Painting portraits was part of my schooling. John Nerekov was an emigré from Stalin’s Russia living in Paris. The Abstract sprang from nowhere and is the only one I painted at that time.
The moon in its fullness
has taken over the sky.
Men from the earth have
walked on its dry surfaces.
seems that Artemis has departed.
Ah! these immortals always want
our full devotion
and we’re so busy.
Close
I’m a contemporary
with all that’s lost and
not yet found.
I brave the city streets and
the underground.
I listen to the traffic noise.
When I walk among the trees
a jay calls out.
I tread this raddled earth
carefully
for broken mirrors lie around.
I am a contemporary
wandering until
that healing flower
is found.
Close
In the corridor of the day
are doors
some marked ‘not yet’
or ‘missed’ are closed
some open
on a burning forest
a quaking earth
tumbling broken homes
faces as a wasteland
vacant
others that greet and advise
are open
a door I tiptoe by
sideways looking
where the dead gaze back
kindly and stern
20/11/2015
Close
Noah stood on a knife-edge,
knew he was in a fix.
A thick black threatening cloud
he’d never seen before
hung overhead.
True, he longed for rain.
Lakes were empty,
grass withered,
soil blown away in the wind,
trees with yellow leaves
in a dry air.
But this black cloud
he’d never seen before.
Tried talking to his neighbours.
They had other things to do.
Noah eyed that cloud
never seen before
and knew that time
was running out.
He grabbed his staff and ran
to the nearest town. Women, children
but no men.
He pointed to the cloud
never seen before.
‘They’re at their temples,’ cried the women.
Out of breath he found them by the river.
Huge statues stood along the shore.
Men were looking up admiring Mammon,
jewels gleaming in the light.
Others spellbound prayed to a wooden god.
and when the god smiled they smiled too,
they chanted the words It spoke.
‘I am the means, the way and the future.
No-one can enjoy the good life
except by me.’
Noah moved on.
Down river the air was filled
With wild screams and cries
As babes and animals were sacrificed
To a stone god.
No-one saw
the thick black cloud
never seen before
that darkened the air.
Noah then went upstream.
Waterfalls made music on the rocky shelves.
Birds sang among the shadowed leaves.
Men and women sat around
conversing on many things
and on the thick black cloud
never seen before.
They talked all night and at dawn
Noah went home.
‘Build an ark, build an ark’ a voice
kept saying ‘and save the people’.
Noah had a dream that night,
he dreamed of building an ark.
Close
I’m in a hospital with a broken leg
dear Mum, on Mars. I thought you’d like to know
and please don’t worry for I’m doing fine.
It happened on the trip through space although
the medics said before we left, “No way,”
when I asked the risks, “no gravity, no fall,
no broken limbs” and smiled, “no need to pray.”
The landing was a shambles and I lost
Consciousness and when I came around
‘ I’m on the wrong planet’ I really thought.
I gazed about me everything I found
Was unexpected, nothing that was planned
Back in the space station seemed now to fit.
I somehow was aware that all was well
yet strangely well was how I thought of it.
Aware! now hold an apple you imagine
only and feel it clearly in your hand
its form, solidity, see its colour
taste its sweetness and you’ll understand
something of the world I found me in.
They told me Sid and Barry were OK
but where and how they are I’ve not a clue.
You see I trust in everything they say
but not exactly clear on what they mean.
Like the apple things are evidently there,
the touchy feeling sense of being real
and yet I feel I’m swimming in thin air.
Please forgive me all my buts and yets.
I seem to be constructing all the facts
No dream is this however strange it gets.
You remember that holiday when I was nine.
the seashore where we found the ammonites
Dad said they lived a million years ago
now dead and buried in those battered heights.
Those spiralled molluscs mathematical
And earthy I loved, mind and matter one.
My nurse, my angel I am not sure which
nor how and where the healing care is done
tells me my friends are in intensive care.
“Your planet needs it too,” I heard her say.
Try to imagine what that is. They don’t go into details
What is speech? It begins in throat and tongue directed by brain. Now I see it is already there before all that. It can be seen before being uttered.
Martians report on their visits to earth. Earthquakes and volcanoes signs of pathological condition.
Earth’s need of intensive care.
Is Mars red? Colours as surface and colours as transparent experience.
We aim to meet face to face. Martians meet side to side.
Nature of work. Doing in order to know. Here knowing is doing.
To show that earth is man’s home.
Close
Blessed by birds your golden pinnacle
My fire tree, still rising in the paler blue of heaven,
Magpie spying from a dying branch
The far momentary light of dawn
Bringing the tale of past and other worlds
Where God walks.
