Time,that horned and masked chameleon,
With bulging swivelling round eyes,
Stalks slowly forward till its sticky tongue
Strikes like a lightningbolt...
The dead man’s spirit lives on in his jawbone.
He moves through the long grass
Like a leopard.
His smile is wrapped in a red barkcloth shroud.
One twin is human, the other a python.
Their voices are waterfalls.
West through the forest,crossing two streams,
I go,emerging at the swamp
Of sitatunga and shoebill,
Then climb the hill to the shrine.
In the rainforest the chimpanzees are at war:
One tribe methodically exterminating the other,
Isolating and murdering the enemy
One by one.
Friday, January 14, 2011
The Man in the Panama Hat
My mind:
Basilisk lizard running
Across water
With paddle feet.
All things are always and everywhere
Getting worse
In the most exquisite ways.
Like that wily Mayan
Who,questioned by Columbus
As to the whereabouts of the golden cities,
Pointed eastwards away from his homeland,
I will always send the world the other way.
A chieftain climbing the mountains
To search for golden frogs,
I pull down the clouds with my fingers,
Name every new thing I see.
My Scottish empire
Disappears in the jungle,
Overgrown,
Bitten to death.
An orchid’s flame
Will not save you
Though you try to cup it in your hands.
Basilisk lizard running
Across water
With paddle feet.
All things are always and everywhere
Getting worse
In the most exquisite ways.
Like that wily Mayan
Who,questioned by Columbus
As to the whereabouts of the golden cities,
Pointed eastwards away from his homeland,
I will always send the world the other way.
A chieftain climbing the mountains
To search for golden frogs,
I pull down the clouds with my fingers,
Name every new thing I see.
My Scottish empire
Disappears in the jungle,
Overgrown,
Bitten to death.
An orchid’s flame
Will not save you
Though you try to cup it in your hands.
The Rivals
Florence, 1504-1508
A wily operator,Piero Soderini,
Who matched two heavyweight champions,
In the Great Council Hall’s ring,
Michelangelo the broken-nosed slugger,
The crowd’s new favourite,
And Leonardo,prancing jabbing fop,
Hated and adored in equal parts.
Through long still nights,Leonardo,
Muttered over his notebooks,encoding
The world with a bastard’s will,
While Michelangelo ,holding his chisel
Like an assassin’s dagger,circled
His sculpture,choosing his next attack.
Brutal in their mutual vendetta,
They raged ,schemed,insulted each other,
Desperate to win the crown
And cast the enemy like a rebel angel
Down into the Bottomless Pit.
First Leonardo,then his younger rival
The Gonfalier commissioned, their contest
Meant to serve the glory of Florence.
At opposite ends of the Great Hall
Each would paint a giant mural:
Leonardo The Battle of Anghiari,
Michelangelo The Battle of Cascina.
This would be the grandest room on earth,
The heroic city’s greatest boast,
The school of supreme art.
In capes and gowns of pink and purple
Flouting the day’s dark fashions,
Cardinal of his own heretical Church,
Leonardo walks the same streets
Where Buonarroti,surly and dishevelled,
Black hair over a clenched frown,
Bowls along in scruffy slept-in clothes,
Like a murderer fleeing his crime.
Monstrous ruck of men and horses,
Knotting,clashing,twisting,stabbing:
The pen’s spearpoint jabs and parries,
Swings across the paper,raising
A dustcloud of blood,dirt,dreams.
Slowly,so slowly the work progresses,
In Leonardo’s studio at Santa Maria Novella,
As other fascinations constantly
Pull him away for hours, days,weeks.
Bent over a vast battlefield of paper
In the Hospital of the Dyers,Michelangelo-
Greek fire fuelling his bathhouse fever-
Etches young men’s sinews and nerves,
Superb flesh about to be ravaged
In its final humiliation.Audacity has him
By the balls:risk the soul on his hand’s
Work is all he can do to live,breathe,
Self-martyred ,broken into ecstasy.
In the Great Hall young Raphael
Walks from one end to the other,
Sketching the opposing cartoons,
His soul divided by their splendours,
Resolved to reconcile such extremes
With grace;inwardly he transmutes
This titanic game of thrusts and feints,
And steals their powers for himself.
A wily operator,Piero Soderini,
Who matched two heavyweight champions,
In the Great Council Hall’s ring,
Michelangelo the broken-nosed slugger,
The crowd’s new favourite,
And Leonardo,prancing jabbing fop,
Hated and adored in equal parts.
Through long still nights,Leonardo,
Muttered over his notebooks,encoding
The world with a bastard’s will,
While Michelangelo ,holding his chisel
Like an assassin’s dagger,circled
His sculpture,choosing his next attack.
Brutal in their mutual vendetta,
They raged ,schemed,insulted each other,
Desperate to win the crown
And cast the enemy like a rebel angel
Down into the Bottomless Pit.
First Leonardo,then his younger rival
The Gonfalier commissioned, their contest
Meant to serve the glory of Florence.
At opposite ends of the Great Hall
Each would paint a giant mural:
Leonardo The Battle of Anghiari,
Michelangelo The Battle of Cascina.
This would be the grandest room on earth,
The heroic city’s greatest boast,
The school of supreme art.
In capes and gowns of pink and purple
Flouting the day’s dark fashions,
Cardinal of his own heretical Church,
Leonardo walks the same streets
Where Buonarroti,surly and dishevelled,
Black hair over a clenched frown,
Bowls along in scruffy slept-in clothes,
Like a murderer fleeing his crime.
Monstrous ruck of men and horses,
Knotting,clashing,twisting,stabbing:
The pen’s spearpoint jabs and parries,
Swings across the paper,raising
A dustcloud of blood,dirt,dreams.
Slowly,so slowly the work progresses,
In Leonardo’s studio at Santa Maria Novella,
As other fascinations constantly
Pull him away for hours, days,weeks.
Bent over a vast battlefield of paper
In the Hospital of the Dyers,Michelangelo-
Greek fire fuelling his bathhouse fever-
Etches young men’s sinews and nerves,
Superb flesh about to be ravaged
In its final humiliation.Audacity has him
By the balls:risk the soul on his hand’s
Work is all he can do to live,breathe,
Self-martyred ,broken into ecstasy.
In the Great Hall young Raphael
Walks from one end to the other,
Sketching the opposing cartoons,
His soul divided by their splendours,
Resolved to reconcile such extremes
With grace;inwardly he transmutes
This titanic game of thrusts and feints,
And steals their powers for himself.
Monday, January 03, 2011
Feedback
Polysemous eyes
of the loved one-
we live in all the senses
a volatile cosmos
changing from moment
to moment
Oblivion sirens
the cracked people
waiting for a saviour
in a country never seen
on any map
Moss takes hold
on the temple ruins
the clock on the mantelpiece
stutters to standstill
The sun comes up again
saluted with a shrug
of the loved one-
we live in all the senses
a volatile cosmos
changing from moment
to moment
Oblivion sirens
the cracked people
waiting for a saviour
in a country never seen
on any map
Moss takes hold
on the temple ruins
the clock on the mantelpiece
stutters to standstill
The sun comes up again
saluted with a shrug
Hitler's Books
Pencil in hand, he scans the page
For something he can use,
Underlining a passage here, a phrase there,
Inserting exclamations or question marks,
Plundering ideas to fit his mission.
Each day at breakfast, the Fuhrer reprises
Last night’s reading at tedious length
To all at his table, recalling complete passages
From various books, discussing the topics
To fix them in his own mind.
1925.He opens his sketchbook
And draws a detailed stage set for the first act
Of Julius Caesar, with ominous facades
For the Forum where the hero will die.
We will meet again at Philippi,
He warns opponents with a glower.
For something he can use,
Underlining a passage here, a phrase there,
Inserting exclamations or question marks,
Plundering ideas to fit his mission.
Each day at breakfast, the Fuhrer reprises
Last night’s reading at tedious length
To all at his table, recalling complete passages
From various books, discussing the topics
To fix them in his own mind.
