Time,that horned and masked chameleon,
With bulging swivelling round eyes,
Stalks slowly forward till its sticky tongue
Strikes like a lightningbolt...
The dead man’s spirit lives on in his jawbone.
He moves through the long grass
Like a leopard.
His smile is wrapped in a red barkcloth shroud.
One twin is human, the other a python.
Their voices are waterfalls.
West through the forest,crossing two streams,
I go,emerging at the swamp
Of sitatunga and shoebill,
Then climb the hill to the shrine.
In the rainforest the chimpanzees are at war:
One tribe methodically exterminating the other,
Isolating and murdering the enemy
One by one.
Friday, January 14, 2011
The Man in the Panama Hat
My mind:
Basilisk lizard running
Across water
With paddle feet.
All things are always and everywhere
Getting worse
In the most exquisite ways.
Like that wily Mayan
Who,questioned by Columbus
As to the whereabouts of the golden cities,
Pointed eastwards away from his homeland,
I will always send the world the other way.
A chieftain climbing the mountains
To search for golden frogs,
I pull down the clouds with my fingers,
Name every new thing I see.
My Scottish empire
Disappears in the jungle,
Overgrown,
Bitten to death.
An orchid’s flame
Will not save you
Though you try to cup it in your hands.
Basilisk lizard running
Across water
With paddle feet.
All things are always and everywhere
Getting worse
In the most exquisite ways.
Like that wily Mayan
Who,questioned by Columbus
As to the whereabouts of the golden cities,
Pointed eastwards away from his homeland,
I will always send the world the other way.
A chieftain climbing the mountains
To search for golden frogs,
I pull down the clouds with my fingers,
Name every new thing I see.
My Scottish empire
Disappears in the jungle,
Overgrown,
Bitten to death.
An orchid’s flame
Will not save you
Though you try to cup it in your hands.
The Rivals
Florence, 1504-1508
A wily operator,Piero Soderini,
Who matched two heavyweight champions,
In the Great Council Hall’s ring,
Michelangelo the broken-nosed slugger,
The crowd’s new favourite,
And Leonardo,prancing jabbing fop,
Hated and adored in equal parts.
Through long still nights,Leonardo,
Muttered over his notebooks,encoding
The world with a bastard’s will,
While Michelangelo ,holding his chisel
Like an assassin’s dagger,circled
His sculpture,choosing his next attack.
Brutal in their mutual vendetta,
They raged ,schemed,insulted each other,
Desperate to win the crown
And cast the enemy like a rebel angel
Down into the Bottomless Pit.
First Leonardo,then his younger rival
The Gonfalier commissioned, their contest
Meant to serve the glory of Florence.
At opposite ends of the Great Hall
Each would paint a giant mural:
Leonardo The Battle of Anghiari,
Michelangelo The Battle of Cascina.
This would be the grandest room on earth,
The heroic city’s greatest boast,
The school of supreme art.
In capes and gowns of pink and purple
Flouting the day’s dark fashions,
Cardinal of his own heretical Church,
Leonardo walks the same streets
Where Buonarroti,surly and dishevelled,
Black hair over a clenched frown,
Bowls along in scruffy slept-in clothes,
Like a murderer fleeing his crime.
Monstrous ruck of men and horses,
Knotting,clashing,twisting,stabbing:
The pen’s spearpoint jabs and parries,
Swings across the paper,raising
A dustcloud of blood,dirt,dreams.
Slowly,so slowly the work progresses,
In Leonardo’s studio at Santa Maria Novella,
As other fascinations constantly
Pull him away for hours, days,weeks.
Bent over a vast battlefield of paper
In the Hospital of the Dyers,Michelangelo-
Greek fire fuelling his bathhouse fever-
Etches young men’s sinews and nerves,
Superb flesh about to be ravaged
In its final humiliation.Audacity has him
By the balls:risk the soul on his hand’s
Work is all he can do to live,breathe,
Self-martyred ,broken into ecstasy.
In the Great Hall young Raphael
Walks from one end to the other,
Sketching the opposing cartoons,
His soul divided by their splendours,
Resolved to reconcile such extremes
With grace;inwardly he transmutes
This titanic game of thrusts and feints,
And steals their powers for himself.
A wily operator,Piero Soderini,
Who matched two heavyweight champions,
In the Great Council Hall’s ring,
Michelangelo the broken-nosed slugger,
The crowd’s new favourite,
And Leonardo,prancing jabbing fop,
Hated and adored in equal parts.
