaks, roses and sweetbriar,
And ducks take flight from old riverbeds.
Morning mist over the river.
splash of a beaver flopping into the water,
barking of village dogs at night...
a waterwheel murmurs as it turns
And swallows skim the fish-pond at evening.
Mistletoe’s sticky pearls hang in the woods.
The cried of wild geese pierce the soul.
The and oozes with springs, ponds and swamps,
Rivers, lakes and streams...
In spring cannonade sound above the river,
Ice floes star to shift ad crack up, clambering
Onto each other, ice castles, towers and walls
Appear and disappear instantaneously,
Ice masses battering against the banks
Desperate to bust free...
Once the villagers say they saw
A whole wooden chapel drifting on the April flood,
Celebrating Mass as it sailed away...
In the dark fir forest the wood-grouse
Utters its calls, a sound like the dripping
Of thawing snow...
In summer the orioles whistle,
The nightingales trill,
Hawks and golden eagles plane
Over the water meadows,
Cranes dance in the swamp mists,
The cuckoo foretells long life for him
Who approaches with good will...
At dawn huge pike splash among waterlilies...
The Fens
Slowly the sun moves towards the world’s edge
In early summer, before the grain hardens,
When the earth stares into space, expectant.
Herons take up their posts on their river;
Only their eyes move, hypnotizing fish.
Swifts and swallows tangle with the sky.
The opiate sun fades, shedding red petals.
Distant spires disappear into night.
The earth rocks like an open boat,
Constellations foaming over.
Tiny lights perforate the distance.
Will the sea someday return here,
The old foe bent on revenge?
The river’s a steel sword snug in scabbard.
Sparrows chip at morning silence,
Chiselling electric blue.
You can almost hear excited roots pushing
And barley thickening to burst.
Straight roads skip and run on ahead.
Skylarks strive upwards and release
With parachute exhilaration.
Church spires conduct hidden lightnings.
Seductive space opens up to be loved.
August sunset over the flat lands:
Coral reefs of fires fanfare the sky.
White buildings shine like icebergs.
Dervish weathervanes swivel and whoop.
Thunder avalanches: shards and splinters
Explode from the shattered pane.
Autumn strings up glistening webs
From hedge to hedge, and telepathic mist
Creeps through trees and people.
Primeval pungency of damp vegetation...
Fish-bubbles break the river’s still.
A clock ticks in an empty house.
Fleets of churches sail across fenlands,
And a solitary walker throws back his head,
Swallowing rain like sloe gin.
Rimy grass crunches like glass-splinters.
Winter chill wrings out the bladder.
Dead moles hang in a line on a fence,
Thirty-seven little peat-black corpses.
Spring looses bright serpents in the air.
No time now, no limits.
Only iridescence .A kingfisher’s wing.
In early summer, before the grain hardens,
When the earth stares into space, expectant.
Herons take up their posts on their river;
Only their eyes move, hypnotizing fish.
Swifts and swallows tangle with the sky.
The opiate sun fades, shedding red petals.
Distant spires disappear into night.
The earth rocks like an open boat,
Constellations foaming over.
Tiny lights perforate the distance.
Will the sea someday return here,
The old foe bent on revenge?
The river’s a steel sword snug in scabbard.
Sparrows chip at morning silence,
Chiselling electric blue.
You can almost hear excited roots pushing
And barley thickening to burst.
Straight roads skip and run on ahead.
Skylarks strive upwards and release
With parachute exhilaration.
Church spires conduct hidden lightnings.
Seductive space opens up to be loved.
August sunset over the flat lands:
Coral reefs of fires fanfare the sky.
White buildings shine like icebergs.
Dervish weathervanes swivel and whoop.
Thunder avalanches: shards and splinters
Explode from the shattered pane.
Autumn strings up glistening webs
From hedge to hedge, and telepathic mist
Creeps through trees and people.
Primeval pungency of damp vegetation...
Fish-bubbles break the river’s still.
A clock ticks in an empty house.
Fleets of churches sail across fenlands,
And a solitary walker throws back his head,
Swallowing rain like sloe gin.
Rimy grass crunches like glass-splinters.
Winter chill wrings out the bladder.
Dead moles hang in a line on a fence,
Thirty-seven little peat-black corpses.