1925.He opens his sketchbook
And draws a detailed stage set for the first act
Of Julius Caesar, with ominous facades
For the Forum where the hero will die.
We will meet again at Philippi,
He warns opponents with a glower.
Remembering Some Lines From A Favourite Poet
A phrase here, a line there
Toll their privilege through me;
Properties of the moment
Reverberate with love.
The secret signs return
In various guises,
The old enchantment
Still telling the rosary
Of my blood.
To please and bewilder
Is the poem’s heft;
A foreign self becomes
As one’s own heartbeat.
Everything is there and gone,
Flitting in and out of sight,
Too rich and exquisite
To exist for more than a second.
From these fires you flee
And to them you return,
Endebted to their cold burning.
Toll their privilege through me;
Properties of the moment
Reverberate with love.
The secret signs return
In various guises,
The old enchantment
Still telling the rosary
Of my blood.
To please and bewilder
Is the poem’s heft;
A foreign self becomes
As one’s own heartbeat.
Everything is there and gone,
Flitting in and out of sight,
Too rich and exquisite
To exist for more than a second.
From these fires you flee
And to them you return,
Endebted to their cold burning.
137
A colleague who met me strolling rather aimlessly in the beautiful streets of Copenhagen said to me in a friendly manner, “You look very unhappy,” whereupon I answered angrily, “How can one look happy when he is thinking about the anomalous Zeeman effect?”
Wolfgang Pauli
Mephistopheles the mathematician
Smiles a sardonic smile.
The veiled woman on the staircase
Sings with perfect guile.
And everywhere the numbers
Turn somersaults all the while.
There are thirty-two paths of wisdom,
Of which I have stumbled on
Perhaps one or two, no more.
The more precisely one knows the energy
Of a spectral line ignited when an electron jumps
From a higher to a lower orbit within an atom,
The less precisely can you measure
The time the action takes.
The dreams and mandalas of physics,
The Buddhist sutras of everyday life,
Drive me deeper and deeper
Into mathematics.
Invented or discovered, the world
Holds me to uncanny bargains.
No matter how old I grow
I shall always be afraid.
From three to four is the difficult transition.
Symmetries and harmonies beyond comprehension
Madden my straining intellect.
Every theory contains its own heresy.
The weak links teach more than the strong.
From circles to ellipses my mind runs.
The trembling thrust of planetary motions
I sense in each line I write.
Can it be that God is left-handed?
Dogs and foxes bite me in my sleep.
A Chinese woman hands me a bowl of noodles
With a weird little smile.
Wolfgang Pauli
Mephistopheles the mathematician
Smiles a sardonic smile.
The veiled woman on the staircase
Sings with perfect guile.
And everywhere the numbers
Turn somersaults all the while.
There are thirty-two paths of wisdom,
Of which I have stumbled on
Perhaps one or two, no more.
The more precisely one knows the energy
Of a spectral line ignited when an electron jumps
From a higher to a lower orbit within an atom,
The less precisely can you measure
The time the action takes.
The dreams and mandalas of physics,
The Buddhist sutras of everyday life,
Drive me deeper and deeper
Into mathematics.
Invented or discovered, the world
Holds me to uncanny bargains.
No matter how old I grow
I shall always be afraid.
From three to four is the difficult transition.
Symmetries and harmonies beyond comprehension
Madden my straining intellect.
Every theory contains its own heresy.
The weak links teach more than the strong.
From circles to ellipses my mind runs.
The trembling thrust of planetary motions
I sense in each line I write.
Can it be that God is left-handed?
Dogs and foxes bite me in my sleep.
A Chinese woman hands me a bowl of noodles
With a weird little smile.
Six Perfect Sentences
That was the year when Hemingway wrote six perfect sentences.
The year when Ulysses was published.
The year the California grizzly bear became extinct
And the last Barbary lion was killed in Morocco.
The Soviet Union was founded;
The Ottoman Empire was abolished.
The first men in three thousand years
Entered the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Mussolini and his Blackshirts marched on Rome,
While, in Paris, Gurdjieff opened his Institute
For the Harmonious Development of Man.
Michael Collins fell in an ambush in West Cork.
Walter Rathenau was assassinated in Berlin.
The Turks massacred the Greeks in Smyrna.
A twenty-ton meteorite landed in Virginia.
Mohandas Gandhi was sentenced to prison
For “sedition against the British Crown.”
And Hemingway managed six perfect lines.
The year when Ulysses was published.
The year the California grizzly bear became extinct
And the last Barbary lion was killed in Morocco.
The Soviet Union was founded;
The Ottoman Empire was abolished.
The first men in three thousand years
Entered the tomb of Tutankhamun.
Mussolini and his Blackshirts marched on Rome,
While, in Paris, Gurdjieff opened his Institute
For the Harmonious Development of Man.
Michael Collins fell in an ambush in West Cork.
Walter Rathenau was assassinated in Berlin.
The Turks massacred the Greeks in Smyrna.
A twenty-ton meteorite landed in Virginia.
Mohandas Gandhi was sentenced to prison
For “sedition against the British Crown.”
And Hemingway managed six perfect lines.
Chess Moves
Accumulation of advantages is my game,
The delight of asymmetry,of annihilation,
With bayonet attacks,blockades and breakthroughs,
Zugzwang and zwischenzug,
The unseen mate and the vanished centre.
What will it be? The Berlin defence
Or the Calabrian counter-gambit?
The Dragon variation or the Lasker trap?
Perhaps I shall introduce the Java theme,
Practise decoys and distant opposition,
Or proffer Greek gifts and poisoned pawns.
Do not be surprised to face the Fegatello attack
Orthe cunning use of outposts and holes;
See-saws,star checks,staircase movements,
All can be brought to bear.
One revels in trebuchets,mirror mates,excelsiors,
The timely use of bad bishops and bare kings,
Passar battaglia and the pendulum draw.
At the siege of Sebastopol,Prince Sergei Urusov,
One of Europe’s finest players,proposed
To settle possession of a long-contested trench
By a game of chess against a worthy opponent,
The best player in the English army.
His general,alas,dismissed the idea
And ordered the next costly attack.
Alexandre Deschapelles joined Napoleon’s army,
Was left for dead at the siege of Mainz,
Fought again at Fleurus,was captured at Baylen,
Made a clever escape from Cadiz,
Lost his right hand and earned a sabre scar
From brow to chin.One of the first men
To be awarded the Cross of Honour.
He tore it off in disgust when Napoleon
Had himself crowned Emperor.
After Waterloo he earned a living
Playing chess at the Cafe de la Regence,
Boasting he had learned all the secrets of the game
In just three days.Delicate and irritable,
A slow meticulous player,he took on Bourdonnais
As pupil,his opposite,hale and cheerful
And a swift decisive master at the board.
Once he had lost to his talented disciple,
Deschapelles gave up chess altogether
And made his fortune at whist instead.
He retired to a pleasant villa
And,when not tending the orchards,
Frequently fought one-armed duels,
His prickly self-regard all too easily provoked.
His last years he spent writing bizarre constitutions
For various South American republics.
Saint Amant said of him:”The only way
To remain on good terms with him
Without meanness or flattery
Is to see him seldom,never to be in his debt,
And to maintain a dignified reserve.”
Now for some sly triangulation,
The accelerated dragon and the use of desperados,
Sitzfleisch or Santasiere’s Folly.
Let us commence with the Orang Utan opening...
Very soon I shall hold you in perpetual check.
The delight of asymmetry,of annihilation,
With bayonet attacks,blockades and breakthroughs,
Zugzwang and zwischenzug,
The unseen mate and the vanished centre.
What will it be? The Berlin defence
Or the Calabrian counter-gambit?
The Dragon variation or the Lasker trap?
Perhaps I shall introduce the Java theme,
Practise decoys and distant opposition,
Or proffer Greek gifts and poisoned pawns.
