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?”
Sunday, May 16, 2010
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.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
The Old Man of the Mountain
Tamerlane’s invaders scale the Rock of Alamut
And breach the Assassin’s citadel, fortress of Hasan-i-Sabbah.
Penetrating deeper and deeper along sinister corridors,
One unwary soldier, probing an unlit tunnel,
Drops with a shriek into the secret honey-store,
And, struggling like a fly in amber, drowns.
The legendary Hasan could not die like any mortal.
Sensing death’s call, he withdrew to his sanctum,
Instructing his attendants to wait three days, then enter.
Alone, he plunged ,with a smile, into a bath of vitriol,
Blissfully dissolving into the Absolute.
On the fourth day, when the door was opened,
Not a trace of the Master remained
In the hushed room, empty except for a raven
Glaring like a demon on its perch.
And breach the Assassin’s citadel, fortress of Hasan-i-Sabbah.
Penetrating deeper and deeper along sinister corridors,
One unwary soldier, probing an unlit tunnel,
Drops with a shriek into the secret honey-store,
And, struggling like a fly in amber, drowns.
The legendary Hasan could not die like any mortal.
Sensing death’s call, he withdrew to his sanctum,
Instructing his attendants to wait three days, then enter.
Alone, he plunged ,with a smile, into a bath of vitriol,
Blissfully dissolving into the Absolute.
On the fourth day, when the door was opened,
Not a trace of the Master remained
In the hushed room, empty except for a raven
Glaring like a demon on its perch.
In Her Praise
Do you know, have you heard
she is beautiful
as modulating sunlight on Moroccan city walls
as the water spider’s equilibrium
when he runs the meniscus chasing prey
as the mercury in a barometer
or the water in a well
never seen only sometimes heard
when a child drops a stone in
I seek her in recondite corners
a silhouette
a glimmer
a footstep or a giggle
a tightness in the stomach
a maggot in the mind
A swooning apple-tree
I break into blossom
for the air’s delectation
mysterious harmonies
gather me into the earth
Hippos in a mud-hole
we wallow in each other
she is beautiful
as modulating sunlight on Moroccan city walls
as the water spider’s equilibrium
when he runs the meniscus chasing prey
as the mercury in a barometer
or the water in a well
never seen only sometimes heard
when a child drops a stone in
I seek her in recondite corners
a silhouette
a glimmer
a footstep or a giggle
a tightness in the stomach
a maggot in the mind
A swooning apple-tree
I break into blossom
for the air’s delectation
mysterious harmonies
gather me into the earth
Hippos in a mud-hole
we wallow in each other
Charles Mingus
Couldn’t write a straight tune if he wanted to.
Couldn’t read music or keep time.
Couldn’t do anything the way others did it.
Swung at anyone who pissed him off, or pulled a knife, even.
Once threw a piano down the stairs in a rage.
Chased women all the time, white women, especially.
Talked non-stop, always ranting about some kind of mistreatment.
Cheated anyone to get his own way.
Bragged incessantly about himself.
Loved fine wines and exotic cuisines.
Lived rich and died broke.
Had a grin as wide as America.
A voice, a charm, a wit, a charisma, a splendour
That he carried around in his bass.
All that he saw and felt and learned
Went into that instrument,
Nothing was separate, nothing was wasted.
All he had was death and women.
And that sound.
Couldn’t read music or keep time.
Couldn’t do anything the way others did it.
Swung at anyone who pissed him off, or pulled a knife, even.
Once threw a piano down the stairs in a rage.
Chased women all the time, white women, especially.
Talked non-stop, always ranting about some kind of mistreatment.
Cheated anyone to get his own way.
Bragged incessantly about himself.
Loved fine wines and exotic cuisines.
Lived rich and died broke.
Had a grin as wide as America.
A voice, a charm, a wit, a charisma, a splendour
That he carried around in his bass.
All that he saw and felt and learned
Went into that instrument,
Nothing was separate, nothing was wasted.
All he had was death and women.
And that sound.
The Green Man
In an ancient village church, still, so still,
Smelling of wood and stone,
The dust of memory imbuing the air,
I look up and spot the Green Men
Inhabiting the roof bosses,
Snarling, sighing, following me with their eyes,
Disgorging vegetation from their mouths,
A puissant uncanny tribe.
Chartres in the rain:
Stones deepen to brown-orange and blue-grey,
Walls and buttresses glisten,
Portals’ columns and carvings shine.
Nourished at the roots, the whole cathedral
Swells, replenished, green hints in the stone,
The recesses, arches, gables and tabernacles
Revealing some of their mysteries.
Water pouring down the transepts’ facades
Issues from the spandrels, north and south,
Through bestial mouths, jetting in gouts
To splash on steps below...This is the cross-bar
Where the north-south line of time
Transects the east-west line of eternity.
Corbelled out on brackets, carved in waves
Of Deluge, the Green Men and gargoyles
Swim through the sky, as earthly waters
Pour and pour, transfigured into life itself,
And the devout soul, bearing witness,
Leaves this place with newfound vigour,
To bless the world with holy water.
Viriditas: the Divine Word penetrates
Body and soul, here in the branches
Of the Tree.
I have seen the Green Man’s face
In so many places, peering out from the swirl:
Wise, demonic, sinister, angelic,
Contemplative, prophetic, idiotic, frowning,
Benevolent, weary, youthful, primitive,
Leonine, chivalrous, fantastical, amused,
Mournful, bestial, solemn, ethereal,
Omniscient, somnambulant, professorial,
Mischievous, filling the woodland
With laughter, praise and song.
Smelling of wood and stone,
The dust of memory imbuing the air,
I look up and spot the Green Men
Inhabiting the roof bosses,
Snarling, sighing, following me with their eyes,
Disgorging vegetation from their mouths,
A puissant uncanny tribe.
Chartres in the rain:
Stones deepen to brown-orange and blue-grey,
Walls and buttresses glisten,
Portals’ columns and carvings shine.
Nourished at the roots, the whole cathedral
Swells, replenished, green hints in the stone,
The recesses, arches, gables and tabernacles
Revealing some of their mysteries.
Water pouring down the transepts’ facades
Issues from the spandrels, north and south,
Through bestial mouths, jetting in gouts
To splash on steps below...This is the cross-bar
Where the north-south line of time
Transects the east-west line of eternity.
Corbelled out on brackets, carved in waves
Of Deluge, the Green Men and gargoyles
Swim through the sky, as earthly waters
Pour and pour, transfigured into life itself,
And the devout soul, bearing witness,
Leaves this place with newfound vigour,
To bless the world with holy water.
Viriditas: the Divine Word penetrates
Body and soul, here in the branches
Of the Tree.
I have seen the Green Man’s face
In so many places, peering out from the swirl:
Wise, demonic, sinister, angelic,
Contemplative, prophetic, idiotic, frowning,
Benevolent, weary, youthful, primitive,
Leonine, chivalrous, fantastical, amused,
Mournful, bestial, solemn, ethereal,
Omniscient, somnambulant, professorial,
Mischievous, filling the woodland
With laughter, praise and song.
Thomas Hardy as a Boy
The Dorset boy lies on his back in the grass,
Squinting at the summer sky from under a straw hat;
Why can he not stay this way forever
And never have to grow into a man?
He knows every clod of this county,
Every field, hedge and gate, every tree’s silhouette,
The depth and temperament of every stream,
The works of fairies, the scenes of ancestral crimes.
And words emerge from him like miller-moths
From the mouths of the dying.
Solitary Tom sits by, silent, unnoticed,
Watching others sing, play, chatter and jest.
Till the day he dies he will never forget
That smile, so sweet, a nameless beauty gave him
As she passed by on horseback
In the fragrant August lane.
At Dorchester prison he stands, transfixed,
Next to the creaking gallows, staring up
At the murderess who slit her husband’s throat.
Beautiful, she dangles against the rainy sky,
Her black silk gown wound tightly round her,
Her face half-visible through a mask of wet cloth.
Sketch-pad in hand, he walks from village to village,
Prentice architect, surveying ancient churches,
Touching their stones with a lover’s hands,
Tracing their lineaments with a pencil,
His quiet eyes lighting on chronicles and dreams.
Squinting at the summer sky from under a straw hat;
Why can he not stay this way forever
And never have to grow into a man?
He knows every clod of this county,
Every field, hedge and gate, every tree’s silhouette,
The depth and temperament of every stream,
The works of fairies, the scenes of ancestral crimes.
And words emerge from him like miller-moths
From the mouths of the dying.
Solitary Tom sits by, silent, unnoticed,
Watching others sing, play, chatter and jest.
Till the day he dies he will never forget
That smile, so sweet, a nameless beauty gave him
As she passed by on horseback
In the fragrant August lane.
At Dorchester prison he stands, transfixed,
Next to the creaking gallows, staring up
At the murderess who slit her husband’s throat.
Beautiful, she dangles against the rainy sky,
Her black silk gown wound tightly round her,
Her face half-visible through a mask of wet cloth.
Sketch-pad in hand, he walks from village to village,
Prentice architect, surveying ancient churches,
Touching their stones with a lover’s hands,
Tracing their lineaments with a pencil,
His quiet eyes lighting on chronicles and dreams.
Lightning Bird of Africa
Africa, where spirits abound,
The baleful and the benign!
The seer breathes life into the bones;
They open their eyes,
Smile, walk and speak.
Man from elsewhere, who are you?
What do you dance?
I dance the crocodile,
The antelope,
The aardvark,
The baboon,
The porcupine.
In the beginning was the Great Serpent,
Whose seven thousand coils gave birth to the stars
And the earth, gouging out rivers and streams.
See him now, moving in the river,
Lashing up waves in the sea;
See him rainbow the sky.
A woman astride a quern
Grinds the grain and sings.
A woman strikes her grindstone
And it rings like a gong.
Perfect. Without flaws.
The sky hears it and smiles with pleasure.
All across Africa,
The stones are growing, singing to themselves.
The new chief at his inauguration
Swallows a crocodile stone.
It is his head, his life, his power.
Have you seen how a captured snake,
After that first wild battle,
Never shows the same ferocity again,
Its spirit broken,
The will to be free lessening by the day?
A hamerkop stands in a pool of water,
Staring intently at its own reflection.
It knows the unknown.
It knows those things that vanish
When you look at them.
It stands alone.
It cannot be pointed at.
It indicates wizards, for it shares their powers.
Once in many generations,
The Lightning Bird,
Pursued by wind and rain,
Assumes human form.
A rock-gong hums
And the hills throb with one fundamental note.
Bare red mountains,
Waterless citadels with the smell of leopards,
Caves filled with paintings.
On one wall a witch doctor,
In mask and tail,
Poised on the ball of one foot,
Reaches out his hand
To cup an impala’s head.
