The three sons of Ferdinand fought amongst themselves,
United by bad blood.
The kingdoms of poetry were kingdoms of war.
None of the brilliance of scholars and scientists,
Nor philosophy, religion or verse
Could keep those little Taifa states from vicious feuding.
Not even the polylobed and interlacing arches
Of Cordoba’s Great Mosque
Could keep brothers from killing each other.
To Sancho,his eldest,Ferdinand gave Castile;
On the second son, Alfonso, he bestowed the richest portion, León;
And to the youngest,Garcia,fell Galicia’s realm.
Coveting his lands,Sancho and Alfonso
Drove their brother Garcia into exile
Then turned against each other with a vengeance.
In Seville, the guest of al-Mutamid,
Garcia wandered the irrigated gardens,
Refreshed by miraculous fountains,
And, seated on silk cushions amid colonnades,
Smiled as the whole court jousted in verse.
Likewise,Alfonso,defeated and banished,in turn,
Saw for the first time the botanical gardens of Toledo,
Enjoying the hospitality of al-Mamun,
And banqueted in columned palaces
With fellow guests in silk perfumed robes,
And played manqala with priceless ivory pieces.
He admired the easy mingling of Mozarabic craftsmen,
Jewish physicans and Muslim astronomers,
And began to dream of ruling such a realm.
Within a few years,the mighty Sancho was betrayed
And assassinated outside Zamora,
So that Alfonso was free to return
And seize the Christian kingdoms for himself;
And, after a few years, al-Mamun also
Fell to an enemy’s dagger, and was succeeded
By his corrupt weak grandson al-Qadir,
So, seeing his chance, the ambitious Alfonso
Who had so long dreamed of this moment,
Conquered Toledo without a fight,
Promising its citizens safety, property and freedom of worship;
Thus, he took possession of the most glorious citadel in Castile,
With all the wonders the Muslims bequeathed;
Palaces and courtyards resonating with poetry and song;
The qasidas of Ibn Zaydun, all passion and doom;
The pennants of the poetic champions,
Carried out of the Arabian deserts.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
St Anthony's Tongue
The patron saint of lost objects,
And the cat got his tongue.
A hazardous dagger,
A necromancer’s wand.
A tiny shrivelled titbit of flesh
In a crystal cylinder.
The nub.
Bodies: immortal absences.
The first,second and third- class relics
Of Catholic imagination.
From a lullaby baby
To a dismembered corpse.
There has to be proof.
Scientists of the invisible,
Physicists of love,
We enter equations
In our book-keeping
And feel for a warm true body in the night.
And the cat got his tongue.
A hazardous dagger,
A necromancer’s wand.
A tiny shrivelled titbit of flesh
In a crystal cylinder.
The nub.
Bodies: immortal absences.
The first,second and third- class relics
Of Catholic imagination.
From a lullaby baby
To a dismembered corpse.
There has to be proof.
Scientists of the invisible,
Physicists of love,
We enter equations
In our book-keeping
And feel for a warm true body in the night.
Cathar Castles
Dew on the grapevines
in the Aude valley,
among the beeches and pines;
through narrow gorges,
vaginas of the Goddess,
under hermit caves.
Climb through privet and scrub oak
to Puilaurens,clinging
to the limestone,
up to the crenellated walls.
The people dug their fingers
into this earth,and cultivated
each other’s bodies
to feel the joy
that troubadours chanted
in the green bird tongue.
Only in that Bible
was there revelation.
A ghost,they say,
patrols these ruins:
the lady Blanche of Bourbon,
wife of King Peter the Cruel,
who smothered her to death
when beauty had outlived usefulness.
Along the north wall
the latrines remain,
where elegant courtiers-
Lucifer's angels-
would bare their white bums
over the vertiginous abyss.
Quèrebus on its limestone pinnacle:
hallucination luring you upwards
on steps hewn from the rock;
the wind can blow a man
straight off the mountain.
In the keep’s core you circle
the Gothic chamber-
solar sanctum of the imagined Grail-
and in the dank passages
and gloomy chambers illuminated
only by arrow-slits,
you feel the terrible heaviness
that stimulates flight.
in the Aude valley,
among the beeches and pines;
through narrow gorges,
vaginas of the Goddess,
under hermit caves.
Climb through privet and scrub oak
to Puilaurens,clinging
to the limestone,
up to the crenellated walls.
The people dug their fingers
into this earth,and cultivated
each other’s bodies
to feel the joy
that troubadours chanted
in the green bird tongue.
Only in that Bible
was there revelation.
A ghost,they say,
patrols these ruins:
the lady Blanche of Bourbon,
wife of King Peter the Cruel,
who smothered her to death
when beauty had outlived usefulness.
Along the north wall
the latrines remain,
where elegant courtiers-
Lucifer's angels-
would bare their white bums
over the vertiginous abyss.
Quèrebus on its limestone pinnacle:
hallucination luring you upwards
on steps hewn from the rock;
the wind can blow a man
straight off the mountain.
In the keep’s core you circle
the Gothic chamber-
solar sanctum of the imagined Grail-
and in the dank passages
and gloomy chambers illuminated
only by arrow-slits,
you feel the terrible heaviness
that stimulates flight.
Little Monsters
God is the persecutor of newborn children; he it is who sends tiny babies to eternal flames.
Julian of Eclanum
These hundred thousand years of Homo sapiens sapiens,
Trillions of neural connections in the brain…
Look at all the cannibals killing their children,
Mutilating, abandoning, torturing and raping,
Prostituting them for their own needs.
All their self-hatred they pour into their babies,
They punish them for their own sins,
Break its legs, tear its eyes out,
Touch its privates, kick it to death.
The guilty one, the persecutor.
What can the people do with their poisons
But pour them into wars and slavery,
And into their children’s veins?
The mother kills her baby
Because it might grow up to be a sorcerer,
Because it is a terrible clinging mouth,
Because she is angry with her husband
Or afraid he will leave her foraother woman,
She tosses the newborn to the sows
And watches them devour it;
She kills it and feeds it to its siblings;
She buries it alive in a shallow hole
So its brothers may see it suffocating
And though they try to save it
Their mother stamps it deep into the earth
Until it is dead.