Do not be surprised to face the Fegatello attack
Orthe cunning use of outposts and holes;
See-saws,star checks,staircase movements,
All can be brought to bear.
One revels in trebuchets,mirror mates,excelsiors,
The timely use of bad bishops and bare kings,
Passar battaglia and the pendulum draw.
At the siege of Sebastopol,Prince Sergei Urusov,
One of Europe’s finest players,proposed
To settle possession of a long-contested trench
By a game of chess against a worthy opponent,
The best player in the English army.
His general,alas,dismissed the idea
And ordered the next costly attack.
Alexandre Deschapelles joined Napoleon’s army,
Was left for dead at the siege of Mainz,
Fought again at Fleurus,was captured at Baylen,
Made a clever escape from Cadiz,
Lost his right hand and earned a sabre scar
From brow to chin.One of the first men
To be awarded the Cross of Honour.
He tore it off in disgust when Napoleon
Had himself crowned Emperor.
After Waterloo he earned a living
Playing chess at the Cafe de la Regence,
Boasting he had learned all the secrets of the game
In just three days.Delicate and irritable,
A slow meticulous player,he took on Bourdonnais
As pupil,his opposite,hale and cheerful
And a swift decisive master at the board.
Once he had lost to his talented disciple,
Deschapelles gave up chess altogether
And made his fortune at whist instead.
He retired to a pleasant villa
And,when not tending the orchards,
Frequently fought one-armed duels,
His prickly self-regard all too easily provoked.
His last years he spent writing bizarre constitutions
For various South American republics.
Saint Amant said of him:”The only way
To remain on good terms with him
Without meanness or flattery
Is to see him seldom,never to be in his debt,
And to maintain a dignified reserve.”
Now for some sly triangulation,
The accelerated dragon and the use of desperados,
Sitzfleisch or Santasiere’s Folly.
Let us commence with the Orang Utan opening...
Very soon I shall hold you in perpetual check.
The Silk Road
Beyond the Great Wall is nothing.Death.
The barbarous wilderness with its monsters.
The banished who die there,what hell shall befall them!
Demons shall tear them from their graves.
And any Buddhst who perishes on that side
Shall be damned eternally,reborn in the lowliest forms.
Wind-besieged bastion of Jiayuguan,
Last tower looking out on death.
Exiles,passing through the tunnel,
Leave life and hope behind them,
Never to hear their mother tongue again,
Scratching despairing poems and messages
Into the bricks as they go.
Westward to Dunhuang spins the thread.
Once-great cities,teeming,dreaming,building,
Now are vanished into the sand,
Crawled over by lizards and scorpions.
Fabulous mirages visit the wide horizons,
Lakes and rivers misted in their own reflections,
Ghosts of trees and houses hover beyond.
In the Mogao caves of the Mingsha Hills,
Images extrude from the walls,
Vivid in the gloom,-Hindu gymnosophists
Pa,vermilion faces oxidized to black,
White eyes glaring with preternatural fervour.
Frescoed Buddhas and bodhisattvas
Multiply,sanctified by endless reproduction,
Hallucinations of Maya,
Styled into truth by human hands.
Thus one makes one’s way across
The swaying ropebridge of time.
Through shades of barren blue landscape
Northward to Turfan, warehouse of winds,
Where a sand-buried egg will boil in a minute.
Strangely,in this rainless nowhere,
Cold water channels emerge from the ground
And in autumn courtyard trellises sag
With dusky grapes,apricots and lemons.
Uighur oases:all shrewdness and swagger,
The horse-people canter,neigh and capriole,
Lemon-bright eyes and ebullient gestures,
Horses dancing over the sands.
Voluptuous music ripples in veils
And the women dressed in colour-fanfares
Are a torchlight procession in the dark.
Beyond,dead cities shiver in the wind,
Battlements and palaces all rubbed away,
Spires looming stupendous and forlorn.
Compacted earth rasps underfoot,
And perhaps an apparition will silently rise
And show you a lifetime in an instant.
Eight hundred miles to Kashgar:
On one side hazy snowcrests shine like madness,
On the other stretch the Taklamakan sands,
Flood-smoothed stone and gravel glaze,
And here and there a mountain-suckled
Orchard or arable field.
Demons lead travellers astray with noises,
Sandstorms open onto unearthly hush,
Voices and ghosts lull the heart past caring.
There,no,over there,somewhere,near and far,
Comes the hum of a non-existent caravan
And musical instruments ensorcelling
With melodies that are and are not.
Outside Kashgar,in dust by the roadside,
Huddle the graves of Chinese labourers,
Facing east,back towards their motherland.
In the city,the Fragrant Concubine has her tomb,
An Uighur princess given in tribute
To the Chinese emperor,sold into despair.
He,entranced by this beautiful savage,
Ran long-nailed fingers over her skin,
But she drew back,rejecting his desire,
And,fleeing his angry eyes,strangled herself.
The barbarous wilderness with its monsters.
The banished who die there,what hell shall befall them!
Demons shall tear them from their graves.
And any Buddhst who perishes on that side
Shall be damned eternally,reborn in the lowliest forms.
Wind-besieged bastion of Jiayuguan,
Last tower looking out on death.
Exiles,passing through the tunnel,
Leave life and hope behind them,
Never to hear their mother tongue again,
Scratching despairing poems and messages
Into the bricks as they go.
Westward to Dunhuang spins the thread.
Once-great cities,teeming,dreaming,building,
Now are vanished into the sand,
Crawled over by lizards and scorpions.
Fabulous mirages visit the wide horizons,
Lakes and rivers misted in their own reflections,
Ghosts of trees and houses hover beyond.
In the Mogao caves of the Mingsha Hills,
Images extrude from the walls,
Vivid in the gloom,-Hindu gymnosophists
Pa,vermilion faces oxidized to black,
White eyes glaring with preternatural fervour.
Frescoed Buddhas and bodhisattvas
Multiply,sanctified by endless reproduction,
Hallucinations of Maya,
Styled into truth by human hands.
Thus one makes one’s way across
The swaying ropebridge of time.
Through shades of barren blue landscape
Northward to Turfan, warehouse of winds,
Where a sand-buried egg will boil in a minute.
Strangely,in this rainless nowhere,
Cold water channels emerge from the ground
And in autumn courtyard trellises sag
With dusky grapes,apricots and lemons.
Uighur oases:all shrewdness and swagger,
The horse-people canter,neigh and capriole,
Lemon-bright eyes and ebullient gestures,
Horses dancing over the sands.
Voluptuous music ripples in veils
And the women dressed in colour-fanfares
Are a torchlight procession in the dark.
Beyond,dead cities shiver in the wind,
Battlements and palaces all rubbed away,
Spires looming stupendous and forlorn.
Compacted earth rasps underfoot,
And perhaps an apparition will silently rise
And show you a lifetime in an instant.
Eight hundred miles to Kashgar:
On one side hazy snowcrests shine like madness,
On the other stretch the Taklamakan sands,
Flood-smoothed stone and gravel glaze,
And here and there a mountain-suckled
Orchard or arable field.
Demons lead travellers astray with noises,
Sandstorms open onto unearthly hush,
Voices and ghosts lull the heart past caring.
There,no,over there,somewhere,near and far,
Comes the hum of a non-existent caravan
And musical instruments ensorcelling
With melodies that are and are not.
Outside Kashgar,in dust by the roadside,
Huddle the graves of Chinese labourers,
Facing east,back towards their motherland.
In the city,the Fragrant Concubine has her tomb,
An Uighur princess given in tribute
To the Chinese emperor,sold into despair.
He,entranced by this beautiful savage,
Ran long-nailed fingers over her skin,
But she drew back,rejecting his desire,
And,fleeing his angry eyes,strangled herself.
Polish Communion
This country cannot be found on any map,
Only in the breaking of bread
And the chill grace of vodka;
The borders are shifting, as ever,
And nothing can be held in the hand.
