Driving through Liguria

In Dolceacqua we looked out over the castle ramparts
For the ghost of a girl murdered by a baron
When she refused him his droit de seigneur,
And on St Sebastian’s Day the procession came,
And the man carried a tree laden with communion hosts,
Spirit of the forest, hidden in the harvest,
Infusing his life into the vegetation.
Spiralling heavenwards on hairpin bends,
We sought the Saracen sun’s initiation;
In Triora we wandered empty streets,
Past ancient houses locked and deserted,
Reading the stone vaults’ woodsmoke stains,
And the carved door lintels, lit with the figures of saints,
And curious initials of the forgotten dead,
Who might never have existed.
In the glistening forest of chestnuts and pines,
I held you close against a tree, embracing,
And the earth charged like a wild boar
To gore the vertiginous sky as it fell,
Lifted on the wings of golden eagles.
In Taggia on the feast of Mary Magdalene,
Two men performed the Dance of Death,
And revived the dead saint with the perfume
Of lavender blossom, and all across the summer fields
And olive groves birds sang with fierce delight.
In Portovenere ,ascending the narrow stairways,
You shone like a rare silver Roman coin in the sun,
Recovered from some shark-loved wreck,
And we found ourselves among maps and boats,
Doomed pirates dreaming of another voyage,
While life swam away with a dolphin’s smile,
Suddenly my soul was returned to me
A lost ring found in the belly of a fish.
“I hate my ankles!” you groaned, “so thick and ugly!
What a joke- they just don’t belong!”
The sea glittered in the evening sun,
And I could almost smell the junipers and orchids
Of the wild maquis, carried on the warm breeze.
I imagined the White Madonna drifting ashore,
And envied the fishermen, calmly mending their nets,
Certain of the kind protection of Venus,
And just below St Peter’s sanctuary, remote,
I ventured down the slippery steps to the shore,
And teetered, clumsy coward, on the rocks
From where bold Lord Byron, heroic or crazy,
Plunged in and swam across the waves to Leri

Gabriel Faure (1845-1924)

Cruising among the Parisian salons,
Discreet and correct in dark suit and white shirt,
He scanned the room for odalisques,
Sultan of a sad and secret place;
Where was she, imagination’s siren,
Mistress and mother, black widow on the skin?
He seemed so high spirited ,debonair, and witty,
Who would suspect the melancholy beneath,
Deep in those dark gold-flecked eyes?
So much tenderness and passion yearned
For honest consummation, reticent lest
It choose the wrong refuge, the false confidante.
The slightest praise would give him courage
To return to solitude, to seek again the miracle
Of melody and harmony, fusing in a whole;
But still he would wake in the night, in despair,
Certain that all he had ever done was mediocre,
That he had deceived himself all along:-
Fool, you presume to express the inexpressible,
That which lies beyond music itself?
His supple hands touched the piano keys
With meticulous sincerity, with a horror
Of affectation and mere virtuosity;
Only the clearest, simplest, most absolute sound
Deserved to disturb the perfection of silence.
What nonchalance shot through with fury!-
The soul’s abundance conjured atmospheres.
To live and die and live again, in music:
That was the trick, a lifetime’s quest.
Could reverie make real the pure ideal?
The veiled seductress stood waiting
In the garden, among the classical statues,
Voluptuous, yet chaste, mysteriously smiling.
The game was on ,as ever, too good to end.
The greatest audacity called for the finest discretion:
Extreme compassion had a violence of its own.
If only he could make music like the light
On Lake Lugano,in summer, reflecting the snows,
To render the jeopardy of delicate things,
Subtle as a priest or a mathematician.

Signs and Veils

At first
I thought the face was behind the veil
But no
The veil was the face
What is the sign
The sign to lead me home?
Whose is the face
Beyond the mirror’s surface?
Only know am I learning
That to know
Is not to know
Only now am I learning
To laugh
Do the beautiful
And it will be right
Do the beautiful
With body
Tongue
And heart
Between Mercy
and Wrath
I breathe my life
All is now as it was
All is now
We are Shahadah
You must see everything
In the east and the west
My soul feels through
Its stations and states
And finds the names
The names
I see myself in the mirror
And the reflection
Recognizes me
We are Nothing
Fool I am
Forever asking
Who and what and where and when and why
All I know
Is that my last breath is still in me
Lord
Take my life
And give me a face
The face
To be Adam
The first man
Pronouncing all the names
For the first time
Out of memory
I am prophecy
You can only know love
By its taste
Do I hear the signs?
Do I hear them and see them?
Do I join the music
And dance?
So begins the spiral return
Hierogamy
Of sperm and ovum
Veil on veil
Light on light
The cosmos
Calls me in
To confuse me
And if I seek to lift the veil
That too is the veil
And I myself
Am the veil
The veil of veils
And the face

John Coltrane

He disappeared for days
And when he came back his face
Was so radiant, so serene,
And all the sounds were in his head,
Ready to be born.
The spirit is rising,
And the times are auspicious.