Through long still nights,Leonardo,
Muttered over his notebooks,encoding
The world with a bastard’s will,
While Michelangelo ,holding his chisel
Like an assassin’s dagger,circled
His sculpture,choosing his next attack.
Brutal in their mutual vendetta,
They raged ,schemed,insulted each other,
Desperate to win the crown
And cast the enemy like a rebel angel
Down into the Bottomless Pit.
First Leonardo,then his younger rival
The Gonfalier commissioned, their contest
Meant to serve the glory of Florence.
At opposite ends of the Great Hall
Each would paint a giant mural:
Leonardo The Battle of Anghiari,
Michelangelo The Battle of Cascina.
This would be the grandest room on earth,
The heroic city’s greatest boast,
The school of supreme art.
In capes and gowns of pink and purple
Flouting the day’s dark fashions,
Cardinal of his own heretical Church,
Leonardo walks the same streets
Where Buonarroti,surly and dishevelled,
Black hair over a clenched frown,
Bowls along in scruffy slept-in clothes,
Like a murderer fleeing his crime.
Monstrous ruck of men and horses,
Knotting,clashing,twisting,stabbing:
The pen’s spearpoint jabs and parries,
Swings across the paper,raising
A dustcloud of blood,dirt,dreams.
Slowly,so slowly the work progresses,
In Leonardo’s studio at Santa Maria Novella,
As other fascinations constantly
Pull him away for hours, days,weeks.
Bent over a vast battlefield of paper
In the Hospital of the Dyers,Michelangelo-
Greek fire fuelling his bathhouse fever-
Etches young men’s sinews and nerves,
Superb flesh about to be ravaged
In its final humiliation.Audacity has him
By the balls:risk the soul on his hand’s
Work is all he can do to live,breathe,
Self-martyred ,broken into ecstasy.
In the Great Hall young Raphael
Walks from one end to the other,
Sketching the opposing cartoons,
His soul divided by their splendours,
Resolved to reconcile such extremes
With grace;inwardly he transmutes
This titanic game of thrusts and feints,
And steals their powers for himself.
Monday, January 03, 2011
Feedback
Polysemous eyes
of the loved one-
we live in all the senses
a volatile cosmos
changing from moment
to moment
Oblivion sirens
the cracked people
waiting for a saviour
in a country never seen
on any map
Moss takes hold
on the temple ruins
the clock on the mantelpiece
stutters to standstill
The sun comes up again
saluted with a shrug
of the loved one-
we live in all the senses
a volatile cosmos
changing from moment
to moment
Oblivion sirens
the cracked people
waiting for a saviour
in a country never seen
on any map
Moss takes hold
on the temple ruins
the clock on the mantelpiece
stutters to standstill
The sun comes up again
saluted with a shrug
Hitler's Books
Pencil in hand, he scans the page
For something he can use,
Underlining a passage here, a phrase there,
Inserting exclamations or question marks,
Plundering ideas to fit his mission.
Each day at breakfast, the Fuhrer reprises
Last night’s reading at tedious length
To all at his table, recalling complete passages
From various books, discussing the topics
To fix them in his own mind.
1925.He opens his sketchbook
And draws a detailed stage set for the first act
Of Julius Caesar, with ominous facades
For the Forum where the hero will die.
We will meet again at Philippi,
He warns opponents with a glower.
For something he can use,
Underlining a passage here, a phrase there,
Inserting exclamations or question marks,
Plundering ideas to fit his mission.
Each day at breakfast, the Fuhrer reprises
Last night’s reading at tedious length
To all at his table, recalling complete passages
From various books, discussing the topics
To fix them in his own mind.
1925.He opens his sketchbook
And draws a detailed stage set for the first act
Of Julius Caesar, with ominous facades
For the Forum where the hero will die.
We will meet again at Philippi,
He warns opponents with a glower.
Remembering Some Lines From A Favourite Poet
A phrase here, a line there
Toll their privilege through me;
Properties of the moment
Reverberate with love.
The secret signs return
In various guises,
The old enchantment
Still telling the rosary
Of my blood.
To please and bewilder
Is the poem’s heft;
A foreign self becomes
As one’s own heartbeat.
Everything is there and gone,
Flitting in and out of sight,
Too rich and exquisite
To exist for more than a second.
From these fires you flee
And to them you return,
Endebted to their cold burning.
Toll their privilege through me;
Properties of the moment
Reverberate with love.