Now
The eye sinks in the mud
Of desolate flats once washed by crystal seas
Made blue by that same heaven.
Close
I walked along Primrose Avenue the other day
and there was Caesar with Calpurnia hand in hand,
he carrying a plastic bag and she a spray
of flowers. Quite surprised I was to see them stand
simple and unassuming waiting for a bus.
He smiled and helped her on to number 23.
They found their seats on the upper deck, no fuss,
though it was rather crowded. I could clearly see
them talking to each other as the bus drove off.
I wanted to run and climb aboard and speak to them
but had a date with the lawyers Nightingale & Bluff
and missed my chance hoping another one would come.
To find out more I checked on Wikipedia.
Much on Pompey, Brutus and the Ides of March
the Gallic Wars and Caesar’s landing in Britannia.
But as for Primrose Avenue in all my search
I never found it mentioned, lots on Rubicon.
Later I spied him on the escalator going down
as I went up in the underground at Islington.
I tried to catch his eye but only caught a frown.
In the blustery sky crows flapped above the chimney tops.
The streets of Pimlico lazed in the warm sunlight.
Folk strolled along gazed at windows went into shops
or sat in cafes with their ipod and flat white.
A shot like the crack when a car backfires rang out.
Again a shot. The strollers gazed along the street
alert uncertain. Then more shots cries and a shout
from someone twisting round, arm in the air to meet
a crouching shape, rising, legs spread, waving a gun.
Horror emptied the sky and air. Two figures backed
slowly, hoping for life afraid to turn and run.
The second gunman aimed, the atmosphere was packed
with terror as the two fell and lay side by side.
Chaos reigned. There were screams. People ran.
Another fell. Justice! Freedom! The gunman cried.
I saw two figures looking at the scene a man
and a woman, then stepping from the pavement walk towards
hellfire. The woman gestured and the gunman smiled.
Then sirens scream and police cars brake, shouts and bullets fly,
The second gunman falls and Caesar all the while
walks among the dead and dying, comforting.
(I recognise him then as he kneels down and seems
to speak to the gunman – it’s like an awakening
and not a dying.) then a passing sunray beams
on the carnage.
Images from smart phones show
a million million times on Facebook and TV
things that happened on that day in Pimlico.
No trace of those I saw on number 23;
it seems they weren’t interviewed or even named.
But we who watched it all in real time
some mystery was going on it seemed.
Some may think it has no reason and no rhyme.
Close
As sheaves
We are bound
Leaning to others
The dry wind blows through
Shrieks in the night
The threshold we
Tread alone
Close
Take off that blindfold
Cupid and admit
love has eyes to see.
But what and who?
The dazzling overtures of flesh and all
nature’s box of tricks like
sunrise, dewdrops on the grass
waves breaking on the shore
that bind so dearly still
make me rich.
Love’s optic power grows
beyond this wealth
and in a desert blossoms.
Close
We sit at Beachy Head
The slow rolling tide
Shuffles below. The sea
A vague mist of grey on grey
Melds with sky
No horizon.
Close
We sit at Beachy Head
The slow rolling tide
Shuffles below. The sea
A vague mist of grey on grey
Melds with sky
No horizon.
Lure of the loving eye
Skyline and face
Mountain and desert
Colours and forms
Earth plant and beast
Vivid and here.
The robot eye shifts
In shallowness
Screening the world
Shooting its prey.
What more is there to say?
We get born
To crawl among our life’s theatricals
To learn ‘this is a moon,
This a tree
This a machine to make thunder
To make light
To make life
To make a woman
Or a man’
In the maelstrom
To devour or be devoured
To end on the way.
What more is there to say?
In the silence
Of the empty heart
Opens the rose
Unsaying what is said
Joining the living with the dead.
Close
Opening a door
No key no latch
No hinges
Standing
No floor no concrete foundations
No feet
But eyes yes eyes
Drowning in blue
Sky cirrus drifting
Ecstasy
Closure
Curtains
In the bright dark
Sitting
Laptop of desires
On knees
Prayerfully
Touch and go
Cool fearfully
Gratified
Here between
The shimmering
Of grass and cloud
Walking
Carelessly
Amid sun and rain
A green song
There in the tree
And deep within
I rest my case
Close
There’s no way back
The river flows
The music dies
And the party ends
Cliffs fracture and fall
Waves pulverise
Vast deserts are the legacies
Of rich rolling fields of summer wheat
Flesh wrinkles and dries
Garments fray and fall apart
Species vanish and stars collapse
And everything has its demise
Does nothing hold
Warmth ends in cold
The bravest hopes in sighs
Speak up o love
And tell us true
Your growing makes us wise
June 2015
Close
Strange air
Cloud-grey above the tree
And you in your white and black
Balanced there;
Strange heir
Prince Magpie
On a fir tree top.
