Lord Muck

Slouched, muttering, at the window, sentry
To the crumbling sun,I amuse myself
With delusions of power and pleasure,
Ultimate glory, a kingdom of my own.

Disappointment was always my forte;
How nobly I contrive to take the blows
That fate deals out with such indisputable flair.

Crepuscular world, metaphysical blur!
What will remain of mental adventures?
Will brilliant soliloquies linger long in the air?

It seems I built this house to be alone in,
To savour the whale- music made by the hours
Drifting slowly through the empty rooms.

The Golden Age of the Netherlands

Prudent, self-satisfied, rubicund faces
Stare out of canvases by Rembrandt and Hals,
Their mansions’ facades along misty canals
Dignified, restrained, built by restless generations
Of bourgeois conscience and calculated risk,
As God wills, without flamboyance or panache,
Sober lives guarding their self-righteous pride.
O, cities of illusion, swan islands ordered in trust,
Slowly rotting timbers and weathered stone
Claiming a permanence that does not exist!
How well they know their riches’ jeopardy,
Their beleaguered republic shoring up the Flood,
As argosies bring triumph or disaster
And strange fever sweats on ledger-book brows,
Tulip mania, frenzied speculation on the Bourse.
Reality is guttural and Dutch; the gnarled present
Is their element, immune to profitless nostalgia,
Horizon-scanning pilots who live and die at sea.

The Smell of Cheap Soap

This is some kind of perfection, not to be sneezed at,
These sauntering days command the sky’s respect;
My mind goes like a stray dog down the street,
Cocking his leg against a lamp-post,
Lord of all he surveys.
Who needs a nametag or a collar?
Such things only get in the way.

Laugh in the face of uncertainty,
Laugh to yourself in the supermarket car park;
Admit nothing, deny nothing,
Play your cards as they come.
Whose turn is it now to suffer?
Whose day of reckoning has just strolled in the door?

Chaos has its consolations,
Its mystery prizes to bestow.
Read, lucky winner, the number on your ticket;
Polish your shoes for the big occasion;
Tonight you will dance with the Carnival Queen
In an empty ballroom walled with mirrors.

Valencia

Diaphanous illumination of the air
Suffusing blue-tiled steeples and cupolas,
Mutable and melodious upon the lagoon…

At the Torres de Serranos, looking east along the river
I imagine the vanished Gate of El Cid,
Through which the champion's corpse, decked out
In warrior’s panoply and propped up in the saddle
On his favourite horse Babieca,
Led the attack on the Moorish besiegers
Who had taken courage from rumours of his death.

Land of gunpowder and fire,
Of pyrotechnic fanfares in the orange-and-lemon sky,
O ecstasies of cacophony ! fiestas of folly !
Translucent reptiles on the water,
Our Masonic minds construct irradiant jokes.
I am the sea’s Caliph, building mosques of light…
White orange blossom bliss of firework-bursts,
The bull-horned earth is rising, shouldering up
And running the sky’s gauntlet,
Flamingo-winged words fan out of our mouths,
Migrating to the sun’s black heart.
Burning on spring’s pyre,
Carpenter nailing my madness to the sky’s cross,
I stagger through the crowds of Las Fallas,
Among swirling freaks and giants,
Stuffing my face with paella,
And the dragon queen on her balcony surveys the city
With Catherine wheel eyes…
O, see the giants burning after dark,
Disintegrating into ashes…

Angels and devils battle in the streets,
Throwing fireballs from their fingertips,
Fiery lizards and snakes fly through the air,
The heart runs like a bewildered bull,
Taunted and bewildered on all sides.

City of black arts and occult sciences,
Planetarium-cinema of the starburst eye,
Crystal humpback whale voyaging through the sky !
In the Capilla del Santo Càliz, in the Cathedral,
Stands the Holy Grail, or another pretender.