The secret signs return
In various guises,
The old enchantment
Still telling the rosary
Of my blood.
To please and bewilder
Is the poem’s heft;
A foreign self becomes
As one’s own heartbeat.
Everything is there and gone,
Flitting in and out of sight,
Too rich and exquisite
To exist for more than a second.
From these fires you flee
And to them you return,
Endebted to their cold burning.
137
A colleague who met me strolling rather aimlessly in the beautiful streets of Copenhagen said to me in a friendly manner, “You look very unhappy,” whereupon I answered angrily, “How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?”
Wolfgang Pauli
Mephistopheles the mathematician
Smiles a sardonic smile.
The veiled woman on the staircase
Sings with perfect guile.
And everywhere the numbers
Turn somersaults all the while.
There are thirty-two paths of wisdom,
Of which I have stumbled on
Perhaps one or two, no more.
The more precisely one knows the energy
Of a spectral line ignited when an electron jumps
From a higher to a lower orbit within an atom,
The less precisely can you measure
The time the action takes.
The dreams and mandalas of physics,
The Buddhist sutras of everyday life,
Drive me deeper and deeper
Into mathematics.
Invented or discovered, the world
Holds me to uncanny bargains.
No matter how old I grow
I shall always be afraid.
From three to four is the difficult transition.
Symmetries and harmonies beyond comprehension
Madden my straining intellect.
Every theory contains its own heresy.
The weak links teach more than the strong.
From circles to ellipses my mind runs.
The trembling thrust of planetary motions
I sense in each line I write.
Can it be that God is left-handed?
Dogs and foxes bite me in my sleep.
A Chinese woman hands me a bowl of noodles
With a weird little smile.
Wolfgang Pauli
Mephistopheles the mathematician
Smiles a sardonic smile.
The veiled woman on the staircase
Sings with perfect guile.
And everywhere the numbers
Turn somersaults all the while.
There are thirty-two paths of wisdom,
Of which I have stumbled on
Perhaps one or two, no more.
The more precisely one knows the energy
Of a spectral line ignited when an electron jumps
From a higher to a lower orbit within an atom,
The less precisely can you measure
The time the action takes.
The dreams and mandalas of physics,
The Buddhist sutras of everyday life,
Drive me deeper and deeper
Into mathematics.
Invented or discovered, the world
Holds me to uncanny bargains.
No matter how old I grow
I shall always be afraid.
From three to four is the difficult transition.
Symmetries and harmonies beyond comprehension
Madden my straining intellect.
Every theory contains its own heresy.
The weak links teach more than the strong.
From circles to ellipses my mind runs.
The trembling thrust of planetary motions
I sense in each line I write.
Can it be that God is left-handed?
Dogs and foxes bite me in my sleep.
A Chinese woman hands me a bowl of noodles
With a weird little smile.
Six Perfect Sentences
That was the year when Hemingway wrote six perfect sentences.
The year when Ulysses was published.
The year the California grizzly bear became extinct
And the last Barbary lion was killed in Morocco.
The Soviet Union was founded;
The Ottoman Empire was abolished.
The first men in three thousand years
Entered the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Mussolini and his Blackshirts marched on Rome,
While, in Paris, Gurdjieff opened his Institute
For the Harmonious Development of Man.
Michael Collins fell in an ambush in West Cork.
Walter Rathenau was assassinated in Berlin.
The Turks massacred the Greeks in Smyrna.
A twenty-ton meteorite landed in Virginia.
Mohandas Gandhi was sentenced to prison
For “sedition against the British Crown.”
And Hemingway managed six perfect lines.
The year when Ulysses was published.
The year the California grizzly bear became extinct
And the last Barbary lion was killed in Morocco.
The Soviet Union was founded;
The Ottoman Empire was abolished.
The first men in three thousand years
Entered the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Mussolini and his Blackshirts marched on Rome,
While, in Paris, Gurdjieff opened his Institute
For the Harmonious Development of Man.
Michael Collins fell in an ambush in West Cork.
Walter Rathenau was assassinated in Berlin.
The Turks massacred the Greeks in Smyrna.
A twenty-ton meteorite landed in Virginia.
Mohandas Gandhi was sentenced to prison
For “sedition against the British Crown.”
And Hemingway managed six perfect lines.
Chess Moves
Accumulation of advantages is my game,
The delight of asymmetry,of annihilation,
With bayonet attacks,blockades and breakthroughs,
Zugzwang and zwischenzug,
The unseen mate and the vanished centre.