Spring looses bright serpents in the air.
No time now, no limits.
Only iridescence .A kingfisher’s wing.
Budapest, 1900
In violet twilight the lights come on
Along the boulevards.
Raucous energy surges:
Juvenile metropolis thrashes back and forth,
Sophisticated and coarse.
Chestnuts dropping on Castle Walk
Echo the autumn forlornly.
A lonely cello complains.
Clear skies rise again in December,
Paler gold of a winter sun
Refracted through crystalline cold.
Festive innocence falls with the snow:
Rich women prance along, snuggled in furs,
Emerging from confectioneries,
Fondling dainty parcels, a joy to unwrap.
Day’s blue diamond sings fire and ice.
Skating rinks and ballrooms ring
With pleasure, crisp as snow-crunch.
In March, the river’s rising thrills
With ripe commotion, swirling increase.
By April, the quays and bridges
Quaver in mother-of-pearl.
Acacias, apricots and lilacs in May
Charge the atmosphere with sex,
Some wild transcendence in the bone,
Elusive as the sinuous smiling motions
Of pagan brides in light frocks.
Summer thunders with gypsy bravura,
Dishes clatter in open-air restaurants,
Young wives throw open their windows
And lean out into the sun.
The city initiates its strolling neophytes,
Writers beginning in media res.
Outbreaks of appetite exuberate in sorrow,
Breaking up the slow sad music
Of futility, prolific with schemes.
New forms, new expression! Coffee houses
Seethe with a bold pioneer generation;
Brief lurid straw-fire flares into ashes.
Beneath the clamour, a wistful knowing tone
Strangely illuminates the night.
Along the boulevards.
Raucous energy surges:
Juvenile metropolis thrashes back and forth,
Sophisticated and coarse.
Chestnuts dropping on Castle Walk
Echo the autumn forlornly.
A lonely cello complains.
Clear skies rise again in December,
Paler gold of a winter sun
Refracted through crystalline cold.
Festive innocence falls with the snow:
Rich women prance along, snuggled in furs,
Emerging from confectioneries,
Fondling dainty parcels, a joy to unwrap.
Day’s blue diamond sings fire and ice.
Skating rinks and ballrooms ring
With pleasure, crisp as snow-crunch.
In March, the river’s rising thrills
With ripe commotion, swirling increase.
By April, the quays and bridges
Quaver in mother-of-pearl.
Acacias, apricots and lilacs in May
Charge the atmosphere with sex,
Some wild transcendence in the bone,
Elusive as the sinuous smiling motions
Of pagan brides in light frocks.
Summer thunders with gypsy bravura,
Dishes clatter in open-air restaurants,
Young wives throw open their windows
And lean out into the sun.
The city initiates its strolling neophytes,
Writers beginning in media res.
Outbreaks of appetite exuberate in sorrow,
Breaking up the slow sad music
Of futility, prolific with schemes.
New forms, new expression! Coffee houses
Seethe with a bold pioneer generation;
Brief lurid straw-fire flares into ashes.
Beneath the clamour, a wistful knowing tone
Strangely illuminates the night.
Gandhi
In Hardwar, amid the pilgrim swarm,
The returned exile roams the streets,
Appalled by the credulity, hypocrisy and dirt
Going by the name of religion.
Can one man, one soul among myriads,
Redeem, through virtue, the sins of all?
A spinning wheel turns in a prison cell
As Gandhi meditates on his sorrow:
If his penance were perfect,
Would India’s violence not cease?
The world thwarts and destroys itself as before,
Yet, staring into the wheel, he smiles,
For he cannot but see love in its revolutions.
Leading a pilgrim host to the salt shores,
The Mahatma marches through villages
And towns, drawing crowds to his side,
A frail little man, more powerful than armies.
To the sea! In joy and triumph, to the sea!
Let this gathered salt be the sign of hope.
The returned exile roams the streets,
Appalled by the credulity, hypocrisy and dirt
Going by the name of religion.
Can one man, one soul among myriads,
Redeem, through virtue, the sins of all?
A spinning wheel turns in a prison cell
As Gandhi meditates on his sorrow:
If his penance were perfect,
Would India’s violence not cease?
