The Church

Just before Communion was dispensed

My mother pointed out the woman

Dressed in grey plumes and quills and sheen

Of looks, as Tara Palmer-Tomkinson.


So. You may need reminding.

(No, you won’t, the kind who don’t

Say they know who she is, they

Know her well enough to disapprove).


A line of royalty and others too,

A career and some adverts and a face

That is attractive, very, save its cause.

But Tara, of the Irish hill, at Hampshire makes her home.


“No reason to get excited” – eyes mock-averted,

We bowed, as at prayer or twinging from the Host,

A good-attendance-ful of Lancelots shunned the Grail,

To let the city clothes and home girl sit at ease.


Beside me and behind me sisters knelt

Who dressed to match her and had conserved strength,

Who laughed with me at wombs and veiled flesh,

And at the vicar’s aphrodisiac.


I didn’t laugh with them about the blow

Caught in her drooping feathers. For she

Sang lowly, she looked down and did not take

A blessing from Rev. Parnell-Hopkinson.

My Place

Why scorn my city?

Well then, whip me, but stop that deigning;

Your speech was framed for fitter errantry

Your heart to sooner break such tenantry

To tropes and troubles and to angled squares.


Don’t blame my birthplace if you shift like that;

I shouldn’t blame at all. Raise up that brow

Now – if you choose, know that that edge

That tires on plate will best dissever silk

And bear in mind your best rational ilk

Your kind that rallies in each jibe I’ve eyed.


Enough, to me be silent,

And yet my city, ground, is duller than

A grind, but when enjoyed, don’t you

Remember how you shine or shone in it?

Brightly but not the first, nor most deserving.

The mind and hand here bowed itself unswerving.


Here scholars dropped their tracts for many a cause

Ill-fortuned and unfunded and believed.

Can’t you see Empress Matilda, arm in arm

With shortie Charles? It doesn’t snow too often

Because this city’s memory’s in slush,

Shall we then hear one sleetflake’s anecdote?


Sixty odd years back a boy was due

To pick up one of Jowett’s awards. In Poland

Look at that palamino’s unmetalproof flank.

So Grandpa never went the way I followed,

Stayed at the great subcontinental jewel,

Married his artist cousin, and kept up his Greek.


The chosen ghosts, the great who stayed behind -

No wonder it feels odd, our yellow town,

Demands its homage, and revenges hurt.

Concede it that, and drink at least its health.

When it can’t yield, then I want to throw

A trenchcoat over melting gutter snow.

The judgement of Paris

(The first part and a half of the next one written ages ago. The rest recent.)

1

Oenone’s lyre is northern and stained;

And shunned by all others of Ida’s nymphs.

Picture eleven knots’ silent disdain!

If they could, those roots would be drinking Parnassus;

But moves are not done now. If Pan propositioned

Some Idan fair, she’d accept his slather and cling.

The reeds sink into bog, there is ever less peat

And the nymph-pines fear prices.


The human palette looks for wrongness. So

Midas could not flatter Apollo; what

Did that deserve? Harsh glory lies with taste

And makes strange bastards roll about with men.


I don’t walk in hills by choice, and in mountains

I don’t walk at all. Three hundred feet and rainfall

Is good enough for wishing-wells.

Bring me a well and that grating sound

That calls out agility! Then I shall run,

I shall skip, I will gall the Spanish goats.


He whom the Gods favour is wrong.


2

No one ever remembers to shoot the messenger now.

This is a shame, as the fault often lies with the messenger.

If he’s first on the scene, suspicions may not be misplaced;

And if he is not, he is late.


He was cold and he was male, he believed in reason’s sway;

His voice could play in barrios and echo night and day;

The kind I hate on sight, that makes my craw recoil

Because I see efficiency to ravage and despoil.


His tune made a triad of beauts want to dance

And me want to sort out the sheep from goats.

Stay boyo he said, there’s work to be done

I know you don’t know about hand’s turns

But, mate, you soon will. Take a look.

Plug your eye in, we need it in heaven.


He whom the Gods utilise is strong.


3

Statistically this one – just lovely is

N’t she, all the numbers are going

For her. The magazines like her?