The creature stretches forward its neck,
Meeting the sorcerer mouth to mouth
In a kiss,
The two of them sharing breath.
In the impala’s dark uterus
A pair of eyes stare out,
Bright and watchful.
The first men left their footprints
And we must follow,
In a world black, white and red.
The man struck by lightning
Got up and walked away.
The trees looked after him.
The rocks sang to him.
He wandered with leopards and antelopes.
He vanished in the mountains with the evening sun.
Under a thorn tree the black bull is sacrificed,
While the women chant shimmering praise;
A hammer stone strikes between the horns,
The throat is slit.
Let it rain, let it rain!
In the old days the people buried their dead
Sitting up, facing the rising sun.
But now the world is sad and the land is thin.
The old customs are forgotten.
But still there is water,
And water knows everything,
All secrets,
Mine and yours.
The baleful and the benign!
The seer breathes life into the bones;
They open their eyes,
Smile, walk and speak.
Man from elsewhere, who are you?
What do you dance?
I dance the crocodile,
The antelope,
The aardvark,
The baboon,
The porcupine.
In the beginning was the Great Serpent,
Whose seven thousand coils gave birth to the stars
And the earth, gouging out rivers and streams.
See him now, moving in the river,
Lashing up waves in the sea;
See him rainbow the sky.
A woman astride a quern
Grinds the grain and sings.
A woman strikes her grindstone
And it rings like a gong.
Perfect. Without flaws.
The sky hears it and smiles with pleasure.
All across Africa,
The stones are growing, singing to themselves.
The new chief at his inauguration
Swallows a crocodile stone.
It is his head, his life, his power.
Have you seen how a captured snake,
After that first wild battle,
Never shows the same ferocity again,
Its spirit broken,
The will to be free lessening by the day?
A hamerkop stands in a pool of water,
Staring intently at its own reflection.
It knows the unknown.
It knows those things that vanish
When you look at them.
It stands alone.
It cannot be pointed at.
It indicates wizards, for it shares their powers.
Once in many generations,
The Lightning Bird,
Pursued by wind and rain,
Assumes human form.
A rock-gong hums
And the hills throb with one fundamental note.
Bare red mountains,
Waterless citadels with the smell of leopards,
Caves filled with paintings.
On one wall a witch doctor,
In mask and tail,
Poised on the ball of one foot,
Reaches out his hand
To cup an impala’s head.
The creature stretches forward its neck,
Meeting the sorcerer mouth to mouth
In a kiss,
The two of them sharing breath.
In the impala’s dark uterus
A pair of eyes stare out,
Bright and watchful.
The first men left their footprints
And we must follow,
In a world black, white and red.
The man struck by lightning
Got up and walked away.
The trees looked after him.
The rocks sang to him.
He wandered with leopards and antelopes.
He vanished in the mountains with the evening sun.
Under a thorn tree the black bull is sacrificed,
While the women chant shimmering praise;
A hammer stone strikes between the horns,
The throat is slit.
Let it rain, let it rain!
In the old days the people buried their dead
Sitting up, facing the rising sun.
But now the world is sad and the land is thin.
The old customs are forgotten.
But still there is water,
And water knows everything,
All secrets,
Mine and yours.
In The Days of Ancient China
1
Tsung Ping loved landscapes more than any man.
In the west, he ascended Mounts Ching and Wu,
In the south he stood on Heng’s summit.
On Mount Heng he constructed a hut
And lived in tranquiliity, until he fell ill
And was forced to return home to Chiang-ling.
“My wandering days are over, “he lamented,
“It befalls me to meditate on the Tao,
Only to roam in dreams...”
All that he had seen his travels
He painted on the walls of his house.
2
Po Chu-i, in official disfavour,
Ended up in a rat-hole on the Yangtze,
Blue-shadowed by the peaks of Lu-Shan.
Tramping the hills, he chose a site
And contrived a thatched cottage retreat.
One night’s lodging there brought rest to the body,
Two nights were a guarantee of peace;
Three nights and nothing existed at all
But the bamboo’s dripping
Amid rocks, clouds and trees.
He sowed the pool with lotus
And stocked it with fish,
And a pine-shaded torrent sang in his ears.
Springwater pearls trickled over the ledges,
Turning to mist on the breeze.
Tsung Ping loved landscapes more than any man.
In the west, he ascended Mounts Ching and Wu,
In the south he stood on Heng’s summit.
On Mount Heng he constructed a hut
And lived in tranquiliity, until he fell ill
And was forced to return home to Chiang-ling.
“My wandering days are over, “he lamented,
“It befalls me to meditate on the Tao,
Only to roam in dreams...”
All that he had seen his travels
He painted on the walls of his house.
2
Po Chu-i, in official disfavour,
Ended up in a rat-hole on the Yangtze,
Blue-shadowed by the peaks of Lu-Shan.
Tramping the hills, he chose a site
And contrived a thatched cottage retreat.
One night’s lodging there brought rest to the body,
Two nights were a guarantee of peace;
Three nights and nothing existed at all
But the bamboo’s dripping
Amid rocks, clouds and trees.
He sowed the pool with lotus
And stocked it with fish,
And a pine-shaded torrent sang in his ears.
Springwater pearls trickled over the ledges,
Turning to mist on the breeze.
The Napoleonists
It is always a question of fathers:
The good papa, distant in his foreign realm,
The rotten dad here at home.
A mad god rules the centre.
The sons of despots become despots, too,
Rulers of their own rival courts.
They ride with Napoleon in the wilderness,
Banished from the corrupt citadel,
Rallying the righteous legions of the dead
Against the present, under the future’s flag.
Only revolt is pure and religious:
Mercurial escapists, spitting cobras
Of the mind, they relish their venom,
Yet believing their hatred benign,
All too ready to turn the dagger
Against themselves, in vicious despair.
Dandy’s nonchalance turns to violence,
Persuaded of its own moral right,
Against the loved detested patriarch.
The cold moon promises final defeat,
After grand performances of nursery games,
The exercise of narcissistic martyrdom
In “revolution” or “enlightened reform”.
And all these faces, theoretically loved,
Are but masks in a sinister charade.
The good papa, distant in his foreign realm,
The rotten dad here at home.
A mad god rules the centre.
The sons of despots become despots, too,
Rulers of their own rival courts.
They ride with Napoleon in the wilderness,
Banished from the corrupt citadel,
Rallying the righteous legions of the dead
Against the present, under the future’s flag.
Only revolt is pure and religious:
Mercurial escapists, spitting cobras
Of the mind, they relish their venom,
Yet believing their hatred benign,
All too ready to turn the dagger
Against themselves, in vicious despair.
Dandy’s nonchalance turns to violence,
Persuaded of its own moral right,
Against the loved detested patriarch.
The cold moon promises final defeat,
After grand performances of nursery games,
The exercise of narcissistic martyrdom
In “revolution” or “enlightened reform”.
And all these faces, theoretically loved,
Are but masks in a sinister charade.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Secrets
These secrets are Promethean fire.
A path, a riddle, a jewel, an oath...which will you choose?
Those who answer the Sphinx incorrectly are torn to pieces and devoured.
Insiders, outsiders, guarding the unspeakable with circumlocutions, we draw boundaries round names. Transparency may tempt us, at times, yet we remain, with guilty gratitude, opaque.
Who controls this information? Who penetrates the enemy’s defences? Who is augmented and who is reduced?
What is open closes, what is closed opens-under the spell of a secret, a formula for creation and destruction, a chemical catalyst.
Bodily excretions, mental secretions...here goes another stab at definition, another attempt to put birds in cages.
The initiate is led through gloomy mazes, by vertiginous precipices, into a monster's den, a coven of torments. Until he reaches the Holy of Holies and the hallowed words.
I must have a confessor. Someone to show sympathy, someone to intrigue and shock, to manipulate with flaunted weakness and concealed strength. I name my temptations the better to resist them. Dear listener, will you interpret my indiscretions and guide me to release? I am here to seduce, to exploit, to elicit responses.
Invisible crimes infest the air. Who does not crave the exposure of justice? Who does not wish to unmask?
The devilish secret is stolen and then offered as a gift.Why, friend, are you reluctant to accept it? It is simply a trade, a property.
This gossip is a substitute for understanding. Not to reel at dangerous complexity. Not to blink and look again.
Did I exist? Did I have an effect? I dabbled in judgements, dealt a few blows, kept most things to myself.
A path, a riddle, a jewel, an oath...which will you choose?
Those who answer the Sphinx incorrectly are torn to pieces and devoured.
Insiders, outsiders, guarding the unspeakable with circumlocutions, we draw boundaries round names. Transparency may tempt us, at times, yet we remain, with guilty gratitude, opaque.
Who controls this information? Who penetrates the enemy’s defences? Who is augmented and who is reduced?
What is open closes, what is closed opens-under the spell of a secret, a formula for creation and destruction, a chemical catalyst.
Bodily excretions, mental secretions...here goes another stab at definition, another attempt to put birds in cages.
The initiate is led through gloomy mazes, by vertiginous precipices, into a monster's den, a coven of torments. Until he reaches the Holy of Holies and the hallowed words.
I must have a confessor. Someone to show sympathy, someone to intrigue and shock, to manipulate with flaunted weakness and concealed strength. I name my temptations the better to resist them. Dear listener, will you interpret my indiscretions and guide me to release? I am here to seduce, to exploit, to elicit responses.
Invisible crimes infest the air. Who does not crave the exposure of justice? Who does not wish to unmask?
The devilish secret is stolen and then offered as a gift.Why, friend, are you reluctant to accept it? It is simply a trade, a property.
This gossip is a substitute for understanding. Not to reel at dangerous complexity. Not to blink and look again.
Did I exist? Did I have an effect? I dabbled in judgements, dealt a few blows, kept most things to myself.
Black Widow Pulsar
Brittle rock cries out.
Glitter-birds consecrate the air.
Prayers float downriver.
Statues look around.
Lava bubbles up.
Centre and circumference are one.
A woolly mammoth is raised intact from the ice.
How can the material convolutions of a brain
Contain a mind?
Through spring the alien rainbow woman strolls.
Warm reefs grow coruscations
While human generations live and die.
A small boy passes his finger through a candleflame, delighted.
A jeweller sits at his table, shaping a diamond with infinite patience.
How much damage have I done in my life?
How much damage?
Who built the cyclopean cities,
The semi-visible capitals of time?
Stones into plants into animals into men.
The somnambulist walks among the dead,
Faces he never really looked at.
The funambulist sets out on the rope,
Wobbling, stopping, advancing step by step.
In a frozen rock-wave an ammonite is sleeping.
A bloody hare soaks in a jug.
The marketplace is deserted.
Where have all the noisy demons gone?
A man with forged documents crosses the border.
A red horse canters alone in a field
Where the sun plays dice.