The preacher cried a spiral
Of whispers, sobs and psalms,
Finer and finer the insight
Suffering its melodies
To sound their alarms.
I believe in all religions and none.

Skyward flies the sound
Of a soul in question,
Wrestling clouds and angels
To the ground,
Bound, then released,
Cursed, then blessed.

Everyone Says "I"

I called to myself from a long way away,
So strange and powerful my voice;
I sat in a room, repeating the same word
Over and over, till it lost all meaning;
I lay on my back and became the clouds
Drifting across the dazzle;
I hurt myself just to feel alive,
Coming home in pain and surprise;
I telephoned strangers just to hear their voices;
Traveled round the world
By walking round my room
Visiting every continent and city
Sailing every sea;
Stared for ages at a stain on the wall
Seeing in it wondrous visions;
I saw myself die a thousand times
In every way conceivable;
Slew everyone who annoyed me,
Slaughtered hordes with mad joy;
I rode the Underground for miles
Going nowhere in particular;
I waited at bus stops and on railway platforms
Contemplating the absurdity of all;
I invented a thousand lives for myself
And believed in them all, every detail;
I stared at strangers as I passed them in my car,
Wondering who, why and what they were;
I moved among crowds, feeling invisible,
Shocked when someone’s eyes met mine;
I scrutinized the odysseys of ants
Across the patio on a summer afternoon,
Trying to imagine their universe;
I watched the stellar dust floating
In a sunbeam, glinting as it whirled
And spiralled, dancing in the mind;
I started to believe in Father Christmas again,
And heard his flying reindeer’s bells
And listed all the toys I craved;
I stopped and examined a dead pigeon
In the street, its innards putrefying,
Maggoty and useless, a work of art;
I tried to still my mind and not think,
Cursing my weakness as the bedlam
Broke through and ravished me;
I lay in the bath, making islands
With my body, pondering the nature
Of humanity and soap;
I spoke to hear the shapes of sound,
Flattening against the void;
I picked up some smooth round pebbles
On a beach, and kept them for years,
Talismans, perhaps they brought me luck;
I bumped into someone I had not seen
For years, had never expected to see again,
Astonished, embarrassed, and wondering;
I went back to my childhood haunts,
So dreary, diminished and unworthy;
I scampered by the same beggar every day
And gave him nothing, shunning his eyes,
Threatened by that feeble whine;
I chuckled, giggled, sniggered, guffawed,
Laughed my bloody head off,
Watched it roll across the floor.

St Luke's Summer

Smoother skin there is none;
Darker eyes there are none…
And the game is afoot,
The hounds are unleashed.

September sunfire Indians skin;
River’s quicksilver sword
Pierces heart through,
Bleeding passions and perversions.

Let the agony of an hour
Stand for a lifetime,
Soul’s totem,
Mysterious and proud.

What is history
But the madman’s ecstasy?
Behold the unaccomplished,
The unexpressed.

If I knew where the centre was,
I would be there;
Instead, I drift to the margins,
And make them home.

This is my epoch:
The face in shadow,
The forgotten day.
Quintessence:
Exquisite word,
Whose meaning I seek
In unforgiving places.

Let me sink to the bottom:
I belong among the drowned.
Ship, sail on without me
To your promised port.

We drink to sober up,
Ferocious fools,
Extravagantly wishing
For the simplest thing.

I roam among the dead,
Looking for a face
To hold my gaze.

We do not finish loving,
Nor does our love improve.
One just vanishes,
Leaving the chair still warm.

This life is not mine
To fashion and perfect,
Only to battle with,
Breath by breath.

What body does my mind
Desire and deserve?
These words,
Or the autumn earth?

Keep the sweets,
Only give me the bitters.
My tongue knows
What tastes true.

The saddest music
Is the fiercest delight,
Sound of burning houses
And breaking bones.

Because this life is unreal,
I hate and destroy it,
Raging against the idiocy
Of rational minds.

When I die,
Carry me off to the side,
Cover me with a little earth, or burn me,
But save me from the trampling crowd.