The world thwarts and destroys itself as before,
Yet, staring into the wheel, he smiles,
For he cannot but see love in its revolutions.
Leading a pilgrim host to the salt shores,
The Mahatma marches through villages
And towns, drawing crowds to his side,
A frail little man, more powerful than armies.
To the sea! In joy and triumph, to the sea!
Let this gathered salt be the sign of hope.
Mozart
A coach speeds along the roads of Europe,
Little Mozart enthroned inside, exhilarated,
Watching the landscape vanish behind,
Into Backwardsland, his private kingdom,
Complete with its own geography and laws,
A realm of children, all happy and good...
So he muses, as the coach clatters onward,
With Papa, his faithful ervant, at his side.
Vast operas swell within the boy’s heart,
Tales of exotic prince and their courts,
With he the benevolent castle-building autocrat.
His finger picks out just the right note on the clavier,
His tongue tosses out the exact unsurpassable word!
Quartets: pure unearthly realms of sound,
Eddying energy, growling agitation, radiant streams,
Violins etching diamond-point moments
On glass, and behind it all a solemn stillness,
Simple as a morning cobweb in the sun...
Dead...dead...his father, Leopold,-dead!
His own growth was dear Papa’s decline...
How many times had father accused him
Of hastening his death with his waywardness,
As the old man waited, paced, fretted, waited
For ever rarer, ever briefer letters from his son?
All too often Wolfgang had failed the one
Who had created him ,loved him, encouraged
Each step, sacrificed so much for his sake,
Infusing him with all his knowledge and pride.
And now there is guilty relief and terrible freedom-
Never, never, never to hear that voice again,
Offering encouragement and counsel...
Symphonies ascend out of chaos
As the bailiff world beats down the door...
Bent over the final chorus of Die Zauberflöte,
Mozart strains after a serene simplicity,
Earth made heaven in rippling auroras,
Each instrument soaring to curtain-fall,
Death confronted, converted, overcome.
As Mozart lies dying, his pet canary strikes up
Innocently trilling merry tunes by its master,
A mockery too cruel that strains his fevered nerves
Until the offending bird is removed.
On the desk the Requiem lies unfinished,
Leopold, the hooded judge, betrayed by his son,
Looms before him now, a dire revenant,
Bringing black sobbing tremors and clamour,
The crushed soul weeping in penitence.
The clock strikes: he slips into oblivion,
Lips mouthing a last breath of music,
Some indistinguishable irrepressible phrase.
Little Mozart enthroned inside, exhilarated,
Watching the landscape vanish behind,
Into Backwardsland, his private kingdom,
Complete with its own geography and laws,
A realm of children, all happy and good...
So he muses, as the coach clatters onward,
With Papa, his faithful ervant, at his side.
Vast operas swell within the boy’s heart,
Tales of exotic prince and their courts,
With he the benevolent castle-building autocrat.
His finger picks out just the right note on the clavier,
His tongue tosses out the exact unsurpassable word!
Quartets: pure unearthly realms of sound,
Eddying energy, growling agitation, radiant streams,
Violins etching diamond-point moments
On glass, and behind it all a solemn stillness,
Simple as a morning cobweb in the sun...
Dead...dead...his father, Leopold,-dead!
His own growth was dear Papa’s decline...
How many times had father accused him
Of hastening his death with his waywardness,
As the old man waited, paced, fretted, waited
For ever rarer, ever briefer letters from his son?
All too often Wolfgang had failed the one
Who had created him ,loved him, encouraged
Each step, sacrificed so much for his sake,
Infusing him with all his knowledge and pride.
And now there is guilty relief and terrible freedom-
Never, never, never to hear that voice again,
Offering encouragement and counsel...
Symphonies ascend out of chaos
As the bailiff world beats down the door...
Bent over the final chorus of Die Zauberflöte,
Mozart strains after a serene simplicity,
Earth made heaven in rippling auroras,
Each instrument soaring to curtain-fall,
Death confronted, converted, overcome.
As Mozart lies dying, his pet canary strikes up
Innocently trilling merry tunes by its master,
A mockery too cruel that strains his fevered nerves
Until the offending bird is removed.
On the desk the Requiem lies unfinished,
Leopold, the hooded judge, betrayed by his son,
Looms before him now, a dire revenant,
Bringing black sobbing tremors and clamour,
The crushed soul weeping in penitence.