The glittering fleece hangs on a tree
On an island at the end of the world.
The enemies of poetry sit in contracting rooms,
Counting grains of dust
And checking the exchange rate.
Mountains inverted in a lake.
A squirrel leaps between two branches.
Lightning flickers under the sleeper’s eyelids.
A green snake sheds its skin in the undergrowth.
An ox’s carcass shines in the hot sun.
The stranger will come as foretold.
Glitter-birds consecrate the air.
Prayers float downriver.
Statues look around.
Lava bubbles up.
Centre and circumference are one.
A woolly mammoth is raised intact from the ice.
How can the material convolutions of a brain
Contain a mind?
Through spring the alien rainbow woman strolls.
Warm reefs grow coruscations
While human generations live and die.
A small boy passes his finger through a candleflame, delighted.
A jeweller sits at his table, shaping a diamond with infinite patience.
How much damage have I done in my life?
How much damage?
Who built the cyclopean cities,
The semi-visible capitals of time?
Stones into plants into animals into men.
The somnambulist walks among the dead,
Faces he never really looked at.
The funambulist sets out on the rope,
Wobbling, stopping, advancing step by step.
In a frozen rock-wave an ammonite is sleeping.
A bloody hare soaks in a jug.
The marketplace is deserted.
Where have all the noisy demons gone?
A man with forged documents crosses the border.
A red horse canters alone in a field
Where the sun plays dice.
The glittering fleece hangs on a tree
On an island at the end of the world.
The enemies of poetry sit in contracting rooms,
Counting grains of dust
And checking the exchange rate.
Mountains inverted in a lake.
A squirrel leaps between two branches.
Lightning flickers under the sleeper’s eyelids.
A green snake sheds its skin in the undergrowth.
An ox’s carcass shines in the hot sun.
The stranger will come as foretold.
Henry James
History’s passenger, the fastidious American
Observes and records with cool discernment,
Passionate for art, not for passion.
All these adventures in the mind-
Indirections, omissions, anxiety, control...
A lonely old celibate in an English villa,
Surrounding himself with precious artefacts,
He rewrites their beauty with critical élan,
His solitary solace this difficult craft
That wrings a man out, squeezes him dry.
The last springtime of the century:
Mourning a absent young ephebe
Held off-perhaps wrongly-but tenderly-
He sees, in the mirror, grey streaks in his beard...
Too late? Too late? He must begin again,
Believing in new discoveries and ambitions,
To ensphere the soul entire,
Open himself to all he has neglected,
Break out to the great world beyond
And share in unpretentious human warmth.
Too long concealed and muffled by this beard,
With sudden resolution, he shaves
And stares back at the clean rejuvenated face,
Domed skull, strong nose, sensuous lips,
The deep blue lyncean eyes of the Master.
In his mind, a new book is taking shape:
His grave, measured voice sounds through
The hosue, dictating to an amanuensis,
Evolving long sinuous sphyngine sentences.
On his bicycle, he hums along seaside lanes,
Enacting his mind’s looping motions,
Winding in and out with aristocratic aplomb.
Observes and records with cool discernment,
Passionate for art, not for passion.
All these adventures in the mind-
Indirections, omissions, anxiety, control...
A lonely old celibate in an English villa,
Surrounding himself with precious artefacts,
He rewrites their beauty with critical élan,
His solitary solace this difficult craft
That wrings a man out, squeezes him dry.
The last springtime of the century:
Mourning a absent young ephebe
Held off-perhaps wrongly-but tenderly-
He sees, in the mirror, grey streaks in his beard...
Too late? Too late? He must begin again,
Believing in new discoveries and ambitions,
To ensphere the soul entire,
Open himself to all he has neglected,
Break out to the great world beyond
And share in unpretentious human warmth.
Too long concealed and muffled by this beard,
With sudden resolution, he shaves
And stares back at the clean rejuvenated face,
Domed skull, strong nose, sensuous lips,
The deep blue lyncean eyes of the Master.
In his mind, a new book is taking shape:
His grave, measured voice sounds through
The hosue, dictating to an amanuensis,
Evolving long sinuous sphyngine sentences.
On his bicycle, he hums along seaside lanes,
Enacting his mind’s looping motions,
Winding in and out with aristocratic aplomb.
Samuel Johnson
Large unpredictable hands zoom in, assail him,
Freakish through his eyes’ semi-darkness,
Whudding round his head’s cracked bell,
Violating with a will to correct.
Little Samuel sits in scrofulous stupor,
Defiantly gulping down the painful world,
Wills himself independent, responsible,
Not to blame the world for anything,
But cure himself with unceasing ambition.
What if disease should unman him,
Make him crave self-pity, and forfeit
The hopeful energy to strive and fight?
The inner man is madness, treachery, fear...
He gropes at the solid world for support,
To sober his erratic mind with fact.
The young man stares up at the town clock,
Too stunned by lassitude even to recognise
The hour. Suicide or lunacy? Reason has
No jurisdiction here. Every resolution
Disillusions itself, stranded in self-loathing.
Mile after mile, the cumbersome idiot
Tramps the roads, trying to forget himself,
To outpace the demons of sloth.
Self-persecuting his soul with scruples,
He teeters, besieged, in self-revenge,
Bedevilled by angry tics and compulsions.
Imagine, imagine, imagine!-Attack the void
With ferocious invention, toil, travail
To outmanoeuvre despair...or die...
On a Lincolnshire hill, with friends,
Johnson surveys the steep slope, mischievously
Grinning: “Why, I haven’t had a proper roll
In ages!”In a moment, he empties his pockets
And lies on the edge, then launches himself,
Turning over and over, bouncing down
To the bottom, then clambers to his feet,
Huffing and laughing, big face flushed
With childish triumph.
Sleepless, the sage paces up and down his rooms,
Measuring out the floor with heavy tread,
-Will it bear his weight, his confusion and grief?-
Contriving ritual patterns with heels and toe,
Soothing himself with arithmetical exercises.
In the neighbouring room sleeps a sick young
Prostitute, a hollow-cheeked wretch he had lifted
Out of the utter the night beforehand carried
Safely home on his broad back. The destitute
Would always find succour under his roof,
Where he returned, always, with pockets empty,
All the coins given in alms to street-beggars.
Hunched at table, through the night, he hews
Out solemn stately periods, solid bridges
To hold him to the earth and carry him over.
Freakish through his eyes’ semi-darkness,
Whudding round his head’s cracked bell,
Violating with a will to correct.
Little Samuel sits in scrofulous stupor,
Defiantly gulping down the painful world,
Wills himself independent, responsible,
Not to blame the world for anything,
But cure himself with unceasing ambition.
What if disease should unman him,
Make him crave self-pity, and forfeit
The hopeful energy to strive and fight?
The inner man is madness, treachery, fear...
He gropes at the solid world for support,
To sober his erratic mind with fact.
The young man stares up at the town clock,
Too stunned by lassitude even to recognise
The hour. Suicide or lunacy? Reason has
No jurisdiction here. Every resolution
Disillusions itself, stranded in self-loathing.
Mile after mile, the cumbersome idiot
Tramps the roads, trying to forget himself,
To outpace the demons of sloth.
Self-persecuting his soul with scruples,
He teeters, besieged, in self-revenge,
Bedevilled by angry tics and compulsions.
Imagine, imagine, imagine!-Attack the void
With ferocious invention, toil, travail
To outmanoeuvre despair...or die...
On a Lincolnshire hill, with friends,
Johnson surveys the steep slope, mischievously
Grinning: “Why, I haven’t had a proper roll
In ages!”In a moment, he empties his pockets
And lies on the edge, then launches himself,
Turning over and over, bouncing down
To the bottom, then clambers to his feet,
Huffing and laughing, big face flushed
With childish triumph.
Sleepless, the sage paces up and down his rooms,
Measuring out the floor with heavy tread,
-Will it bear his weight, his confusion and grief?-
Contriving ritual patterns with heels and toe,
Soothing himself with arithmetical exercises.
In the neighbouring room sleeps a sick young
Prostitute, a hollow-cheeked wretch he had lifted
Out of the utter the night beforehand carried
Safely home on his broad back. The destitute
Would always find succour under his roof,
Where he returned, always, with pockets empty,
All the coins given in alms to street-beggars.
Hunched at table, through the night, he hews
Out solemn stately periods, solid bridges
To hold him to the earth and carry him over.
The Initiation (Papua New Guinea)
Sinuous, impeded current, cargoeing terremote debris,
All the soil sucked from the screes,
Frothing like a sick horse, the river churns downward,
Kicking hillocks dropped from heaven.
Rock-dice spin amid panting vapour,
Ferrous waters oiled with plant decay.
Stumble, stumble through strangling purgatory,
Purblind through thickets, lianas, thorns.
Scratches. Ant-bites. Hunger. Rotting skin.
Bellyaches. Isolation. Fever. Eyes won’t focus.
Paltry bivouacs; leaves clatter; lukewarm rain.
Bottlegreen monotony, falling, bruising.
Cold bone-crack nights of mosquito savagery,
Led astray, disoriented, by a false twinkle,
Drowning in chaos of flagellating branches,
Knotted and noosed nothing straight or true...
Rainblack bark: leeches stretch and lean,
Waving as they wait to fasten.
Cobble-scouring river gushes slower, darker.
Slowly loose-clustered bats flap across pink sky.
A subtle orange sun goes to ground
Behind the village. Naked children, balanced
On slick black branches, launch into the water,
Kicking as they crash; they surface, shrieking
With joy. Tinfoil moisture peels down
Treebrown skin, as they monkey up
Their makeshift divingboards again.
Slimy slugbodied clouds dawdle over
The treetops, where spirit houses hide
In forests enclaves, under the mottled full moon.
Morning miasma. A sprightly canoe
Cuts the channel, sticky new cobwebs
Snapping in the paddlers’ faces,
Damp air sickly with overripe fruit.
Bat-squadrons whud away to somnolent asylums.
Egrets lodged on drift-logs poise their scissor profiles.
The crocodile awakes...initiates sleep with their fear...
The panting river shimmers, mercury near boiling...
Tick-tock: hand-drums, a monster stamping...
In the crocodile’s nest, the threshing floor
Of manhood, beaten, bleeding, mud-shrouded
Sleepwalkers dance...submitted to perfect pain,
The delving knifepoint’s dreamy shock...
Dueting parent flutes lull the little ones to sleep.
Shavenheaded, scarified, they sing out
Their suffering, tortured and mocked
In the hallowed arena, forbidden the privileges
Of men, to please a cruel loving god.
All the soil sucked from the screes,
Frothing like a sick horse, the river churns downward,
Kicking hillocks dropped from heaven.
Rock-dice spin amid panting vapour,
Ferrous waters oiled with plant decay.
Stumble, stumble through strangling purgatory,
Purblind through thickets, lianas, thorns.