Close
Adrift down soulless rivers on I went
Feeling no longer the tug of the barge’s rope:
I saw some howling redskins nail the crew,
Naked, to flag poles and then shoot them down.
I had no interest in the boats that passed,
Loaded with Flemish wheat or English cloth.
Then when the uproar with the bargemen stopped,
The rivers let me float down where I would.
Through the raging surges of the tides
Last winter, heedless like a dreamy child
I raced along! Peninsulas let loose
Have never known such jubilant turmoil.
The tempest blessed my wakenings out at sea.
Light as a cork I danced upon the waves
(Endlessly tumbling their victims, they say)
Ten nights, nor missed the lantern’s stupid eye.
Sweeter than sour apples to the child
Green water seeped into my pinewood hull,
Washing me clean of blue wine-stains and sick
And swept away the anchor and the helm.
And from that time I bathed long in the poem
Of the sea, mingled with stars and white like milk
Devouring bluish greens and floating pale,
Ravished, a pensive corpse at times sank by;
And where the slow tempo and delirium
Staining these blues in the shining glare of day,
Ferment the bitter flush of love,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than songs.
I’ve known the lightning split the skies, currents,
Whirlpools and waterspouts: the fall of night,
The dawn exalted like a flock of doves,
I’ve seen, at times, what some believe they’ve seen.
I’ve seen the low sun, dyed with mystic awe,
Illuminating violet clotted shapes,
Like actors in an ancient tragedy,
The rolling distant waves flicker like blinds.
I’ve dreamed in the green night of dazzling snow,
Of a kiss ascending slow to the ocean’s eye,
The ambulation of unheard-of sap,
The awakening of singers in the phosphorous dawn.
For months on end I watched the crash of surge
On reef, like a herd of hysterical beasts
Never dreaming that the the Maries’ shining feet
Could break the snout of broken-winded seas.
You know, I’ve struck undreamed-of Floridas
Flowers mixed with the eyes of panthers clad
In human skin! And rainbows stretched to curb,
Below the sea’s horizon, pale green flocks.
I’ve seen fermenting swamps, vast eel-pots where
A huge Leviathan rots among the reeds!
And waters crashing down on halcyon days,
The distant rushing headlong to the abyss!
Ice, silver suns and pearly waves and skies
On fire, grim wrecks sunk low in sombre gulfs
Where giant serpents eaten up with lice
Drop with exotic scents from twisted trees!
I would have wished to show these golden fish
Of the eye-blue wave to children, these singing fish
From spumes of flowers have blessed my aimless drift,
At times mysterious winds have winged me on.
Sometimes, that weary martyr of poles and zones
The sea whose sobbing soothed this sickening pitch,
Raised for me ghostly flowers with yellow mouths
And I, like a kneeling woman, didn’t move…..
Like a peninsula, splattered with the dung
And squabbles of pale-eyed pesky birds;
I floated on, while across my worn-out ropes
Drowned men moving backwards sank to sleep.
But I, a boat lost under a creek’s green mane
Thrown by tempests through the birdless air,
I that no cruiser nor a Baltic sail
Would ever save, a carcase drunk with brine;
Free and steaming, mounted by purple mists
I who pierced like a wall the reddening sky,
Delicious compote made for troubadours,
With its sun-bred lichens and azure slime;
Streaked with electric crescents, the crazy raft
Flew on, escorted by black hippocamps,
When July’s cudgel blows demolish all
The burning vortices of deep-blue skies.
Trembling I heard the groans at fifty leagues
Of turbid maelstroms and Behemoth in rut,
Eternal spinner of blue archetypes,
I long for Europe’s ancient parapets!
I’ve seen starry archipelagos! And isles
With ecstatic skies open to vagabonds:
Can you sleep exiled in these boundless nights,
A million golden birds, O Powers to come?
It’s true, I’ve wept too much. The dawns are sad.
Moons are unbearable and bitter the suns!
My mordant love swells up with drunken languor.
Let my keel burst! O let me go to the sea!
In Europe the only water I desire
Is a cold, black pool where in the scented dusk
A sad-eyed child crouches and pushes out
His boat as frail as a butterfly in May.
No longer can I, in your languor bathed
O waves! erase the tracks of merchant ships
Nor face the arrogance of flags and flames,
Nor swim in the fearful gaze of prison hulks.
Close
I
On calm dark waters with the stars asleep
The fair Ophelia floats, strange nenuphar —
Floating so slowly wrapped in her long veils…
In distant woods you hear them tally-ho.