Blue Virgin with a robe of water,
Why do you lead me into the bullring
To face the dazzling matador ?
I must wash my feet in the ocean,
And cast my sins into the fire…

Street Religion

I drift about the city,
Catching trams at random
And riding to the end of the line,
Staring out of train windows,
Carefully choosing my seat on the bus,
So let it come,
Let it all come,
And if there are no answers
There is pleasure in the quest…
Is this city male or female
Or a splendid hermaphrodite?
Here I take my chances,
Follow my hunches,
Spend too much for too little,
Lose my way sometimes.
Here and there a sudden glimpse
Of beautiful strangeness
Will prove the revelation
Secreted in the bones,
Instantaneous chimera,
Black lightning in the veins.
Arbitrary streets,
Do you know how momentous
You are?

Sunday at Schloss Benrath

A unicorn dances across the grass,
Vanishes into the trees.
I watch with the eyes of Cranach,
Anatomizing.
Hunched on the steps of the Schloss
I gaze down into the fountains’ web.

To craft a work of beauty-
That is all.
To command the self
Into sounds and structures,
Hallowed in the making,
And harrow the soul
In a joyous instant.

Distance, be my friend, my intelligence.
Fear you? No.
I can walk around you
And make you my own,
At home in between,
With nowhere else to go.
In the end I love only you.

Spider in a light-web,
I sense the tremblings,
The coming songs,
And time is the prey.
What comes to the sculptor’s hands
Is the shape of his death.

Nothing has to happen
To disturb the still.
Let the day lie there,
A casual stone
Weathered into magic.

This work on yourself,
Unending,
It tests you to breaking,
Yet always gives you space
To catch your breath.

Welcome to Dusseldorf, City of Culture and Shopping

“Become passers-by.”


The Gospel of Thomas


1.Opening the Suitcase

And then the stranger music
Of another day,
Because of other eyes,
Other minds,
Magic, black or white.

Have I the capital for this venture?
Well, if risk is its own reward,
And bankruptcy no stigma…
Shining deer fly
Through my Neanderthal brain.

The city looms before me in its glass case,
The skeleton of an aurochs in mid-stride.
The blonde German summer
Browns its skin,
The Rhine a noose of light
About my neck,
And dazzlegirls dance
Through the avenues.
Europa,
I will sing your anthem
Out of tune.

I check my watch:
Geological time.
What might I become?
A Mexican sand rose,
A glittering anthophyllite,
South African vermiculite,
Congolese malachite,
A slab of quartz filled with black tourmaline needles,
Tiny tektites from Siberia.

I sit in an empty children’s playground,
Alone in the afternoon,
Two weird dolls staring
From a child’s bedroom window,
Sullen streets clicking their tongues.

Lizard streets watch me pass,
Too many adjectives in my mind.
All the yeses, no’s and don’t knows,
All the thises and the that’s,
All the ifs and buts and maybes,
What made it so?

With a few words in my pockets
And more dreams than you can shake a shitty stick at,
I stumble out onto crossword streets;
Bring on the anagrams, the palindromes,
The acrostics,
Bring on the dancing horses
And the circus clowns,
And I will celebrate the madness.
So have I come,
Offences and follies abounding,
To this finishing school for idiots,
This three-ring circus of fools
And no-one will see my face
And those who see my face will not know me
But only what they want to see.


2.Unpacking

Sitting on the Rhine steps
Staring into haze…
Sunmusk of skin:
Pepper and ginger from the Malabar coast,
Nutmeg and cloves from the Moluccas,
Cinnamon from Sri Lanka…

Palpitation of a candleflame
In a church corner…
Vocation:
To make of my life
The Gesamtkunstwerk.

Dark rain streets,
Tramlights blurring by…
“Throughout history
Man has sought
The sensation of falling…”
Summer rain,
Be the red wine of Communion
On my tongue;
I am neither fish nor fowl.
Apparitions I meet
In darkened shop windows,
Utter your oracles
And depart.

In the Altstadt
At three in the morning:
A man being carried home by his friends-
Like Jesus lifted off the Cross-
With shitstained trousers…
Does hell perhaps taste
Of cointreau?