Raise your glass and toast again
Blasphemy, obscenity, pain;
Joy we despise
For its simpering folly.

Drunkenness is worship,
Service to the soul;
Wash the world down
With beer and spirits.

Choose darkness,
The better to see by;
I drink for the hangovers
Of the meek and the wise.

Electromagnetic

I crave the bad food
That punishes me
My eyes are dark crescents
My skin so pale
I am a perilous magnet
Malevolent spirits
Move about me
These lights I see
Ball lightning
Earth lights
Corona discharges
I can feel things about to happen
The noise
The light
The vibration
Something is missing again
Out to lunch
I have been away somewhere
And now I am back
And the trance is in me
Paralysed
Tingling
And numb
The ghosts have come
Floating through the walls
Someone in the room with me
Invisible
But there
Have I been here before
I have been here before
No never
Nevermore
Déjà vu is jamais vu
Magnetophosphenes under my eyes
Dervish candles in the dark
In the upper left quadrant
Of the visual field
Petit mal is grand mal
“Ha-ha,” said the clown
“Now start dying”
Panic
Shock to the amygdala
I can see all the fires in the air
Waves and beams
Radio broadcasts
Telephone conversations
Television programmes from all over the world
Radar
Microwaves
Power lines
Geoelectrical tectonic faults
Subterranean currents crackling
Broca’s brain
And Werninke’s brain
Are on fire
They hear voices
Near and far
I am the transformer
Don’t put those lights in my eyes
I can’t stand those lights in my eyes
And the strobe
And the flicker
All those times when time froze
Or exploded
Or went round in circles
Or doubled back on itself
Or touched a door handle
And got a shock
I don’t know who I am
Or where I am
And my tongue tastes funny
Oh eerie silence
No sound at all
Fade-out
Something is stimulating
The reticular portions of the midbrain
I want to write and write
In the cool moonlight
Fear is the crowd
All noise and vibration
Close the door
Draw the curtains
Get undercover
And my ears are all Morse code
Clicking and buzzing
Do you feel uncomfortable
In synthetic fabrics?
Does electrical equipment
Behave strangely in your presence?
Did you have a happy childhood?
Do you ever have hairs on your body stand on end?
Do you find that objects in your home
Go missing
Or sometimes seem to behave oddly?
Feel that darkness
In your blood
Making spirals
Poltergeist is here to play
Turning the house upside-down
Footsteps of ghosts
Doors opening and closing
A laser beam strikes my forehead
And fires the pineal gland
I see with the eyes
Of an Amazonian shaman
High on yage
I can feel the magnets in my head
Pushing and pulling
Behind the eyes
Behind the ears
I want to be friends with God

A Song from the Orchard

What does the hurtling chariot bring?
What message of war for the throne?
And that this war
May be a kind of love.
Broken,
All broken,
Give me strength to begin
My duty,
My work of repair.
The dearest friend
Reaches out his hand,
The friend of your soul.
My name is:
Was…is…will be…
The Angel of the Presence
Opens his mouth
And the ram’s horn
Trumpets the jubilee.
Evil also is divine:
Angels, good and evil,
Serve alike.
Belial,
Do your worst,
For you are needed;
Lavish iniquities upon us,
Sow wickedness in the very ground.
Come,
Unseen world,
Invade
The seen,
Infuse,
Permeate,
Transmute.
We are workers in the world,
Midwives of the spirit,
Hauling forth
The bloody screaming babe.
Fire of voices,
Soaring,
Praising;
Fire and light,
Light and sound,
Raise paeans
To crescendo,
Then hush.
My eye sings an octave,
The music of light,
Blue,
Deep blue.
See,
I draw a circle in the sand,
In which I shall stand
And call for rain.
How far may I venture,
How far may I probe,
Into the Divine Will,
The heart of the cosmos,
Before I must turn back
Or be cast into the abyss?
Where is the world’s foundation,
That I might stand upon it?
Majesty,
Destroy me,
Break me apart
Like a peach,
That the stone shine forth,
Revealed.
Beauty is victory,
Beauty
Calls me to action,
To hold the balance
By prayerful works,
So let severity and mercy
Be one.
In my weakest moment,
The glory is most clear.
These spheres
Are wisdom’s sapphires,
Numbers of Creation,
My body,
The body of the world.
What little light I see
I call Eternity,
Infinity,
God…
Every atom of my body
Was once inside a star…
O fabulous fancy
Of the momentary world,
The laughing flux of things!
In a glass of wine
I find
A thousand poems.

