Wednesday 17 December 2008

Theme owed to Rowse and socks to Jay

These two I stole a week or so ago
I alternated, rearrayed, three times,
Like cavaliers recouping between raids –
Rest in the drawer, nay, on the floor
And air your flair and on.

There is a price in order; it becomes
Uncertain if the heel mounts its height
Or ankle does not sag, or length not mar,
Proportion, decency, and protocol
Stand in their peghung pasts.

And now this morning they ride ere the flood
Will foil the maturation of their joys;
And they display their innards to the noon,

So that my steps crunch hundredworth feelers
To rugs and planks; I’ve donned a pair of squid
Nudging around the bottom of the sludge,
Timidly querulous. They teach me how
To fold up morning yet evade the now.

Thursday 20 November 2008

Living

Every day I grow more like a butcher,
From a saw-dust puffed out stage for musical,
Garnering the red cheeks and the wares, he worships them.

Basso celebration of the dried out gammon –
Bloodied fillet caught up in refrain,
Crowned with rashers, lamby sceptre, early rising
Greets him, greets that daily killy tang.

I used to handle stuffs with care
And rank up sausages in style
I never wasted offal then
Each bone told a fair tale.

But the voice grows compulsive
For the red germs at the raw,
A shelf collapsed last Monday –
Ill stacked upon the Sunday –
The shanks now need a saw
Even custom grows repulsive.

He’s slowed down with the commerce and he’s in it for himself,
He sort of takes a bath. Earlier, redder, rise, baptised with ham,
The morning folding out like pudding skin,
A gamey pre-luncheon becomes tartare;
We lurch about through mince skeins and blood pie.
When routine becomes metaphor, it gets
Hard to hold back. He blames the suffragettes.
I think it went back longer, mammothwards,
But mercy for that steak –

It is, when we come down to it, a piece of meat.
It is our friend. Don’t land it woman’s name.

Monday 17 November 2008

Experiment with Eugene

Is it so shocking in such times to fail
To heal that slashed goodbye with a buy?
When RBS's lunging can't avail
To stem or succour, can bull hearts ride high?
The envelopes I picked up can't conceal
Through friendship this cold thriftiness, this deal;
Now, though the postponed tack embraces paint
Those Stuart faces betray August's taint.
Donne's sermons caught to Spitfire my style
Were all their shelf could proffer, yet too dear.
In all, each time I wrenched my card, too near,
In spite of Scots wool or stationer's aisle,
Your stare was felt unhidden in my hide,
I knew I bought things while crunched from your side.

Sunday 16 November 2008

Experiment with 'Cesco

Those scars, my scourge, have scabbed from jam to whey,
Their flint infection settled, but obscure,
So set for moulding, they could yet seem pure
Enough to point the proper, straightened way.
For all I ever planned, still yet they may:
A gap's slid out for a tongue to abjure,
The quarry should have learnt to hop the lure,
A witness of the portioning of past prey.
But weals fasten something as they sink,
Slivers and thorny specks iterate flesh,
And thought looks to the rigour of the sense.
What use then to so much as think to think,
When such a hurt is only cheap as fresh,
And the least quenching salve's the mere defence?

Thursday 13 November 2008

Symptoms

I see them billow after I half-close
My lashes – sailing scraped out buoyant skins
Of avocado, armaded and stern,
Or smooth or pitted, bannering the sight,
Becoming colder, creamier, but vague,
Possessing stink of wonder and the end
Taking the passage via that throwaway
The starkened mounding, on one way, in fact
To pinnacles. Between plasma and blood
The mind-multching accomplishes enough.

Monday 10 November 2008

Killing and Raping Mummy

Picture this – I’m gay in December
Picture this – freeze the cold weather
You got clutched in religion, you'd take off the lids
And, oh, your head is beautiful.

I’m in the phone-booth and don’t wanna cross a whore,
Mounting like a fugitive. Your cigarette
Is tentative. A bucket of the ocean, oh,
Like a cabinet of wax, yet, oh
Your head is beautiful.

Wednesday 5 November 2008

Nippy

Was not the hounds that wore Actaeon out,
Tubbily biscuit-sated, fondly warm,
Kitchen-scrap merchants cut back for the shoot,
It fell out so.

The earth-born hunter, straying for a mark,
The queen at chaste ease in her ordered park
(Whose order is a forest, eases such
As boars might shun and tigers barely touch);

Actaeon takes the crazy pavementing
Over a root above a cache of snails,
The hoof, the green-gyration, and the trails,
Unknown to Cynthia’s lodge’s casementing –

(Which is of glinty moss and blue-black sedge)
- it is a morning outing, and in light
Vegetable-dappled, is she blotched aright,
So that the lunatrix spreads in hell’s hedge –

She sees him see. Grey eyes gulf out. She smiles in courtesy,
But shivers with such mortal effort, sways half down and coughs,
A bronchial clarion whose sympathy spins him from his firm seat –
“And love?” he says in quiet.

The trigger wording for the bloody batch,
And baying as they ferry on a catch,
Their fast-bred haunches and their slavening jaws.
The nymphs, Actaeon eaten, became whores.

Wednesday 29 October 2008

To Sir Philip, Qualified Thanks

Dear, why make you more of a blade than me?
If it do splash, I plunge, I plunge unsung;
It it hang well, better still am I hung;
If it be long, yet but a blade can be.
Heavy it is, yet lighter worth than me;
It swings, my dance thy own step oft does prove;
Displayed, perhaps it bolsters you above,
But undisplayed is my soul fetched to thee.
Yet while I languish, it that post-room tips,
That lap doth lap, nay wins, in spite of spite,
This cumbered mate grinds on thy sugared hips,
Alas, if you grant only such delight
To witless bars, then love, I hope, since wit
Becomes a log, will soon ease me of it.

Saturday 11 October 2008

And Why

I love him with the kind self love
That makes you love Pierre; King George;
Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke;
I love where Willy Yeats fucks up.
Yellow Christmas a time ago
This man, of men, my sympathy’s
Chief holder, in Mummy’s ex-street,

Met Oscar, and was shone on, just like us,
Stammered and glowered and told Cyril stories.
Two men who saved their stock against the tide,
But Wilde? What could fat Oscar have thought?
Seeing a countryman who couldn’t work
A room, but breathed the truth,
If rarely spoke it.