In the Blue Hour
I dive into my Swimming Pool,
Alchemized in blue swirls
Of dream-stuff,
Deeper and deeper,
Breathing water…

Between the girl at the tram stop
And me:
Silence.
Magnificent distance.
Or nothing.

What is beauty now today?
The necessary reverie.
Other loves
Come perfect as advertised,
Mine defy
The Trade Descriptions Act.
In the discotheque darkness
A girl was dancing,
Alone,
Oblivious,
Working her trance,
Casting shapes
Like a voodoo priestess,
And I watched with envy
Her serene concentration,
Bewitched by distance,
By space.

I turn my life
Round and round-
Which side is up?
And is it a Mondrian
Or a Van Gogh?

Yes,
Definitely,
I was dropped on my head
As a baby
And now I cannot think straight
And strange things disturb me
And pills and doctors cannot help.

Fear lives on my skin
And havoc under,
Seldom is often
And always is never.

My umbrella is my best friend
As I prowl the streets alone.
This music I orchestrate in my mind,
Would anyone else, if they could hear it,
Feel the notes as I do?

As when, in school, in chemistry lessons,
We tested alkali metals in a Bunsen burner flame,
Marveling at the vivid flares,
So now do I prove words
In the moment’s fire.


3.Closing the Suitcase

Why complicate the situation?
There are only women, the world and me.
And then to say
You spent a lifetime
Waiting for something to happen,
Watching out for signs and motions,
Omens of something
You could never put your finger on…
-What a joke!

Bad translations,
False economies,
Wrong turnings,
Thank you all!
I am learning to speak
With someone else’s tongue,
Glorying in
A failed experiment
Because of the “interesting results”.

I sit in an eis-café,
Watching the prettiest waitress in the world
Making magic:
A Botticelli face
And a ballerina’s body-
Delectable, her grace and brio!

Good burgher,
Out for your Sunday stroll,
Come too near
And I’ll eat your pampered little pooch!

Someone who smiled,
Someone who made you laugh,
Someone who taught you a new word;
Look no further
For the Messiah.

Thoughts in my head,
Jellyfish drifting in electric blue space;
All I hear is the ticking of traffic lights
And the evolution of sharks.
Electromagnetism of the city:
Fossilized sea lilies from the Jurassic.

Good company, and a quick pretty waitress,
In a street corner bar
With old scratched tables…
I can see the future in the smoke rings…
Crucify me on the Wheel of Fortune,
To rise again, with a bewildered smile.
On the cusp of September
The Virgin enfolds us in her blue robes,
And an old tramp at the tram stop
Swigs from a bottle
Then tucks it in his tattered jacket
And staggers off down the street.

The Typhonian Gnosis

Dark entities from the nether side
Are stealing slantways into our world,
Ravens from the Tree of Death
Are whudding through the twilight.
See what horrors are falling
Out of the coils of the Mother Serpent,
Writhing in her Sumerian lair.
Armed with craft and ritual, the mage
May come this way unharmed,
But the naked blunderer, lured in
Without protection, will lose mind
And soul, plucked like a chicken
And stuffed into the cooking pot.
What shall I be next? Wolf or tiger
Or hyena? Rise or fall is all the same;
The hallowed claw shines red with God.
Have you found the hidden door
In the Abyss, that yawns onto madness,
Immolation, perversion, and murder?
The spider is wise to your dealings,
And the crab has your life in his claw;
The horned toad lords on your shoulder.
Take care; fight on, for spiritual glory
With sorcery, and, against the night, win
The world’s mystery, else perish, undone.

Tempo Rubato

Tempo Rubato


1

This is the voice of a dying man.
A double man.
A doubter.
My sick mind races,
Longing to be slow,
To be still.
As the tennis player
Attaining the angels
Sees the ball come huge
Over the net,
Suspended in the air
Forever,
As he saunters forward
And ponders how to hit it.