Scratches. Ant-bites. Hunger. Rotting skin.
Bellyaches. Isolation. Fever. Eyes won’t focus.
Paltry bivouacs; leaves clatter; lukewarm rain.
Bottlegreen monotony, falling, bruising.
Cold bone-crack nights of mosquito savagery,
Led astray, disoriented, by a false twinkle,
Drowning in chaos of flagellating branches,
Knotted and noosed nothing straight or true...
Rainblack bark: leeches stretch and lean,
Waving as they wait to fasten.
Cobble-scouring river gushes slower, darker.
Slowly loose-clustered bats flap across pink sky.
A subtle orange sun goes to ground
Behind the village. Naked children, balanced
On slick black branches, launch into the water,
Kicking as they crash; they surface, shrieking
With joy. Tinfoil moisture peels down
Treebrown skin, as they monkey up
Their makeshift divingboards again.
Slimy slugbodied clouds dawdle over
The treetops, where spirit houses hide
In forests enclaves, under the mottled full moon.
Morning miasma. A sprightly canoe
Cuts the channel, sticky new cobwebs
Snapping in the paddlers’ faces,
Damp air sickly with overripe fruit.
Bat-squadrons whud away to somnolent asylums.
Egrets lodged on drift-logs poise their scissor profiles.
The crocodile awakes...initiates sleep with their fear...
The panting river shimmers, mercury near boiling...
Tick-tock: hand-drums, a monster stamping...
In the crocodile’s nest, the threshing floor
Of manhood, beaten, bleeding, mud-shrouded
Sleepwalkers dance...submitted to perfect pain,
The delving knifepoint’s dreamy shock...
Dueting parent flutes lull the little ones to sleep.
Shavenheaded, scarified, they sing out
Their suffering, tortured and mocked
In the hallowed arena, forbidden the privileges
Of men, to please a cruel loving god.
Nichiren Shoshu
Always the ten worlds, from moment to moment-
Hell, hunger, animality, anger, tranquillity,
Rapture, learning and realisation,
Boddihisattva, buddhahood!
Infinitely fluctuating mind, feverish merry-go-round...
You worry at dire imaginings,
Slander yourself with grimacing glee...
From hell to heaven the road is short but steep.
Hunger, hunger...desire loves only itself...
Who but you can turn poison into elixir?
Shakyamuni, walking in the Deer Park,
Came upon a deer lying stricken by an arrow;
Two learned Brahmins stood there, arguing
Earnestly the nature and meaning of death,
And ,turning to the stranger, asked his opinion.
Shakyamuni, silently, simply knelt
And pulled the shaft from the suffering animal’s side.
The urge to live and live, and never die,
Clumsy destructive greed,
All the animal dread in your instincts,
Making hostile and blind...
Angry idiot, attached and detached,
Suprerior, so superior (to what?),
Feigning benevolence, righteousness, propriety,
Disfigured underneath...
Contemptuous one, is it fame you want,
Is it success?
Human, be true, be tranquil,
Excellent and wise in every motion.
Do you smother yourself in sloth?
Do you fear the risks of change?
Rapture of fulfilled desire-
All formlessness and form-
The ridiculous orgasm-gone!
Your goodness may imperil you more than your evil.
In everyone is a mother’s devotion,
The vacuum is a plenum of love,
Absorbing all evil, unlocking all prisons
In an everlasting instant.
When there is war in a single particle,
How can there be peace anywhere?
If the soul condescends or begrudges,
So much good will is undone.
The entire world is latency,
The seen from the unseen, here and not here,
Memories now unconscious, now manifest,
Cherry blossoms appearing and disappearing as they will.
The cause is the effect.
Miraculously, exquisitely strict and harmonious-
The laws, the connections everywhere!
Each moment offers the gift to choose
And become.
Hell, hunger, animality, anger, tranquillity,
Rapture, learning and realisation,
Boddihisattva, buddhahood!
Infinitely fluctuating mind, feverish merry-go-round...
You worry at dire imaginings,
Slander yourself with grimacing glee...
From hell to heaven the road is short but steep.
Hunger, hunger...desire loves only itself...
Who but you can turn poison into elixir?
Shakyamuni, walking in the Deer Park,
Came upon a deer lying stricken by an arrow;
Two learned Brahmins stood there, arguing
Earnestly the nature and meaning of death,
And ,turning to the stranger, asked his opinion.
Shakyamuni, silently, simply knelt
And pulled the shaft from the suffering animal’s side.
The urge to live and live, and never die,
Clumsy destructive greed,
All the animal dread in your instincts,
Making hostile and blind...
Angry idiot, attached and detached,
Suprerior, so superior (to what?),
Feigning benevolence, righteousness, propriety,
Disfigured underneath...
Contemptuous one, is it fame you want,
Is it success?
Human, be true, be tranquil,
Excellent and wise in every motion.
Do you smother yourself in sloth?
Do you fear the risks of change?
Rapture of fulfilled desire-
All formlessness and form-
The ridiculous orgasm-gone!
Your goodness may imperil you more than your evil.
In everyone is a mother’s devotion,
The vacuum is a plenum of love,
Absorbing all evil, unlocking all prisons
In an everlasting instant.
When there is war in a single particle,
How can there be peace anywhere?
If the soul condescends or begrudges,
So much good will is undone.
The entire world is latency,
The seen from the unseen, here and not here,
Memories now unconscious, now manifest,
Cherry blossoms appearing and disappearing as they will.
The cause is the effect.
Miraculously, exquisitely strict and harmonious-
The laws, the connections everywhere!
Each moment offers the gift to choose
And become.
The Phoenicians
From wilderness they came the ocean’s Bedouin,
Their vessels indomitable camels saddled,
The watery wastes their pasture and delight,
Roaming far from cities’ clenched fists,
Their liberty in impermanence, in perpetual motion,
the night sky their flickering compass and dream.
They arrive, do there business, disappear again,
A voluble people, with thin canny features,
Trading wares found only in their ships’ holds,
Hinting at shores no mere Greek ever trod;
And many an Athenian captain’s cry of discovery
Dies on his lips as a rounds a newfound headland,
Only to find the Phoenicians there before him.
Their hooded agents stand behind the throne
Of Egypt, and mingle at the highest courts,
Whispering in the ears of Eastern kings.
Even Alexander’s eyes are dark with envy
At these mysterious seafowl gliding, untouchable,
In their element, masters of infinite chance.
Yes, he, Alexander, will break their proud wings
And forbid them, cast the back onto land
In abjection, drain the ocean from under them,
Laughing to see them marooned, undone!
There shall be no demi-gods but he alone!
Who, frittering sand through superstitious fingers,
Riddles the riddle of glass? You Lebanese mages
Inexplicably turn the sombre into light.
Little murex shells plucked from shallows
Are milked with tender cunning for their secret
Splendour-that stately purple cloth that lies
Nonchalantly on monarchs’ and senators’ shoulders.
Cockleshell boats cast off into the chartless,
Caulked and buoyed audaciously, risking all
On the wind’s evil eye, the sailors striking
Bargains with the gods, from dawn to dawn.
Jezebel Phoenicia- Europe astride the white bull;
Aphrodite’s bare feet on the sands of Paphos,
As she wades ashore, out of the shimmering East...
Hawk nosed Adonis, that pungent brown Semite,
Is smelted and recast in foreign climes;
Dionysus, dragon in a bubbling chalice,
Breathes fire into Crete and Hellas,
Beer-bibbers’ nemesis, man-shaped vine...
Aleph, beth, daleth...ox’s head, house, door...
Merchants’ tally, the sea’s exclamations,
Crane-wings’ casual genius on the air!
Notches in the tongue bespeak the tempest,
History’s roaring assaults and weird lulls,
The longing for a firm and bounteous shore...
Their vessels indomitable camels saddled,
The watery wastes their pasture and delight,
Roaming far from cities’ clenched fists,
Their liberty in impermanence, in perpetual motion,
the night sky their flickering compass and dream.
They arrive, do there business, disappear again,
A voluble people, with thin canny features,
Trading wares found only in their ships’ holds,
Hinting at shores no mere Greek ever trod;
And many an Athenian captain’s cry of discovery
Dies on his lips as a rounds a newfound headland,
Only to find the Phoenicians there before him.
Their hooded agents stand behind the throne
Of Egypt, and mingle at the highest courts,
Whispering in the ears of Eastern kings.
Even Alexander’s eyes are dark with envy
At these mysterious seafowl gliding, untouchable,
In their element, masters of infinite chance.
Yes, he, Alexander, will break their proud wings
And forbid them, cast the back onto land
In abjection, drain the ocean from under them,
Laughing to see them marooned, undone!
There shall be no demi-gods but he alone!
Who, frittering sand through superstitious fingers,
Riddles the riddle of glass? You Lebanese mages
Inexplicably turn the sombre into light.
Little murex shells plucked from shallows
Are milked with tender cunning for their secret
Splendour-that stately purple cloth that lies
Nonchalantly on monarchs’ and senators’ shoulders.
Cockleshell boats cast off into the chartless,
Caulked and buoyed audaciously, risking all
On the wind’s evil eye, the sailors striking
Bargains with the gods, from dawn to dawn.
Jezebel Phoenicia- Europe astride the white bull;
Aphrodite’s bare feet on the sands of Paphos,
As she wades ashore, out of the shimmering East...
Hawk nosed Adonis, that pungent brown Semite,
Is smelted and recast in foreign climes;
Dionysus, dragon in a bubbling chalice,
Breathes fire into Crete and Hellas,
Beer-bibbers’ nemesis, man-shaped vine...
Aleph, beth, daleth...ox’s head, house, door...
Merchants’ tally, the sea’s exclamations,
Crane-wings’ casual genius on the air!
Notches in the tongue bespeak the tempest,
History’s roaring assaults and weird lulls,
The longing for a firm and bounteous shore...
Cornwall
Radioactive granite. Hard rocks. Sharp coast.
This land breaks you down so you can live anew.
Blackbacked gulls and oystercatchers
Angel the winter beaches.
Bladderwrack and tangleweed
Wave brown in remotest coves.
Jagged rocks torn from the land lie tumbled
Amid seaweed and anemone,
Cormorants and shags stand, shivering on rocks,
Staring deep into the sea,
Nightwalkers’ country: a fish rises in a stream,
Drum-loud plop rippling in the still.
Dry sticks crackle. Something is moving
In the deep secretive wood.
Suddenly the sad cry of a rabbit
Pounced on by a fox.
A badger emerging from its sett
Raises its muzzle to the moon in homage.
The furious moon gallops down into the sea,
The dizzy earth turns over like a foetus in the womb.
The churning gull-stormed Atlantic is my own pulse.
Billows shatter against headlands,
Throw white foam-spouts into the air.