The clock strikes: he slips into oblivion,
Lips mouthing a last breath of music,
Some indistinguishable irrepressible phrase.
Madoc
It is told how Madoc, son of Prince Owain Gwynedd,
Sick of fighting his brethren,
Took leave of the homeland, and prepared ships
With men and munitions,
To seek far shores, sailing west,
Until he came to a land unknown,
Where many strange things were revealed.
A man much changed, he returned
To Britain, declaring the wonders he had seen,
To any who would listen,
And drew to him such men and women
As would quit the quarrelsome wasp-nest, Wales,
For a bounteous and peaceable demesne.
Thus, bidding farewell forever, he voyaged
Again into the West, never seen on these islands again.
It is said by those who have knowledge
That he and his people settled in that distant country
And prospered there, learning its customs and speech.
In a cottage in a haunted vale in South Wales,
Iolo Morganwg bends over precious maps,
Shuffles notes and draws lines with a ruler,
Scribbles calculations, specifying the lineaments
Of a dream, until, at last, his hovering finger
Comes down on that empty space
In the American heartland.
These are the First Men, who grew out of the ground,
The Mandans, at the heart of the world.
And, at the village centre, stands the shrine to the Lone Man:
Cottonwood palisade, bound with willow thong,
To mark the water level of the Deluge,
And a red cedar enclosed within.
When the willow leaf is full, the ceremony commences:
Gourds like upturned tortoises are brought,
Filled with water from the four quarters.
The villagers rush to see the Lone Man coming:
White-clay-covered, descending from the western hills,
He marches among the houses and people,
And opens up the medicine lodge.
Just as, at the time of the Flood, he had saved the Mandans
From drowning, landing his big canoe on a mountain
And bringing all good things in his hands.
The Welsh Indians? Everyone knows they exist.
They must be a little further on, beynd the next mountain.
If not the Delawares, they might be the Shawnees,
Or the Pawnees, no, not the Pawnees, the Comanches, then,
The Padoucas, perhaps...but they must be somewhere,
Those elusive whiteskinned Indians,
Gabbling and crooning in Welsh.
Out beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains,
A certain intrepid Evan Williams of Colcoed
Comes across Indians bantering in Welsh-
North Walian at that, and no mistake!
Wide-eyed and earnest, he addresses them politely,
Breathless as they blink dn respond,
In a queer yet familiar gab, Welsh and un-Welsh,
So they all stand there, gawping, bewildered,
Excitedly trying to communicate,
Expecting any minute an intelligible sentence...
Sick of fighting his brethren,
Took leave of the homeland, and prepared ships
With men and munitions,
To seek far shores, sailing west,
Until he came to a land unknown,
Where many strange things were revealed.
A man much changed, he returned
To Britain, declaring the wonders he had seen,
To any who would listen,
And drew to him such men and women
As would quit the quarrelsome wasp-nest, Wales,
For a bounteous and peaceable demesne.
Thus, bidding farewell forever, he voyaged
Again into the West, never seen on these islands again.
It is said by those who have knowledge
That he and his people settled in that distant country
And prospered there, learning its customs and speech.
In a cottage in a haunted vale in South Wales,
Iolo Morganwg bends over precious maps,
Shuffles notes and draws lines with a ruler,
Scribbles calculations, specifying the lineaments
Of a dream, until, at last, his hovering finger
Comes down on that empty space
In the American heartland.
These are the First Men, who grew out of the ground,
The Mandans, at the heart of the world.
And, at the village centre, stands the shrine to the Lone Man:
Cottonwood palisade, bound with willow thong,
To mark the water level of the Deluge,
And a red cedar enclosed within.
When the willow leaf is full, the ceremony commences:
Gourds like upturned tortoises are brought,
Filled with water from the four quarters.
The villagers rush to see the Lone Man coming:
White-clay-covered, descending from the western hills,
He marches among the houses and people,
And opens up the medicine lodge.
Just as, at the time of the Flood, he had saved the Mandans
From drowning, landing his big canoe on a mountain
And bringing all good things in his hands.
The Welsh Indians? Everyone knows they exist.
They must be a little further on, beynd the next mountain.