2

And if a song
Should disturb your composure,
Should break the stride
Of a pigeon-toed thought,
Rejoice, its rising fall
Is your uprising.

Incantation hones
The day’s intonation,
Dark sounds crucified
Upon a stave.

Time taunts
My spying ears
With wild harmonics,
Music of another man,
Not I.

The flute recalls me
To its tune,
The drum resounds,
Alive, alone.


3

Dark declensions of energy
Hollow me out,
Corpse left to the vultures
Of my mind…

Human Remains

Yes to the wood-brown nymphs of summer, teasing the air with their legs and making trees and rivers shine and shimmer;
Yes to the autumn sky’s alarum, to cirrocumuli racing to their deaths and forests evanescing;
Yes to winter snows making golden deathmasks for our faces;
Yes to the suffering and confessions of the night;
Yes to you in your splendour, simple and unaware;
Yes to the kisses that killed me, that pierced my heart like St Sebastian’s arrows.
How many times have I fallen?
How hard have I fallen to my knees or on my face, again and again,
Yet always risen, staggered up and on?
Nothing can stop me:
I am here and moving forward,
Christ in one hand, Satan in the other.
I ask no charity,
Just let me breathe,
And I will find the deep and swim…

Ladyboys of Bangkok

Sinuous slinking prima donnas, mimicking feline perfection,
All velveteen gestures and narcissistic grace,
Little waifs and vamps, sing for your supper!
Self-mesmerized, adoring your own mystery, you
Can only exist in the eerie drifting smoke-light,
Doomed to conjure and refine a half-life,
Sisters of the neon moon, delicately prancing
Or wriggling on the laps of fat wealthy men.
But how sad you were out in your ancient villages,
Slaves to custom and decency, the bane of all eyes
That could not perceive your special distinction.
The bus to the city was a last chance to be born,
Freedom to be what the nights had foretold,
To pass through the mirror, home at last.

Nefertiti

You will find no body, no remains:
She disappeared into the desert’s glow.
Such gentleness and melancholy touch her face,
Perfect and remote, this beauty commands trepidation and awe,
Severe in its symmetry and ritual.
From her hands she bestows love poems and sensual sculpture,
The dead in immaculate white linen robes set sail
On the river, and in the palace naked acrobats and dancers
Entertain the feasting nobles, as they toast one another
With endless cups of wine, and nibble at fine foods.
Birds sing in the palace garden:
Intoxicated with the blue lotus,
The female musician ,though copulating with a guest at the dinner party,
Refuses even then to put down her lute,
Still playing her bewitching music.
The queen’s eye hunts the wild lion through the air;
Her tongue catches glittering fish in its nets.
Smooth is her slender body all over, radiant-skinned,
Perfumed, and graceful, sinuous in her movements,
Her beauty rouses the gods, and gives them pleasure;
In the temple she receives the god into herself,
Shaking the sistrum ,irradiated by the sun,
Her body glowing through her diaphanous robe,
She opens her arms to the light, the uraeus ignites and sings,
As she chants adoration among the echoing columns,
And the sun holds the ankh to her lips.
She rides the sphingine palanquin of centuries,
Takes the reins of the chariot, galloping across the desert;
Her hand lifts the mace to execute the kneeling foe;
Her name is written in the horizon’s cartouche.
She is the burden of vineyards bowing to heaven,
Beehives oozing honey; ships’ bellies stuffed with grain and gold;
Precious stones from distant lands.
Sunlight blesses the benben stone.
See here the bust of a young and puissant queen,
Her face austere and serene, full of strength and equanimity,
Measuring justice with unfailing instinct;
And here the crone, with sagging dugs and gut,
Frowning in sorrow and resignation at her fate,
Alone, her sere womb exhausted of harvest.