Stroking, masturbating and sucking
Their children’s’ genitals,
The parents amuse themselves,
In incestuous trance;
Overcoming their own depression.
The men bugger the boys’ mouths and arses,
Turning themselves from victims into conquerors,
To purge their mother-polluted blood
With powerful semen
And show them to eat and not be eaten.
Their selves split into others,
And act out the scenes again and again,
Sick and dreaming.
They will march to war
To mend their broken selves,
And cannibalize the enemy,
Devour his penis, muscles and tongue,
Absorbing their strength.
The men trade seashells
Reddened with ochre
To redeem the souls of murdered newborns.
They fondle and gaze at their precious shells
For hours on end, healing their hurts.
Demons are our wetnurses.
They will beat the bewitched child
For daring to grow up and separate,
To defy their domination with each breath.
Look at the devils-how like children they are-
Dancing, lauging, farting and joking!
Have you felt the joyous rage, the rising?
A seizure in the hippocampus,the amygdala,
Releasing God from the poor cramped body.
In the bigman’s house
His enemy’s severed head is kept in honour,
Fed on choice morsels
And consulted for oracles.
At the tree hung with human placentas
The Serpent Lady reigns
Over a fearful congregation;
Her priests cut off their own genitals
And run riot through the town.
Julian of Eclanum
These hundred thousand years of Homo sapiens sapiens,
Trillions of neural connections in the brain…
Look at all the cannibals killing their children,
Mutilating, abandoning, torturing and raping,
Prostituting them for their own needs.
All their self-hatred they pour into their babies,
They punish them for their own sins,
Break its legs, tear its eyes out,
Touch its privates, kick it to death.
The guilty one, the persecutor.
What can the people do with their poisons
But pour them into wars and slavery,
And into their children’s veins?
The mother kills her baby
Because it might grow up to be a sorcerer,
Because it is a terrible clinging mouth,
Because she is angry with her husband
Or afraid he will leave her foraother woman,
She tosses the newborn to the sows
And watches them devour it;
She kills it and feeds it to its siblings;
She buries it alive in a shallow hole
So its brothers may see it suffocating
And though they try to save it
Their mother stamps it deep into the earth
Until it is dead.
Stroking, masturbating and sucking
Their children’s’ genitals,
The parents amuse themselves,
In incestuous trance;
Overcoming their own depression.
The men bugger the boys’ mouths and arses,
Turning themselves from victims into conquerors,
To purge their mother-polluted blood
With powerful semen
And show them to eat and not be eaten.
Their selves split into others,
And act out the scenes again and again,
Sick and dreaming.
They will march to war
To mend their broken selves,
And cannibalize the enemy,
Devour his penis, muscles and tongue,
Absorbing their strength.
The men trade seashells
Reddened with ochre
To redeem the souls of murdered newborns.
They fondle and gaze at their precious shells
For hours on end, healing their hurts.
Demons are our wetnurses.
They will beat the bewitched child
For daring to grow up and separate,
To defy their domination with each breath.
Look at the devils-how like children they are-
Dancing, lauging, farting and joking!
Have you felt the joyous rage, the rising?
A seizure in the hippocampus,the amygdala,
Releasing God from the poor cramped body.
In the bigman’s house
His enemy’s severed head is kept in honour,
Fed on choice morsels
And consulted for oracles.
At the tree hung with human placentas
The Serpent Lady reigns
Over a fearful congregation;
Her priests cut off their own genitals
And run riot through the town.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Futures
See the traders forming alliances or operating solo,
Roaming widely or staying still,
Chasing one particular stock or voracious for all,
Scheming and reacting, living and dying,
Speculating in their magic mirrors.
As ciphers jittering on a screen
Decide the rise and fall of civilisations,
And the Brownian motion of algorithms
Tips the market this way and that.
Unhappy hunters, follow the running stag
That will lead you to your doom!
The predator, it seems, becomes the prey.
What to do when the funhouse isn’t fun any more?
Roaming widely or staying still,
Chasing one particular stock or voracious for all,
Scheming and reacting, living and dying,
Speculating in their magic mirrors.
As ciphers jittering on a screen
Decide the rise and fall of civilisations,
And the Brownian motion of algorithms
Tips the market this way and that.
Unhappy hunters, follow the running stag
That will lead you to your doom!
The predator, it seems, becomes the prey.
What to do when the funhouse isn’t fun any more?
Because I Am Lonely I Know I Am Alive
They are building the Tower of Babel again,
With new technology but old ambitions.
As before,there will be lies and simulations.
What is it in man that he should hate himself
And purpose his own damnation?
I cannot live in that Tower;
Let me out into the wilderness.
I am with the nobodies, the everybodies.
They call themselves superior who conquer
With force,not with reason.
The bombs that are dropping on them over there
Are dropping on us here.
With new technology but old ambitions.
As before,there will be lies and simulations.
What is it in man that he should hate himself
And purpose his own damnation?
I cannot live in that Tower;
Let me out into the wilderness.
I am with the nobodies, the everybodies.
They call themselves superior who conquer
With force,not with reason.
The bombs that are dropping on them over there
Are dropping on us here.
Grace
It is the third person, the Holy Ghost,
That moves when she moves.
Her eyelids are theology to me;
The whorls in her fingertips
Are a Milky Way.
Because she exists I can be sure
That God is real, and everywhere.
Catholic no more,I am thankful
For the chalices and vestments
An adolescent boy cast off in anger,
For the Midnight Masses
And the Ave Marias;
Without them I could not appreciate
This charisma, this grace.
Beauty’s rebellion tutors me
In strictures of freedom;
There is a glamour in society
That mediates the pain.
Suddenly a miraculous incident
Brings the distant near;
And wretched struggling desire
Becomes the hope of love.
Neither work nor knowledge
Have any place here;
One simply must believe.
Mystical body,precious cult
I serve, in union most alone!
That moves when she moves.
Her eyelids are theology to me;
The whorls in her fingertips
Are a Milky Way.