Something and Nothing

I,
The sum of all ifs and buts,
The space monkey
Shot into the stars,
Strum my banjo
And bellow daft songs…
I,
The crocodile god,
The sex policeman
With fur-lined handcuffs,
Ballet-dance in silence
Out of sight,
Out of mind…
And have you heard
That filigree of music
Sounding and resounding
Through spirals of time?
And have you seen
That translucent icon
Shining in and out
Of indigent eyes?
I must have met you a thousand times
In other lives,
We must have passed one another
Without recognition.
From the bust of Nefertiti
To the Mona Lisa’s smile
I sacrifice to the artifice
Of the strange female.
By the ten fingers of my hands
I swear fealty to the stars,
And menstruate mad love
Like Saint Teresa of Avila.
No,
You do not see me,
Do not know me,
Nor I you,
Ignorance is all we share
Through disfigured days,
And no Second Coming
Interrupts our routines…
I see the purple cloaks
Of the Spanish Inquisition,
Here they come,
Notebooks in hand…
“Justice must be served!
Bring out the heretics,
The Satanists,
The witches!
Bring out the funny-looking people!”
Too late now, perhaps,
To master the piano,
But even to play the triangle in an orchestra,
That would be something…
Other lives, other talents,
Compel imagination,
Tantalise with glimpses
Of glories unknown,
But the dwarf in my head
Hisses “Stick to your last!”
So I stick to my last,
Stick fast.
Lifting the sangria glass,
I remember the voice
Of the master:
“It can illuminate,
But it can burn.”

The Girl Who Liked Novels

She could only live in prose, in periods and cadences, in mosaics of invented lives.
Many lands and wonders had she witnessed; she had trodden the streets of famous cities; she had loved and been loved; she had suffered; but still she wanted to read.
What are you going to do with your life? When are you going to get married? She did not want to answer. She just wanted to read.
There it was, in black and white: the mystery. Would she ever find the perfect story, the ankh?
She came home, shut the door and sighed. The book had fallen off the shelf onto the floor. She picked it up, sat down and started to read.

The Fur Collar

1

All evening I could smell the fur collar of her new coat, like a happy memory or a promise, the coat she had bought that morning at the fleamarket. Who had been its mistress before? Who had been owned by its perfume, its cut?
Later she removed her opal ring and handed it to me. “Look closely, you can see seven colours.” I turned it in the light- a tiny constellation flared- but all I could see were blue and white.

2

Cramped in her cage, the anguished mink paces to and fro, to and fro, and bites, bites her own flesh, just to feel something, to know she is still alive, and in her mind she is swimming in cool waters, sanctified.
Soon someone will come to gas her or poison her or break her neck.
Caged foxes attack one other, tearing at each other’s flesh in cannibal frenzies. Presently a man comes, humming a song, to electrocute them in the anus.
A struggling raccoon gnaws screaming at his leg, desperate to free himself from the trap. Then he looks up: a bullet in the head and the hunter’s boot stomps on his skull.

3

All evening I could smell the fur collar of her new coat, like a happy memory or a promise.
She had palped the fabric with her witch’s fingers, probed its warmth and depth for meaning, till she trusted it, needed its comfort, its grace. A bargain.
Her smile spiralled like a Methodist hymn into the devirginated heavens.

Dusseldorf Sonata

Mist-silhouettes
Of a vanishing city:
January
Unhinges me.
The two-faced god
Strides upon the stage
For a silent crowd.
The sepia river
Ripples its fish scales
Into nothingness,
And I
Am a tiny old man
Floating
On a mountainside
Somewhere in China.

Agent Provocateur

I think you might be about to teach me
The tenderness and fury of love,
The flight of birds,
The fall of dynasties,
The colours of day and night.

Why do I toil in my corner,
Inventing jokes to make you laugh?
Because your laughter
Is a golden elixir
That I, an ancient Jew, rush to capture
In flasks of Venetian glass.

Relapse

Ready?
Ready as I’ll ever be.
Now cover me with honey and unleash the killer bees.

My life:
A fossilized shark’s tooth inside a Triassic rock.

Animals and angels, I know them both,
Neither high nor low,
Neither good nor evil.
From emptiness they make little sounds.

They said: “Come back.”
I said: “I was never here.”
They said: “Be still.”
I said: “I never moved.”

Apostrophes, enigmas
Tint the ambience,
Ceremonious phantasms
Bewildering the mind…
Polymorphous sensibility
My benefice.

My eye is in the work,
These sounds are its lightbeams.