Morning sun paints rainbows in the salt drift,
Waves are blustering, breaking, besieging,
All fluttering flaking whirling white steam;
The sun’s reflection in the water
Is juddering disintegrating fire-flakes...
In the abandoned slate quarry
Saplings of ash, beech and willow have rooted;
Rusty deserted tramways and disused machinery,
Rusted wagons and winches lie around.
Half-hidden under ferns and wildflowers;
Slate-red, green and white- winks in the sun;
Jackdaws nest on ledges.
Buzzards and ravens fly overhead.
Purple orchids, hawkweed, thistles and sloe bushes
Thrive among spoil heaps.
God the hermit clenches in the granite,
The desolate moorland, the bogs, the buttercup meadows.
The harsh fanatical voice of a Celtic saint,
Uttering terror and peace.
Look at the isolated farms, shouldering the wind,
Confronting the sea and its dead,
Ricks crow-and-jackdaw-stewarded,
Stonechats frickering over gorse-thatched greystone walls.
Megalithic stone circles dance under the sky,
Summer sea-mists curl up to slumber
In obsolete quarries and mines.
Can you hear , when the tide is running,
The bells and voices of drowned Lyonesse?
Here the Celtic missionaries walked, ragged and wild,
Preaching and healing like the wind,
Tasting the blown sea-salt on their tongues
As they shook their staves in righteous anger.
Their gnarled fists christened granite,
Raising baptisteries over heathen springs and wells.
At night, they lay down with the sheep for warmth;
At dawn, they sang as they bathed in cold rivers.
They grew old and gnarled like winter elms and thorns,
And fell, at last, gladly into God’s hands,
Absorbed into the moors’ endless prayer.
The lights of Bodmin Moor are the milkwort and lichens,
Skylarks’ wings and wide skies,
A realm more dangerous and exquisite,
Where birds sing themselves into ecstasy,
A chalice uplifted swirling with murmurous spirits.
Heal yourself by clinging to granite,
Shed sickness into the immovable incorruptible stone,
Among the wastes and ruins, forced to face yourself,
Initiated into humility and courage
By Neolithic stillness.
The sun settles on your face
Like a dragonfly on a stream.
Thin earth drizzled over granite.
Grass. Rock. Wind. Marsh. Bog.
Uncanny horses appear out of nowhere,
Charging into the cold air, manes blazing, heads high,
Dragon-pennants of breath streaming
From strained nostrils and shining backs;
They gallop across their winter underworld,
Lift their sovereign heads in piercing neighs.
Faint eerie murmurings hang over the stone circles,
Voices of the Beaker People who saw
The sun spinning off the summer tors
And the moon swimming like a sea-monster
Through their dreams, as they danced
To hold the sky up...
Shipwrecks’ whale skeletons litter the bays.
Desolate waves boom in caverns, bite at rocks.
Crabs and lobsters pick out drowned sailors’ eyes,
Tear the flesh from their limbs.
Along bare cliffs only winter gorse blooms.
Everything is crumbling away
Into that vast invincible sadness
Under the shrunken phantom sun.
Seals gaze out to sea with the eyes
Of drowned souls, beyond hope or prayer.
White china clay waste pyramids gleam
In the sun, reflecting the sea off the clouds,
And the whole hill-range shivers with the windy light,
Silver, blue and gold, and sometimes magenta...
Here, you are death’s astronaut, cut off
In white space, belittled yet exalted,
Turned into a ghost, until sunset
Crimsons the hills, lava streaming into darkness.
This land breaks you down so you can live anew.
Blackbacked gulls and oystercatchers
Angel the winter beaches.
Bladderwrack and tangleweed
Wave brown in remotest coves.
Jagged rocks torn from the land lie tumbled
Amid seaweed and anemone,
Cormorants and shags stand, shivering on rocks,
Staring deep into the sea,
Nightwalkers’ country: a fish rises in a stream,
Drum-loud plop rippling in the still.
Dry sticks crackle. Something is moving
In the deep secretive wood.
Suddenly the sad cry of a rabbit
Pounced on by a fox.
A badger emerging from its sett
Raises its muzzle to the moon in homage.
The furious moon gallops down into the sea,
The dizzy earth turns over like a foetus in the womb.
The churning gull-stormed Atlantic is my own pulse.
Billows shatter against headlands,
Throw white foam-spouts into the air.
Morning sun paints rainbows in the salt drift,
Waves are blustering, breaking, besieging,
All fluttering flaking whirling white steam;
The sun’s reflection in the water
Is juddering disintegrating fire-flakes...
In the abandoned slate quarry
Saplings of ash, beech and willow have rooted;
Rusty deserted tramways and disused machinery,
Rusted wagons and winches lie around.
Half-hidden under ferns and wildflowers;
Slate-red, green and white- winks in the sun;
Jackdaws nest on ledges.
Buzzards and ravens fly overhead.
Purple orchids, hawkweed, thistles and sloe bushes
Thrive among spoil heaps.
God the hermit clenches in the granite,
The desolate moorland, the bogs, the buttercup meadows.
The harsh fanatical voice of a Celtic saint,
Uttering terror and peace.
Look at the isolated farms, shouldering the wind,
Confronting the sea and its dead,
Ricks crow-and-jackdaw-stewarded,
Stonechats frickering over gorse-thatched greystone walls.
Megalithic stone circles dance under the sky,
Summer sea-mists curl up to slumber
In obsolete quarries and mines.
Can you hear , when the tide is running,
The bells and voices of drowned Lyonesse?
Here the Celtic missionaries walked, ragged and wild,
Preaching and healing like the wind,
Tasting the blown sea-salt on their tongues
As they shook their staves in righteous anger.
Their gnarled fists christened granite,
Raising baptisteries over heathen springs and wells.
At night, they lay down with the sheep for warmth;
At dawn, they sang as they bathed in cold rivers.
They grew old and gnarled like winter elms and thorns,
And fell, at last, gladly into God’s hands,
Absorbed into the moors’ endless prayer.
The lights of Bodmin Moor are the milkwort and lichens,
Skylarks’ wings and wide skies,
A realm more dangerous and exquisite,
Where birds sing themselves into ecstasy,
A chalice uplifted swirling with murmurous spirits.
Heal yourself by clinging to granite,
Shed sickness into the immovable incorruptible stone,
Among the wastes and ruins, forced to face yourself,
Initiated into humility and courage
By Neolithic stillness.
The sun settles on your face
Like a dragonfly on a stream.
Thin earth drizzled over granite.
Grass. Rock. Wind. Marsh. Bog.
Uncanny horses appear out of nowhere,
Charging into the cold air, manes blazing, heads high,
Dragon-pennants of breath streaming
From strained nostrils and shining backs;
They gallop across their winter underworld,
Lift their sovereign heads in piercing neighs.
Faint eerie murmurings hang over the stone circles,
Voices of the Beaker People who saw
The sun spinning off the summer tors
And the moon swimming like a sea-monster
Through their dreams, as they danced
To hold the sky up...
Shipwrecks’ whale skeletons litter the bays.
Desolate waves boom in caverns, bite at rocks.
Crabs and lobsters pick out drowned sailors’ eyes,
Tear the flesh from their limbs.
Along bare cliffs only winter gorse blooms.
Everything is crumbling away
Into that vast invincible sadness
Under the shrunken phantom sun.
Seals gaze out to sea with the eyes
Of drowned souls, beyond hope or prayer.
White china clay waste pyramids gleam
In the sun, reflecting the sea off the clouds,
And the whole hill-range shivers with the windy light,
Silver, blue and gold, and sometimes magenta...
Here, you are death’s astronaut, cut off
In white space, belittled yet exalted,
Turned into a ghost, until sunset
Crimsons the hills, lava streaming into darkness.
Ivan Turgenev
That brave handsome face, always distant, like the stars...
A single kind word or gesture from his father
Startles the little lad into incoherent babbling,
A grateful sinner in the presence of God.
Just for a moment, the idol is a friend,
Loved and trusted without restraint,
Then suddenly, inexplicably, that magisterial hand
Brushes him aside like a bothersome fly,
But with such terrifying courtesy-and then he is gone.
Once, only once, did his father caress him-
So tenderly, so unexpectedly, that the boy
Thought he would burst into sobs like a ninny,
Shocked by the possibility of love.
Be decisive, be determined! If only!
If only he could please his idol thus.
To be a hero...but what kind of hero?
Something like that forbear, Peter the Great’s jester,
Who enlightened shaggy boyars with a barber’s shears?
The big house, swarming with gossip and intrigue;
The serfs in the fields, carrying the world on their backs,
Tensed for the next blow to fall...
The gentle boy’s greyblue eyes are always watching:
Registering his mother’s cruel caprice
As she sends a domestic out to be flogged.
This is the miniature state she has ordained,
Her lackeys given courtly titles and ministerial dignity,
And her own police force at her beck and call.
Expert at inflicting humiliation and distress,
She guards her own almighty serenity at all costs,
Checking her reflection in the glass.
From a Parisian window, Turgenev trains his telescope
On the East, and rolls superb Russian syllables
On his tongue, wondering at his countrymen’s folly:
How could the possessors of such enchanted speech
Not themselves be beautiful, just and free?
Surrounded by vivacious blasé French chatter,
The courtly Russian bulks in his own slow timezone,
Maintaining stately balance and control...
But sometimes a wind blows in from the East,
Carrying the sound of quarrelling voices,
And he yearns for the motherland’s dark earth.
A single kind word or gesture from his father
Startles the little lad into incoherent babbling,
A grateful sinner in the presence of God.
Just for a moment, the idol is a friend,
Loved and trusted without restraint,
Then suddenly, inexplicably, that magisterial hand
Brushes him aside like a bothersome fly,
But with such terrifying courtesy-and then he is gone.
Once, only once, did his father caress him-
So tenderly, so unexpectedly, that the boy
Thought he would burst into sobs like a ninny,
Shocked by the possibility of love.
Be decisive, be determined! If only!
If only he could please his idol thus.
To be a hero...but what kind of hero?
Something like that forbear, Peter the Great’s jester,
Who enlightened shaggy boyars with a barber’s shears?
The big house, swarming with gossip and intrigue;
The serfs in the fields, carrying the world on their backs,
Tensed for the next blow to fall...
The gentle boy’s greyblue eyes are always watching:
Registering his mother’s cruel caprice
As she sends a domestic out to be flogged.
This is the miniature state she has ordained,
Her lackeys given courtly titles and ministerial dignity,
And her own police force at her beck and call.
Expert at inflicting humiliation and distress,
She guards her own almighty serenity at all costs,
Checking her reflection in the glass.
From a Parisian window, Turgenev trains his telescope
On the East, and rolls superb Russian syllables
On his tongue, wondering at his countrymen’s folly:
How could the possessors of such enchanted speech
Not themselves be beautiful, just and free?