To the dead man I love

Soon I will pass Auberon Waugh
En route to the stark calling point
The make or break of William Yeats,
Delay and worship of the cruel,
The pity of Miss Florence Farr,
Olivia unrecognised
(For love ain’t letters)

– lack of fruit
In cruelty’s chase, then, schadenfraud,
Your life vested in John MacBride;
Relish each drunk spat frown and kick,
Get hold of history’s verdict,
Get Maud in France (so by the by
And fly-by) and Iseult –

Named for Blanchemains? The stand-in, yes,
So much for “natural declension
Of the soul”. But you you saved,
Razed down Responsibilities,
Workmanlike gentle double helix,
Through compromise and fudge.

Note

The birthdays of my legends I
Leave unrecorded - please assume
Nine of the clock and eight hours' sleep
A silent and a vile room.

What Milady Means

Once wide, the slopes began to lap
Inwards a bunch of years ago;
So that that sidereal pair
That dances and dances so well
The ur-self and the fancy-girl
Underwent passes.

And for the rest it is substance
That overtook her hazy hair
Made it infested and frayed down.
But my night’s lady’s still of night,
For all she steps in faytour’s mould,
And has seen through my softliness.

She was my handmaid and she knows
None better, how to sneer.

Saturday 4 October 2008

Head Office

An inhouse style guide
Makes a killing
During suicide.

Thursday 2 October 2008

Dodge the Bullet

When things like love one cares about
Jar one's jaw in beyond endurance
One lies in bed glumly awake
And howls against one's phone insurance.

Thursday 18 September 2008

A long time ago and hardly revised

The two of us almost bumped straight

Into the two of them. But it was alright,

Because neither boy nor girl looked back at us.

They had not gone far past us as I steered

My mother about the pharmacist’s corner.

The Diet Coke and the change in her handbag,

The silence was silenced - we both now had something to say.


Normally, when people-watching,

I look at women first. Man’s Descent makes three markers,

Sex, age, then aesthetics. The girl had a right

To demand a conspicuously furtive glance;

Her long hair had fine brown brightness,

She was smiling and natural and unconcerned.

I did look at her first, but scarcely at all.


For with her was one I felt I knew well,

I disliked him, disliked me, as I watched him.

He was my age, and made me feel short, dark, stumbling,

Away from a race contemptuous of fear,

Stout hearted, steel toned.

Looking at the girl was soothing, half-attainable,

But the blond boy’s morning aimed scowl fixed my stare.

I knew him then, I knew his sort!

Within sixteen guesses, his name as well,

And I wanted to use some honourless means,

Poison or deceit or book-learning,

Atomic science, verses, to leave him dead

And take his girl. If there is Progress

Such longings engender it.


And deftly I helped my mother to make way,

To absolve that envy by the gift of a pavement,

And we trudged on, past the chemist’s.

“I thought I knew that boy’s face,” I said.

I was her familiar, as I saw the same vice

Bundled under our verb.

“How strange,” she said, “I thought I knew the girl’s.”

Restaurant

Well, it’s a new place, said she, I’d rather not.

The reviews are good; yet a quiet evening,

I said. She said, yes, no problem with booking,

I’d just rather not; is that alright with you?


Then a ring percussed from the tall white door.

I opened it now to a man, a threatener

In a brown leather jacket with brown leather hair.

They looked at each other to tell what had passed,

He stared at the both of us, hands in his pockets,

She blinked first, and I spoke to the blackened beau.


What do you think of the new place in town

With its sparkling white décor and pulverised meat?

The newcomer meddled a grin of drugged slyness.

We’ll eat at that cool place called fury tonight.

Red Watch

My raging was diagonal

The sleep was only of a kind

My last thoughts placed me as a boor

My post-last kicked the duvet far

A rat at salami

A man at his tongue

Far too angry, far too ready, and only faded

From consciousness in that the words were dismissed

Till I arched my tense frame and rolled and shouted

“I shall not be sold to Mrs Lascelles”

Woke to a contortion and to a rebellion

And passed to fabliau non-sleep.

(I recall, however, that Mrs Lascelles’s

Husband’s first name was Charles).

Tuesday 16 September 2008

Out of curiosity

Mister George Harnett,

I have a query,

With reference to your soul.

We've not really talked ever

(By my intendment

I slide choppily from your way).


This morning a sober clarion rang,

And I woke to the skein of your unfathomed mind.

Let's get to the washing up, Mister George Harnett.


The ur-Harnett, for the present author

Is smiling. His foot rests upon conquered contentment.

Some kind of noble truth he has passed,

He sold laughter for that hard-wearing smile.


Does it only amuse you, George Harnett esquire,

This oddly ruled turfworld, is it to be pinned,

Wreathed and contained by a lordly smirk,

And a bundle of creased, or perhaps folded blue?


I do not know you, good Harnett,

But do explain

If your mirth is germane

To time's drawn, aching slash,

To Russia, the mother of Lermontov,

Hardening in a grey turgid pipe,

To war beyond weapons?


If amusement can cover

The Cabinet's writhing

The BBC owes you one, Mr. Harnett.


Which sage cast you thus,

A formed man of power,

With banalised faults and no chance for surprise,

So gallant in peace and so hardy in war?

Was it OUCA and the Royal Air Force, or were

You born lumpen?

Saturday 6 September 2008

Drug

Well, as if it were that,

I pause for its coming,

I stand at its parting,

For its sight the better,

Avert neck, dart eyes.


I wish it were her, but it's not them, at least.

It's definiteless though deictic, and as

It hamstrings ken, spits, too, at the Infinite.


A substitute nymph

Plywood splints what was better.

Earns thanks without asking, taking or deserving.


O would it were beauty!

Would then it were love.

But that walker wears poetry's name.

Thursday 4 September 2008

'Please Explain'

Do you ever have those nightmares

Which though horrid are compelling

Enough to book a postchaise

Foam-flecked worn-down attempt?

I have chartered that compartment

For a restive shop-soiled sleep

Because a detail usually needs firming up.


Let me stop you there, my darling,

Let us step that jig again,

Why exactly are we lost for good?

What was the nature of...ah, well,

This was one of the silent movies.