A View from Silbury Hill

This land is where we make our souls,
Aligned with stars and planets,
Living in the masks of the dead.
These are the portals, the thresholds
Of gods, calling us inward.
Here is the hub of the wheel,
Around which the heavens revolve,
All fixed in their orbits and motions,
The first mound rising from out of the Flood.
The white hound is my escort;
Full moon music seduces and entrances,
Tempting me astray into other dimensions.
This is the serpent’s head, the earth-eye,
The mother’s belly,biggening with life.
Illumination, this is your day,
Love-threshold in the horizon’s lens,
As we play upon the crystal chessboard;
Here is the voice in the ear,
The sovereign shining meridian,
The cone of light drawing down the sky;
The riddle in the corn-ear,
The golden king riding on horseback,
The snail shell spiral thunderstorm under the eyelids.
The bull’s spine throbs with power,
The Sleeping God summons his servants in dream,
The hidden pyramid gleams white in the hidden sun.
Egyptian liturgy resonates in the caverns.
Here is the green breast rising from shadow,
The golden phallus glowing in the sun;
Hermaphrodite entire unto itself,
Impregnating and giving birth.
The dowser’s rod tracks the currents,
Penetrating waves in the mind;
Here is the animal altar,
The dragon’s egg,
The magician’s tower,
The well of souls.
Dragon stars align overhead,
And everywhere is connection,
As the diamond spider spins at the centre of its web.
I call out the serpent from the heights,
And see its cobalt-blue electric light emerging,
Shifting, undulating, sparking and spurting,
Charging the spirit with invincible force;
See, the friend is coming, merging
With you, with everyone, recognising its own.
Here is the hollow hill, with secret doors,
The royal lair of the horned beast,
The coven of dancers, under the moon;
Reflections in the waters beckon,
Island echoes expand the mind,
What and why are one.
The herds of the mind move with the seasons,
And star stuff is the core;
See the faces in the stones,
Your ancestors, feeling you out.
Here is the pulse of dawn and dusk,
Magnetic whorls in the mind,
Leaping flames, and shuddering quakes,
The focus of light in the lens.
Find your stone, and listen to its voice,
Teaching you to breathe;
Our bodies are the harvest, out of the womb,
The male stone seeks the female,
The shadow finds its cleft.
Out of the horse’s mouth comes music,
And the land heaves and surges,
Cascading through you,
As the bull with Venus between his horns
Tramples you into the earth.
Brother to the Ox, breaker of the ground,
Ploughman of the stars, come forth,
And ,striking with your hoof, reveal a spring.
Fivefold death calls you, beloved,
Flesh melts into light,
Vortex to the heavens;
The way out is the way in.
Snake bite for the willing sacrifice:
The king is scourged and sheds his skin,
And faces the rising sun, and the stars of the Great Bear,
And at the sun’s zenith falls,
Blood running in earth’s furrows,
Impaled on a spear of light.

Sacred Masks

Before me rises the god, the face of glory,
Horrible and awesome, warding off evil,
Destroyer of obstacles, bestower of success,
Guardian of the hazardous threshold.

Lord of paradox and disguise,
I am the actor in the temple theatre,
Priest and redeemer, prancing like a goat.

I am the larva, the spectre of man,
The seething turmoil in the cocoon
Before the butterfly’s innocent flight.

All is saltation, the dancer’s leap into space,
The sudden transformation born of pain,
The next move in the chess game.

Through the eyes of my mask I see into the other world
Where time and space run backwards
And custom is reversed.
I hold the universe in balance,
In each hand the eternal opposite.

The death mask glows in the sepulchre
While the mourner dances in his dead brother’s place.
I set my mask upon the temple pillar
And stand at the centre in prayer.

I am the satyr, now solemn now merry,
Contained, then abandoned, laughing through tears,
Noble and ribald, graceful and gauche,
Prancing to the song of the flute.
Tragedy and comedy meet in me,
In the circle round the altar.
I raise my phallus in salute to the sun
And charge out of the woods in season,
Hairy with knowledge and delight.