Surrounded by vivacious blasé French chatter,
The courtly Russian bulks in his own slow timezone,
Maintaining stately balance and control...
But sometimes a wind blows in from the East,
Carrying the sound of quarrelling voices,
And he yearns for the motherland’s dark earth.
Franz Liszt
Will lightning strike through the drawing room ceiling?
Gazing upward in solemn supplication, he
Lets his hands fall casually to the keyboard,
Dishevelled head motionless, in suspense,
As the haughty philistines wait to be entertained,
To have their luxurious expectations fulfilled.
Those stern white hands tease across the keys,
Trembling into a numinous prelude...
Abruptly the maestro starts to his feet,
Bangs the piano lid shut with imperious flourish-
No! The bear will not dance tonight!
In his rooms Liszt paces back and forth...
Too many years performing for idiots,
Titillating with idle brilliance,
When he should give himself to solitude and creation,
Abandon vanity’s charavari...
Like a jockey on an Arab mare,he jumps the piano,
Daredevil storming the atmosphere,
His galloping fingers an entire orchestra,
Hurtling into the abyss.
Genteel ladies’ faces boggle with rapture,
Electricity jolting them out of their seats,
Hoisting their skirts over their heads.
Gazing upward in solemn supplication, he
Lets his hands fall casually to the keyboard,
Dishevelled head motionless, in suspense,
As the haughty philistines wait to be entertained,
To have their luxurious expectations fulfilled.
Those stern white hands tease across the keys,
Trembling into a numinous prelude...
Abruptly the maestro starts to his feet,
Bangs the piano lid shut with imperious flourish-
No! The bear will not dance tonight!
In his rooms Liszt paces back and forth...
Too many years performing for idiots,
Titillating with idle brilliance,
When he should give himself to solitude and creation,
Abandon vanity’s charavari...
Like a jockey on an Arab mare,he jumps the piano,
Daredevil storming the atmosphere,
His galloping fingers an entire orchestra,
Hurtling into the abyss.
Genteel ladies’ faces boggle with rapture,
Electricity jolting them out of their seats,
Hoisting their skirts over their heads.
Pierrot Mask
amnesiac anaesthetized in my mind out of my mind in two minds no more
am I anywhere or nowhere
at all times or no time
I am metaphor I am symbol
every possible antithesis simultaneous
looking for coigns of vantage for pitfalls for confrontations with the other
contemptuous and contrite
how many letters unopened faces avoided or misread how many places passed through blindly and words spoken stupidly and things idly lost
inadvertently I breathe exist ad infinitum ad nauseam to stop short
denouements none but moments dense and unreal a grammar never mastered
accidence of happenstance
solipsist’s solfeggio recidivist’s fandango
history histories for all it is worth
catoptromancer in a city of mirrors I do my thing and eat from demons’ hands
apathy aeipathy my identical twins
am I anywhere or nowhere
at all times or no time
I am metaphor I am symbol
every possible antithesis simultaneous
looking for coigns of vantage for pitfalls for confrontations with the other
contemptuous and contrite
how many letters unopened faces avoided or misread how many places passed through blindly and words spoken stupidly and things idly lost
inadvertently I breathe exist ad infinitum ad nauseam to stop short
denouements none but moments dense and unreal a grammar never mastered
accidence of happenstance
solipsist’s solfeggio recidivist’s fandango
history histories for all it is worth
catoptromancer in a city of mirrors I do my thing and eat from demons’ hands
apathy aeipathy my identical twins
Goethe
In Weimar, tormented by doubt and despair,
Goethe strikes out on muddy winter roads,
Through wind, rain and mist, into the Harz Mountains,
To climb the Brocken, citadel of witches and demons,
To seek a sign, and question the cryptic Fate
That brought him so oddly to Weimar
As courtier and official to an autocrat,
The same Fate that decreed his sister’s death,
And would thwart his own inspiration.
Spirit of the Mountain, answer me, answer me-
Am I on the right path? Is my ambition approved?
Half-human whispers and warnings swarm
In the thick mist enveloping anfractuous heights;
Denied the summit, Goethe rests on a rock,
Heavy-hearted, asking: Must I even now turn back?
Then, suddenly, wondrously, the weather
Starts to clear, and a sun-ray strikes the Brocken
Like a torch setting a beacon on fire,
Signalling to the quester that the challenge is still on.
Onward, upward, through deep snow, Goethe
Slogs, and, standing, at last, breathless, on the peak,
Gazes round, in exultation, at the glorious chaos
Of cloud and light, crowned lord of the world,
Boundless in vision, power and potential.
At the Devil’s Altar he offers thanks to God,
That, yes, he can exalt his life with meaning,
Still the beloved, conquering son of Fate,
Able to overcome any perplexities!
Knapsack on back, on geological expeditions,
Goethe leaps from rock to rok, pursuing
Some principle of harmony and order in nature,
The path direct to the centre of the maze.
In his study, he broods over an elephant’s skull,
Awaiting an insight, an answer to the riddle,
Te unity in multiplicity, the origin, the essence.
Constricted with long stern routine, he
Suffocates within a stiff benevolent public dignitary,
Emotions suppressed, rebellions quelled.
Italy’s dusty roads open ahead, as the coach
Rattles into an idyll of mulberries, quinces and vines,
Plump grapes drooping over lizard-basking walls;
A northern bear set free from dark forest,
Into a carnival of light, too vivid to be real,
The intoxicated German plucks peaches ad figs
From branches, sucking at life’s core.
On the Venice Lido, watching crabs scrabble
Over breakwaters, he marvels at the tenacity
Of life, absorbed in inexhaustible oneness.
In the museum, transfixed by antique statues,
He feels new inspiration stirring in his guts,
The same secret grace every age has known.
Goethe strikes out on muddy winter roads,
Through wind, rain and mist, into the Harz Mountains,
To climb the Brocken, citadel of witches and demons,
To seek a sign, and question the cryptic Fate
That brought him so oddly to Weimar
As courtier and official to an autocrat,
The same Fate that decreed his sister’s death,
And would thwart his own inspiration.
Spirit of the Mountain, answer me, answer me-
Am I on the right path? Is my ambition approved?
Half-human whispers and warnings swarm
In the thick mist enveloping anfractuous heights;
Denied the summit, Goethe rests on a rock,
Heavy-hearted, asking: Must I even now turn back?
Then, suddenly, wondrously, the weather
Starts to clear, and a sun-ray strikes the Brocken
Like a torch setting a beacon on fire,
Signalling to the quester that the challenge is still on.
Onward, upward, through deep snow, Goethe
Slogs, and, standing, at last, breathless, on the peak,
Gazes round, in exultation, at the glorious chaos
Of cloud and light, crowned lord of the world,
Boundless in vision, power and potential.
At the Devil’s Altar he offers thanks to God,
That, yes, he can exalt his life with meaning,
Still the beloved, conquering son of Fate,
Able to overcome any perplexities!
Knapsack on back, on geological expeditions,
Goethe leaps from rock to rok, pursuing
Some principle of harmony and order in nature,
The path direct to the centre of the maze.
In his study, he broods over an elephant’s skull,
Awaiting an insight, an answer to the riddle,
Te unity in multiplicity, the origin, the essence.
Constricted with long stern routine, he
Suffocates within a stiff benevolent public dignitary,
Emotions suppressed, rebellions quelled.
Italy’s dusty roads open ahead, as the coach
Rattles into an idyll of mulberries, quinces and vines,
Plump grapes drooping over lizard-basking walls;
A northern bear set free from dark forest,
Into a carnival of light, too vivid to be real,
The intoxicated German plucks peaches ad figs
From branches, sucking at life’s core.
On the Venice Lido, watching crabs scrabble
Over breakwaters, he marvels at the tenacity
Of life, absorbed in inexhaustible oneness.
In the museum, transfixed by antique statues,
He feels new inspiration stirring in his guts,
The same secret grace every age has known.
Fairy Tales
Cinderella, among the ashes of the dead,
Speak to the invisibles in flame,
At the hearthstone,
And the dark god in dogskins
Looms in your eyes.
The Ugly Sisters killed your mother
And ate her,
But you collected the bones
And planted them
Under the yew tree.
It sprang up from just three drops of blood,
Branches full of fruit, clothes and treasure.
From one grain of corn you make bread for the world,
From one thread you spin endless cloth.
Legions of ants march through your head.
Pumpkin moon races across the sky,
A mouse-drawn carriage,
Wherein you sit, black-veiled.
Your three bright robes dance,empty,in the air,
And a swooping blackbird catches the falling glass slipper,
Carries it away over the sea.
With a talking stick and a ball of mist,
Cinderella steps from her dead mother’s tomb,
Her laughter falls from the ramparts
Of a castle in the forest’s heart.
A hawthorn branch guards the night.
The changeling’s eyes open. A weird blue stare.
Footsteps and shadows play chess with the mind.
The sun goes down behind Bluebeard’s castle.
The same riddle is put
To the True Bride and the False.
The king’s third and youngest son,the despised simpleton,
Comes to rescue the realm,where his brothers have all failed,
Mounted on a scraggy nag,dressed as a fool
In hempen coat and dunce’s cap,
Wand in hand and a child’s smile on his face.
Pricked by a spindle, you sleep
In the highest chamber of the castle,
While a spinning wheel whirrs the world awake.
Speak to the invisibles in flame,
At the hearthstone,
And the dark god in dogskins
Looms in your eyes.
The Ugly Sisters killed your mother
And ate her,
But you collected the bones
And planted them
Under the yew tree.
It sprang up from just three drops of blood,
Branches full of fruit, clothes and treasure.
From one grain of corn you make bread for the world,
From one thread you spin endless cloth.
Legions of ants march through your head.
Pumpkin moon races across the sky,
A mouse-drawn carriage,
Wherein you sit, black-veiled.
Your three bright robes dance,empty,in the air,
And a swooping blackbird catches the falling glass slipper,
Carries it away over the sea.
With a talking stick and a ball of mist,
Cinderella steps from her dead mother’s tomb,
Her laughter falls from the ramparts
Of a castle in the forest’s heart.
A hawthorn branch guards the night.
The changeling’s eyes open. A weird blue stare.
Footsteps and shadows play chess with the mind.
The sun goes down behind Bluebeard’s castle.
The same riddle is put
To the True Bride and the False.
The king’s third and youngest son,the despised simpleton,
Comes to rescue the realm,where his brothers have all failed,
Mounted on a scraggy nag,dressed as a fool
In hempen coat and dunce’s cap,
Wand in hand and a child’s smile on his face.
Pricked by a spindle, you sleep
In the highest chamber of the castle,
While a spinning wheel whirrs the world awake.