I want to know my wreaking hands

Have full possession of the brute

Aggression, gone unspent by day.

Did I really smash the fat old liar's

Spectacles again?


It's not the rollercoaster stab

Which I've never invited. No:

It's about truth in falsehood, checks,

Corroborations, or exactitude,

A veering hope of pardon or vision.


I want, often, a re-run with sub-titles.

Monday 4 August 2008

Days, a ditty

It's a natural sort of gambolling, a kind of alchemy,

That while I stretch across the land I urge to thrill the sea,

That when I'm sunk and spring in that I leap aloft to thee,

And am wettened and become dried down, punctual for milkened tea.

Saturday 26 July 2008

Getaway

I walked alone along the road,

By day, as if I had Sherlock

Tracking my progress (also had

To hide I’d murdered you).


(to be continued)

Tuesday 22 July 2008

Saul in Endor

THE WITCH

What could have brought you here so grown?

What cart conveys you tall?

How did you hem that diadem

Beneath my overhanging hall?


THE KING

Why, my dear, aren’t you used enough to kings?


WITCH
Not ones like this, nor ones I knew before,

When I first started scaping hollows out,

Between the dances, and they got ahead.

What magnet snares a magnate, save a whore?


KING

Small trouble of that kind, dear, nowadays.


ENDOR

Then it is harps and daughters, politics,

The brazen champ, the bachelor crown prince,

A strangler’s order, a Philistine’s march…


SAUL

All these have cantered past my care long since.


HER

This is no tripper’s resort, as you know,

Old pal; you had to slop in soup of gore,

Yours and a hound’s and some stray vassal low,

You deigned to hurl my way. When previously

You’d always hedged, and stayed and put about

You were too sick to pass a pace with me…

And now you come just for the sake of it?


HIM

Believe it.


SHE

You will die before the day.


ME

At night, and here. A votive chunk of clay.

Friday 27 June 2008

Passport Renewal

A conscious smile is hard enough to pull

Off, but I did it, sort of pretty well,

For Snappy Snaps, where I once saw a dame

From Atalanta chat God with the Turk.


The screen is grey, the shirt is checked, the bars

Of black marking out rims, squares, teeth

Between the edges of that cheeky smile,

That smiling cheek that forswore dignity,

That looked as if it cared about Darfur


(Or Zimbabwe. More current). Eyes go ho

Ho ho, I am aware of this ridicule,

And I accept it, because I am British,

Microchipped in with civic mockery.


Turns out that doesn’t play out. Service with

A smile, but the citizen must stand

Taut and oppressed, looking just as he feels.


Take two. Cheaper. I see her hesitate,

My Slovenian handmaiden, and then,

She develops a fourfold look that could

Recruit for Zanu-PF. Even, should.

Saturday 7 June 2008

Such Is The Breath

No one, then, loved America like George –

Not Washington, not Bush, the uber George –

The Royal George, the Bennett-destined King.


She spurned him lengthily; he could not know

That he must renounce her, nor could he plan

For it. He looked with certainty at maps,

A real, if an amorous, kind of love.


“Bring me Lord North.” “Your Majesty.”

“Ah, North. Good, just the chap.

Tell me about this stretch over here,

The colony I see is named Maryland.”

“My liege, of Marilyn I’ll tell you all.”


“Marilyn!?

Wait, North, you mean to say

That all the time I’m miscarried that name?”

“You are incapable of such, Sire. Recall indeed

The English language is your fief, the stress,

Orthography, doctor, dictionary, all.”


“Shut up, North. Don’t you see this matters to me.

I have plans. When we have hanged the troublemakers there

I want a summer-palace high in…Marilyn.

The Queen mentioned it quite the other night.

The climate’s good, the people sturdy folk,

Protestant, and unplagued by dicing-dives,

Which pleases me; I’ll curb the Princes’ debts.”

“The plan is feasible, certes, my liege.”


***

A King has Sport, and Rights, and Breath,

And optimism is a fitting train.

I’ll bite a warning into my cheek’s side,

But still when morning smudges indistinct,

I’ll frame your daughters’ lineaments;

Solve their quarrels, sort their rooms.

Downy Sent Down

Ten bairns headed to Buckinghamshire,

The watery jaundice and swart nebulae,

With Mummy, now used to her parenting role

Being wielded by men in a truck –

She barely extends chiding wings any more.


One maid high up at the Raven Hotel

Climbing the Balliol Jowett-reared eaves,

Victorian Gothic, Edwardian pleasure,

Where Mummy could never have guided her,

Never so well as a battel-free beak.


Another slip last thought of the strange affront,

The loud, black-fletched boy, like a boisterous brother,

Swelled by Mummy’s intemperate spoiling,

Deprived of feathers and gorged on power,

The scent of the cooing snatch echoing around her.


Mummy screeched her off, did her bit by the rest,

Especially those seven hardy drake sons,

She can feel quite proud as she stretches her neck

Back to non-intervention, and pecks at a butt

She managed to ply from the gardeners’ woe.


The girls may come back with broods of their own –

If they’re up to it – judging by 8 and 11…

In any case, the lads will get strong, greenheaded,

Grow up to be drakely, and plump, and perhaps

Like Daddy, or Uncle, will help Balliol’s rowing.

Explanation of my college room's relative bareness

People express surprise upon

The starkness of my shelves.

I’ll pin it down between ourselves:

I am famous for reading

And I cannot.


Sure, pragmata also there,

I don’t care much for lugging things.

If it were only the teeth-grinding,

The arched cat-maundered shoulders – but

The blaming also, the incompetence,

The damage. No, no carrier I.


But this too is misleading. What I want

Or wanted, lay at first in carrying,

In hitting, running. The black reading-lamp

Was step two, the caste-marker,

Could not be shaken off.


I never treasured them, the blocks,

Never relished their smell. They were

A substance to block out non-time,

A sharp, negative means.


Why should I fill the chasms

With the cowls that kept me down and in,

In for the count, but quarantined?

Monday 2 June 2008

From the Fairy Castle: The Artist's Tales

He was a tall sort of a man

A weathered one, a frayed, and wild,

And measured, but a hearty fastbreaker.

His name I knew. But why had I

Expected the dissembling colour here?


What do you do, you principles,

You moral mariners, when having met

Belial, you find all you ever sought?