If not the Delawares, they might be the Shawnees,
Or the Pawnees, no, not the Pawnees, the Comanches, then,
The Padoucas, perhaps...but they must be somewhere,
Those elusive whiteskinned Indians,
Gabbling and crooning in Welsh.
Out beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains,
A certain intrepid Evan Williams of Colcoed
Comes across Indians bantering in Welsh-
North Walian at that, and no mistake!
Wide-eyed and earnest, he addresses them politely,
Breathless as they blink dn respond,
In a queer yet familiar gab, Welsh and un-Welsh,
So they all stand there, gawping, bewildered,
Excitedly trying to communicate,
Expecting any minute an intelligible sentence...
Dogfaces
Now the past means nothing. It does not exist.
For a body trained to react without question,
A body renunciant, submissive to fate.
Now there is nothing but day-to-day detail,
Instructors’ incantations, catechism of fear.
Accept your death as simple and correct.
Black rain. Drenched to the slimy root bone.
Everything soiled in the glutinous morass.
Reek of flesh and dung. Vegetable putrescence.
Foxholes full of slop and dusk all hours.
The jungle thinks evil every second,
Concocting infection, fever and death.
Weary automata, -scared shitless,-dig, dig, dig.
Benumbed in every fibre, they curse and pray,
Pray and curse. Blistered, bombarded, shaken
Apart. Up to the line the veterans sleepwalk,
Indifferent as workers through factory gates.
Their world is superstition and random doom.
Bone-brittling terror. Twitching sinews and minds.
Clenched guts. Clamped jaws. No mouth, just void.
The entire world a rising nausea, a maddened pulse.
Idiots, idiots, why do you return from the dead?
You should sleep and find some ease, some love,
Under the ground, beyond misery and disgrace.
For a body trained to react without question,
A body renunciant, submissive to fate.
Now there is nothing but day-to-day detail,
Instructors’ incantations, catechism of fear.
Accept your death as simple and correct.
Black rain. Drenched to the slimy root bone.
Everything soiled in the glutinous morass.
Reek of flesh and dung. Vegetable putrescence.
Foxholes full of slop and dusk all hours.
The jungle thinks evil every second,
Concocting infection, fever and death.
Weary automata, -scared shitless,-dig, dig, dig.
Benumbed in every fibre, they curse and pray,
Pray and curse. Blistered, bombarded, shaken
Apart. Up to the line the veterans sleepwalk,
Indifferent as workers through factory gates.
Their world is superstition and random doom.
Bone-brittling terror. Twitching sinews and minds.
Clenched guts. Clamped jaws. No mouth, just void.
The entire world a rising nausea, a maddened pulse.
Idiots, idiots, why do you return from the dead?
You should sleep and find some ease, some love,
Under the ground, beyond misery and disgrace.
Boris Pasternak
The lilacs were in bloom on the day of your death.
Consecrated by Moscow’s golden cupolas,
You boomed and sang, the storm’s hierophant,
Tenderness and courage in those huge amber eyes.
That sovereign stallion’s head, alert to vibrations,
Shot out laser glances at the strangest tangents,
Catching nature unawares. Erupting in centrifugal
Genesis, you stormed the silence with ecstasies,
Obedient to destiny’s strictures, never failing
To praise life with an awkward seraph’s joy.
Consecrated by Moscow’s golden cupolas,
You boomed and sang, the storm’s hierophant,
Tenderness and courage in those huge amber eyes.
That sovereign stallion’s head, alert to vibrations,
Shot out laser glances at the strangest tangents,
Catching nature unawares. Erupting in centrifugal
Genesis, you stormed the silence with ecstasies,
Obedient to destiny’s strictures, never failing
To praise life with an awkward seraph’s joy.
Petra
The road curls and curls into the hills,
Fragile gamble across bare shimmering distances,
Rock-scumbled wastes of russet dust that dip
And fold, concealing desiccated wadi beds.
In winter, glacial winds drive sleet-blizzards
And crouched rocks glint in the sombre light.
In summer, shrill silence and shrinking heat
Invest the motionless air with expectation;
Bleached earth phases from ochre to violet,
Faraway horizons vibrate with cobalt glare.