What will it be? The Berlin defence
Or the Calabrian counter-gambit?
The Dragon variation or the Lasker trap?
Perhaps I shall introduce the Java theme,
Practise decoys and distant opposition,
Or proffer Greek gifts and poisoned pawns.
Do not be surprised to face the Fegatello attack
Orthe cunning use of outposts and holes;
See-saws,star checks,staircase movements,
All can be brought to bear.
One revels in trebuchets,mirror mates,excelsiors,
The timely use of bad bishops and bare kings,
Passar battaglia and the pendulum draw.
At the siege of Sebastopol,Prince Sergei Urusov,
One of Europe’s finest players,proposed
To settle possession of a long-contested trench
By a game of chess against a worthy opponent,
The best player in the English army.
His general,alas,dismissed the idea
And ordered the next costly attack.
Alexandre Deschapelles joined Napoleon’s army,
Was left for dead at the siege of Mainz,
Fought again at Fleurus,was captured at Baylen,
Made a clever escape from Cadiz,
Lost his right hand and earned a sabre scar
From brow to chin.One of the first men
To be awarded the Cross of Honour.
He tore it off in disgust when Napoleon
Had himself crowned Emperor.
After Waterloo he earned a living
Playing chess at the Cafe de la Regence,
Boasting he had learned all the secrets of the game
In just three days.Delicate and irritable,
A slow meticulous player,he took on Bourdonnais
As pupil,his opposite,hale and cheerful
And a swift decisive master at the board.
Once he had lost to his talented disciple,
Deschapelles gave up chess altogether
And made his fortune at whist instead.
He retired to a pleasant villa
And,when not tending the orchards,
Frequently fought one-armed duels,
His prickly self-regard all too easily provoked.
His last years he spent writing bizarre constitutions
For various South American republics.
Saint Amant said of him:”The only way
To remain on good terms with him
Without meanness or flattery
Is to see him seldom,never to be in his debt,
And to maintain a dignified reserve.”
Now for some sly triangulation,
The accelerated dragon and the use of desperados,
Sitzfleisch or Santasiere’s Folly.
Let us commence with the Orang Utan opening...
Very soon I shall hold you in perpetual check.
The delight of asymmetry,of annihilation,
With bayonet attacks,blockades and breakthroughs,
Zugzwang and zwischenzug,
The unseen mate and the vanished centre.
What will it be? The Berlin defence
Or the Calabrian counter-gambit?
The Dragon variation or the Lasker trap?
Perhaps I shall introduce the Java theme,
Practise decoys and distant opposition,
Or proffer Greek gifts and poisoned pawns.
Do not be surprised to face the Fegatello attack
Orthe cunning use of outposts and holes;
See-saws,star checks,staircase movements,
All can be brought to bear.
One revels in trebuchets,mirror mates,excelsiors,
The timely use of bad bishops and bare kings,
Passar battaglia and the pendulum draw.
At the siege of Sebastopol,Prince Sergei Urusov,
One of Europe’s finest players,proposed
To settle possession of a long-contested trench
By a game of chess against a worthy opponent,
The best player in the English army.
His general,alas,dismissed the idea
And ordered the next costly attack.
Alexandre Deschapelles joined Napoleon’s army,
Was left for dead at the siege of Mainz,
Fought again at Fleurus,was captured at Baylen,
Made a clever escape from Cadiz,
Lost his right hand and earned a sabre scar
From brow to chin.One of the first men
To be awarded the Cross of Honour.
He tore it off in disgust when Napoleon
Had himself crowned Emperor.
After Waterloo he earned a living
Playing chess at the Cafe de la Regence,
Boasting he had learned all the secrets of the game
In just three days.Delicate and irritable,
A slow meticulous player,he took on Bourdonnais
As pupil,his opposite,hale and cheerful
And a swift decisive master at the board.
Once he had lost to his talented disciple,
Deschapelles gave up chess altogether
And made his fortune at whist instead.
He retired to a pleasant villa
And,when not tending the orchards,
Frequently fought one-armed duels,
His prickly self-regard all too easily provoked.
His last years he spent writing bizarre constitutions
For various South American republics.
Saint Amant said of him:”The only way
To remain on good terms with him
Without meanness or flattery
Is to see him seldom,never to be in his debt,
And to maintain a dignified reserve.”