What if you swoon before the black K’aaba

And wake in a Palladian garden?


A grey sort of a man, he was

To look at, dark red as you heard

His voice, slow, keeping back the best,

His laugh, disdaining worse.


Cold eyes with warm attention – if

A carnivore, one of our blood,

With fur and cubs and eddying temperature.

He etched, his wife related, their girl hid,

Not his stories, but those about him, wrothe,

Familiars, warnings, dark-quilt bedroom slippers.

Friday 30 May 2008

First Thing from Fairy Castle

“Ah, I live in Mulgrave, not in York,

This drive ends my job.” Peaceable eyes

Alighting on a sky textile grey,

Over the fairy fashioned trees.


A wide house, a tall castle, a white card

To convey place and construe laws of exit.

They dream of Mulgrave, all the wounded kings,

And oligarchs, and, of course, poet snobs,

Like me – it sounded better when he said it –

Our pumpkin rider – “Mulegrave. Muhlgrave. Moolg.”


If it was fairy it was solid, very,

And as you walked upwards, a journey stuck,

And trappings of the south drummed out your legs,

And work extended, though it did not grate,

As if the place made forge-slogging your art.


It did. Because you owned your forge, you were it,

It was, too, what you did. I needed

An essay and a lot of unread dross to classify me,

Like a narrator of Chaucer,

Walked in on Malory.

Tuesday 20 May 2008

Ditty on an unread text. To JAY, Muse, was this due...

Judy ain't no saint

No a saint she ain't

Though Renaissance paint

-ers relish her taint


No, she's Old Testament

And chops up a gent

Of Assyrian bent

By his bivouacked tent


Indeed she's a Jew

(Jesus was too)


But he comes later

A Lover, not a Hater

And his poetry's greater

(Worthy of Pater?)

Friday 16 May 2008

A Cento

As if, on water, that unfocused she

No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,

In her consists my happiness and thine.

So bide ye in the Maiden Tower,

While others fight for thee.


She is foremost of those I would hear praised,

I will talk no more of books, new faces, other minds.

But o, photography! As no art is,

Faithful. A dream. O light upon the wind.


But in behind our path they closed,

Though fain to let us through. I believe

I heard your master sing – ‘Poor maidy dear!”

They shall be speaking forever,

The people shall hear them forever,


And I murdered William Moore, without the leave of thee,

Her minion-knights, the gong-tormented sea,

It’s not the selfsame bird of columbine,

What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine.


[To some extent in order of appearance - Larkin, Shakespeare, traditional, Yeats, Tennyson, Leonard Cohen, Hardy, Joni Mitchell.]

Thursday 15 May 2008

The Catalogue

The light cutter is not usually counted,

The diplomat’s runner, the drape of the raptor,

The shrill of the raptors in diplomats’ rooms.

Seaworthy with her puffed mockery,

Worthy only of green sea, then, but so worthy.


The patroness watched that merchantwoman skip,

And hummed with curled lip about silk bales and mist

Of her power that could propel them.


The first of the kings’ ships is very knowing.

She knows every flaw and beats them all up,

But still doesn’t know what to do

Except lie and laugh on familiar sand

Between spear-carrying jokes…


They view singers with suspicion there, but love them.


That Salamonian ship will, if bound for Troy

For the learning and burning, return via Cyprus,

Then maybe out north, out west, out and crying.

God, they fight as they cry there,

They cry as they dance, shedding what they glug.


Paler sails, darker ropes, and blooded rigging shadow them,

The tearsongs clang on shields of Myrmidons.


Slighter figure, seems much taller, eyes that draw and fillet dolphins,

Smaller number, seems much sharper, voice of murderous melody,

When the Myrmidons are marching, or afloat upon the sea,

See the vanquisher the bearer, see the purer, fairest sins.


See that eye survey the landing – see it see its colleagues slack –

There a king of rapid pity, there giants’ lewd sorority –

See the lip curl on the wine-glee, as hands draw the casket back –

Achilleus, she’ll have none of warming charity.

And the arms of Thetis’ bairn can caress and can convince

And the smile of Thetis’ child congeals as an appeal dies.


True, the train is newly started, and will be unravelled,

In a fit of starts, a route of delays, a slew of necessary songs,

And there will yet come Diomed, and that grey opera-star,

Idomeneo, and Ulysses, she will be quite overbooked,

Small red, long black, Ithaca, London, here

We stay and stay the distance.

Friday 9 May 2008

The Glum Reply

Indeed you say you’d choose that oyster’s life,

And you mention a crop of things that charmed you

In passing, like the shell-rills and the pearl,

And now assume a tranquil sort of shine

Upon your well-timed slumber.


In doing so you let your lot encumber

Your energy in reaching down to mine,

We have an upstream current too –

Sometimes we’re cornered, we are snagged

In bursts of fits of moving a to b…


Regarding your non-gains, I cannot see

That you’re so short on aspiration – after all

You’ve ordered me. But just in morsel form;

Your passionate passionlessness will yet depart.


And you’re so sure I cannot reel off art,

And only am it? I drive me quite hard,

Hard enough to know what regret is, what work’s not.


You know your way about a wide shore-length

That’s no use to me where I brood my jewel,

Where every image is a sludge of grit,

And one that sphincter-tears and carves in and distorts, mars, sours,

This art that is production, that must be, that pulses me an exact mile

And half from all prodigal’s lies. You and your homage and your…


I can be realist and not be dour,

I can grind through the dirt and shine the more,

I can be pretty but no piece you seek –


You, with your round of boring sparkle, reek,

I don’t dislike you and I’ll hear you out,

But don’t think listening now redeems a thing,

And don’t think my glint isn’t just innate,

Or that your extended and misread splashed

Attempt at sight doesn’t make me more than irked.


The view you shirked,

Like a slept-out lecture – no I don’t play –

And this is what I’ve said before, you know,

I grant you you are near your pile’s

Arid circlet. We will speak again,

But it’s not thinking that you’re well out of now.

The pair of us shall never really talk.

Wednesday 30 April 2008

The Glad Choice

Gladly I’d choose an oyster’s life

They pile up, the symphonies,

In scraps of starts and spiny bones,

They clog the musted guiltworn air

That drapes a late but scanty sleep.