Because she exists I can be sure
That God is real, and everywhere.
Catholic no more,I am thankful
For the chalices and vestments
An adolescent boy cast off in anger,
For the Midnight Masses
And the Ave Marias;
Without them I could not appreciate
This charisma, this grace.
Beauty’s rebellion tutors me
In strictures of freedom;
There is a glamour in society
That mediates the pain.
Suddenly a miraculous incident
Brings the distant near;
And wretched struggling desire
Becomes the hope of love.
Neither work nor knowledge
Have any place here;
One simply must believe.
Mystical body,precious cult
I serve, in union most alone!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Lost Languages
She was the last one, the last speaker,
And the words came slowly to her now,
There was no-one left to talk to,
No-one to understand,
An old woman,more and more alone,
A whole world disappearing.
She lay on the bed in her small house,
The grammar of her body coming apart,
All the precious exact names for reindeer
Muted and killed.
Soon she would be gone
Back to the place where the words came from.
When Captain Cook’s scientists
First discovered it off Hawaii,
They named the darkfaced fish “Moorish idol”,
Pleased with their invention,
They sketched it and classified it,
Never consulting the Hawaiians,
Who had always known it as kihikihi,
“Crescent shaped,” “sailing zigzag”.
The Marovo of the Solomon Islands
Observed every aspect of fishes’ behaviour
And named them precisely:
Ukuka “the behaviour of shoals
When individuals drift and circle as if drunk,”
Udumu,” a large school so closely packed
As to resemble a single object,”
Sakoto, “quiet almost motionless schools at rest,
Looking like a gathering of mourners.”
The Borôro people of the Amazon
Would specify exact times for meetings
By coded gestures of arm and hand
Denoting precise angle and location
Of the sun in the sky at the chosen hour
And by pointing to various parts
Of head,face and neck.
The Nivkhs of Outer Manchuria
Employed twenty-seven different classifiers
To count and place precisely
Every possible object in the world.
There was nothing that could not be designated
In the memory theatre they lived in.
They counted the suns and moons for their children.
They sang their songs alone.
And the words came slowly to her now,
There was no-one left to talk to,
No-one to understand,
An old woman,more and more alone,
A whole world disappearing.
She lay on the bed in her small house,
The grammar of her body coming apart,
All the precious exact names for reindeer
Muted and killed.
Soon she would be gone
Back to the place where the words came from.
When Captain Cook’s scientists
First discovered it off Hawaii,
They named the darkfaced fish “Moorish idol”,
Pleased with their invention,
They sketched it and classified it,
Never consulting the Hawaiians,
Who had always known it as kihikihi,
“Crescent shaped,” “sailing zigzag”.
The Marovo of the Solomon Islands
Observed every aspect of fishes’ behaviour
And named them precisely:
Ukuka “the behaviour of shoals
When individuals drift and circle as if drunk,”
Udumu,” a large school so closely packed
As to resemble a single object,”
Sakoto, “quiet almost motionless schools at rest,
Looking like a gathering of mourners.”
The Borôro people of the Amazon
Would specify exact times for meetings
By coded gestures of arm and hand
Denoting precise angle and location
Of the sun in the sky at the chosen hour
And by pointing to various parts
Of head,face and neck.
The Nivkhs of Outer Manchuria
Employed twenty-seven different classifiers
To count and place precisely
Every possible object in the world.
There was nothing that could not be designated
In the memory theatre they lived in.
They counted the suns and moons for their children.
They sang their songs alone.
At the Chateau Lacoste
Under the stone arch of the Goats’ Gate,
Past shuttered houses,crouched and spying,
You climb over cobbles to the wolf in the mist…
Beloved residence of the Marquis de Sade,
Fortress-theatre of reckless imagination ,
Where the same man who would revel
With his children at hide-and-seek
Also choreographed pornographic fiestas
With virgins, valets and whores.
Here he could always return in trouble,
Fleeing the law and enemies’ revenge,
Safe among the contrary peasants
Who shrugged off his every scandal
As the normal antics of a nobleman
And never ,to the end,betrayed him,
Though he scorned them as canaille.
From the ruined ramparts,you survey
Foreboding country,the mother wolf
That whelped a criminal-martyr.
Red clay soil and dark green olive trees,
Mustard yellow and orange of autumn,
A breeze in the rosemary and thyme...
You wander the narrow stone alleys
At twilight ,the buildings turning gold
Then yellow,then grey-white...
France will be a part of you,always,
However far from her superb excess,
Urging abandon,rebellion and love.
What’s a man without obsessions and delusions?
One carries on,despite the knowledge
That finally,the longsuffering villagers
Turned on their disgraced seigneur
And tore his hated castle down.
Past shuttered houses,crouched and spying,
You climb over cobbles to the wolf in the mist…
Beloved residence of the Marquis de Sade,
Fortress-theatre of reckless imagination ,
Where the same man who would revel
With his children at hide-and-seek
Also choreographed pornographic fiestas
With virgins, valets and whores.
Here he could always return in trouble,
Fleeing the law and enemies’ revenge,
Safe among the contrary peasants
Who shrugged off his every scandal
As the normal antics of a nobleman
And never ,to the end,betrayed him,
Though he scorned them as canaille.
From the ruined ramparts,you survey
Foreboding country,the mother wolf
That whelped a criminal-martyr.
Red clay soil and dark green olive trees,
Mustard yellow and orange of autumn,
A breeze in the rosemary and thyme...
You wander the narrow stone alleys
At twilight ,the buildings turning gold
Then yellow,then grey-white...
France will be a part of you,always,
However far from her superb excess,
Urging abandon,rebellion and love.
What’s a man without obsessions and delusions?
One carries on,despite the knowledge
That finally,the longsuffering villagers
Turned on their disgraced seigneur
And tore his hated castle down.
The Ship of Theseus
Not a plank or nail
Of the original survives,
All replaced,
Yet the same craft it is;-
The Ship of Theseus,
My paper boat
On an autumn pond
In the park
Where I never was.