I am the centaur bearing branches,
Dancing from dusk until dawn
At he carnival of liberated wants.
The drum and the flute lead me inwards,
My fury rends intruders limb form limb,
I offer sacrifice with a piercing screaaam.
I love the flesh of mortal women,
In my madness there is justice and wisdom,
I am curer of evils, righter of wrongs.

I am Hercules the hunter in his second skin,
Lion-headed hero sworn to great labours,
Born a man, died a god, made immortal,
Suffering uneasy alliance with the heavens,
Bearing the burden of duty in sorrow,
Tormented tormentor, threshing the rage within.

I am Perseus in the shrieking Gorgon’s lair,
Averting my eyes from her fatal gaze
And striking off her head with an oath.
Henceforth her fearsome magic is mine,
To rectify injustice and restore fair balance
Until the meted hour of unfortunate death.

I am the man-lion with the Third Eye;
My fire, turned outward, annihilates the world,
Turned inward, it ignites the soul for God.
I anoint my forehead with soma,
Drink the milk of heaven and ascend,
Shedding this ragged skin with a beatific smile.
The honey-mead of vision pervades me,
The soul’s ambrosia renders me immortal,
Attracts all things desired, transfigures the senses,
Weds man and woman in body and spirit;
Sweet blossom that falls on the night of the full moon
Unites in me the warrior and the seer.

I tread the left-handed spiral as a woman,
Dark queen of horses, mistress of the water-jar,
Naked at the sacred pillar in the temple,
Ripening with the fruits of the earth.

I am the glaring gnashing Medusa,
Belted with snakes, caduceus held aloft,
Mistress of the spring orgies,divine androgyne,
Austere on my throne flanked by lions.

I wear the Gorgon mask and dance in season,
Babbling tremendous prophecies, on fire with hydromel;
The twin serpents wind up my spine to the skies
And the blue dolphin leaps from the waves of my mind.

Gamine

Cupidic lips,breathe into my mouth
The beautiful illusion,the perfect lie;
Bite into the ripened moment’s flesh
To savour near-death’s quintessence.

I don’t know!-my life’s defiant cry
And whimper-to hell with everything!
You cannot kill the maggot in the core,
The parasites breeding under the skin.

Melodrama was always my forte,
Histrion in buskins for the eager mob,
Playing farces with solemn conviction,
Taking a bow to the killer in the dark.

Nice

Do what you see, what you want, what you feel.

Gustave Courbet


This light makes me a Fauve:
The eye feels the moment’s pulse,
Subtle form, geometry of emotion.
This violence seduces, destroying to create.
Ripening bananas thrust out of the earth…
In the heart’s rococo casino, the croupier
Commands : “Rien ne va plus…”
In Peillon, atop the steep hill,
In the Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs,
I stood before the frescoes by Canavesio :
Judas, hanged and tormented by a black devil
Gleefully ripping out his damned soul.
I will get drunk on pastis,- hey, waiter,
A momie, a tomate, a mauresque, a perroquet !
In the Middle Ages they thought this stuff
Could even cure the plague..
Here comes His Majesty, the Carnival King,
Escorted by the grosses têtes,
Warding off Lent with laughter,
To be burnt alive on Mardi Gras night.
Now the sun is in Leo and shepherds
Make millepertuis, for burns and wounds,
Stealing magic from the dog day sun,
And seal the precious red oil in tiny bottles…
Sometimes I feel like a hotel bar pianist,
Playing for strangers night after night,
Or an ailing Russian Grand Duke
Fleeing through a Siberia of light.
Villainy seduces the soul here
By legerdemain, promising paradise
To the cunning, glory to the left-handed.
The hooded cloak of the Penitent
Conceals a demon’s face.
Exiles’ icons shine on my face
In the Russian Cathedral’s
Echo chamber;those onion domes rose
At the last tsar’s behest,
Another useless amulet to trust.
Might I , too, like senescent Matisse
Find here some consummation,
Reaching for the pomegranate
On the high branch-his gnarled hands,
Unable even to grasp a brush,
Still conjured worlds unerringly,
Seeking truth in line and light…
On St Peter’s Day a boat is burning
On the beach, like a Viking sacrifice,
As the fishermen give thanks for their safety,
And pray for all who go to sea.
Inside the Cathédrale Ste-Réparate
Cherubim and seraphim infest the heavens,
And the chapels of the affluent
Vie in vulgar opulence and trompe-l’oeil;
I light no tapers, offer up no orisons,
Yet linger by the saint’s uncorrupted body,
That first materialized in the bay
In a barge of flowers towed by angels.