Oracle Bones

Valediction is the process of our days,
Shading the shadows with curious tints,
Till instinct fires the funeral pyre.

Flesh’s frontiers permit no crossings
Save after dark, across rivers and woods,
Panting under searchlights’ strobing.

Love is the genius under my skin,
Burning through forehead and fingertips,
Starting excellent fires without permission.

Words’ doom conjures conical futures
On the bear market; buyer beware,
Your weird wards other than you think.

Worse and worst are with us still and ever,
Pricking the witch’s fingertips of time,
Cunningly to draw the bad blood out.

The English Girl

I stood beneath the Sphinx,
And across the desert
You came riding on a camel,
Laughing at all the sand.

I wandered through the ruins
Of Angkor Wat, and, looking up,
Saw you, clutching a tulip,
With that clownish smile.

I stood on the cliffs
Of Easter Island, and there
You were, swimming off the rocks,
Waving a dainty hand.

Odessa

Summer you took in your hands like a watermelon
And bit into the ripe red flesh.
You stumbled through the market,
Brushing against dead animals still in their fur,
Like a sailor looking for the nearest brothel.

Dust under my fingernails, under my eyelids,
A cool quiet courtyard
Safe from the yowling street,
I was dead, or not myself,
Outlandish and here.

Kindzmarauli:
Stalin’s favourite wine,
Sweetness of paradise
That he too dreamed of;
I raise my glass to the light,
Hypnotized by the gleam…
On the seafront
Watching the sun set
Across the port,
I wonder who sailors pray to,
If they pray at all.

The beach deserted in winter:
Just a few old men playing chess,
Packs of stray dogs roam the sand, howling and whimpering,
The cantor’s voice rises
In the synagogue of my eye.

Don’t ask for black pearls.
Take black bread and honey.
This dust you ignore
Falls from distant stars.

You stood in the doorway,
Munching on a gherkin,
And laughed: “If I knew what I really wanted,
Just think what a mess I’d be in!”

Venus and the Organ Player

When I think of great blondes in history,
Your face is among them.
And so I persist, I play.
Look! my fingers on the keyboard
Do your bidding;
Polymorphous music agitates the air,
Billowing the shimmering veil.
Your icon, candle-gilded and smoked,
Glimmers in my heart’s gloom,
Where John the Baptist, roaming
The desert, suckles on honeycomb.
Your presence is a memory of Venice,
Stone and water reflecting one another,
Blown glass mimicking lace
In fiery filigree, a comet’s tail.
The painter’s sable brush adores
Your empirie, pirouetting in time
With that fey smile, that silhouette
Of serendipity or malicious fate.
When I think of great blondes in history…
No, alas, there is only you,
Only you to confess to,
And hymn with harmonies and sighs.

Moscow Metro

Attention, the doors are closing.

                                          Announcement on the Moscow Metro

The metro map floats through the deep sea trenches of my mind, neon amoeba.
Every station is another opening and closing of doors, grim grand babble in our heads.
Faces, nameless faces, I need your foreignness to stimulate me, to lead me astray, to tantalize and torment.
My dreams are no grander than the next man’s, but I hold them oh-so dear. Everything continues without me: it is all Out There and I In Here.
Versed in courtesies of fear, I court the stillness, the stillness in the rush. Passions play blind-man’s-buff down here. Soft slow oneiric gloom beats my pulse down into trance. I am the fat priest adoring icons in the dark glass, fashioning the moment’s liturgy, with these shaman’s words about me like an ermine stole round a ballerina’s neck. Eyes coincide and glance away, cat’s cradles of intimate strangeness.
And is it true that when slaves are offered their freedom, some refuse in dread?
The quickening chaos, the pullulating mass, the protoplasm…swerve and dodge, defend your territory, hurry, hurry…and then the escalators’ stately purgatorial glide, and the faces jousting up and across, and the faces jousting down and across, licensed to stare, to wonder, to seek…each face for a second or two, no more, then gone, gone, and the sad trance surfs its own wave.
There, in the tunnel, stands a girl with her notice: Please help, my mother is dying. Beside her, another: Diplomas for sale.

Osmosis

The night owns us all, who make believe we own the night. And whatever those shadows are, they outrank us.
I too desire the prize supreme, knowing how scarcely I deserve it. Does love denied become a viper’s fangs?
Life, or whatever you call it, has its own designs on us, but…toil as you will and believe in the real.
All my life I have been compiling strange words, tracing roots, inventing languages. So why still tongue-tied?
The moment of meeting my own eyes in the mirror: courage, you have it, and more, no matter the falling.