White rocks in the Bab el Siq irradiate white light,
Still but for the rattle of stones underfoot,
As the hills close in stealthily around;
Deeper, narrower the high gorge plunges...
Squinting little wadis, glutted with tumble-boulders,
Intersect at intervals from either side,
And sometimes a tantalizing flight of worn steps
Rises, leading to nowhere at all.
Towering rock-walls glow with stratified hues,
Ranging from pearlwhite to mellowest yellow,
Gold and madder, red, carmine and mauve.
One moment, exploratory sunlight slants down
Across a curving pirouetting surface,
Nubbed pinnacles conspiring with the sky;
The next, all is horrible shadow, sullen shades
Convulsed, pining for light, as the traveller
Stumbles on, disheartened.Suddenly, the chasm
Opens wide onto vivid greenery and white blooms,
But instantly the rocks press in again, relentless,
Higher, tighter, more menacing even than before.
Near its end, the intestinal ravine clamps deadly
In doomy twilight, where the echo of scuttling
Boot-crunched stones rebounds .Ahead, a squinting
Sunlight-fissure glints, with weird contortions,
A keyhole to be picked or unlocked.
Black-framed, a classical façade, a quester’s castle
Rises up, revealed, as you exit, transfigured,
Into miraculous dazzle, blinking at the peach-coloured
Treasury’s hallucination, chiselled into rock.
From the High Place of Sacrifice, you look out
Over the deserted city’s eerie mysterious maze,
North to rumbling uplands, south to low sere hills.
At nightfall, waiting spectres emerge among the stones
That mortal hands once touched and cherished,
Gathering at the altar, eager to clutch at your arm
In the chill, to greet you and explain themselves.
Under the Nabateans’ dolphin stars, nightsurfing,
Empty tombs disintegrate into darkness,
Secrets easily reclaimed by the desert air.
Fragile gamble across bare shimmering distances,
Rock-scumbled wastes of russet dust that dip
And fold, concealing desiccated wadi beds.
In winter, glacial winds drive sleet-blizzards
And crouched rocks glint in the sombre light.
In summer, shrill silence and shrinking heat
Invest the motionless air with expectation;
Bleached earth phases from ochre to violet,
Faraway horizons vibrate with cobalt glare.
White rocks in the Bab el Siq irradiate white light,
Still but for the rattle of stones underfoot,
As the hills close in stealthily around;
Deeper, narrower the high gorge plunges...
Squinting little wadis, glutted with tumble-boulders,
Intersect at intervals from either side,
And sometimes a tantalizing flight of worn steps
Rises, leading to nowhere at all.
Towering rock-walls glow with stratified hues,
Ranging from pearlwhite to mellowest yellow,
Gold and madder, red, carmine and mauve.
One moment, exploratory sunlight slants down
Across a curving pirouetting surface,
Nubbed pinnacles conspiring with the sky;
The next, all is horrible shadow, sullen shades
Convulsed, pining for light, as the traveller
Stumbles on, disheartened.Suddenly, the chasm
Opens wide onto vivid greenery and white blooms,
But instantly the rocks press in again, relentless,
Higher, tighter, more menacing even than before.
Near its end, the intestinal ravine clamps deadly
In doomy twilight, where the echo of scuttling
Boot-crunched stones rebounds .Ahead, a squinting
Sunlight-fissure glints, with weird contortions,
A keyhole to be picked or unlocked.
Black-framed, a classical façade, a quester’s castle
Rises up, revealed, as you exit, transfigured,
Into miraculous dazzle, blinking at the peach-coloured
Treasury’s hallucination, chiselled into rock.
From the High Place of Sacrifice, you look out
Over the deserted city’s eerie mysterious maze,
North to rumbling uplands, south to low sere hills.
At nightfall, waiting spectres emerge among the stones
That mortal hands once touched and cherished,
Gathering at the altar, eager to clutch at your arm
In the chill, to greet you and explain themselves.
Under the Nabateans’ dolphin stars, nightsurfing,
Empty tombs disintegrate into darkness,
Secrets easily reclaimed by the desert air.
Human Evolution
Comes Cro-Magnon, tall, young, invincible,
Hunter-warrior, rich priest of flints,
The sun’s disciple, born to summer plains,
Falling in anger upon the runts,
The ugly Neanderthals, beasts of night,
Blood-drinking lunatics, who, offering submission,
Present their hairy behinds.