Of the original survives,
All replaced,
Yet the same craft it is;-
The Ship of Theseus,
My paper boat
On an autumn pond
In the park
Where I never was.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Demonology
Something in the blood
Calls you back to the black book.
Would you rise to the seventh hierarchy
And abide among the Furies,
Spreading discord,evil and war,
Ruled by Abaddon?
You can call me La Rue.
A priest condemned to the fires.
The dukes of Hell come riding to my door.
Abraxas,
Guide me by this opal ring
In the ways of heresy.
These are my scorpion days.
Sound the bells,
Drive evil away!
Subtle perversion is my mistress.
What does the black book counsel?
Read it backwards.
Its letters are written in blood.
There’s a black dog at the crossroads,
Always there as I approach.
In a ruined church at midnight
Where toads spit venom on the shattered altar
The cursed priest lifts the black Host.
The fallen angel Caim
Will answer your questions with burning ash.
See,he is that blackbird on a branch at your window.
He will open your ears
To the language of animals
And the running waters.
Look about you: the possessed
Walk side by side with you on the streets,
No different from you,
Their souls controlled by others.
Babylonian voices take me over.
The Devil comes tall and handsome,
Dressed all in black,
Full of ingenious persuasion,
Eloquent and unknown.
Imp in a bottle,
Are you good or evil today?
With English words
I catch poems in my incantation bowl.
Satanael,speak to me
In the flames of falling stars!
It was you, they say, who created Adam
Then saw he was imperfect,
With life leaking from his right foot
And a forefinger in the shape of a serpent.
Calls you back to the black book.
Would you rise to the seventh hierarchy
And abide among the Furies,
Spreading discord,evil and war,
Ruled by Abaddon?
You can call me La Rue.
A priest condemned to the fires.
The dukes of Hell come riding to my door.
Abraxas,
Guide me by this opal ring
In the ways of heresy.
These are my scorpion days.
Sound the bells,
Drive evil away!
Subtle perversion is my mistress.
What does the black book counsel?
Read it backwards.
Its letters are written in blood.
There’s a black dog at the crossroads,
Always there as I approach.
In a ruined church at midnight
Where toads spit venom on the shattered altar
The cursed priest lifts the black Host.
The fallen angel Caim
Will answer your questions with burning ash.
See,he is that blackbird on a branch at your window.
He will open your ears
To the language of animals
And the running waters.
Look about you: the possessed
Walk side by side with you on the streets,
No different from you,
Their souls controlled by others.
Babylonian voices take me over.
The Devil comes tall and handsome,
Dressed all in black,
Full of ingenious persuasion,
Eloquent and unknown.
Imp in a bottle,
Are you good or evil today?
With English words
I catch poems in my incantation bowl.
Satanael,speak to me
In the flames of falling stars!
It was you, they say, who created Adam
Then saw he was imperfect,
With life leaking from his right foot
And a forefinger in the shape of a serpent.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Inhale/Exhale
Cadmium orange and ivory the Kalahari, furred with grasses and stunted trees, and then the viridian myriad-rivering pale-gold-crystalline lagoon-glittered yellow-grass-floodplain-drenching lily-eyed Okavango Delta,delicate as a bee-eater poised on a branch,and the rainstorm-scenting elephant herds stride in,cutting intricate trails through the tawny grasses, carrying the winter deluge on their trunks..their hearts are little raindrops bulging towards the earth and their ears whud thunder across the wetlands, they plunge with glee in the blissful pools,frolicking and tumbling,thwacking their trunks in delight...
Oh carmine and crimson sunsets!The air is thick with stabbing,swallowing,flapping,screeching,cackling birds!Herds of impala race through the water,silhouetted in explosions of spray...Buffalo by the thousand,gently bellowing,steaming the misty morning air with their breath,steadily advance across the shallows,curved horns one endless joyous rhythm...
Green specks of phytoplankton in bloom drift through sunbeams in the Alaskan waters...the planet rolls on its axis,the sun stands proud and millions of herrings emerge from deep water, heading for the shallows to spawn,pulsing in waves along the shoreline and all is a white soup of milt...flocks of common murres lance down through green water in pursuit of prey,trailing comet-flares of bubbles...
Steller sea lions spin through green gloom,almost colliding but twisting away at the last instant..one bull sea lion floats broken and doome don the surface,as a pod of orcas keeps charging in and ramming his body with brutal tail whacks,making pass after pass, remorselessly methodically killing him, then pulling him underwater in pairs to tear his flesh with ther teeth..
In the still morning air come the exhalations of humpback whales,white plumes smoking in the blue air,rasping and foghorning..
Across the green Serengeti the myriads of white-bearded wildebeest migrate,one endless wave for a moment,then dispersing again in exquisite patterns...a lioness sits Buddha-like surveying the distance with serene golden eyes..tall dust devils twist high into the air and undulate across the horizon...a female wildebeest on the move ,looking out for cheetahs and hyenas,walks away from the herd,lies down on her side and heaves her baby out of her body,her head turned to watch the calf emerge...
Arctic summer: the ice is splitting and turquoise pools riddle the expanses in the heat shimmer...narwhals surface and joust with their tusks in an icehole...snowgeese flock in the sky...enormous swarms of sea snails and jellyfish ride the North Atlantic Drift...blood is scarlet on the ice as a polar bear rips skin and blubber from a slaughtered seal..wobbling in masses, walruses clash and quarrel,honking,spitting and stabbing at each other with their tusks,then flop back into stupor,farting and dribbling through the warm afternoons...
Up the cold clear rivers of British Columbia the salmon are returning,hard against the currents to shed their lives,-chum,coho,pink,sockeye and chinook...grizzly bears stand on top of the river falls,catching leaping salmon in their open mouths ...The wolf-eyed trees watch every motion,every heartbeat in their green sky, and thunderstorms drip under the Spirit Bear’s claws...
In the winter waters off South Africa, in the clash of the Agulhas and Benguela Currents, billions of pilchards gather in mammoth shoals, while the great ocean’s predators converge to feast, the sharks,dolphins,fur seals and Bryde’s whales , and gannets in myriads bomb into the waves, slicing down through the foam..waltzing dolphin pods patiently herd the massive globes of pilchards to the surface, and the mayhem begins...