The magazines are her! They worship

With votive speculation her each hair.


Enough, I thought, of you, crass errand boy.

For all that he’s been bribed elsewhere I know,

And that “statistically” does her no gloire.

Gloire she should have, gloire she could doubtless make.


Stick to the subject. Auburn was this queen,

Red, you would say, but that you meant no harm

And feared to touch too near a regal spleen.

Yes, what a look! But that’s what you expect.


I didn’t like listening to what she extended,

Power I’d drop or money I’d burn.

Remember how Juno’s pin-up Jason ended,

Medea then mast. Remember or learn.


Not that I’d question the cloudy king’s taste.


4

They’ll make her, number two, proffer abstract truth

The occultist wisdom, some rational sway.

She had to suborn me, but she did more

In tangibility’s way.


Baby, if you want wisdom, she sighed,

Think about what you have. Do reflect

On your plush Idan bower

Nymph Oenone’s dower

The grey homeland eyes that deflect

Any buffets and shadows. I cried.


God the other two cats didn’t relish my tears,

In each of my eyes a bust they rubbed,

They squeezed my hands, under a divine guise

That I might be squeezing theirs.


She just said think about her – and wasn’t it

Her lyre, that got you where you are?

What if the prince your brother deems her only

Workaday? She made you work as hard

As you now play; and while you lie beside her

That dart can never come. Come what may, think.


5

And so I thought, as number three twirled,

And gripped me and commenced my purification

At her domain’s first shrine – and I kept on thinking,

When she shed her last pretences and fell down

And spewed out tableaux – Helen, she, and I,

And Clytemnestra to be factored in,

And craned over my neck again and clutched

And felt that apple I kept always close,

And began to adminster –


I thought, and decided, and took the tongue

Coiled, from my throat, and gave it to Minerva,

Duessa.


I thought, and saw, and knew, and called for Oenone,

As for a mother. But leaning on the brawn

Of the neglected messenger, she went.


Oenone, now I’ve lost my tongue for you

Thank Heaven that I have your lyre’s use -

It’s a quiet span and lonely and still very long,

At Ida’s slope, sorting the goats from sheep.

A Lyric Born of Idleness

(I found this on an old CD
Of documents and accretions
And if you will forgive the slang
That invidious Windsorian twang
Then read and see how I spent all
Of five years that I coldly loved. -MD)

O muse! Mistress all-perfect, thou
Crimson, white-streaked transparent one
O vessel of the Coke that flows
From Parnassus (Ohio) speed my song.

Perhaps ‘twas too much piety to thee
O Cola-Queen, that robbed away my sleep
And left me rolling in the duvet blue-
With beigish stripes-upon the Sunday’s morn

Yet not in Sleep’s caress. Frustrated then,
I staggered early from the creased couch
Each aggravating fold crafted by me,
And stumbled down the scarlet corridor.

My feet, and not my head, compelled my trunk,
I found myself before a paint-white door,
And black and white that spread across the floor-
M’Dame’s grave Mail dwells on Tory drugs.

(My Telegraph preferred to laugh it off
Etonians will ever be Etonians.)
I turn sharp left, and, slipperless, regret
My progress on a bathroom’s dampened ground

Not yet restored from E Block’s aqueous fights.
A host of visions flow into my mind-
Forgotten face-wash turns to Dorney Lake
And Dorney Lake-no limits!-Oceania

Consumes the generosity of Henry.
From scaffold on the back of real Chapel
To where faux-Chapel basks beyond Keates Lane
Poseidon has no mercy! The waves roll!

Under the sea the swimmers might be said
To have the edge by training and practise
But Classicists I’d say have mental stores
From reading Horace in his second Ode

The one that tells of deer sinking down
Not so unlike large-satcheled F Block hordes;
Of seals barking, sleek, dappled, urbane
Like English masters on a favourite theme.

And think of all the flotsam drifting by,
From School Office cometh the Tardy Book
Itself, a grimoire with a gruesome tale
That hydrogen dioxide will leave pulp.

My rambling soul is rallied by my sole
Which slips upon a chilly, clinging puddle
Sending me on my face. It’s back to Earth,
And all that’s most relentless there entailed.