We have to wind through hopes, a heap,

We have to fall upon a crease,

We have a circus track as well,

But it is broken and veers off

To heights or through the drains…


And do not overstate my gains,

Though I myself like so to do.

I’d take a solid increment. In

Truth, I’d take the oyster’s life.


This gift or stolen flame of thought – I could take it,

Given the choice, I’d leave it. Now I’ve got it

Its use is but a commentary on all I fear or cannot do.


Oh surely, if the third road grew

(The spirit’s twin of ninety-seven’s vow, say,

The elite’s liberty, the water-fairy’s rope)

Certainly all thinking beasts would bless their souls

Before abolishing them to reach for you,

That steeper oracle, that freer point…


The road is very sheer, sharp at its joint,

And the mild clime pools by the seas:

Give me the oyster’s solar suite.


The round of short dependent craving meat,

Immobile satisfaction – recall now

Those gaseous things both inert, and noble.

Some distant cultivated bursary

Installing one in the world’s oldest hall,

The shell…


Order, not obsessive ordering…well

I will take up that aeon-length fellowship

At All Shells’ College, The Sea!

The ocean shall gawp wide like one green eye

And I, my pearl – its mote, its speck, its sleep;

The bed shall pout below, poignant-glad lip

And I will cling and never think again.

Sunday 27 April 2008

Held Up

“What kept you?” she said with a waft of wound

Perfection in the creases and the air.

“Where have you been ever since you made over

Your frame and redly vowed to do me right?”

She was silent while she said this but I

Give her sentiments I used myself afterwards.

And I flicked out this answer from its case –

“Ever, ever so busy; a commission

To parody everyone else, then me;

My studies” – here I drew in breath –

“The world of politics” – her brow grew girdled –

“The theatre, the chorus and the lash

(Nelsonwise or demotic). Even now

I am obliged to frolic fast away.

I came here just to pick up my effects…”

“Leave now,” said the muse, “and I must leave you.”

Her voice – an excellent thing in woman – finely low,

I inattentive let it slide. I bolted.

Thursday 24 April 2008

The burbler's epigram

And I will strive for this the more -

To gain the thought, the notion of

Being impulsive, worn out, young

- To discharge debts and draw gazes.

Thursday 17 April 2008

Propertius carmen XVI first draft translation

'I, who was once thrown open for great triumphs,

Like unto the door of Tarpeia, noted for her virtue,

Past whose threshold there cantered the gold-inlaid chariots,

Who grew damp with the suppliant teardrops of captives,

Now I, rent in sot's nightly scuffles,

Beaten by ignoble knuckles, oft complain

And for me of rank wreaths danglings there is no shortage,

And always brands lying, a sign to those she's burnt out.


'Neither can I ward off milady's ill-famed nights,

My shapely structure pilloried in vile ditties;

But nor can she endeavour to reclaim her scant honour,

Living foully enough to shame this epoch of lust.

Penned between these truths I'm pinned to lead appeals,

A sadder barred suitor - long suppliant he.


'Never does he suffer my hinges to unwind,

Carolling verses as biting as charming:


'"Door, crueller at bottom than our lady herself,

Why to me are you dumb, granite-hard, slammed clam-tight?

Why never unlatched do you receive my amours,

Know you not how, moved, to answer discreet pleas?

Will there never be granted, to end my lament,

Anything, save begrimed slumber on lukewarm lime?

Me at the night's medians, me at the star's full girths, me lying,

The breeze frozen with chill Dawn grieves me, grieves for me,

You, solely, never downcast on human accounts,

Answer with your hinges' pact of silence.


'"O, if only my whimper, thrust through some covert cranny,

Striking on milady's earlobes might return!

Allow then for the chance that Sicily's rock's milder,

That she may be harder than iron, than worked steel,

She could not yet have power to avert darling eyes,

Her heart would lurch up in sighs and wrenched tears.


'"Now soft she lounges on some blessed foe's shoulder,

And my words drop into the nightly East Wind.

But you're the lone reason for my pains - greatest, anyway,

Never to be won, door, by my favours.

You I never harrassed with my tongue's spite,

Any speech which it's usual to tell perverse blocks,

That you might be indifferent to me, rasping, pleading,

Keeping up anxious watches in some back-alley.

Indeed, I've composed verses for you, in the latest style,

And, stooped down, I have lavished kisses on your worn steps,

Prized offerings I've brought you, veils over my hands!"


'Stuff like that, that you lovestruck wretches all seem to know,

He gasps out next unto the morning larks.

Thus I now, what with milady's faults, and the lover ever

In floods of tears, well, eternal upset is my fate.'

Monday 31 March 2008

Propertius carmen I - first draft translation

Cynthia caught me, the wretch, with her eyes,

Touched not at all before by amorousness.

Then he cast down my glance of steadfast scorn,

Love did, and my head crushed with hob-nailed feet,

Until he tutored me chaste maids to hate -

The reprobate! - and to live with no aim.

This spasm has not flagged for a year's length,

Though crossed by gods I'm forced to own as mine.


Milanion recalled, Tullus, that faint-heart never

Fair lady won, when he smashed flint Iaside's tantrum.

Maddened in just this way he staggered in Parthenian grottoes,

And he went on to survey hairy brutes.

He even, smitten with the Hylaean branch's hurt,

Squirming in agony, at Arcady's steeps moaned.

Thus could he housetrain the flighty lass:

So highly are prayers and mighty feats valued in love.


In me sluggard Love cannot think of such crafts,

Nor remember even the known ways he's trodden before.

But you, whose lie it is that you've led off the Moon,

And appease blasphemies by toiled incantations,

Drive and alter then the mind of mistress mine,

And outshine her complexion, that grows paler than I!

Then will I trust you, that both stars and tides

Cytinaean cantrips can command.


And you, who call up a man lately fallen, friends,

Seek remedies for a heart not in full health.

Hardily I'd take surgery or harsh cautery,

If thence might come licence to speak as my wrath wills.

Send me through outland tribes, and send me through waves,

Whither no women might learn of my pathway;

You stay, to whom the god attends and is kind,

And be always equals in a love secure.


In me our Venus lays on nights - bitter ones -

And Love is missing from no hour - unfulfilled.

From this curse, I warn you, fly: anyone should hoard

His affection, nor vary from love assured one jot.