Now for some sly triangulation,
The accelerated dragon and the use of desperados,
Sitzfleisch or Santasiere’s Folly.
Let us commence with the Orang Utan opening...
Very soon I shall hold you in perpetual check.
The Silk Road
Beyond the Great Wall is nothing.Death.
The barbarous wilderness with its monsters.
The banished who die there,what hell shall befall them!
Demons shall tear them from their graves.
And any Buddhst who perishes on that side
Shall be damned eternally,reborn in the lowliest forms.
Wind-besieged bastion of Jiayuguan,
Last tower looking out on death.
Exiles,passing through the tunnel,
Leave life and hope behind them,
Never to hear their mother tongue again,
Scratching despairing poems and messages
Into the bricks as they go.
Westward to Dunhuang spins the thread.
Once-great cities,teeming,dreaming,building,
Now are vanished into the sand,
Crawled over by lizards and scorpions.
Fabulous mirages visit the wide horizons,
Lakes and rivers misted in their own reflections,
Ghosts of trees and houses hover beyond.
In the Mogao caves of the Mingsha Hills,
Images extrude from the walls,
Vivid in the gloom,-Hindu gymnosophists
Pa,vermilion faces oxidized to black,
White eyes glaring with preternatural fervour.
Frescoed Buddhas and bodhisattvas
Multiply,sanctified by endless reproduction,
Hallucinations of Maya,
Styled into truth by human hands.
Thus one makes one’s way across
The swaying ropebridge of time.
Through shades of barren blue landscape
Northward to Turfan, warehouse of winds,
Where a sand-buried egg will boil in a minute.
Strangely,in this rainless nowhere,
Cold water channels emerge from the ground
And in autumn courtyard trellises sag
With dusky grapes,apricots and lemons.
Uighur oases:all shrewdness and swagger,
The horse-people canter,neigh and capriole,
Lemon-bright eyes and ebullient gestures,
Horses dancing over the sands.
Voluptuous music ripples in veils
And the women dressed in colour-fanfares
Are a torchlight procession in the dark.
Beyond,dead cities shiver in the wind,
Battlements and palaces all rubbed away,
Spires looming stupendous and forlorn.
Compacted earth rasps underfoot,
And perhaps an apparition will silently rise
And show you a lifetime in an instant.
Eight hundred miles to Kashgar:
On one side hazy snowcrests shine like madness,
On the other stretch the Taklamakan sands,
Flood-smoothed stone and gravel glaze,
And here and there a mountain-suckled
Orchard or arable field.
Demons lead travellers astray with noises,
Sandstorms open onto unearthly hush,
Voices and ghosts lull the heart past caring.
There,no,over there,somewhere,near and far,
Comes the hum of a non-existent caravan
And musical instruments ensorcelling
With melodies that are and are not.
Outside Kashgar,in dust by the roadside,
Huddle the graves of Chinese labourers,
Facing east,back towards their motherland.
In the city,the Fragrant Concubine has her tomb,
An Uighur princess given in tribute
To the Chinese emperor,sold into despair.
He,entranced by this beautiful savage,
Ran long-nailed fingers over her skin,
But she drew back,rejecting his desire,
And,fleeing his angry eyes,strangled herself.
The barbarous wilderness with its monsters.
The banished who die there,what hell shall befall them!
Demons shall tear them from their graves.
And any Buddhst who perishes on that side
Shall be damned eternally,reborn in the lowliest forms.
Wind-besieged bastion of Jiayuguan,
Last tower looking out on death.
Exiles,passing through the tunnel,
Leave life and hope behind them,
Never to hear their mother tongue again,
Scratching despairing poems and messages
Into the bricks as they go.
Westward to Dunhuang spins the thread.
Once-great cities,teeming,dreaming,building,
Now are vanished into the sand,
Crawled over by lizards and scorpions.
Fabulous mirages visit the wide horizons,
Lakes and rivers misted in their own reflections,
Ghosts of trees and houses hover beyond.
In the Mogao caves of the Mingsha Hills,
Images extrude from the walls,
Vivid in the gloom,-Hindu gymnosophists
Pa,vermilion faces oxidized to black,
White eyes glaring with preternatural fervour.
Frescoed Buddhas and bodhisattvas
Multiply,sanctified by endless reproduction,
Hallucinations of Maya,
Styled into truth by human hands.
Thus one makes one’s way across
The swaying ropebridge of time.
Through shades of barren blue landscape
Northward to Turfan, warehouse of winds,
Where a sand-buried egg will boil in a minute.