Again it is Maundy Thursday
And the villagers hang effigies of Judas,
Flog them, burn them, throw them in the river.
Woman, sunrise celebrates Mass in your eyes,
Bird calls break the forest silence,
A pillar of fire rises among the trees,
Wild boar guard the musky gloom.
Skulls under skullcaps recite the Psalms.
Drunkenness is my vocation,
Religiously reciting the names
Of different vodkas :
Żubrówka,Tatrazańska, Jarzębiak.
Pierced by the Tartar arrows of the summer sun,
I tumble naked into steaming lakes,
The earth sweats like an Arabian thoroughbred,
This is no land for the rational,the sane,
It belongs to the laughing rascals
Leaning out of windows on Easter Monday
To throw water bombs at passing girls.
Insurrection clamours
In the shipyards of the spirit;
Shanties carry on the wind,
And whale songs echo through sailors’ bones,
While the potbellied knights of King Arthur
Feast in the hall of marble columns,
Fed from the Holy Grail.
In Praski Park,on the Vistula’s edge,
I sit on a smooth glacial boulder,
Looking across at the ghost city’s outline,
Luminous Warsaw,resurrected stone by stone.
I cross the bridge to the Old Town,
The Castle’s pink Renaissance facade in the square,
Where the last king was hustled out by Russian soldiers,
Forbidden to address the silent crowd,
Before him only exile,nostalgia,despair.
The gilded apartments,willed out of nothingness
By desperate magic,glitter with mourning,
The dust of broken centuries swarming in the light.
Chestnut-splendid and besquirrelled,
All paths through Łazienkowski Park lead
To the Palace on the Water,that great swan
Fed on faith and joy,its mutable aspects
Appearing through the willows as you approach.
Inside,the rooms,elaborately dazzling,
Bespeak pavanes on polished marble
And fluttering repartee at butterfly balls,
Lightness and fancy set free for a moment.
In my mundane mediocrity,I envy
The old nobles of Poland, decadent, idle,
Revelling in their imagined Sarmatian descent,
As much as the ideals of Greece and Rome,
Horsemen warriors decked in gold, with Amazon women,
Feasting and living with opulent extravagance,
Wearing fur caps with pearls and crimson damask robes,
Silk and precious stones, with sashes of gold,
The men shaving their heads in imagined imitation
Of the ancient Sarmatian nomads.
Neglecting politics for display,
Karol Radziwiłł would, in a drunken stupor,
Shoot any dinner guest he deemed disagreeable;
For sport, he would also have his servants
Fire huge bison into the air
From massive launchers hidden in the forests
Of his estate, so he could shoots them in mid-air,
A crack shot who seldom missed.
They were the finest men ever,
Jan Sobieski, born in a thunderstorm,
Caparisoned in furs and silks,
Silver half-moon heels on his Turkish boots,
Jewelled scimitar at his side,
And his winged hussars, steel armour
Polished like silver and edged with brass,
Shining like gold,
Their shoulders adorned with mascarons
Depicting the Nemean lion,
Their breastplates graven with the Holy Virgin,
The officers in Sarmatian scale armour,
Leoparskins thrown over their backs,
Tall eagle feathers attached to their backs,
Their Circassian saddles of broidered velvet
Set with precious stones,
Striking terror into every enemy
When they appeared on the horizon,
Pennants fluttering and weapons gleaming....
In the cathedral of Sandomierz
Along the nave the massive paintings
Detail the innumerable martyrdoms
Of faithful Catholics at the hands
Of Muslims and Jews,-here, a Christian child
Is ritually murdered by Jews,
Rolling him in a barrel of nails,
Then letting the blood drain from his body
Then throwing the corpse to the dogs.
Endless beheadings and tortures
Prove the nation righteous,
And a Pole still seated on his horse
Is blown through the air
Across the Vistula, as the castle explodes,
To land uninjured on the other side.
Must the courageous be cruel in their defiance?
Time and again the people have risen
To fight for freedom,whatever the cost,
Knowing that victory is always temporary,
A preparation for the next defeat,
Surviving to work some profound influence
Upon the nations of Europe.
Puszcza Kampinoska:countless trails lead off
Into the deep wilderness...stray too far
And you are lost,lost,lost...who would hear
Your small voice calling? The darkness
Belongs to wolves and boars.In a silent clearing
A monument marks the spot where people
Stood before open ditches to be shot.
The lonely trumpeter of Kraków sounds the hours
From the highest tower of Mariacki Church,
Addressing the four quarters in turn,
Each slow sobbing call cut short in mid-phrase,
Surprised by the Tatar’s fatal arrow.
On Wawel Hill,in the Gothic cathedral,
Straight ahead in the transept ,reflecting
Sun-shafts from golden roof and columns,
Rides the body of St Stanislaw in silver coffin.
Poems fill the air like the palatial Turkish tents
Captured at Vienna,displayed in the castle,
With empty suits of oriental armour standing guard.
Ornamental Italian castles on the northern European plains;
Tiny roads to ancient villages or overgrown ramparts...
Memories roll forward and back,crossing the Obidowa pass
At sunset,ridge on ridge receding through green
And grey to distant blue,the Tatra peaks ever closer...
Nothing but the fire of rowanberry vodka
On this unrepeatable day,in the imagined world
Of destruction and creation,where the soul
Must suffer and grow wise.
Inside the brute red mass of Malbork Castle,
Labyrinthine corridors disappearing into inner darkness,
I gaze into lumps of amber,into the bodies
Of insects and plants suspended in amniotic hell.
Is it there still,inside me,Copernicus’s view
Of the Baltic from Frombork,out at the edge,
Where what appears disappears and appears again?
Only in the breaking of bread
And the chill grace of vodka;
The borders are shifting, as ever,
And nothing can be held in the hand.
Again it is Maundy Thursday
And the villagers hang effigies of Judas,
Flog them, burn them, throw them in the river.
Woman, sunrise celebrates Mass in your eyes,
Bird calls break the forest silence,
A pillar of fire rises among the trees,
Wild boar guard the musky gloom.
Skulls under skullcaps recite the Psalms.
Drunkenness is my vocation,
Religiously reciting the names
Of different vodkas :
Żubrówka,Tatrazańska, Jarzębiak.
Pierced by the Tartar arrows of the summer sun,
I tumble naked into steaming lakes,
The earth sweats like an Arabian thoroughbred,
This is no land for the rational,the sane,
It belongs to the laughing rascals
Leaning out of windows on Easter Monday
To throw water bombs at passing girls.
Insurrection clamours
In the shipyards of the spirit;
Shanties carry on the wind,
And whale songs echo through sailors’ bones,
While the potbellied knights of King Arthur
Feast in the hall of marble columns,
Fed from the Holy Grail.
In Praski Park,on the Vistula’s edge,
I sit on a smooth glacial boulder,
Looking across at the ghost city’s outline,
Luminous Warsaw,resurrected stone by stone.
I cross the bridge to the Old Town,
The Castle’s pink Renaissance facade in the square,
Where the last king was hustled out by Russian soldiers,
Forbidden to address the silent crowd,
Before him only exile,nostalgia,despair.
The gilded apartments,willed out of nothingness
By desperate magic,glitter with mourning,
The dust of broken centuries swarming in the light.
Chestnut-splendid and besquirrelled,
All paths through Łazienkowski Park lead
To the Palace on the Water,that great swan
Fed on faith and joy,its mutable aspects
Appearing through the willows as you approach.
Inside,the rooms,elaborately dazzling,
Bespeak pavanes on polished marble
And fluttering repartee at butterfly balls,
Lightness and fancy set free for a moment.
In my mundane mediocrity,I envy
The old nobles of Poland, decadent, idle,
Revelling in their imagined Sarmatian descent,
As much as the ideals of Greece and Rome,
Horsemen warriors decked in gold, with Amazon women,
Feasting and living with opulent extravagance,
Wearing fur caps with pearls and crimson damask robes,
Silk and precious stones, with sashes of gold,
The men shaving their heads in imagined imitation
Of the ancient Sarmatian nomads.