Because he who gives ear to my urging, yet late,

Will - alas - carry back my wail with such sorrow.

Sunday 9 March 2008

The Flowers of Valentine

Wreathed to cure the plague maybe

In the Christian time

They hung about the nape of the cruel fresh


And might have been dishevelled by accident

When one of my forerunners caught a sepal

Wound in a hairy bounding sort of crown

And cried “But these are almost real”

To the ripping sound


The florist’s writing is less beautiful

Than hers who sent them who cannot see me,

Except by clear morningshine, like before;

But the florist just whacks them out, neatly,

Bluely neatly, some mauve flowers,

In frustratingly edible and swaddled boxes.


And so indeed the date came round and

Didn’t staunch the plague or kill

The victims who had extreme unction;

Didn’t profit by my will.


The debt and dirt in layers and occlusions, let it be sowed,

As the date rolls back, as they draw back, as I go back.


But the gift was sourced and the sauce was cooked

For the voluble gander as white goosey looked,

And the funny side was greased about,

Between the shipments and proctor’s doubt,

A trope delivered is a cliché bare,

Pleasant to study.


And how we could laugh, though they died with all

Else that ever died, and Saint Valentine,

The posthumous plague-saint, the pyrrhic faith healer.

The corse of a saint is inviolate,

But his relics can rot, and these stank, and we laughed.


Two good-byes later, which I just don’t do,

And non-conversations past, which I didn’t,

I’m so grateful. We laughed very hard.

Sunday 24 February 2008

Acquisition

Red Chinese garment bought at Unicorn

I cannot say we’ll bide another night,

Or that we won’t. I know you cool me down,

A poultice up against that wound of warmth.

I love your look and think you’re fond of mine,

Can revel at my shoulders and express

Pride enough to be certain in your ride.

But though you passed sufferance, you may go.


Red garment that I bought at Unicorn,

You should know that your outer side is handsome.

It is well woven and softly repaired.

Argolid eyed it hung; drawn out it is

A banner, sure enough. But I am keener

On the smooth red creamsheen layered within,


The ideal contact, child of Unicorn,

That intimate synthesis, a kinship, and a touch,

From the collective purchase, to you, worn

Unlessened by company. Skin and you.

If this is our last night, Unicorn-silk,

We will spend it together.


Red garment bought at ancient Unicorn,

There where things have been bought or not

Bought since Christ was a cadet

(Around 1910, in the Irish arm) – know you,

You are a stopgap, love. Behind my claim

Lies desire for an unseen jacket form,

That whores its blindside, jubilating black,

That bleeds and stains its redness where you shine.


And though you are a beauty, you can’t pull

A trick like that. Count on no powers

During these sympathetic red-gold hours.

Your feeling cannot plead your case,

When I’m pledged in another place,

Though for the night, you’re needed to the full.


(I kept you as it turned out-

rival's late)

Thursday 21 February 2008

Wimple

I daresay I could, if I set my mind to it,

But my body will never be set to.

And so I never fight, I rarely look,

Why would I? When that which I see, I want?

I’ve been told I am tall enough,

The boathouse, such a place to hack that down.


But here we are, long coats wavering in step,

Rowing the air with the draped spavined lion,

And it is suffused with half-clerical fear

That I, for myself, crouch at that boathouse,


The irk of emasculation, the envy of the brave,

The guilt of the voyeur when the crews heave up

Their torpedoes, and shake them free.


I realise, still inward, the race is passing, and say,

“Which one are they? Which one?” and get no

Answer, presuppose navy blue, so catch that drama

Anyway. And they are winning.


An extended viewing I’ve scarcely deserved, all things

Being equal, and so am shamed to bawl for Ball,

And a bit comforted by this.


I find, beyond hope or qualm, the shape I have looked for,

Spiked with coldness to bump the rightful metaphor.


I cannot stay to greet it, only stare,

And scarper, to gather the spirits.


I hadn’t taken in that we were altogether first,

Which is sufficient, I suppose, at this point.


But blood and picture-postcard snow

Disturbed this feast.

Towering

Did we know it existed?

Shall we climb up within it?

Travel with an armed guard, then,

Benedick’s stong arm, and his girl’s meekness,

Artemis to the fore, Freyja to the aft,

Whither the winged lion would speak with you.


At Joyous Gard, I am a frequent guest.

They tend to put me next to Bors the good,

With Guinevere opposite. Another another’s,

And I care elsewhere, and so am safe here.


The plastic arras, it was apposite

For murder or for jinks, not for a clutch.

But we had left some happy ones

To search about the pretty night

Preferring ourselves to do as plants do,

To rustle.


The vultures may not eat but speak.

The white bird sent me out to pine,

And watched me netted in the reek

Of chugged up, patronised red wine.


What kind of thing is this? Feather, fake, fur,

Two persons or three or a pangoline?

The Queen shrugs off revolt, incarnated

In such a beautiful and noteless sound.

God Save Her with a golden liturgy,

God and I and another sirens serve.

Wednesday 13 February 2008

Lupercalia. The order foreseen

So she spoke:

13th Feb

Anointing.
Bacchic state.
Frustrated search.
Purification and Rebirth.
Hymn to the Gods.
Lyric poetry.
Symposium.
Confrontation of Duty.
Aeolus and Cupid
bar, bar, ian
Flaying at the Dionysia

14th Feb

Piety
Confusion
Despair
Duty arisen
Amphitheatred
Being Whored
Becoming Innured
Flayed at the Dionysia

15th Feb

Meditation.
Self-reproach.
Asceticism.
Examination.
Curst deluge

And to survive I feigned that I
Was ignorant of Delphic Greek

Saturday 9 February 2008

So-So Drunk, Not So Drunk

You worry what you might have said?

My memory is good – but you’d

Rather not know. Yet surely you won’t mind

If I now tell you what, tonight, you did not say.


Never a syllable passed on a brow

Or garment or eye of a single man.

(Though tentative knives set about carving

At women, but that does does not count)


Suppose a yardarm had been raised,

Suppose a gallows-tree had creaked,

Suppose an oath had tied a mind, and then

Suppose what speech I could have made.


As I recall, I made it, and, along two anecdotes,

Clothpegged it hung strangled out and beat down.

That was before I tumbled and I ripped

And my dialogue became, well, less exact.