Strangely,in this rainless nowhere,
Cold water channels emerge from the ground
And in autumn courtyard trellises sag
With dusky grapes,apricots and lemons.
Uighur oases:all shrewdness and swagger,
The horse-people canter,neigh and capriole,
Lemon-bright eyes and ebullient gestures,
Horses dancing over the sands.
Voluptuous music ripples in veils
And the women dressed in colour-fanfares
Are a torchlight procession in the dark.
Beyond,dead cities shiver in the wind,
Battlements and palaces all rubbed away,
Spires looming stupendous and forlorn.
Compacted earth rasps underfoot,
And perhaps an apparition will silently rise
And show you a lifetime in an instant.
Eight hundred miles to Kashgar:
On one side hazy snowcrests shine like madness,
On the other stretch the Taklamakan sands,
Flood-smoothed stone and gravel glaze,
And here and there a mountain-suckled
Orchard or arable field.
Demons lead travellers astray with noises,
Sandstorms open onto unearthly hush,
Voices and ghosts lull the heart past caring.
There,no,over there,somewhere,near and far,
Comes the hum of a non-existent caravan
And musical instruments ensorcelling
With melodies that are and are not.
Outside Kashgar,in dust by the roadside,
Huddle the graves of Chinese labourers,
Facing east,back towards their motherland.
In the city,the Fragrant Concubine has her tomb,
An Uighur princess given in tribute
To the Chinese emperor,sold into despair.
He,entranced by this beautiful savage,
Ran long-nailed fingers over her skin,
But she drew back,rejecting his desire,
And,fleeing his angry eyes,strangled herself.
Polish Communion
This country cannot be found on any map,
Only in the breaking of bread
And the chill grace of vodka;
The borders are shifting, as ever,
And nothing can be held in the hand.
Again it is Maundy Thursday
And the villagers hang effigies of Judas,
Flog them, burn them, throw them in the river.
Woman, sunrise celebrates Mass in your eyes,
Bird calls break the forest silence,
A pillar of fire rises among the trees,
Wild boar guard the musky gloom.
Skulls under skullcaps recite the Psalms.
Drunkenness is my vocation,
Religiously reciting the names
Of different vodkas :
Żubrówka,Tatrazańska, Jarzębiak.
Pierced by the Tartar arrows of the summer sun,
I tumble naked into steaming lakes,
The earth sweats like an Arabian thoroughbred,
This is no land for the rational,the sane,
It belongs to the laughing rascals
Leaning out of windows on Easter Monday
To throw water bombs at passing girls.
Insurrection clamours
In the shipyards of the spirit;
Shanties carry on the wind,
And whale songs echo through sailors’ bones,
While the potbellied knights of King Arthur
Feast in the hall of marble columns,
Fed from the Holy Grail.
In Praski Park,on the Vistula’s edge,
I sit on a smooth glacial boulder,
Looking across at the ghost city’s outline,
Luminous Warsaw,resurrected stone by stone.
I cross the bridge to the Old Town,
The Castle’s pink Renaissance facade in the square,
Where the last king was hustled out by Russian soldiers,
Forbidden to address the silent crowd,
Before him only exile,nostalgia,despair.
The gilded apartments,willed out of nothingness
By desperate magic,glitter with mourning,
The dust of broken centuries swarming in the light.
Chestnut-splendid and besquirrelled,
All paths through Łazienkowski Park lead
To the Palace on the Water,that great swan
Fed on faith and joy,its mutable aspects
Appearing through the willows as you approach.
Inside,the rooms,elaborately dazzling,
Bespeak pavanes on polished marble
And fluttering repartee at butterfly balls,
Lightness and fancy set free for a moment.
In my mundane mediocrity,I envy
The old nobles of Poland, decadent, idle,
Revelling in their imagined Sarmatian descent,
As much as the ideals of Greece and Rome,
Horsemen warriors decked in gold, with Amazon women,
Feasting and living with opulent extravagance,
Wearing fur caps with pearls and crimson damask robes,
Silk and precious stones, with sashes of gold,
The men shaving their heads in imagined imitation
Of the ancient Sarmatian nomads.
Neglecting politics for display,
Karol Radziwiłł would, in a drunken stupor,
Shoot any dinner guest he deemed disagreeable;
For sport, he would also have his servants
Fire huge bison into the air
From massive launchers hidden in the forests
Of his estate, so he could shoots them in mid-air,
A crack shot who seldom missed.