Resistance
Resistance in the wire
Resistance on the streets
In the people’s faces
Resistance red and black
Some are guilty
Some are ashamed
Some are envious
Others jealous
All are in two minds
Resistance in the rocks the trees
Resistance in bricks in buildings
Despairing poets tear up their works
Trains derail all too easily
White fever dream
Stare through walls
Faces blank
Bodies listless
Cut-throat lovers
Besotted with their quarrel
Resistance the suicide
Resistance the homicide
Outbreak of plague
Outbreak of war
Resistance the Michelangelo
Resistance the Newton
Resistance on the streets
In the people’s faces
Resistance red and black
Some are guilty
Some are ashamed
Some are envious
Others jealous
All are in two minds
Resistance in the rocks the trees
Resistance in bricks in buildings
Despairing poets tear up their works
Trains derail all too easily
White fever dream
Stare through walls
Faces blank
Bodies listless
Cut-throat lovers
Besotted with their quarrel
Resistance the suicide
Resistance the homicide
Outbreak of plague
Outbreak of war
Resistance the Michelangelo
Resistance the Newton
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Viva La Muerte!
“Duty is heavier than a mountain,
But death is lighter than a feather.”
So say the Japanese.
I am not Japanese.
Totalitarians, embrace your suicide,
The vertigo of immense masses,
The oblivion in the Supreme Leader’s eyes.
All the epics are written;
Apocalypse has come and gone.
Protean indifference is up to its tricks.
A life in quotation marks.
Philistine beauty-my idol!-
Bogus profundity,endless imitation-
My ruses protect me
Against the system.
That which is disappearing
Fascinates me most.
But death is lighter than a feather.”
So say the Japanese.
I am not Japanese.
Totalitarians, embrace your suicide,
The vertigo of immense masses,
The oblivion in the Supreme Leader’s eyes.
All the epics are written;
Apocalypse has come and gone.
Protean indifference is up to its tricks.
A life in quotation marks.
Philistine beauty-my idol!-
Bogus profundity,endless imitation-
My ruses protect me
Against the system.
That which is disappearing
Fascinates me most.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Nezahualcoyotl's Flower Songs
Words’ blood tongued from secret wounds;
Born for that war, he stood alone
In the zoological garden he had made,
As plants and animals
Took him as their totem.
Texcoco had become his academy of art,
Blessed by the Toltecs and Quetzalcoatl;
A new spirit was smoking
Among the volcanoes and lakes.
Gorged on holy poisons,
The mushrooms’ bitter genius, he flew
Into frenzies,as the gods twisted his bones
With glee,and crowned him hero,
Devourer of all enemies, king of time.
Now he had a name, and could name.
History was all before him,simultaneous,
Synonyms and metonyms interconnecting,
Too many jaguar voices in the night,
The hand drums throbbing through.
Mankind was living and dying
To the tremolo of a clay flute.
By day warriors and harlots danced together
In the House of Song beside the temple;
In the evening,schoolchildren assembled there
To learn the art of music.
At the Feast of Flowers, Hungry Coyote
Stood and chanted, as gods and goddesses
Danced merrily in their finery,flower-crowned,
Before Xochiquetzalli high on her throne,
Among the artificial trees and grottoes,
While lads and lasses costumed as birds
And butterflies romped in the branches...
He sang of heroes and hunters and lovers,
Of pleasures soon ended,and friends long gone.
Born for that war, he stood alone
In the zoological garden he had made,
As plants and animals
Took him as their totem.
Texcoco had become his academy of art,
Blessed by the Toltecs and Quetzalcoatl;
A new spirit was smoking
Among the volcanoes and lakes.
Gorged on holy poisons,
The mushrooms’ bitter genius, he flew
Into frenzies,as the gods twisted his bones
With glee,and crowned him hero,
Devourer of all enemies, king of time.
Now he had a name, and could name.
History was all before him,simultaneous,
Synonyms and metonyms interconnecting,
Too many jaguar voices in the night,
The hand drums throbbing through.
Mankind was living and dying
To the tremolo of a clay flute.
By day warriors and harlots danced together
In the House of Song beside the temple;
In the evening,schoolchildren assembled there
To learn the art of music.
At the Feast of Flowers, Hungry Coyote
Stood and chanted, as gods and goddesses
Danced merrily in their finery,flower-crowned,
Before Xochiquetzalli high on her throne,
Among the artificial trees and grottoes,
While lads and lasses costumed as birds
And butterflies romped in the branches...
He sang of heroes and hunters and lovers,
Of pleasures soon ended,and friends long gone.
Apocalypse (Or Not)
Polar ice caps melting
coral reefs disintegrating
rainforests stripped to the bone
oceans fished out
welcome to the new evolution
the arch-delusion
that no scientific mythology
can reverse
Rejoice:
a life unlimited
with more fabulous machines
more engrossing virtual worlds
more wealth
more toys
The gods of Olympus
the Mesoamerican deities
the Hindu lords of the cosmos
the Father,the Son and the Holy Ghost
all are having their sport with us
The cycles and periods
the alignments
and endings of time
revolve simultaneous multi-levels
under the skin
This world I co-create
saturate with meanings
categorize
compile
and record
Daimons break through
the cracks
delighting in sabotage
and subversion
Is my being insufficient?
Is that the reason why I create
insufficient worlds?
Give me slowness and complexity,
art,
not technology
now
not then
Inexhaustible fairy tales
tell our destinies
full of wise counsel
and prophecy...
so come,sad and cunning,
to learn
Harmonies of time
harmonies of spirit
if you feel it
it is
What perfect mysterium is hidden
in the ineffable structure
of time?
Mind mutates
through millennia
each leap
the sudden manifestation
of possibilities latent
in the origin
The pyramids of Egypt
Mexico
Mesopotamia
call us back
to climb their steps
coral reefs disintegrating
rainforests stripped to the bone
oceans fished out
welcome to the new evolution
the arch-delusion
that no scientific mythology
can reverse
Rejoice:
a life unlimited
with more fabulous machines
more engrossing virtual worlds
more wealth
more toys
The gods of Olympus
the Mesoamerican deities
the Hindu lords of the cosmos
the Father,the Son and the Holy Ghost
all are having their sport with us
The cycles and periods
the alignments
and endings of time
revolve simultaneous multi-levels
under the skin
This world I co-create
saturate with meanings
categorize
compile
and record
Daimons break through
the cracks
delighting in sabotage
and subversion
Is my being insufficient?
Is that the reason why I create
insufficient worlds?
Give me slowness and complexity,
art,
not technology
now
not then
Inexhaustible fairy tales
tell our destinies
full of wise counsel
and prophecy...
so come,sad and cunning,
to learn
Harmonies of time
harmonies of spirit
if you feel it
it is
What perfect mysterium is hidden
in the ineffable structure
of time?
Mind mutates
through millennia
each leap
the sudden manifestation
of possibilities latent
in the origin
The pyramids of Egypt
Mexico
Mesopotamia
call us back
to climb their steps
Tornado Chasing
The roads are flat and straight
Across the prairies,where each town
Begins as a grain elevator on the skyline,
And the asphalt ripples in the heat,
Cars swimming like waterspiders...
Dead armadillos and coyotes
Sprawl under the wheels;
Cottonwoods along the riverbeds
Release white vapour into the wind
That rolls the grass for a thousand miles
Through blonde beatitudes...
Big weather is out there,calling me on;
Cumulonimbi towers piling up,
Mammatus banks herding beneath...
I ride with the engines of destruction,
Trying to map the unmappable,
Weaving myself into those forces,
Waiting to see that cone funnel,
Silent and eerie,on the horizon,
Slowly rippling waves moving
Up and down its sides...
You have to be there when the air
Turns inside-out,upside-down,
(Green light bursts through black
And giant hailstones cannonade...
Out of dark clouds falls a spark,
Then another,and another,
Showering down,till one flare
Branches out into zigzags,
Then another,another,and,then,
One sparkling leader touches earth,
Calling forth its fiery counterpart
-Instantaneous tremendous bolt
Pours back up the smoking channel
Of its fall.)When black stormclouds
Coalesce,and begin to revolve,
The vortex drops to the ground
And starts racing cross-country,
An all-consuming hole in the sky.
With stately majesty it advances,-
Snaking,mushrooming,funnelling,
Shapeshifting with ghoulish glamour,-
Sinuous and veiled like a dancer,
Dust and debris boiling round,
As the white serpent climbs,
All devilish intelligence...
Afterwards,across smashed fields,
Under the brightening sky,
In the spooky stillness
A lone meadowlark sings out,
Gurgling down the scale.
Everything has been shredded
By a gargantuan buzz saw:
Grass ripped out of the very ground,
Asphalt stripped from highways,
Trees denuded,cattle dismembered,
Houses all swept away into space,
And,here and there, human bodies,
Torn apart by the maenads,
Sometimes nothing left but the torso
Or a stray arm, the wedding ring still on.
Across the prairies,where each town
Begins as a grain elevator on the skyline,
And the asphalt ripples in the heat,
Cars swimming like waterspiders...
Dead armadillos and coyotes
Sprawl under the wheels;
Cottonwoods along the riverbeds
Release white vapour into the wind
That rolls the grass for a thousand miles
Through blonde beatitudes...
Big weather is out there,calling me on;
Cumulonimbi towers piling up,
Mammatus banks herding beneath...
I ride with the engines of destruction,
Trying to map the unmappable,
Weaving myself into those forces,
Waiting to see that cone funnel,
Silent and eerie,on the horizon,
Slowly rippling waves moving
Up and down its sides...
You have to be there when the air
Turns inside-out,upside-down,
(Green light bursts through black
And giant hailstones cannonade...
Out of dark clouds falls a spark,
Then another,and another,
Showering down,till one flare
Branches out into zigzags,
Then another,another,and,then,
One sparkling leader touches earth,
Calling forth its fiery counterpart
-Instantaneous tremendous bolt
Pours back up the smoking channel
Of its fall.)When black stormclouds
Coalesce,and begin to revolve,
The vortex drops to the ground
And starts racing cross-country,
An all-consuming hole in the sky.
With stately majesty it advances,-
Snaking,mushrooming,funnelling,
Shapeshifting with ghoulish glamour,-
Sinuous and veiled like a dancer,
Dust and debris boiling round,
As the white serpent climbs,
All devilish intelligence...
Afterwards,across smashed fields,
Under the brightening sky,
In the spooky stillness
A lone meadowlark sings out,
Gurgling down the scale.
Everything has been shredded
By a gargantuan buzz saw:
Grass ripped out of the very ground,
Asphalt stripped from highways,
Trees denuded,cattle dismembered,
Houses all swept away into space,
And,here and there, human bodies,
Torn apart by the maenads,
Sometimes nothing left but the torso
Or a stray arm, the wedding ring still on.
Gogol the Prophet
The thirteenth apostle,
Richard Crouchback of the Russian word,
He plunged his hands into the black earth
Of Ukraine, the tangled roots.