Oh carmine and crimson sunsets!The air is thick with stabbing,swallowing,flapping,screeching,cackling birds!Herds of impala race through the water,silhouetted in explosions of spray...Buffalo by the thousand,gently bellowing,steaming the misty morning air with their breath,steadily advance across the shallows,curved horns one endless joyous rhythm...
Green specks of phytoplankton in bloom drift through sunbeams in the Alaskan waters...the planet rolls on its axis,the sun stands proud and millions of herrings emerge from deep water, heading for the shallows to spawn,pulsing in waves along the shoreline and all is a white soup of milt...flocks of common murres lance down through green water in pursuit of prey,trailing comet-flares of bubbles...
Steller sea lions spin through green gloom,almost colliding but twisting away at the last instant..one bull sea lion floats broken and doome don the surface,as a pod of orcas keeps charging in and ramming his body with brutal tail whacks,making pass after pass, remorselessly methodically killing him, then pulling him underwater in pairs to tear his flesh with ther teeth..
In the still morning air come the exhalations of humpback whales,white plumes smoking in the blue air,rasping and foghorning..
Across the green Serengeti the myriads of white-bearded wildebeest migrate,one endless wave for a moment,then dispersing again in exquisite patterns...a lioness sits Buddha-like surveying the distance with serene golden eyes..tall dust devils twist high into the air and undulate across the horizon...a female wildebeest on the move ,looking out for cheetahs and hyenas,walks away from the herd,lies down on her side and heaves her baby out of her body,her head turned to watch the calf emerge...
Arctic summer: the ice is splitting and turquoise pools riddle the expanses in the heat shimmer...narwhals surface and joust with their tusks in an icehole...snowgeese flock in the sky...enormous swarms of sea snails and jellyfish ride the North Atlantic Drift...blood is scarlet on the ice as a polar bear rips skin and blubber from a slaughtered seal..wobbling in masses, walruses clash and quarrel,honking,spitting and stabbing at each other with their tusks,then flop back into stupor,farting and dribbling through the warm afternoons...
Up the cold clear rivers of British Columbia the salmon are returning,hard against the currents to shed their lives,-chum,coho,pink,sockeye and chinook...grizzly bears stand on top of the river falls,catching leaping salmon in their open mouths ...The wolf-eyed trees watch every motion,every heartbeat in their green sky, and thunderstorms drip under the Spirit Bear’s claws...
In the winter waters off South Africa, in the clash of the Agulhas and Benguela Currents, billions of pilchards gather in mammoth shoals, while the great ocean’s predators converge to feast, the sharks,dolphins,fur seals and Bryde’s whales , and gannets in myriads bomb into the waves, slicing down through the foam..waltzing dolphin pods patiently herd the massive globes of pilchards to the surface, and the mayhem begins...
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Catholic Magic
It is time for the Mass of St Secaire: the Gascon peasants prevail upon their priest too kill a man with the Liturgy, saying Mass backwards in a ruined church, with a black Host ,ending on the stroke of midnight; thereafter, the chosen sacrifice slowly withers away of a wasting disease.
Pope Silvester II pores over Arabic astronomical treatises in secret; the mechanical talking head prophesies in the stillness of his chambers, answering whichever questions he puts to it..
Pope Honorius III is writing a grimoire by night.Babylonian demons stir about him; his jewelled ring harbours shifting lights.This secret work is intended to sit beside the Roman Ritual in a country priest’s library. I conjure you, O Book, that you be profitable to those who use you in all their affairs, I conjure you, by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, that is contained in the chalice, that you be good to them who read you.
There will be revolutions,assassinations,hidden crimes;demons will be invoked and set to work;there will be profit in terror, business without limits.Pacts will be made with nefarious powers.
They should have used the Malleus Maleficorum on me...-All those wretched Sunday mornings in church,bored out of my adolescent mind,making up little sins in the confessional to keep the priest happy,saying penance like a plastic robot,the day long forgotten when Father Daly had proudly told my mother: “By God, that boy’s full of religion!”
Pope Silvester II pores over Arabic astronomical treatises in secret; the mechanical talking head prophesies in the stillness of his chambers, answering whichever questions he puts to it..
Pope Honorius III is writing a grimoire by night.Babylonian demons stir about him; his jewelled ring harbours shifting lights.This secret work is intended to sit beside the Roman Ritual in a country priest’s library. I conjure you, O Book, that you be profitable to those who use you in all their affairs, I conjure you, by the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, that is contained in the chalice, that you be good to them who read you.
There will be revolutions,assassinations,hidden crimes;demons will be invoked and set to work;there will be profit in terror, business without limits.Pacts will be made with nefarious powers.
They should have used the Malleus Maleficorum on me...-All those wretched Sunday mornings in church,bored out of my adolescent mind,making up little sins in the confessional to keep the priest happy,saying penance like a plastic robot,the day long forgotten when Father Daly had proudly told my mother: “By God, that boy’s full of religion!”
Monday, July 19, 2010
Scent of the Jaguar
A low vibration from out of the dark.
A gruff hoarse rumble.
A guttural war-cry
Rising to crescendo.
A coughing grunt
That bristles the trees.
Under the hunter’s moon.
There is something out there. In here.
Secret brother,stay alive!
Mists cling to the forest canopy,
Incandescent in the moonlight,
And a chacalaca calls.
In a limestone hill cave
Chac is carved on the wall,
With erect penis
And extended tongue,
Patron of the blood-letter,
The willing sacrifice.
Soft rumours of running water
Whisper off the walls,
Hushed voices from the underworld.
In a bag of jaguar leather
The shaman stores his medicine;
Tonight he will paint himself
Like the jaguar,
Prowl, climb, swim, stalk and kill
While the jungle holds its breath.
Here is a ceramic pot
Shaped like a jaguar’s head
With the mouth emitting
An ecstatic howl;
Once it was used
To administer psychotropic enemas
To shamans and kings.