Neglecting politics for display,
Karol Radziwiłł would, in a drunken stupor,
Shoot any dinner guest he deemed disagreeable;
For sport, he would also have his servants
Fire huge bison into the air
From massive launchers hidden in the forests
Of his estate, so he could shoots them in mid-air,
A crack shot who seldom missed.
They were the finest men ever,
Jan Sobieski, born in a thunderstorm,
Caparisoned in furs and silks,
Silver half-moon heels on his Turkish boots,
Jewelled scimitar at his side,
And his winged hussars, steel armour
Polished like silver and edged with brass,
Shining like gold,
Their shoulders adorned with mascarons
Depicting the Nemean lion,
Their breastplates graven with the Holy Virgin,
The officers in Sarmatian scale armour,
Leoparskins thrown over their backs,
Tall eagle feathers attached to their backs,
Their Circassian saddles of broidered velvet
Set with precious stones,
Striking terror into every enemy
When they appeared on the horizon,
Pennants fluttering and weapons gleaming....
In the cathedral of Sandomierz
Along the nave the massive paintings
Detail the innumerable martyrdoms
Of faithful Catholics at the hands
Of Muslims and Jews,-here, a Christian child
Is ritually murdered by Jews,
Rolling him in a barrel of nails,
Then letting the blood drain from his body
Then throwing the corpse to the dogs.
Endless beheadings and tortures
Prove the nation righteous,
And a Pole still seated on his horse
Is blown through the air
Across the Vistula, as the castle explodes,
To land uninjured on the other side.
Must the courageous be cruel in their defiance?
Time and again the people have risen
To fight for freedom,whatever the cost,
Knowing that victory is always temporary,
A preparation for the next defeat,
Surviving to work some profound influence
Upon the nations of Europe.
Puszcza Kampinoska:countless trails lead off
Into the deep wilderness...stray too far
And you are lost,lost,lost...who would hear
Your small voice calling? The darkness
Belongs to wolves and boars.In a silent clearing
A monument marks the spot where people
Stood before open ditches to be shot.
The lonely trumpeter of Kraków sounds the hours
From the highest tower of Mariacki Church,
Addressing the four quarters in turn,
Each slow sobbing call cut short in mid-phrase,
Surprised by the Tatar’s fatal arrow.
On Wawel Hill,in the Gothic cathedral,
Straight ahead in the transept ,reflecting
Sun-shafts from golden roof and columns,
Rides the body of St Stanislaw in silver coffin.
Poems fill the air like the palatial Turkish tents
Captured at Vienna,displayed in the castle,
With empty suits of oriental armour standing guard.
Ornamental Italian castles on the northern European plains;
Tiny roads to ancient villages or overgrown ramparts...
Memories roll forward and back,crossing the Obidowa pass
At sunset,ridge on ridge receding through green
And grey to distant blue,the Tatra peaks ever closer...
Nothing but the fire of rowanberry vodka
On this unrepeatable day,in the imagined world
Of destruction and creation,where the soul
Must suffer and grow wise.
Inside the brute red mass of Malbork Castle,
Labyrinthine corridors disappearing into inner darkness,
I gaze into lumps of amber,into the bodies
Of insects and plants suspended in amniotic hell.
Is it there still,inside me,Copernicus’s view
Of the Baltic from Frombork,out at the edge,
Where what appears disappears and appears again?
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Waltzing the Danube
Staring out of a train window
As it hurtles through the countryside,
One knows that life eludes all taxonomies
Can never be reduced to diagrams.
You raise your face to the breeze,
Life’s essence passes through you
And seeps into the bones.
Where is the river’s source?
Is it on Mt Abnoba?In Hesperia?
In the land of the Hyperboreans?
This is the zone of hybrids and metamorphoses.
In a small dip in the hillside the Breg
Bubbles up from underground;the meadow
Is steeped in water,sodden and flooded
By countless rivulets...
Once the primeval Danube flowed
Into the Gulf of Thetis,into the Sarmatic Sea,
Its mouth where Vienna now stands.
In the Clock Museum at Furtwanger,
Timepieces by the thousand tick off the hours
In a dream of perpetual motion,pendulums
And cogwheels dividing eternity
Into mathematical units,while life
Flies up and down and in and out
And all around...The relief of science,
Distracting us from our inner torment,
Turning our gaze to the world outside!
Perhaps ths way we will keep our heads,
Discover a world secure and structured,
A home for the self-tormented spirit.
Stations I pass through,words I write...
The struggle to fill in the blank spaces,
Annul the nullity, escape from insignificance...
Why did it all turn out as it did-myself
And the world-from the beginning till now?
Keep moving bravely forward,do not rest.
The mystery of the Hapsburg Empire
Draws me in,through paradox and oxymoron,
The irreconcilable contradiction,the puzzle
Never to be solved,too many pieces missing,
The synthesis that cannot be achieved.
This is my future,forever postponed,
My mind,like a Klein bottle.
Must one believe in God to have faith in the world?
Very early I began to doubt priests’ words
And see in their rites mere theatre.
One must love the created world,all the same,
Be it underwritten by the heavens
Or by ourselves alone.
The Danube is, with no need of affirmation,
Promising nothing,flowing on, oblivious;
I will bridge and ford it however I can,
Accept my destiny as the seasons determine.
A parasite on the hide of Europe,
A parasite feeding on the ideas and emotions
Of the living and the dead,I mime a life
Inside a carapace of rhetoric.
Am I Roman or barbarian? I am drawn
To the empire’s crumbled stone frontier,
Dividing and defining all the way to the Black Sea.
In Ulm, the sparrow’s nest,the shrine
Of Ahasuerus’s shoe,German law and custom
Bless the sad clerks at their desks,
Their hidden passions distorted by convention,
Rendered pitiful and grotesque.
Close,so close to perdition,I dig into the black roots
Of a language I cannot speak,a culture
Far from my birth,and maunder on,
Sure,at least,of desire’s ordeal,
That binds me to the indescribable beloved,
That face,those hips, those shoulders...
Triple-rivered Passau,floating and flowing
Away on the current,gold and carnation marble
Palaces and churches ,streets winding beneath
Arches,domes and colonnades-a cosmos
Of curves,spheres,circles and ellipses-
The nearest is the furthest away,
The simplest is the most mysterious,
As we seek a home on earth, a hearth
To tend with care and hope,
Discovering grace before nothingness.
Smell of snow in Linz,the hills and river
Heraldic in the still-the imperial AEIOU
Spells infinitely receding possibility
To the heart.To break out
Of this landlocked desolation and reach
The sea!-There we might be happy
As humans, as animals,as gods.
Ochre and orange buildings fade
Into the evening’s watercolour,
In Artstetten Castle crypt,they lie,
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his Sophie,
Their idiocies annulled by martyrdom.
The old Europe died in their arms,
As they died in each other’s,
Pulling the whole world down with them
Into the bottomless wishing well,
Keeping forever their lovers’ secrets
Deadlier than bullets or bombs.
The first blood flowed out onto his blue tunic,
From the sleeve and chest,as his hat
With huge green feathers fell unharmed.
In Vienna’s Cemetery of the Nameless,
Treading over the Danube’s sacrificial victims,
I watch big crows rise on the wing,
Inhale the simple joy of morning.
How hard it is to tell the real from the unreal,
Fact from feeling,life from death.
In the Museum of Medicine,among
Anatomical models sectioned to reveal
The madness of muscles,organs,arteries
And nerves,I stop before a beautiful
Colourless male head,the lips drawn
Into the smile of a kouros,the skull
Exposing,in median sagittal section,
The cerebellum’s tree of life.
A woman with abdominal walls removed
To lay the genital organs open
Lies serenely prone,in a blonde wig,
A necklace round her waxen throat.