They were the finest men ever,
Jan Sobieski, born in a thunderstorm,
Caparisoned in furs and silks,
Silver half-moon heels on his Turkish boots,
Jewelled scimitar at his side,
And his winged hussars, steel armour
Polished like silver and edged with brass,
Shining like gold,
Their shoulders adorned with mascarons
Depicting the Nemean lion,
Their breastplates graven with the Holy Virgin,
The officers in Sarmatian scale armour,
Leoparskins thrown over their backs,
Tall eagle feathers attached to their backs,
Their Circassian saddles of broidered velvet
Set with precious stones,
Striking terror into every enemy
When they appeared on the horizon,
Pennants fluttering and weapons gleaming....
In the cathedral of Sandomierz
Along the nave the massive paintings
Detail the innumerable martyrdoms
Of faithful Catholics at the hands
Of Muslims and Jews,-here, a Christian child
Is ritually murdered by Jews,
Rolling him in a barrel of nails,
Then letting the blood drain from his body
Then throwing the corpse to the dogs.
Endless beheadings and tortures
Prove the nation righteous,
And a Pole still seated on his horse
Is blown through the air
Across the Vistula, as the castle explodes,
To land uninjured on the other side.
Must the courageous be cruel in their defiance?
Time and again the people have risen
To fight for freedom,whatever the cost,
Knowing that victory is always temporary,
A preparation for the next defeat,
Surviving to work some profound influence
Upon the nations of Europe.
Puszcza Kampinoska:countless trails lead off
Into the deep wilderness...stray too far
And you are lost,lost,lost...who would hear
Your small voice calling? The darkness
Belongs to wolves and boars.In a silent clearing
A monument marks the spot where people
Stood before open ditches to be shot.
The lonely trumpeter of Kraków sounds the hours
From the highest tower of Mariacki Church,
Addressing the four quarters in turn,
Each slow sobbing call cut short in mid-phrase,
Surprised by the Tatar’s fatal arrow.
On Wawel Hill,in the Gothic cathedral,
Straight ahead in the transept ,reflecting
Sun-shafts from golden roof and columns,
Rides the body of St Stanislaw in silver coffin.
Poems fill the air like the palatial Turkish tents
Captured at Vienna,displayed in the castle,
With empty suits of oriental armour standing guard.
Ornamental Italian castles on the northern European plains;
Tiny roads to ancient villages or overgrown ramparts...
Memories roll forward and back,crossing the Obidowa pass
At sunset,ridge on ridge receding through green
And grey to distant blue,the Tatra peaks ever closer...
Nothing but the fire of rowanberry vodka
On this unrepeatable day,in the imagined world
Of destruction and creation,where the soul
Must suffer and grow wise.
Inside the brute red mass of Malbork Castle,
Labyrinthine corridors disappearing into inner darkness,
I gaze into lumps of amber,into the bodies
Of insects and plants suspended in amniotic hell.
Is it there still,inside me,Copernicus’s view
Of the Baltic from Frombork,out at the edge,
Where what appears disappears and appears again?
Only in the breaking of bread
And the chill grace of vodka;
The borders are shifting, as ever,
And nothing can be held in the hand.
Again it is Maundy Thursday
And the villagers hang effigies of Judas,
Flog them, burn them, throw them in the river.
Woman, sunrise celebrates Mass in your eyes,
Bird calls break the forest silence,
A pillar of fire rises among the trees,
Wild boar guard the musky gloom.
Skulls under skullcaps recite the Psalms.
Drunkenness is my vocation,
Religiously reciting the names
Of different vodkas :
Żubrówka,Tatrazańska, Jarzębiak.
Pierced by the Tartar arrows of the summer sun,
I tumble naked into steaming lakes,
The earth sweats like an Arabian thoroughbred,
This is no land for the rational,the sane,
It belongs to the laughing rascals
Leaning out of windows on Easter Monday
To throw water bombs at passing girls.
Insurrection clamours
In the shipyards of the spirit;
Shanties carry on the wind,
And whale songs echo through sailors’ bones,
While the potbellied knights of King Arthur
Feast in the hall of marble columns,
Fed from the Holy Grail.
In Praski Park,on the Vistula’s edge,
I sit on a smooth glacial boulder,
Looking across at the ghost city’s outline,
Luminous Warsaw,resurrected stone by stone.