Mesmeric stare
Dispassionate and all-powerful
And that ominous odour,
Lithe rippling burnished gold
Splotched and flecked
With dark code,
It steals in and out
Of this world.
It snaps vertebrae,
Crumples skulls,
Crushes windpipes,
Strips bodies to the bone.
Were-jaguars, the Olmecs,
Deforming their heads
To emulate the great cat’s skull...
See the serpentine mosaics at La Venta,
Depicting ferocious jaguars,
The colossal basalt jaguar heads
And the jaguar altars close by...
The Olmec kings were descended
From the union of human women
And male jaguars,
Babyfaced and snarling,
Clawed and fanged for victory,
Dream-princes of the night.
The Jaguar Knights are dancing
With shields and clubs,
The warriors of the Maya,the Inca,the Aztecs,
Roaring,hissing,growling,
Swallowing the night-beast’s supremacy,
To hold the world under their claws
And suffer no enemies.
The jaguar stalks the stars
Above Copán,
Escorting the sun to dawn;
The god-cat’s moon eyes
Follow the action
On the ball court;
Soon rich blood will be drawn.
A gruff hoarse rumble.
A guttural war-cry
Rising to crescendo.
A coughing grunt
That bristles the trees.
Under the hunter’s moon.
There is something out there. In here.
Secret brother,stay alive!
Mists cling to the forest canopy,
Incandescent in the moonlight,
And a chacalaca calls.
In a limestone hill cave
Chac is carved on the wall,
With erect penis
And extended tongue,
Patron of the blood-letter,
The willing sacrifice.
Soft rumours of running water
Whisper off the walls,
Hushed voices from the underworld.
In a bag of jaguar leather
The shaman stores his medicine;
Tonight he will paint himself
Like the jaguar,
Prowl, climb, swim, stalk and kill
While the jungle holds its breath.
Here is a ceramic pot
Shaped like a jaguar’s head
With the mouth emitting
An ecstatic howl;
Once it was used
To administer psychotropic enemas
To shamans and kings.
Mesmeric stare
Dispassionate and all-powerful
And that ominous odour,
Lithe rippling burnished gold
Splotched and flecked
With dark code,
It steals in and out
Of this world.
It snaps vertebrae,
Crumples skulls,
Crushes windpipes,
Strips bodies to the bone.
Were-jaguars, the Olmecs,
Deforming their heads
To emulate the great cat’s skull...
See the serpentine mosaics at La Venta,
Depicting ferocious jaguars,
The colossal basalt jaguar heads
And the jaguar altars close by...
The Olmec kings were descended
From the union of human women
And male jaguars,
Babyfaced and snarling,
Clawed and fanged for victory,
Dream-princes of the night.
The Jaguar Knights are dancing
With shields and clubs,
The warriors of the Maya,the Inca,the Aztecs,
Roaring,hissing,growling,
Swallowing the night-beast’s supremacy,
To hold the world under their claws
And suffer no enemies.
The jaguar stalks the stars
Above Copán,
Escorting the sun to dawn;
The god-cat’s moon eyes
Follow the action
On the ball court;
Soon rich blood will be drawn.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
(In)finite
You know, I was no Einstein.
Albert Einstein
Infinity,or the illusion of it,
Keeps me in business.
My world is finite, without edge.
Demented concepts are my speciality,
All there is,in the end.
Neither and both are my twins.
I can’t help thinking of all the mathematicians
Who have killed themselves...
Did numbers drive them mad
Or were they just lonely like the rest of us?
On a winter beach,
Picking up stones and releasing them
If they do not quite possess the shape I want,
I try to catch the curve of things,
The distance within.
Each thought is like a message from a neutron star.
I look at my hands,
Ridged and veined,slightly calloused,
And remember they were made
In the cores of stars.
My life is a Möbius strip,
A Klein bottle.
There’s terror in the beauty,
Panic in the idleness.
I am trying in vain to make a universe
That looks a little like this one.
All I knw is that nothing can be perfectly smooth
Or perfectly still.
At night from my window
I can see the Ferris wheel on the pier,
Lit up and turning.
Somehow everything fits together
And no-one really knows how.
Will the cosmos one day collapse in on itself
And disappear into the tinest dot
Only to be born again
With the same ecstasy and terror?
Will history repeat itself entire
And find me standing here,this moment, once more?
Albert Einstein
Infinity,or the illusion of it,
Keeps me in business.
My world is finite, without edge.
Demented concepts are my speciality,
All there is,in the end.
Neither and both are my twins.
I can’t help thinking of all the mathematicians
Who have killed themselves...
Did numbers drive them mad
Or were they just lonely like the rest of us?
On a winter beach,
Picking up stones and releasing them
If they do not quite possess the shape I want,
I try to catch the curve of things,
The distance within.
Each thought is like a message from a neutron star.
I look at my hands,
Ridged and veined,slightly calloused,
And remember they were made
In the cores of stars.
My life is a Möbius strip,
A Klein bottle.
There’s terror in the beauty,
Panic in the idleness.
I am trying in vain to make a universe
That looks a little like this one.
All I knw is that nothing can be perfectly smooth
Or perfectly still.
At night from my window
I can see the Ferris wheel on the pier,
Lit up and turning.
Somehow everything fits together
And no-one really knows how.
Will the cosmos one day collapse in on itself
And disappear into the tinest dot
Only to be born again
With the same ecstasy and terror?
Will history repeat itself entire
And find me standing here,this moment, once more?
Friday, July 16, 2010
The Lost Books
I have read them all, the lost books:
Homer’s Margites,Confucius’s Book of Music,
Love’s Labour’s Won and Byron’s Memoirs,
The burnt plays of Aeschylus and Dead Souls Part Two...
No words you will ever read could be as marvellous
As those, forever invisible,
Wyverns and griffons in the ether.
Literature began with a savage laugh.
Margites the human monster, the absurd puppet,
Blunders along, ignorant and inept,
A fool worthy of his own epic,
Still amusing the blind old entertainer in his old age.