Optative verbs take Barbarossa on,
Vocabolario, Gaskell, and this tripe
I grind out when I’m putting off real work.
There’s reams and yards of it-indeed, a gig.

There halts my revelation: friends, adieu,
A better, Mailless world I wish on you.

The Silver Jubilee of the Reign of Silence

You sit before the untalkative screen

(So do I, but too talkative)

Byrhtnoth plucks an endless shaft

From his interminable shield

Somewhere in the glossary

I sit before my too talkative screen

And try to spur you to talk indeed

To make a day have happened

Instead of a temporal picnic

To prize a burnished degree

From a course where thought mires

Over wireless wires

The saucepan hangs and the dolphin enquires

How's Fife? How's life? God Save the Queen.

(Added in line with the addressee's preferences)

extempore

of course

loooove

desolate

boredboredbored

Lament for Ferdinand (part 1, possibly)

Expressed by an Amalfitan lunatic


Hell's pompous stillness hugs that bier!

But this is the sole funeral

Too hot for Hell's fine train.

Where are the white pearls, where

The damned girls? they pace

His Eminence's obsequy, I know them,

sure! And daintily they pace;

Women in black like clean

Red robes, so they forget the smirches.


But the Cardinal's brother's assemblage

Is still - myself, my mutt Minos, I doubt

That ducal dower-soul itself;

What about madam Duchess?


No we'll talk of her later. Skirted.

The healthy will never leave her alone.

I want to think about the premature

Ly stinking body, about unhammered

Cobbles. I want to touch the Maltese Cross

That glints where it was left for protocol.


I will redeem my friend the duke!

I'll redeem all my wolf-friends, every moon

Dweller. In Amalfi of amelancholic moods

Tonight is true for every freak in town.

Message Not Wall For Your Honour's Sake

I'm also still up at 12:whatever

Doing an essay. We have yet another

Common bond. Sleep with me

And our essays will magically

Be completed. I await

Your arrival. The radiator is

On and the room is warm

And fuzzy, the Indian wrap is spread out,

The Anne Bronte flung away...

vamos mia pequena

vamos

vale?

To A Severe Damsel, On Not Going To Cowley

Call me not bastard, sweet, nor craven

That from deepest Cowley

Spurning thy bright, expansive haven

To Jericho I flee.


For no new mistress shall I chase,

Nor shall I chase at all,

But read and brood on book of face

And laze from brow to gall.


Do not censure my fickleness,

You too it should adore;

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not comfort more.


(after Lovelace)

Starting this notebook; an apology

I didn't really take you in,

Nor think, even, of using you.

Are you my mother's gift or Clem's?

And are you pleased to find your pen?


You child of French Ornate Slim Notes,

You'll find a strange marriage I think.

Here sight fluctuates from the screen,

Here musk disturbs the radio,

Here clouds are oldest warmest friends:

They do not mock as shining things.


And I will grant you many grooms,

Identical, fickle and cheap,

They'll bite your pulp 'till worn out by their gnaw.

You can't rely, though, on these staging rules.


Not even at the start of term -

You will not bear Virginia's annals,

You'll have to learn Conjugia's weird tropes.

We will not learn together.

We'll get on.

The Ballad of the Yellow Soup

Carrot and celeriac

Caraway and cumin trace

Buck took them and he mulched them

For the Yorkshire provender.


Jack Buck he sojourns pretty lone,

He takes his brown beard on and off,

He talks to his suppliers and

He dreams of Beorhtnoth.


"Dig them out, them carrot roots

Wash them, mash them through

They give us an aesthetic

In an optimistic goo"


So I bought it from the provender

'Neath Jericho's rampart

Now come and sup this soup with me

Provender of my heart


Mister Buck is not good looking

Neither is celeriac

But I am dark and smouldering

And visually Assyriac -


Liquid sunlight under stars

Swig it back then dream

Of the effects it might have had

Granted a little cream -


But caraway and care away

You will not come with me to drink

Which makes me want to writhe and howl

And hurl Buck's potage down the sink,


Because I would eat dill for you,

As gravadlax or on its own,

Because I would spurn lamb for you,

Carved from the most succulent bone,


And now I'm just a cumin seed

I hope that Buck goes bankrupt soon.