Plump white hands of Hungarian princes,
Earthen hands of Slovakian peasants;
Renaissance palaces winged like griffins,
Hovels made from straw and dung;
Only the trees and stones know
The lives that have gone into this soil.
Wave on wave of invasions, superimposed
Upon one another, have steeped
The earth with Eurasian dreams.
Solitude is their birthright,these souls
Abandoned to the horsemen’s plains,
Forever,even in victory,defeated.
In an open-air cafe in Budapest,I spoon
Icecream into my lying mouth,and watch
The Danube run beneath titanic bridges,
To some unseen horizon,which the spirit,
Fed on books and pictures,can reach for
But never,to its anguish,attain.
Powerless in a marginal province,
One hears the muffled cries of lives
Unknown, destinies arbitrated elsewhere.
Sunflowers and maize cover Mohács field,
Wooden statues planted in the ground
To mark the battle,men and horses.
Faces contorted with ferocious agony,
Crosses and crescents opposed;
The day when the olive tree at Pécs
Turned barren,and King Louis II,
Egged on by his nobles,shrugged
And gave the accursed order for battle.
Like Gaius Scribonius,unwilling
To advance his army into the dark forests
On the other shore,clinging to the pure
And noble Latin tongue as his shield,
I plot strategic victories of speech.
In Bulgaria,-no man’s land of heretics,
Among late nations half-mapped
By Western arrogance,where the dark
Vowels of Old Church Slavonic swung
Their bronze bells in high towers,-
I spy on a church wall an anathema
Against the Bogomils,the peasants’ friends,
Who denounced the satanic princes
Of the earth, its irredeemable evil
Perpetuated through human lust.
Forward the Thracian horseman
Charges,serene in the face of death,
Cloak-wings flying out in the wind.
At the gibbeted crossroads,in the path
Of evil,Romania lures me in where many
Gods have been created then sacrificed.
Only the most fallen, the most corrupt
Can long so for redemption,-
The swarming world,condemned
By sensual delusion,staggers
Under its own desire’s burden.
The delta ravels its secrets before me:
Stream on stream,ramified rivulets
Feeding the great dissolution,
The terminus of death and rebirth.
Nature’s bass note booms through me,
Amid the vast jungle of land and water
Merged,the cavernous shadows
Of overhanging trees, the deep bays
Where time moors,like the Argo returning.
Loosen,release,abandon to the flow!-
Gulls and herons crowd the evening air,
Shouting madly to the sea’s horizon.
As it hurtles through the countryside,
One knows that life eludes all taxonomies
Can never be reduced to diagrams.
You raise your face to the breeze,
Life’s essence passes through you
And seeps into the bones.
Where is the river’s source?
Is it on Mt Abnoba?In Hesperia?
In the land of the Hyperboreans?
This is the zone of hybrids and metamorphoses.
In a small dip in the hillside the Breg
Bubbles up from underground;the meadow
Is steeped in water,sodden and flooded
By countless rivulets...
Once the primeval Danube flowed
Into the Gulf of Thetis,into the Sarmatic Sea,
Its mouth where Vienna now stands.
In the Clock Museum at Furtwanger,
Timepieces by the thousand tick off the hours
In a dream of perpetual motion,pendulums
And cogwheels dividing eternity
Into mathematical units,while life
Flies up and down and in and out
And all around...The relief of science,
Distracting us from our inner torment,
Turning our gaze to the world outside!
Perhaps ths way we will keep our heads,
Discover a world secure and structured,
A home for the self-tormented spirit.
Stations I pass through,words I write...
The struggle to fill in the blank spaces,
Annul the nullity, escape from insignificance...
Why did it all turn out as it did-myself
And the world-from the beginning till now?
Keep moving bravely forward,do not rest.
The mystery of the Hapsburg Empire
Draws me in,through paradox and oxymoron,
The irreconcilable contradiction,the puzzle
Never to be solved,too many pieces missing,
The synthesis that cannot be achieved.
This is my future,forever postponed,
My mind,like a Klein bottle.
Must one believe in God to have faith in the world?
Very early I began to doubt priests’ words
And see in their rites mere theatre.
One must love the created world,all the same,
Be it underwritten by the heavens
Or by ourselves alone.
The Danube is, with no need of affirmation,
Promising nothing,flowing on, oblivious;
I will bridge and ford it however I can,
Accept my destiny as the seasons determine.
A parasite on the hide of Europe,
A parasite feeding on the ideas and emotions
Of the living and the dead,I mime a life
Inside a carapace of rhetoric.
Am I Roman or barbarian? I am drawn
To the empire’s crumbled stone frontier,
Dividing and defining all the way to the Black Sea.
In Ulm, the sparrow’s nest,the shrine
Of Ahasuerus’s shoe,German law and custom
Bless the sad clerks at their desks,
Their hidden passions distorted by convention,
Rendered pitiful and grotesque.
Close,so close to perdition,I dig into the black roots
Of a language I cannot speak,a culture
Far from my birth,and maunder on,
Sure,at least,of desire’s ordeal,
That binds me to the indescribable beloved,
That face,those hips, those shoulders...
Triple-rivered Passau,floating and flowing
Away on the current,gold and carnation marble
Palaces and churches ,streets winding beneath
Arches,domes and colonnades-a cosmos
Of curves,spheres,circles and ellipses-
The nearest is the furthest away,
The simplest is the most mysterious,
As we seek a home on earth, a hearth
To tend with care and hope,
Discovering grace before nothingness.
Smell of snow in Linz,the hills and river
Heraldic in the still-the imperial AEIOU
Spells infinitely receding possibility
To the heart.To break out
Of this landlocked desolation and reach
The sea!-There we might be happy
As humans, as animals,as gods.
Ochre and orange buildings fade
Into the evening’s watercolour,
In Artstetten Castle crypt,they lie,
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his Sophie,
Their idiocies annulled by martyrdom.
The old Europe died in their arms,
As they died in each other’s,
Pulling the whole world down with them
Into the bottomless wishing well,
Keeping forever their lovers’ secrets
Deadlier than bullets or bombs.
The first blood flowed out onto his blue tunic,
From the sleeve and chest,as his hat
With huge green feathers fell unharmed.
In Vienna’s Cemetery of the Nameless,
Treading over the Danube’s sacrificial victims,
I watch big crows rise on the wing,
Inhale the simple joy of morning.
How hard it is to tell the real from the unreal,
Fact from feeling,life from death.
In the Museum of Medicine,among
Anatomical models sectioned to reveal
The madness of muscles,organs,arteries
And nerves,I stop before a beautiful
Colourless male head,the lips drawn
Into the smile of a kouros,the skull
Exposing,in median sagittal section,
The cerebellum’s tree of life.
A woman with abdominal walls removed
To lay the genital organs open
Lies serenely prone,in a blonde wig,
A necklace round her waxen throat.
Plump white hands of Hungarian princes,
Earthen hands of Slovakian peasants;
Renaissance palaces winged like griffins,
Hovels made from straw and dung;
Only the trees and stones know
The lives that have gone into this soil.
Wave on wave of invasions, superimposed
Upon one another, have steeped
The earth with Eurasian dreams.
Solitude is their birthright,these souls
Abandoned to the horsemen’s plains,
Forever,even in victory,defeated.
In an open-air cafe in Budapest,I spoon
Icecream into my lying mouth,and watch
The Danube run beneath titanic bridges,
To some unseen horizon,which the spirit,
Fed on books and pictures,can reach for
But never,to its anguish,attain.
Powerless in a marginal province,
One hears the muffled cries of lives
Unknown, destinies arbitrated elsewhere.
Sunflowers and maize cover Mohács field,
Wooden statues planted in the ground
To mark the battle,men and horses.
Faces contorted with ferocious agony,
Crosses and crescents opposed;
The day when the olive tree at Pécs
Turned barren,and King Louis II,
Egged on by his nobles,shrugged
And gave the accursed order for battle.
Like Gaius Scribonius,unwilling
To advance his army into the dark forests
On the other shore,clinging to the pure
And noble Latin tongue as his shield,
I plot strategic victories of speech.