The silent voices cry out
Like the two hundred and sixty Confucian scholars
Buried alive on the orders of the Emperor Shih-huang-ti
To prevent them from reconstructing the classics from memory.
One thinks of the precious box of papers
Flaubert buried in his garden at Croisset
As the Prussian army advanced across France;
Letters ,notes and drafts for unwritten works,
Perhaps the proposed satire on socialism
Or his Second Empire novel.
And Rimbaud’s notebook,
Misplaced by the friend to whom it was entrusted,
With fifty or sixty unpublished poems,
The only one of which he could recall
"Something about geese and ducks
Splashing around in a pond.”
Homer’s Margites,Confucius’s Book of Music,
Love’s Labour’s Won and Byron’s Memoirs,
The burnt plays of Aeschylus and Dead Souls Part Two...
No words you will ever read could be as marvellous
As those, forever invisible,
Wyverns and griffons in the ether.
Literature began with a savage laugh.
Margites the human monster, the absurd puppet,
Blunders along, ignorant and inept,
A fool worthy of his own epic,
Still amusing the blind old entertainer in his old age.
The silent voices cry out
Like the two hundred and sixty Confucian scholars
Buried alive on the orders of the Emperor Shih-huang-ti
To prevent them from reconstructing the classics from memory.
One thinks of the precious box of papers
Flaubert buried in his garden at Croisset
As the Prussian army advanced across France;
Letters ,notes and drafts for unwritten works,
Perhaps the proposed satire on socialism
Or his Second Empire novel.
And Rimbaud’s notebook,
Misplaced by the friend to whom it was entrusted,
With fifty or sixty unpublished poems,
The only one of which he could recall
"Something about geese and ducks
Splashing around in a pond.”
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Astronomy for the Damned (The Lonely Astronaut)
From the atmospheres and oceans of the primeval Earth
These molecules of me...
Here is the information, the nucleic acids of words.
This instant in the billionfold history of a planet.
The instincts of the hunter-gatherer.
Climb the steps of the ziggurat, astronaut,
Ascend into the cockpit of time.
Listen to the stars,
Speaking in the language of dolphins.
Stars,nurses of life and death,
We are your holy barbarians.
Fish,reptile,mammal,human,
An embryo is evolving in the womb.
The thoughts of every animal on earth
Are in my brain.
Can the elegance of science
Redeem me?
To hike the mountains of Mars
Is my vocation;
Gas, dust and stars,
Billions on billions of stars,
Spin me a galaxy
To call my own.
Golden-helmeted for the crusade,
Jousting with stellar invaders,
I breathe the artificial air
Of unread poems.
Death and time work their magic
On my secret evolution;
The chemistry of proteins,
The neurology of brains-
My poetry!
(Lightning and ultraviolet
Breaking apart the simple molecules
Of the primitive atmosphere,
The fragments recombining
Into ever more complexity,
Then dissolving in the oceans...)
I can see great herds of trilobites hunting across the Cambrian ocean floors...
Myriads of superb adaptations succeeding one another with vertiginous speed..
I can see the first trees shoving against the sky...
God’s parasites, honey-thieves of light and air,
Carbon-pirates flying the skull and crossbones,
We sacred animals ravage the land as fast as we imagine it.
Inhaling and exhaling one another,
We suckle at the same teats.
Into the cell’s subtle labyrinth I voyage-
A galaxy evolved over aeons,
Self-maintaining, transforming molecules,
Storing energy, plotting its own reproduction,
A microdot of frenzy and patience.
Hectic nucleus, whirling coils and strands,
Is there any end to your wisdom?
Multitudinous nucleotides bear me in their sea-snake swarm...
Limitless combinations await us,
The undreamt faces and minds in the core,
Future monarchs of mankind!
The nebulae are on fire with death;
Defunct wraith-worlds drift near the core-star,
The remnant sun a small hot star,
Collapsed to unimaginable density,
Cooling with degenerate indifference
To a black dwarf.
Rorschach blobs of galaxies,
Exist for just a few seconds
Then dissolve,only to reform,
Dying, or committing suicide.
Star-clusters plunge through the Milky Way plane
And out the other side,
To slow,reverse and hurtle back again.
Hot newborn stars squawl in the spiral arms.
Behind my eyes.
In the cerebral cortex.
These molecules of me...
Here is the information, the nucleic acids of words.
This instant in the billionfold history of a planet.
The instincts of the hunter-gatherer.
Climb the steps of the ziggurat, astronaut,
Ascend into the cockpit of time.
Listen to the stars,
Speaking in the language of dolphins.
Stars,nurses of life and death,
We are your holy barbarians.
Fish,reptile,mammal,human,
An embryo is evolving in the womb.
The thoughts of every animal on earth
Are in my brain.
Can the elegance of science
Redeem me?
To hike the mountains of Mars
Is my vocation;
Gas, dust and stars,
Billions on billions of stars,
Spin me a galaxy
To call my own.
Golden-helmeted for the crusade,
Jousting with stellar invaders,
I breathe the artificial air
Of unread poems.
Death and time work their magic
On my secret evolution;
The chemistry of proteins,
The neurology of brains-
My poetry!
(Lightning and ultraviolet
Breaking apart the simple molecules
Of the primitive atmosphere,
The fragments recombining
Into ever more complexity,
Then dissolving in the oceans...)
I can see great herds of trilobites hunting across the Cambrian ocean floors...
Myriads of superb adaptations succeeding one another with vertiginous speed..
I can see the first trees shoving against the sky...
God’s parasites, honey-thieves of light and air,
Carbon-pirates flying the skull and crossbones,
We sacred animals ravage the land as fast as we imagine it.
Inhaling and exhaling one another,
We suckle at the same teats.
Into the cell’s subtle labyrinth I voyage-
A galaxy evolved over aeons,
Self-maintaining, transforming molecules,
Storing energy, plotting its own reproduction,
A microdot of frenzy and patience.
Hectic nucleus, whirling coils and strands,
Is there any end to your wisdom?
Multitudinous nucleotides bear me in their sea-snake swarm...
Limitless combinations await us,
The undreamt faces and minds in the core,
Future monarchs of mankind!