Before I fell, too, I talked with a prize

Bitch nestled in an alpha-nursed boudoir

Who joined her voice to throw my essay out

Perhaps remembering how I’d mocked hers,

In academic sense. Quite well set up,

These folk can play at prophets, powerful,

Unerring, right, salted and harnessed spite,

A cartel on an unknown-purging ride.

You see I wasn’t playing.


You weren’t playful; set to sleep, your mind

Quite lax. You did not declare love

For any being (inc. me) as you know,

You moved those limpid arms from side to side,

You stuck by rowing, analysed your course.

You went to bed.

You aren’t dull. You weren’t hoarse.


The night is small just as the quad is cold

And square shaped and contains none else.

The chorus part and gouged cloth is the king’s.

Thursday 7 February 2008

Its Colour

When you need to see something

The sky can’t be relied upon. Alone

It can look bald, and cluttered when

It’s stained by cloud or Gothic spire-junk.

So much lies in the colour.

One will do.


Sunsets pink and orange like so many boiled sweets

Shining and gloating that they’ve been sucked, no,

We can surely do without them.

Thin grey – well I like its touch,

It treats the wounds of thirst and tousles you.

But no, the artist’s tint lies in the sleeve of Marie-Louise.


Who is Marie-Louise? you may well ask, and does she

Go to St Hughs or Hildas? I don’t know, no, no,

I think she was probably home-schooled,

At some period prior to the flourishing

Of Anthony van Dyck, and arranged

Her blue-grey-mauve-radiant sleeve specially.


But it doesn’t last for very long, soon formalised

Until oversung twilight drapes black wood

And yellow stone, firm colours, Baltic flag.

Her gaze was vacant, no doubt. His was too,

Maybe. He might have been bought by the crinoline

Or perhaps Marie was clothed with Dutch sky.

Wednesday 30 January 2008

A Habsburg match

1

It seemed ordained.

Both of them God-bestowed round the same time;

No proxies would be needed at the church.

They would be joined when she was tall enough

To fit the dress, diamantine brocaded,

That had belonged to small-pox buried aunt.


Their future prospects too great to be good,

Just one dissenting envoy said. “For he

Is heir to arid plains won by the sword,

To tilled and serried verdant fatherland,

Peninsular gem-cities, guarded isles,

And lordship of the heathen Cherokee.

And she? Will wear the mildest western crown,

Whose soft gold teases out a stream of tax,

Whose malleable sceptre subjects strokes,

Those tyrannied sea-people,

Those slaves who feel so blessed free.


“Sirs, what have you done, what do you do?

You parcel the first reign of all the earth.”


2

They do not care for awkward boundaries,

Not much more than they care not for each other,

Acquainted by inexpert hack portraits.

But they are not impassive. The princess

Gladly awaits her dead aunt Bessie’s dress;

And the prince wonders when the cannon sound.

They stick to expectations and go on.

At the altar they are vague, pleasantly so.


3

She thinks her husband a strange sort of boy,

So many words for everyone, quacking

In a garbled, hasty voice that self-corrects

And stumbles; yet he hardly speaks to her

And sounds like a bad actor when he does.

He wishes they weren’t watched

(She’s used to it. She’s been told dignity

Is always less vulgar than privacy).

He knows no conjugal demand

Can get her on her own; he doesn’t know

If this is under foreign protocol,

Or what she wants.


4

He gets into the habit of talking

To everyone when she has left the room

About love. To young, uninterested courtiers,

Old ones, who find it funny though don’t laugh,

A passing poet, and the queen his mother

(He sails back to his kingdom just to reach her),

Who answers “I don’t think, if your conduct

Is as you have described it, well,

I’d scarcely love you either. Restes tranquil.”


The princess misses him a little though.

She moves their household to a port-town, where

A maid falls dead of plague. She crooks

Her regal lips, and boredly wonders

If, when reunited, in heaven with her lord,

Things will perhaps feel easier than this.

Friday 25 January 2008

Meeting by d'Overbroeks

1

So I had walked not far short of an hour

In a plodding sort of way, but then I winnowed

Back, a passport left behind, a card withheld,

Jangled again against that real world,

And on home turf as well,

Where the dons threw up quiet piles

For Anglican courtesans,

Where their houses swap for schooling,

And their schools for scholarships.

One of these is d’Overbroek’s.

(This, Dutch I think, has always rhymed with hooks.)


So I lacked card and purpose, and floated along the past,

And thought of a house broad and red,

Recalled the weblocked garden shed,

The fountain where the toad it was that tumbled

Out on a pang of cold, and was eaten by a tender dovish wife.


On the way to Moore Place, to One Hundred and Three,

Where I grew up (though didn’t), where an evacuee

Cousin had once been billeted (we had the ground floor;

Further up lived Ian McEwan

Further still a harrassed woman

Who one peculiar Wednesday was indicted as a whore),


Between Lloyd’s and the garden and the ground-floor flat,

Sold to a Swede called Blog who culled the front,

And on account of wasting north-disease will cop it soon,

As I say, obstructing my meander

Sits the mother of Art but not not of art. Sits d’Overbroeks.


2

I walked under the sign that raised the obscure Hollander

To Oxford’s pantheon, which means learning’s Valhalla

I suppose. I saw a lovely girl going downtown

With a boy who was familiar (I think only as a type),

And felt a bit embarrassed, just as if

I was – let’s say – an uncle. (Let me finish.)

Let’s put my brother and I about twenty odd years snagged back.

He has a daughter – let us call her Clem (a family name),

And he says to me, “Minoo, Clem

Fouled up some exams, but I Think She’s Good At Art.

I’ve put her down for d’Overbroek’s, so not too far

From your college (I get those saints confused).”

Now I’m a Fellow (the First pre-supposed

Which if I read so little it can’t be),

But I’m not good for that much else. I never

Married, though it hardly was my fault, nor was my aim,

It just was allotted, like the flats of Jowett Walk.

Olly hasn’t read my books (as far as I know)

But I’m trusted to keep a cloistered eye on little Clem,

(Who is not, by the way, my godchild. Niece will do.)

So I invite her to tea, and we postpone for a term,

Not meeting, then a year, and then

I see her studying art on some yuppie tyke’s pects.