In Bulgaria,-no man’s land of heretics,
Among late nations half-mapped
By Western arrogance,where the dark
Vowels of Old Church Slavonic swung
Their bronze bells in high towers,-
I spy on a church wall an anathema
Against the Bogomils,the peasants’ friends,
Who denounced the satanic princes
Of the earth, its irredeemable evil
Perpetuated through human lust.
Forward the Thracian horseman
Charges,serene in the face of death,
Cloak-wings flying out in the wind.
At the gibbeted crossroads,in the path
Of evil,Romania lures me in where many
Gods have been created then sacrificed.
Only the most fallen, the most corrupt
Can long so for redemption,-
The swarming world,condemned
By sensual delusion,staggers
Under its own desire’s burden.
The delta ravels its secrets before me:
Stream on stream,ramified rivulets
Feeding the great dissolution,
The terminus of death and rebirth.
Nature’s bass note booms through me,
Amid the vast jungle of land and water
Merged,the cavernous shadows
Of overhanging trees, the deep bays
Where time moors,like the Argo returning.
Loosen,release,abandon to the flow!-
Gulls and herons crowd the evening air,
Shouting madly to the sea’s horizon.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Mesopotamia
Between two rivers, between drought and flood,
Alluvial civilisation accretes.
Mudtowns obliterated by disaster:
The wind piles sand against their ruins,
Filling in their streets,while the rain
Smooths forlorn heaps into mammary mounds.
Ur lies in ruins,its people dispersed,
Wife abandoned,daughter abandoned,
Walls broken,houses burnt down,
The dead like potsherds scattered
And turning to sand.
In Uruk,home of Anu and Inanna,
Temple cone-mosaic facades
Gleam red,white and black in the glare.
Hunched Sumerian scribes etch pictograms
Into clay tablets,agglutinative thought
Made flesh.They are heaven’s liege-men
On this flat disc surrounded by mountains,
Floating ensphered on a sweetwater ocean,
The terrifying Netherworld groaning below.
Here,where a sudden blinding cloudburst
Turns dusty plain to malebolge,
And a sandstorm candevastate the brightest day,
What should men do but placate the gods
And labour to win their goodwill?
To the gods the ziggurats extend
An invitation to descend;men they command
To shed their shells and ascend.
The temple doors are opened:
The gods gilded statue shines forth
In the shrine’s semi-darkness,
Washed,anointed,perfumed,dressed and fed,
Incense and flowers at his feet.
The air vibrates with music and incantation,
Bread,cakes,butter,fruit and honey on the altar,
The smoke of roasting flesh commingled
With cedarwood and cypress fumes.
Whisper the prayer through a reed tube
In Sumerian into the bull’s right ear,
In Akkadian into the left.
The king lives in harmony.His palace is harmonious,
The sun-gloried courtyard paved with gypsum slabs,
And,inside,the long proud flight of steps
To the throne-room, to the dais
Where His Majesty sits,
His justice as simple as a handful of flour and dates.
In the narrow dusty rubbish-clogged streets,
Pedlars and shoppers walk in the walls’ shade
And a crowd gathers at the crossroads
To hear a storyteller recite “Gilgamesh”.
Ashurnasirpal, King of Assyria,
No pity,no piety in his beaked image,
The straight-staring eyes of total power,
Proclaims: “I built a pillar and covered it
With the skins of rebellious chiefs I had flayed.
Some I walled up inside the pillar,
Some I impaled upon the pillar.
Others I had bound to stakes around it.”
Returning in triumph from campaigns of conquest,
He brings with him strange beasts in cages
And unknown seeds to plant in his gardens.
At Nineveh the omens are reported;
Mathematicians and astronomers plot the heavens
And some already wake from horrible dreams,
Having witnessed the seat of the gods in flames.
In Babylon the New Year’s Festival commences.
A priest unlocks the Temple gate,
Opening the courtyard for prayer.
Purify the precinct with Tigris water,
Smear the walls with cedar resin.
The ceremonial slaughterer with dripping hands
Casts the decapitated sheep into the river
And the old year’s sins are carried away.
The penitent king surrenders his insignia,
The priest strikes his cheek and he bows to the god,
“I did not sin, I protected Babylon.
Neither did I neglect the rites
Or punish without reason.”
Then he rises,purged and blessed,
And once more puts authority on,
Heaven’s chosen Lord of Men.
Alluvial civilisation accretes.
Mudtowns obliterated by disaster:
The wind piles sand against their ruins,
Filling in their streets,while the rain
Smooths forlorn heaps into mammary mounds.
Ur lies in ruins,its people dispersed,
Wife abandoned,daughter abandoned,
Walls broken,houses burnt down,
The dead like potsherds scattered
And turning to sand.
In Uruk,home of Anu and Inanna,
Temple cone-mosaic facades
Gleam red,white and black in the glare.
Hunched Sumerian scribes etch pictograms
Into clay tablets,agglutinative thought
Made flesh.They are heaven’s liege-men
On this flat disc surrounded by mountains,
Floating ensphered on a sweetwater ocean,
The terrifying Netherworld groaning below.
Here,where a sudden blinding cloudburst
Turns dusty plain to malebolge,
And a sandstorm candevastate the brightest day,
What should men do but placate the gods
And labour to win their goodwill?
To the gods the ziggurats extend
An invitation to descend;men they command
To shed their shells and ascend.
The temple doors are opened:
The gods gilded statue shines forth
In the shrine’s semi-darkness,
Washed,anointed,perfumed,dressed and fed,
Incense and flowers at his feet.
The air vibrates with music and incantation,
Bread,cakes,butter,fruit and honey on the altar,
The smoke of roasting flesh commingled
With cedarwood and cypress fumes.
Whisper the prayer through a reed tube
In Sumerian into the bull’s right ear,
In Akkadian into the left.
The king lives in harmony.His palace is harmonious,
The sun-gloried courtyard paved with gypsum slabs,
And,inside,the long proud flight of steps
To the throne-room, to the dais
Where His Majesty sits,
His justice as simple as a handful of flour and dates.
In the narrow dusty rubbish-clogged streets,
Pedlars and shoppers walk in the walls’ shade
And a crowd gathers at the crossroads
To hear a storyteller recite “Gilgamesh”.
Ashurnasirpal, King of Assyria,
No pity,no piety in his beaked image,
The straight-staring eyes of total power,
Proclaims: “I built a pillar and covered it
With the skins of rebellious chiefs I had flayed.
Some I walled up inside the pillar,
Some I impaled upon the pillar.
Others I had bound to stakes around it.”
Returning in triumph from campaigns of conquest,
He brings with him strange beasts in cages
And unknown seeds to plant in his gardens.
At Nineveh the omens are reported;
Mathematicians and astronomers plot the heavens
And some already wake from horrible dreams,
Having witnessed the seat of the gods in flames.
In Babylon the New Year’s Festival commences.
A priest unlocks the Temple gate,
Opening the courtyard for prayer.
Purify the precinct with Tigris water,
Smear the walls with cedar resin.
The ceremonial slaughterer with dripping hands
Casts the decapitated sheep into the river
And the old year’s sins are carried away.
The penitent king surrenders his insignia,
The priest strikes his cheek and he bows to the god,
“I did not sin, I protected Babylon.
Neither did I neglect the rites
Or punish without reason.”
Then he rises,purged and blessed,
And once more puts authority on,
Heaven’s chosen Lord of Men.
Catch Me Before I Kill Again
The panic in my veins is the chaos on the streets.
Repetition.My black muse.My love.
Do you fear the wolf? I do. His terrifying grace.
The news is full of menace and alarm,
The same old decadence about to receive
Its comeuppance,as the evil omens accumulate.
God help me, I live among cannibals and beasts
Who cannot control themselves,cannot stop
Doing the same things over and over,committing
The same accursed mistakes,to no purpose,
In love with their own nameless demons.