I cross the bridge to the Old Town,
The Castle’s pink Renaissance facade in the square,
Where the last king was hustled out by Russian soldiers,
Forbidden to address the silent crowd,
Before him only exile,nostalgia,despair.
The gilded apartments,willed out of nothingness
By desperate magic,glitter with mourning,
The dust of broken centuries swarming in the light.
Chestnut-splendid and besquirrelled,
All paths through Łazienkowski Park lead
To the Palace on the Water,that great swan
Fed on faith and joy,its mutable aspects
Appearing through the willows as you approach.
Inside,the rooms,elaborately dazzling,
Bespeak pavanes on polished marble
And fluttering repartee at butterfly balls,
Lightness and fancy set free for a moment.
In my mundane mediocrity,I envy
The old nobles of Poland, decadent, idle,
Revelling in their imagined Sarmatian descent,
As much as the ideals of Greece and Rome,
Horsemen warriors decked in gold, with Amazon women,
Feasting and living with opulent extravagance,
Wearing fur caps with pearls and crimson damask robes,
Silk and precious stones, with sashes of gold,
The men shaving their heads in imagined imitation
Of the ancient Sarmatian nomads.
Neglecting politics for display,
Karol Radziwiłł would, in a drunken stupor,
Shoot any dinner guest he deemed disagreeable;
For sport, he would also have his servants
Fire huge bison into the air
From massive launchers hidden in the forests
Of his estate, so he could shoots them in mid-air,
A crack shot who seldom missed.
They were the finest men ever,
Jan Sobieski, born in a thunderstorm,
Caparisoned in furs and silks,
Silver half-moon heels on his Turkish boots,
Jewelled scimitar at his side,
And his winged hussars, steel armour
Polished like silver and edged with brass,
Shining like gold,
Their shoulders adorned with mascarons
Depicting the Nemean lion,
Their breastplates graven with the Holy Virgin,
The officers in Sarmatian scale armour,
Leoparskins thrown over their backs,
Tall eagle feathers attached to their backs,
Their Circassian saddles of broidered velvet
Set with precious stones,
Striking terror into every enemy
When they appeared on the horizon,
Pennants fluttering and weapons gleaming....
In the cathedral of Sandomierz
Along the nave the massive paintings
Detail the innumerable martyrdoms
Of faithful Catholics at the hands
Of Muslims and Jews,-here, a Christian child
Is ritually murdered by Jews,
Rolling him in a barrel of nails,
Then letting the blood drain from his body
Then throwing the corpse to the dogs.
Endless beheadings and tortures
Prove the nation righteous,
And a Pole still seated on his horse
Is blown through the air
Across the Vistula, as the castle explodes,
To land uninjured on the other side.
Must the courageous be cruel in their defiance?
Time and again the people have risen
To fight for freedom,whatever the cost,
Knowing that victory is always temporary,
A preparation for the next defeat,
Surviving to work some profound influence
Upon the nations of Europe.
Puszcza Kampinoska:countless trails lead off
Into the deep wilderness...stray too far
And you are lost,lost,lost...who would hear
Your small voice calling? The darkness
Belongs to wolves and boars.In a silent clearing
A monument marks the spot where people
Stood before open ditches to be shot.
The lonely trumpeter of Kraków sounds the hours
From the highest tower of Mariacki Church,
Addressing the four quarters in turn,
Each slow sobbing call cut short in mid-phrase,
Surprised by the Tatar’s fatal arrow.
On Wawel Hill,in the Gothic cathedral,
Straight ahead in the transept ,reflecting
Sun-shafts from golden roof and columns,
Rides the body of St Stanislaw in silver coffin.
Poems fill the air like the palatial Turkish tents
Captured at Vienna,displayed in the castle,
With empty suits of oriental armour standing guard.
Ornamental Italian castles on the northern European plains;
Tiny roads to ancient villages or overgrown ramparts...
Memories roll forward and back,crossing the Obidowa pass
At sunset,ridge on ridge receding through green
And grey to distant blue,the Tatra peaks ever closer...
Nothing but the fire of rowanberry vodka
On this unrepeatable day,in the imagined world
Of destruction and creation,where the soul
Must suffer and grow wise.
Inside the brute red mass of Malbork Castle,
Labyrinthine corridors disappearing into inner darkness,
I gaze into lumps of amber,into the bodies
Of insects and plants suspended in amniotic hell.
Is it there still,inside me,Copernicus’s view
Of the Baltic from Frombork,out at the edge,
Where what appears disappears and appears again?
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