Alban Berg

This is the vanishing, the farewell:
Evanescence is our music…
Superabundance and infinitesimal detail
Disintegrate finally into nothingness,
A sigh of resignation,
Suspended.
Yes, I acquiesce,
Insubstantial, indecisive,
And wanting.
The weak and defeated also sing.
My song, at its climax,
Renounces its own vanity,
Annihilates desire.
External circumstance does not perturb my core:
I favour odd angles, walk with nonchalant gait,
Wry smile anticipating catastrophe.
My soul crafts architecture of its own,
Exhaustively researching, experimenting,
Exquisitely discriminating,
Vain happiness to find.
To love the impossible, and serve the dream:
Out of a multitude of sounds,
The single note,
A tremulous threshold.
And because I so love chaos
I fasten on form,
And, clinging to life,
Give it away to a passing stranger.

Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life

Everyone walking on tiptoe in the dark,
Everyone standing behind the waterfall,
Everyone lost not far from home,
Everyone trying to steal the same peach,
Everyone taking whatever they can get,
Everyone swimming against the tide,
Everyone humming a favourite song,
Everyone admiring someone else’s reflection,
Everyone talking in muffled voices,
Everyone choosing between fire and water,
Everyone pretending to be a movie star,
Everyone making love with gloves on,
Everyone peeking at the moon through their fingers,
Everyone falling through the ice,
Everyone mishearing something important,
Everyone nodding and shaking their heads,
Everyone checking the rear-view mirror,
Everyone losing their favourite toy,
Everyone marching to a ghostly drum,
Everyone dreaming of tropical islands,
Everyone taking the pills as prescribed,
Everyone leaning out of the train window,
Everyone dutifully walking the dog,
Everyone tying themselves up in knots,
Everyone trying on different disguises,
Everyone spending imaginary money,
Everyone pretending to know a great secret,
Everyone caught with their hand in the till,
Everyone putting their vote in the ballot box,
Everyone queuing for the Ferris wheel,
Everyone nervous as the plane takes off,
Everyone playing solitaire for high stakes,
Everyone awake and dreaming,
Everyone doing one-fingered press-ups,
Everyone coming in through the exit,
Everyone looking out for land from the crow’s nest,
Everyone baffled and bemused by each other,
Everyone shopping for non-existent things,
Everyone crowding around the crash victim,
Everyone learning their ABCs,
Everyone their own ghostwriter,
Everyone remembering a nursery rhyme,
Everyone pretending to be Churchill or Napoleon,
Everyone looking for something special for Christmas,
Everyone checking the lavatory seat.

Itinerary in Zero

The fog lifts momentarily in places,
Unveiling long corridors shot through with weird yellow light,
Perspectives of the unmapped city.
A full moon bivouacs in the purple,
Enfilades of light mesmerize in glass globes
Under the arches of cavernous arcades.
A lunatic huddles at the base of a statue,
Gibbering and laughing at everything.
In the casino the croupier performs on automatic,
His eyes distant, dreamy and sad.

In the morning sonorous clouds of swifts
Invest the trees like thoughts in a nervous mind.
The purring green river stalks through the city;
A wind from nowhere haunts the trees
In the military graveyard where wild anemones
Thrive among the tombstones on parade.