I am disturbed, and my life of my mother

Is delayed, and Olly doesn’t invite me to revel Christmas

With the family (the college goose is good).


3

Cut. Cut. Enough of real her and him and unreal lot beside them.

That’s not how it will happen nor how it will happen now,

You just don’t like that lad because he is one,

And now they’re gone. I walk past d’Overbroeks

And see someone who doesn’t work there, couched

Beside the bus-stop. He’s eight times taller than me.

I’m dressed in mourning for the night before,

Black coat and trousers, floral shirt beneath,

The other wears a fag-white tracksuit top,

The fag itself unlit, the hair golden,

Hardy and ropey. You could keep things in it.

The colours make the conjunction a bit

Heraldic, like everything else,

And I like to think as my coat sweeps

And billows, that I take a Black Knight role,

But things like him were made to quell me then,

And my smart money would still back them now.

Tuesday 22 January 2008

Clegg sets out elderly care plan

Welcome, my friends, and it makes me so happy

To see quite so many of you here,

To remember quite how many of you voted for me,

To survey quite how many of you I have succeeded as

Leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and

Shadow Spokesman for getting elected.

Today I wish to talk about a subject close

To all our hearts (or, in the case of my right honourable

Friend, Sir Menzies, your shiny new pacemaker),

Yes, I want to talk to you about mortality,

Or, as I like to put it, age. I have a dream

That age can be golden. That Britain can be

An old country again; a country for old men.

(Fine recent film by the way. Well, my wife,

Who is of immigrant origin (Latino, well, Spanish), said

It was very good indeed, and now it has been nominated

For eight Academy Awards, which just goes to show.)

I want to talk about age. My age. Your age.

Care for the wrinklies. Surfin’ the silver.

My policy is to treat the old well,

If they vote for us, and if they join the party,

And become Shadow Foreign Affairs Spokesman,

And Leader, I hope to take them firmly by the hand

(Firmly, yet gently), and steer them, gently,

(Gently, but firmly) to beautiful Fife.

Monday 21 January 2008

Tybalt's Chat-Up Lines

When fair in love are weapons fair in war,

Bring on the gasmasks, jezzails and lies.

Should Venus grace what Mars has shaped before,

Then call reconnaissance her ambling spies.

Court-martials convene behind staggered lines;

Nor traitors, true allies, nor tongues are spared.

Through crimson lands ride scarlet road designs,

Navvied by junkies and the lotus laird.

We, the insurgents, lunge at every clasp,

But ever look to mount the burgeoning bane:

The clouds, the raisins and the preacher’s rasp,

The cleansing of the scented chlorine rain.

Meet me beyond the trench, the coast, the height,

And I will hurt for graven hurt requite.

Wednesday 16 January 2008

Droplet trail

When I wallowed in the culvert, I held deep converse

With a synaesthetic slug who loved a snail.

“Sir,” I said, inclining my head, “I intend

To write yet more verse.”

“Orange,” he replied, “and yet, here’s the rub,

She! She is aquamarine.”


When I found her she proved to be a witch

Whose glistening was worn and carried off well.

“My lady,” I gasped, “tell me about Love.”

And she stretched out her shining frame and

Promised me the earth – if I’d only

Net the sea.


Now I once knew an island there.

So I set out in search. I called out her name,

The island’s; seven hundred and eighty-nine

Songs told me that Europe now had her.

“Boy, you don’t need her, you don’t need us,

You don’t need the sea – ‘snot your calibre”


I wondered, true, if it was a question

Of technique. Should I try Moments?

Slug? Witch? Sounds?

“No,” said Dylan and the faculty,

“Keep yourself about you.

What else do you know?”

Tuesday 8 January 2008

Is Your Heart Really In This? Mine's In Bits

Chop chop

said your axe as it cut the art

-eries and ventricles and heart

Of Minocher, a scholar, prince and tart,

Transfigured by your gaze's e'er celestial dart

And left to lonely trot out a fool's part

And then at last to wonder why

Your written idiom does not call to mind

Your sonorous voice, so cruel...to be so kind,

And to slump back and listen to Blondie.

Friday 4 January 2008

Mortifying

‘Bout halfway down some poem’s vent

I missed a writing implement

And so went I to Aime’s sphere

A pen or pencil to adhere:

Retrieved a biro, scarcely chewed,

Hacked out verisimilitude.


We had a working partnership,

You and I, biro, quip and whip,

Yes we got on completely braw,

Me and you, sired out of law,

I kept you folded at my breast

With pads and keys at my thought’s nest


In the grey overcoat I slept

Within extra-collegiate space;

Through the grey overcoat you crept

Into the lining’s carapace.


Do you know those whinnying moments?

- no, biro, I address my friends –

Do you know those whinnying times

With wind in hair and a clear way ahead,

When you speed up and revel in your walk,

And think, damned good am I. Then struck the hawk.


Its bead now drawn upon my (comely) thigh,

The dolorous biro always carves on time,

When I am not, for punctuality

My biro bears in mind. Better, pride’s purge.


A certain Millie, willow celebrant,

I fiercely regarded by Hussein’s.

“You really love me,” remarked erring she –

The traitor stabs. Squeak. She: “Fond as I am…”


Fair’s fair, and scissors could it liberate;

But at my greatcoat’s cost would I baulk fate;

So Aime’s biro, and my wounds, will stay.

The moral compass needle has its say.


Accordingly, I’ve relapsed to typed verse.

Tuesday 1 January 2008

2008

How about this for a situation.

I hear insane insane noises in

The basement, put on some clothes, stagger

down to exercise discipline.


I am roundly mocked. I retreat.

As I hurry offstage a hulking figure

Quoth "You're breaking the rules! You can't go there,

You're breaking the Upstairs Rule!"


while this was amusing

and I did like the chance to snap back

I own this place and that kind of thing,

it did make me stop to think. Because


on a deeper level, the most profound level

of life, I am no doubt indeed breaking

the rules. Are we not all breaking the rules,

the rules set up to protect ourselves?


Could not that drunkard's lurching voice

have resonated as the eternal

challenge of the shadow self –

"You are breaking the rules!"?


Then I got tea from this v domesticated

girl with the most absurd hairstyle I ever saw,

like a sort of blue arctic roll superim

posed on a background of porridgey whey.