The nebulae are on fire with death;
Defunct wraith-worlds drift near the core-star,
The remnant sun a small hot star,
Collapsed to unimaginable density,
Cooling with degenerate indifference
To a black dwarf.
Rorschach blobs of galaxies,
Exist for just a few seconds
Then dissolve,only to reform,
Dying, or committing suicide.
Star-clusters plunge through the Milky Way plane
And out the other side,
To slow,reverse and hurtle back again.
Hot newborn stars squawl in the spiral arms.
Behind my eyes.
In the cerebral cortex.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
August Afternoon in Paris
Beloved Sunday, the soul’s respite...
The shutters have come down on cafés and boulangeries.The bellowing traffic is muffled and thinned.
Empty chairs around the fountain in the park.
The waiter almost smiles.
I find a stone bench by the Seine and watch the barges pass by.
It’s not my actions I remember most, it’s my inactions; the not-done is my gift to the world.I am everything that I have not performed.
Can’t you see that everything has changed- and nothing? All your life you have been fooled by appearances.All your life has been ruled by fear.
In the terrace gardens of the Cluny Museum, the Unicorn Forest rustles with poems and quests; the Lower Mysteries of Paris are everywhere around you, once you start to see.
In the flea market at Clignancourt I look into an antique gilded mirror:could that be the face of an eighteenth-century aristocrat, strutting the opulent corridors of Versailles(where the rulers of the world would crouch anywhere they pleased for a shit)? No, rather a peasant, a potato-eater.A Gaul.
I like to spend Sundays with the dead.Their conversation is most congenial to me.Prowling the streets of Pere-Lachaise,with a map of the netherworld,I seek out the mentors in my head.
The artificial river beaches ripple in the heat, Disney oases of palm trees and sand. The day slowly evolves like a game of pétanque.
Then, one morning, the cafe opposite is open again. The shutters are up everywhere. Workers are hurrying along, grabbing something to eat.
No time, no time.
The shutters have come down on cafés and boulangeries.The bellowing traffic is muffled and thinned.
Empty chairs around the fountain in the park.
The waiter almost smiles.
I find a stone bench by the Seine and watch the barges pass by.
It’s not my actions I remember most, it’s my inactions; the not-done is my gift to the world.I am everything that I have not performed.
Can’t you see that everything has changed- and nothing? All your life you have been fooled by appearances.All your life has been ruled by fear.
In the terrace gardens of the Cluny Museum, the Unicorn Forest rustles with poems and quests; the Lower Mysteries of Paris are everywhere around you, once you start to see.
In the flea market at Clignancourt I look into an antique gilded mirror:could that be the face of an eighteenth-century aristocrat, strutting the opulent corridors of Versailles(where the rulers of the world would crouch anywhere they pleased for a shit)? No, rather a peasant, a potato-eater.A Gaul.
I like to spend Sundays with the dead.Their conversation is most congenial to me.Prowling the streets of Pere-Lachaise,with a map of the netherworld,I seek out the mentors in my head.
The artificial river beaches ripple in the heat, Disney oases of palm trees and sand. The day slowly evolves like a game of pétanque.
Then, one morning, the cafe opposite is open again. The shutters are up everywhere. Workers are hurrying along, grabbing something to eat.
No time, no time.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Zinc Cafe (2ieme Arrondissement)
A ballon of rosé, and an oeuf mayonnaise,
That’s all.
I sit staring into space.
Space stares into me.
The waiters practice the art of indifference
With supercilious expertise.
I am part of the furniture,
Not here at all,
Yet so ridiculously alive.
Believe it or not,
My greatest lies have been my greatest truths.
Keep it simple, I tell myself,
Keep out of trouble, can’t you?
The glistening leaves on the pavement
After the autumn rain,
The leaf-smell in my nostrils,
Heady as cocaine...-
That child’s sailboat launched
In a Tuileries fountain
One bright afternoon...
That’s all.
I sit staring into space.
Space stares into me.
The waiters practice the art of indifference
With supercilious expertise.
I am part of the furniture,
Not here at all,
Yet so ridiculously alive.
Believe it or not,
My greatest lies have been my greatest truths.
Keep it simple, I tell myself,
Keep out of trouble, can’t you?
The glistening leaves on the pavement
After the autumn rain,
The leaf-smell in my nostrils,
Heady as cocaine...-
That child’s sailboat launched
In a Tuileries fountain
One bright afternoon...
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Translator
To live is to translate.
These are my horrors; cave paintings of a damned mind...
Impossible exactitude drives me on,
Endlessly rewriting the world,
To resemble some perfect original.
Normality conspires to reclaim
The oddness in these words,
To turn a carnival into a shopping centre.
Can I catch here and there a motif, a refrain
From out of the chaos?
What will foreign eyes appropriate,
What will they assimilate of this?
Find a style of being,
Such is my imperative since birth,
And the knack is not easily won.
What is my natural habitat?
I have not found it yet,
Not on these streets or in these days
Or in this country or any other.
A life spent at the borders,
Busy with espionage and contraband,
Is my calling; the world hangs
On a semi-colon.
Have I misread the situation again?
Misunderstanding is a way of life,
A way of getting by.
Too many compromises
Hedge me in my neverland,
But I press on towards the next crossroads.
These are my horrors; cave paintings of a damned mind...
Impossible exactitude drives me on,
Endlessly rewriting the world,
To resemble some perfect original.
Normality conspires to reclaim
The oddness in these words,
To turn a carnival into a shopping centre.
Can I catch here and there a motif, a refrain
From out of the chaos?
What will foreign eyes appropriate,
What will they assimilate of this?
Find a style of being,
Such is my imperative since birth,
And the knack is not easily won.
What is my natural habitat?
I have not found it yet,
Not on these streets or in these days
Or in this country or any other.
A life spent at the borders,
Busy with espionage and contraband,
Is my calling; the world hangs
On a semi-colon.
Have I misread the situation again?
Misunderstanding is a way of life,
A way of getting by.
Too many compromises
Hedge me in my neverland,
But I press on towards the next crossroads.
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