Faith and fiction held him,longing
For truth,against the world.
Under a monk’s hood
The long nosed shadow-face
Scented sulphur,damned
To an author’s seditious mission.
From a provincial Annunciation-
Infant held in the Virgin’s arms-
He carried his family legend
Like a Paschal candle to light
The beacons of Old Russia.
Schoolmates mocked the “mysterious dwarf.”
Clever fool,God’s favoured sufferer,
He confessed to the Eurasian moon,
Full of Christian rage and heathen compassion.
The stations stretched before him:
Moscow. Rome.Jerusalem.
Richard Crouchback of the Russian word,
He plunged his hands into the black earth
Of Ukraine, the tangled roots.
Faith and fiction held him,longing
For truth,against the world.
Under a monk’s hood
The long nosed shadow-face
Scented sulphur,damned
To an author’s seditious mission.
From a provincial Annunciation-
Infant held in the Virgin’s arms-
He carried his family legend
Like a Paschal candle to light
The beacons of Old Russia.
Schoolmates mocked the “mysterious dwarf.”
Clever fool,God’s favoured sufferer,
He confessed to the Eurasian moon,
Full of Christian rage and heathen compassion.
The stations stretched before him:
Moscow. Rome.Jerusalem.
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Legionnaires
The pain. The fear.The weakness leaving your body.
Another ill-chosen battleground; another ill-starred day,
The odds too great,and the cause insufficient,
The wrong tools to hand,
And no-one to care either way,
Whether you live or die, win or lose.
Despair is your comrade, your rifle.
There is only the Legion, marching apart,
Doing penance for all men.
The outcast, the despised, the wretched of all nations,
Turn to salute one flag blowing in the desert wind.
When you are broken you are ready.
When you have been killed and buried,
You can finally live.
The village nègre after nightfall:
Fifteen-year-old girls beckon with henna hands,
Blue-black negresses with silver against their skin,
Worn-out Spanish women painted like Amazonians,
Blue-eyed Kabyle girls sitting like statues in rows,
In the moonlit alley...
Blood-red sun through the sandstorm,
Solid wind shrieks over you,shoves you to your knees,
Sand lashes that face to shreds,
All you can do is lie flat on the ground,
Cover your head with the shech...
Fire and ice in waterless mountains,
A few stunted cacti and scraggy oaks,
And stones,boulders,stones...
March,stumble,march,fall,march!
Purgatory of an isolated fort:
Men,maddened by tedium,
Lie hour after hour on their bunks,
Staring into oblivion,
Or suddenly rush out into the desert,
Howling with delirium.
Seized by inexplicable evil,
They turn on each other like rats in a trap,
Beating and stabbing for no reason.
A thief’s hand is pinned to the barracks table
With a bayonet.
Another suicide is found on the toilet floor.
At parade the sergeant-major
Bawls the company out:
“If you want to finish it, go ahead!
But don’t make a mess of it, do it properly!
Dont cut the wrists, cut deep down the insides
Of the elbows-the veins are bigger there-
You will have more success.”
The last Legion outposts are wiped out in Indochina:
Men die alone,the manner of their death untold;
A last few radio messages then silence.
In the jungle defiles' green night,
Tiny columns ambushed by entire armies
Keep firing to the last,then bid one another farewell.
Utterly surrounded, a few doomed groups
Start singing a battle chant as they charge
One last time,killed but undefeated.
Another ill-chosen battleground; another ill-starred day,
The odds too great,and the cause insufficient,
The wrong tools to hand,
And no-one to care either way,
Whether you live or die, win or lose.
Despair is your comrade, your rifle.
There is only the Legion, marching apart,
Doing penance for all men.
The outcast, the despised, the wretched of all nations,
Turn to salute one flag blowing in the desert wind.
When you are broken you are ready.
When you have been killed and buried,
You can finally live.
The village nègre after nightfall:
Fifteen-year-old girls beckon with henna hands,
Blue-black negresses with silver against their skin,
Worn-out Spanish women painted like Amazonians,
Blue-eyed Kabyle girls sitting like statues in rows,
In the moonlit alley...
Blood-red sun through the sandstorm,
Solid wind shrieks over you,shoves you to your knees,
Sand lashes that face to shreds,
All you can do is lie flat on the ground,
Cover your head with the shech...
Fire and ice in waterless mountains,
A few stunted cacti and scraggy oaks,
And stones,boulders,stones...
March,stumble,march,fall,march!
Purgatory of an isolated fort:
Men,maddened by tedium,
Lie hour after hour on their bunks,
Staring into oblivion,
Or suddenly rush out into the desert,
Howling with delirium.
Seized by inexplicable evil,
They turn on each other like rats in a trap,
Beating and stabbing for no reason.
A thief’s hand is pinned to the barracks table
With a bayonet.
Another suicide is found on the toilet floor.
At parade the sergeant-major
Bawls the company out:
“If you want to finish it, go ahead!
But don’t make a mess of it, do it properly!
Dont cut the wrists, cut deep down the insides
Of the elbows-the veins are bigger there-
You will have more success.”
The last Legion outposts are wiped out in Indochina:
Men die alone,the manner of their death untold;
A last few radio messages then silence.
In the jungle defiles' green night,
Tiny columns ambushed by entire armies
Keep firing to the last,then bid one another farewell.
Utterly surrounded, a few doomed groups
Start singing a battle chant as they charge
One last time,killed but undefeated.
The Gothic Bride
Now to drink a toast in Vampire Wine
And essay a parody in black;
We are souls in mourning,
Celebrating the fact.
Palest creatures hide the hottest fires.
Noon and midnight coincide in us,
Who cast such distorted shadows.
In darkness is my bliss, my strength.
The whole world’s damage I feel
In the back of my head, in my fingers...
All the ages of human history
Glower in my dark attire.
Cathedral-builders and world-destroyers
Are kindred in my blood.
We are silent watchers,
Drawn to the ruins.
A rosary of skulls for you, my love.
Killers can be gentle
And every saint is a whore.
Delicious heresy incites you
To discoveries and misadventures.
Your black-gloved hands
Tend salamander secrets.
Whispers and conspiracies
Are your angels of demise.
Reverberations of a churchyard bell
Summon the tribe of Morpheus
To celebrate the gypsy blood-wedding
Of time and man.
Dark fairies and fey occasions
Escort you to your bed.
And essay a parody in black;
We are souls in mourning,
Celebrating the fact.
Palest creatures hide the hottest fires.
Noon and midnight coincide in us,
Who cast such distorted shadows.
In darkness is my bliss, my strength.
The whole world’s damage I feel
In the back of my head, in my fingers...
All the ages of human history
Glower in my dark attire.
Cathedral-builders and world-destroyers
Are kindred in my blood.
We are silent watchers,
Drawn to the ruins.
A rosary of skulls for you, my love.
Killers can be gentle
And every saint is a whore.
Delicious heresy incites you
To discoveries and misadventures.
Your black-gloved hands
Tend salamander secrets.
Whispers and conspiracies
Are your angels of demise.
Reverberations of a churchyard bell
Summon the tribe of Morpheus
To celebrate the gypsy blood-wedding
Of time and man.
Dark fairies and fey occasions
Escort you to your bed.
The Whores of Georgian London
City of whores. City of money.
Built with the commerce of minds and bodies.
Majestic facades created
By ruthless speculators and landlords
Ingenious in avarice and plunder.
At his easel in an upstairs room,
Hogarth raises his brush in salute
To poor Moll, the hapless country girl
Swallowed and spat out by wicked London,
With its bawds and libertines,
Venal clergy, quack doctors,
Crooked judges and brutal gaols.
As soon as the streetlamps are lit
And cast their glow in the thickening gloom,
Girls made up in borrowed dresses
Swarm out to hawk their wares,
Accosting every man who passes.
The Temple of Aurora is open for business,
Supplying prepubescent girls
To the rich and depraved.
In the Molly House a fiddle strikes up
As the men come together and dance.
A masquerade at Carlisle House:
Crystal chandeliers and silk sofas;
Chinoiserie reflected in grand mirrors
To the sounds of opera and concerto.
In the evergreen grotto, maskers
Throng,squeezing through endless
Rooms, each more baroque than the last,
Bucks,bloods and maccaronies
With dominoed courtesans,
Duchesses and shopgirls alike,
Mixing with promiscuous incognito.
Each night,after the “Beggar’s Opera”,
Audiences surge out of the theatre
Into the Strand and Covent Garden,
Among the very thieves and queans
They have just enjoyed onstage.
Miss Lavinia Fenton,lady of the streets,
Performs the role of Polly Peachum,
Now famous,wealthy and courted
By her greatest fan, the Duke of Bolton.
From yellow carriages sporting ladies
Alight at Joshua Reynold’s door,
Models for portraits and allegories;
In bagnios,taverns and brothels
He seeks out faces and forms
Worthy of Hellenic goddesses;
Beguiled and half in love
He sits across from them,
Quietly directing their poses,
Co-conspirators,sharing a joke.
Built with the commerce of minds and bodies.
Majestic facades created
By ruthless speculators and landlords
Ingenious in avarice and plunder.
At his easel in an upstairs room,
Hogarth raises his brush in salute
To poor Moll, the hapless country girl
Swallowed and spat out by wicked London,
With its bawds and libertines,
Venal clergy, quack doctors,
Crooked judges and brutal gaols.
As soon as the streetlamps are lit
And cast their glow in the thickening gloom,
Girls made up in borrowed dresses
Swarm out to hawk their wares,
Accosting every man who passes.
The Temple of Aurora is open for business,
Supplying prepubescent girls
To the rich and depraved.
In the Molly House a fiddle strikes up
As the men come together and dance.
A masquerade at Carlisle House:
Crystal chandeliers and silk sofas;
Chinoiserie reflected in grand mirrors
To the sounds of opera and concerto.
In the evergreen grotto, maskers
Throng,squeezing through endless
Rooms, each more baroque than the last,
Bucks,bloods and maccaronies
With dominoed courtesans,
Duchesses and shopgirls alike,
Mixing with promiscuous incognito.
Each night,after the “Beggar’s Opera”,
Audiences surge out of the theatre
Into the Strand and Covent Garden,
Among the very thieves and queans
They have just enjoyed onstage.
Miss Lavinia Fenton,lady of the streets,
Performs the role of Polly Peachum,
Now famous,wealthy and courted
By her greatest fan, the Duke of Bolton.
From yellow carriages sporting ladies
Alight at Joshua Reynold’s door,
Models for portraits and allegories;
In bagnios,taverns and brothels
He seeks out faces and forms
Worthy of Hellenic goddesses;
Beguiled and half in love
He sits across from them,
Quietly directing their poses,
Co-conspirators,sharing a joke.
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