Pallas and the Centaur

Perhaps it was a strange choice

but it happened to be right.

She hasn't smiled once yet

though it's pressing on for night


And the others would be riding hell

For leather home for stag,

And their thighs would drape my haunches

'Till my blazing back might sag -


But they've been told they're beautiful

And only beauts they'll take

So they canter us and lame us

For some Lapith hero's sake.


I have picked another mistress,

My offering is now clear:

Will she smile ere she ends me?

Does she hope to make me fear?


She will strike me when she softens.

My eyes, 'till then, are still

Fastened at her corse's nexus,

Tensened to extract its fill.

To Marguerite - Continued, by Blondie

Yeees!!! Yesss! Yesss!!! Eniiiiiisled,
Yess!!! Thrown tween straits yeesss
Shoreless yeaa, wiild
Take me with a nightingaaaale
Cross some soouunds on starry nights

Ohhhhhhhhh! It's like despair
My longing, ohhhhh!
Ohhhh! Ohhhh! Ohhhhh
Why? Ohhh Why can't our marges
Why why why ohhhh
Meet again meet meet meet ohhhhhhh....

Ohhh my longing, ohh my fire
Longing fire ooo ooo ohhh
I'm gonna kill a God God yeah yeah
And pickle him in salt. Yeah.

Censorship

I wrote a poem called The System

When I got up this morning.

It is a rather witty poem,

But in the mould, rather than of "A Poet's Mind"

Of Tennyson, which is damning but courteously

Imprecise, of Alexander Pope.

To wit, it names names - ten of them

All of the fair sex and for the most part fair.

I wrote it in red ink.

On The Resignation Of Sir Menzies Campbell

He was the best of them. For he alone

Was statesman, senator and servant all.

Too good for Pugin's lobby, too noble

To stand midst cameramen and knavish hacks.

Ming is too good for politics, in fact.

Besides, the man was awkward in the end.

His knighthood made the headlines less concise,

And his wife Elspeth was a minefield.

Elspeth? Scarcely a first names kind of dame.

Then Lady Elspeth? Fear the pedant's pen;

Correctly, Lady Campbell? Sexist, though;

Plain Mrs Campbell? None of us would dare.

Say what you like for Charlie Kennedy,

He let a bloke enjoy a G&T.

Why We Killed Socrates

Gorged out of measure is my feeling for him.

For not much of a reason, I don't much

Like him - I look at him, I laugh

With disgust from my senses and my sense.

And among the discerning, they brag

Of liking him, as if it were a skill.


Witnesses heard him bedding men and women,

My spite hears moans from a cold coverlet.

Those I love so often think him charming.

It's not even that I'm jealous, just

Incredulous. Rarely does anyone extract

With such crassness the numbers of mobiles.


The men I want to recognise

My quality - they've accoladed him,

Cambridge and Oxford shine with slug-trailed dew.

That's alright, as it rains a lot round here,

But vile silver softly clasps at hair,

Now he crawls inside all our pastimes by the Thames.


He doesn't want to stay. He's got

Better things to do. E.g., in London

I saw him lick his phone as it oozed honey.

The First Thing I Worked On Later

I like uncertainty. She's not

So rich in it as some. But is she

Short or tall? For something made her

Tower that morning. Such definite pigments.

Stiffie pallida mors whose touch leaves wounds,

Too ready to watch and cautious to act,

And the mouth, if very red, is wary,

Like a once-snared lynx's. But last evening

Some smut, not mine, disordered her sheathed chrome.

Her eyes hardly moved. But her chin, her chin

Wittily shifted like gelatin.

From "Poems on sore subjects"

I saw your tree-house in a darker garden

Than Headington affords: I see

A boat on real sands unreally,

I played with pigeon post a while,

And learnt to laugh with braggart ease.

Long calm awaited I continent's touch -

That is, the cheeks. But now it is the hair

That holds my thought. I want to know

As clearly as your eyes are grey, just so,

That your hair's brown. Farther yet, if you strive

To make it gold. If so, desist.