Protestant sermons and Catholic rituals
Bedevil my solitude.How we need our monsters!
Dear God, control me,control us,keep order
On earth; all this free will is killing me.
Repetition.My black muse.My love.
Do you fear the wolf? I do. His terrifying grace.
The news is full of menace and alarm,
The same old decadence about to receive
Its comeuppance,as the evil omens accumulate.
God help me, I live among cannibals and beasts
Who cannot control themselves,cannot stop
Doing the same things over and over,committing
The same accursed mistakes,to no purpose,
In love with their own nameless demons.
Protestant sermons and Catholic rituals
Bedevil my solitude.How we need our monsters!
Dear God, control me,control us,keep order
On earth; all this free will is killing me.
Mourning
My death has already taken place,
Somewhere out there, in the future,
While , here,I haunt myself and mourn myself.
I am human technology,
The melancholy android,unsure of its place
Among all the exquisite objects in the universe.
Graphs, flow charts and probabilities
Replace imagination among the elect,
Desperate to manage every detail, every illusion.
Our science is, in truth, science fiction.
Save me,cries the soul,that mad machine,
Superbly engineered by demons and angels
All knowledge is glorified uncertainty
I find;no two testimonies completely agree;
Belief itself is all I can believe in.
Somewhere out there, in the future,
While , here,I haunt myself and mourn myself.
I am human technology,
The melancholy android,unsure of its place
Among all the exquisite objects in the universe.
Graphs, flow charts and probabilities
Replace imagination among the elect,
Desperate to manage every detail, every illusion.
Our science is, in truth, science fiction.
Save me,cries the soul,that mad machine,
Superbly engineered by demons and angels
All knowledge is glorified uncertainty
I find;no two testimonies completely agree;
Belief itself is all I can believe in.
Angler
Out from the house, the slim quick supple wand
Tremulous with anticipation in your hand,
You hurry down by dandelions to the lake,
Summer’s idle prince coming into his kingdom.
A woodpecker beats time in a treetop,
Frankincense languor seeps through the pores,
Moody water overhung with alders and willows,
Where the tall float’s quizzical antenna drifts
And bobs, pricking at a sotto voce omen.
Thrilling through refractions, the rudd
Come plunging and fighting to the net,
Gilt flanks minted in the evening gleam.
Time and again, the spry float dashes
Across black meniscus in hesitant trickles.
Discreetly abundant,a Gioconda moon
Perches, approving,in an old ash tree.
Wending home, holy Lord of Animals,
You breathe the dew-spongeing lane and smile.
Tremulous with anticipation in your hand,
You hurry down by dandelions to the lake,
Summer’s idle prince coming into his kingdom.
A woodpecker beats time in a treetop,
Frankincense languor seeps through the pores,
Moody water overhung with alders and willows,
Where the tall float’s quizzical antenna drifts
And bobs, pricking at a sotto voce omen.
Thrilling through refractions, the rudd
Come plunging and fighting to the net,
Gilt flanks minted in the evening gleam.
Time and again, the spry float dashes
Across black meniscus in hesitant trickles.
Discreetly abundant,a Gioconda moon
Perches, approving,in an old ash tree.
Wending home, holy Lord of Animals,
You breathe the dew-spongeing lane and smile.
African Dream
War-drums are beating...
Red sun rises in the bush of ghosts...
War-drums are beating...
A knife cuts the black goat’s neck.
Blood flows on the breathless dust.
The chant moves slowly through the trees.
It stirs the bones, our ancestors,
Joins them together till they rise
And dance for the moon’s delight.
The wells are poisoned, there is nowhere to go.
Bullet holes in village walls
Gape like starving children’s mouths.
Emaciated earth has no breath to gasp.
Bibles and Korans fall from the sky.
Round and round a madman dances,
Crying like a strangled chicken.
Here come the bankers in black suits,
Undertakers to bury the living,
Cannibals with shiny shoes and small lifeless eyes.
The weapons have been chosen:
Pencils and rulers, drawing lines on a map;
Bullets tipped with promises and lies.
Through the Great Rift Valley they walked,
The first human beings,under the blue cones
Of a thousand volcanic peaks,
Their minds drifting like the herds of elands and zebra,
Their hands as busy as the monkeys’ and baboons’.
No-one had told them this was Eden.
They cooked their words over night fires.
Red sun rises in the bush of ghosts...
War-drums are beating...
A knife cuts the black goat’s neck.
Blood flows on the breathless dust.
The chant moves slowly through the trees.
It stirs the bones, our ancestors,
Joins them together till they rise
And dance for the moon’s delight.
The wells are poisoned, there is nowhere to go.
Bullet holes in village walls
Gape like starving children’s mouths.
Emaciated earth has no breath to gasp.
Bibles and Korans fall from the sky.
Round and round a madman dances,
Crying like a strangled chicken.
Here come the bankers in black suits,
Undertakers to bury the living,
Cannibals with shiny shoes and small lifeless eyes.
The weapons have been chosen:
Pencils and rulers, drawing lines on a map;
Bullets tipped with promises and lies.
Through the Great Rift Valley they walked,
The first human beings,under the blue cones
Of a thousand volcanic peaks,
Their minds drifting like the herds of elands and zebra,
Their hands as busy as the monkeys’ and baboons’.
No-one had told them this was Eden.
They cooked their words over night fires.
Wild Swimming
Pagan me, wild water’s lover-worshipper,
Taking the cold deep inside me
To feel like an animal-god.
Celebrate in the shivering skin,
Plunging into another nervous dimension,
Where you scoop out revelations
With hands turning into flippers.
There is always this moment’s dithering
On the edge,goosebumped flesh
And brain,asking “Am I crazy?”-then the rush,
The fall, the surrender-a memory of birth.
Life stares through me,dark as a seal’s eye.
Taking the cold deep inside me
To feel like an animal-god.
Celebrate in the shivering skin,
Plunging into another nervous dimension,
Where you scoop out revelations
With hands turning into flippers.
There is always this moment’s dithering
On the edge,goosebumped flesh
And brain,asking “Am I crazy?”-then the rush,
The fall, the surrender-a memory of birth.
Life stares through me,dark as a seal’s eye.
Black Pearls
Not order, not measure, but the wild and subtle arguments
Of wistful minds, impossible explorers,
Whose geometry is unorthodox, whose theses
Are exotic, esoteric, prone to the vast diverse panorama....
The soul’s academy drives them to plutonic dialogues,
Theologians of their own imagined deaths,
Wagering all they are on salvation, in an age
Of exile and destruction, divided against itself.
Of wistful minds, impossible explorers,
Whose geometry is unorthodox, whose theses
Are exotic, esoteric, prone to the vast diverse panorama....
The soul’s academy drives them to plutonic dialogues,
Theologians of their own imagined deaths,
Wagering all they are on salvation, in an age
Of exile and destruction, divided against itself.
Skimming Stones
A flat round stone will serve you best.
With a sidearm toss and a flick of the wrist
The trick is to hit the surface
At twenty degrees precisely.
The force from the water
Is proportional to the squared speed of the stone.
A game of ducks and drakes
Is what draws me to the shore,
A practised squanderer wondering
How many bounces I will manage this time.
There is always this stillness
When I am throwing my stones.
A mathematical formula
To describe my life has not yet been found,
Although it may exist.From what I read,
Numbers are capable of limitless feats.
Meanwhile,it’s back to the seashore for me,
And practise,practise,practise.
With a sidearm toss and a flick of the wrist
The trick is to hit the surface
At twenty degrees precisely.
The force from the water
Is proportional to the squared speed of the stone.
A game of ducks and drakes
Is what draws me to the shore,
A practised squanderer wondering
How many bounces I will manage this time.
There is always this stillness
When I am throwing my stones.
A mathematical formula
To describe my life has not yet been found,
Although it may exist.From what I read,
Numbers are capable of limitless feats.
Meanwhile,it’s back to the seashore for me,
And practise,practise,practise.
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