Ochre-ruddled corpses gestate in the earthwomb,
Bone-notches mark the teething moon’s indenture.
Red Ochre Men stalk across Australia,
Inquisitors hunting down the blasphemer,
The traitor to ceremony and myth.
Cretan dancers romp in the sevenfold maze’s spiral:
Seven maidens and seven youths
Offer their throats to the strangler’s cord.
The horned altar waxes with the moon.
Spiral Castle, the revolving isle,
-Grave of the expired king,
Fallen sun’s haven,-
Glints in the mind when cranes are in flight.
The penitent, offering prayers as he steps,
Negotiates the maze inlaid on a church floor.
The spider moon shuttles with threads of intent.
Shaman’s garter-cord, sutra and cincture
All fasten in bondage to the crux quadrata.
Three strands twist the umbilical,
The baby a spider suspended by a filament.
Leftward the moon blooms and perishes.
A centrifugal spider throws out radial threads,
Enunciating a sinistral spiral,
And turns back at the outer edge,
Back towards the centre,
Coming home to symmetry.
His octagonal sanctum awaits a sacrifice.
The moon turns white, then red, then black;
First, a virgin, sealed in immaculate reveries,
Then a blushing flirt deflowered, making monthly blood-libation,
Bringing forth the red-blessed babe,
And, lastly, the venerable dame entombed,
Pending a glorified body.
Thirteen moons stir the cauldron of space,
Brewing fire and rain.
See what burns in the water’s eye:
Tiny salt-stars from the sea.
Left-handed shadows walk backwards forever,
Upside-down in the trancetime of the dead.
Midsummer. The spent king, mead-sodden,
Enters the megalithic circle of thirteen.
Lashed to the cross-oak, flayed, blinded, gelded,
Hacked into joints, he roasts over fires,
And twelve celebrants dance the figure-of-eight,
Tearing his flesh with their teeth.
An alderwood boat floats downriver to the island,
Bearing the genitals and the oracular head.
Hunter-warrior, rich priest of flints,
The sun’s disciple, born to summer plains,
Falling in anger upon the runts,
The ugly Neanderthals, beasts of night,
Blood-drinking lunatics, who, offering submission,
Present their hairy behinds.
Ochre-ruddled corpses gestate in the earthwomb,
Bone-notches mark the teething moon’s indenture.
Red Ochre Men stalk across Australia,
Inquisitors hunting down the blasphemer,
The traitor to ceremony and myth.
Cretan dancers romp in the sevenfold maze’s spiral:
Seven maidens and seven youths
Offer their throats to the strangler’s cord.
The horned altar waxes with the moon.
Spiral Castle, the revolving isle,
-Grave of the expired king,
Fallen sun’s haven,-
Glints in the mind when cranes are in flight.
The penitent, offering prayers as he steps,
Negotiates the maze inlaid on a church floor.
The spider moon shuttles with threads of intent.
Shaman’s garter-cord, sutra and cincture
All fasten in bondage to the crux quadrata.
Three strands twist the umbilical,
The baby a spider suspended by a filament.
Leftward the moon blooms and perishes.
A centrifugal spider throws out radial threads,
Enunciating a sinistral spiral,
And turns back at the outer edge,
Back towards the centre,
Coming home to symmetry.
His octagonal sanctum awaits a sacrifice.
The moon turns white, then red, then black;
First, a virgin, sealed in immaculate reveries,
Then a blushing flirt deflowered, making monthly blood-libation,
Bringing forth the red-blessed babe,
And, lastly, the venerable dame entombed,
Pending a glorified body.
Thirteen moons stir the cauldron of space,
Brewing fire and rain.
See what burns in the water’s eye:
Tiny salt-stars from the sea.
Left-handed shadows walk backwards forever,
Upside-down in the trancetime of the dead.
Midsummer. The spent king, mead-sodden,
Enters the megalithic circle of thirteen.
Lashed to the cross-oak, flayed, blinded, gelded,
Hacked into joints, he roasts over fires,
And twelve celebrants dance the figure-of-eight,
Tearing his flesh with their teeth.
An alderwood boat floats downriver to the island,
Bearing the genitals and the oracular head.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)