In the forbidden citadel the corridors are endless,
Mazy chambers proliferate in echoing confusion,
Incongruous layers mingled in time.
In a peeling apartment stands a concubine’s bed,
Rotting, shrouded in cobweb curtains.
Sometimes you think you hear a ghostly flute
Calling form the prison tower.
Four hooded figures march out through the Gate of the Dead,
Carrying a long cocoon between them.
A secret staircase leads the favoured daughter
To an assignation in the mirror-room,
Where the master hides in fear of assassins,
Glancing all around him as he paces back and forth,
Stiffening at the slightest sound.
In the dungeon far below Their Excellencies, the Deaf-Mutes
Terminate a prisoner with swift dispatch,
Oblivious to anguished pleas for mercy.

Blundering through thorny thickets in the midday liquescence,
You emerge at strange ruins where hierophantic storks
Drift across inlets, and stone sarcophagi
Rest on the shingle like drawn-up canoes.
Shattered aqueducts, echoing amphitheatres, archways about to collapse:
Bone-bits, potsherds, fragments of iridescent glass:
Why did you come here? Why did you come?
You can barely even remember where you first came from.
Sometimes cloaked shepherd boys materialise, hissing,
As if they were the snake-eyed dead evicted from their graves
Into the vandalized necropolis, its broken coffin-lids askew.

In a heron-legged café in a coastal resort
Tourists sit gloomily as the surf booms underneath
And a waterspout appears offshore.
The omens are evil. This year has claws to harm us.
At night lightning shrills; instantaneous epiphanies
Of the sea delirious on the crags
And ghostly castles on the headlands.

Solemnly, slowly, the sun rises over the desert,
Non-existent lakes shimmer on the horizon,
Silhouettes of camels expand and contract,
Dust devils chase one another across the sand.
A beehive mud city hums into action,
Crowds moving in tremulous subaqueous rhythm
Through dappled shadow alleys half-riot half-dream.
Everywhere pious hands have obeyed
The strictures of cosmic asymmetry:
Rug-patterns hanging in the bazaar,
Keyhole arches of exquisite imperfection.
Shopkeepers crouch in their cubbyholes,
Telling their worry-beads hour after hour, year after year,
Dreaming of hard cash and the houris in Paradise.

You move on again, dissatisfied, never knowing why,
Embracing then renouncing, misreading the signs,
Standing apart from everyone, above all yourself,
Desperate for some temporary solace.
Look where you have landed now:
The city of penitents where a silent brotherhood
Process through the festive streets, their wizard eyes
Menacing through slits in their tall black pointed hoods,
Carrying wands and candles, swingigng thuribles of incense,
Accompanied by eerie airs on oboes and bassoons.

The ship puts in at a smouldering coast
Of white ash desert and blackened arboreal bones,
Where a forest fire has been.
This town is shaped like a fish’s skeleton,
The spooky wind ululating through its gills.
In the palace-hotel resplendent staff
Parade through the glistening marble foyer
Like a forgotten garrison of imperial troops.
Jaded habitués sip cocktails at the bar
As the pianist in his tuxedo plays a maundering tune.
The immense salon with its gilded columns
And affluent putti romping across the ceiling
Crushes all thought and action in its void;
Stricken with agoraphobia, you scuttle round the edges,
Avoiding the chandelier’s vast shadow.
From the window of Room13 you can see the postcard view,
You can order room service, ask for anything at all,
But do not linger too long before the mirror
Or enquire about the other guests who just disappeared somehow.

The Apollo of Veii

Ceremony in terracotta :
This is the urgent moment before action,
The terrible approach of the god,
Held taut in suspense, all sharp lines
And harsh surfaces, etched out with a knife:
Will he speak ? His mouth seems charged
With explosion, as he advances in authority
To stop the trespasser Herakles
Bearing away the Ceryneian hind;
Striding forward, as if about to catch you
By the arm, to draw you into his orbit,
His face, sinister-handsome, bulging
With fierce energy, straining insanely
At the brink, eyes fixed on the target
In basilisk glare, head thrust right forward,
His uncanny smile so eager, playing
With your confusion, his cruelty superb.