A thousand years and more the sad Ophelia
Slid ghostly white along the long dark stream.
A thousand years and more her gentle madness
Whispers her story to the evening breeze.
The wind kissing her breasts makes flower-like
The long veils softly cradled on the waves;
The trembling willows on her shoulder weep,
Above her dreaming brow the reeds bend down.
The lilies ruffled by her passing sigh;
At times, in a drowsy alder-tree, she wakes
A nest from which a quivering wing peeps out:
A mystic song comes down from golden stars.
II
O pale Ophelia! lovely as the snow!
These causes swept your life away, my child
— The winds that fall from Norway’s mountain peaks
Had whispered you about stern liberty;
–A breath of air, that teased your splendorous hair,
Transported strange sounds to your dreaming soul;
–Your heart had heard all Nature’s songs
That come from plaintive woods and sorrowing nights;
–The voice of furious seas, the rasp of death,
Shattered the child-like soul within your breast;
–And one May morn, a handsome, pale-cheeked knight,
A wretched fool, sat dumbly at your knee!
O heaven, love and liberty! What dreams,
Mad lady! made you lose yourself in him
Like snow in fire? Your visions choked your words.
—The infinite struck terror in your eyes!
III
—The poet’s eye beholds you come by night
To gather flowers under the stars and he
Has seen there wrapped in her long veils the fair
Ophelia floating like a nenuphar.
Close
The world is sick in bed
no visitors
no flowers.
All died
no paternoster
no amen.
Darkness
seeped into eagles’ eyes
and wolves’
Fallen
leaves and trees
mountains and planets
A shrivelled earth
the cindered sun.
Love holds
here
beyond the thunder
beyond the fire
is the new earth
of the tiger’s gaze
and the yearning
of Adam remade
and Eve
from hearts’ own worth .
Close
Whorl to be unfurled,
flame within flames
world ovum at the birth of time;
wing-beats of the albatross
ruffled the unseen skies;
we can no longer speak,
no longer see
only listen:
wind in the tallest trees that once
brushed the brow of heaven
murmured the Word, amber flowed
like tears to the silent earth
embalming mysteries.
Ur, Nineveh and Babylon rose up,
their walls a mailed fist to the stranger,
cupped hands to the flame of the soul.
The stars stood back and were counted.
The moon still spoke to the heaving seas,
the sun defied the Shining Ones
who folded their wings of light
veiling our eyes.
Then over the horizon came men
and horses neighing and sniffing the air;
brass bugles were heard,
iron swords and ploughshares
stabbing the flesh of men and the earth.
The Greeks set sail for Troy
to bring Helena back,
to rescue beauty for the sake of all
at the price of a daughter’s blood
a burnt-out city and uncounted dead.
On the hill at Athens
beauty blossomed like a rose.
But then the goddess left her shrine
and plague and famine prowled.
In a prison there a flame
awoke the spirit in men
when the hemlock cup was served ?
The wilderness spread.
The high tree Iggdrasill was bare,
Leafless, no eagle there.
The sound of marching feet
was echoed in ROMA by the howl
of the mob at the games.
AMOR conquers all.
What was that voice, that flame that came
out of the desert? Flung by the wind
into the air, dispersed, half heard,
whispered in lonely places –
metanoeite, metanoeite
change, change your heart and mind!
Three years His feet printed the earth.
There were those fishermen who spoke
and ate with him. They heard his stories,
saw His healing miracles yet fled
the soldiers who took him away.
Did they know the fullness of it all?
Were their hearts strong enough to bear,
to understand the depth of darkness
and the terrible light within?
It seemed that nothing significant happened!
Caesar was sick on the isle of Capri,
the price of slaves went up on the market
where rumours of revolt in the east
were usual and took weeks to arrive.
On a hill in springtime olive trees bathed
in the early sun, the wind played in the reeds.
Sparrows frisked in the dust unaware
Of the blood spilt commonly there.
Nothing significant happened.
No special signs, no heavenly blaze.
Only the sign of Jonah was given –
three days and three nights
in the belly of the fish,
in the heart of the earth.
After the death on the hill of the skull
two walked with Him and when
at the inn He broke the bread
they knew their guest for the first time.
In dying and in rising again
the Word went out
in the deserts and cities,
its tongue-like flame was witnessed
in the shattering and spilling
of the old wine in the silence
of the old gods.
It was heard singing in the storms
that battered the stony height
of Skellig Micha-el
and the deep hearts of people.
The dove from Ireland came
and the milk of Iona fed the souls
hungered in a savage wilderness-
the path of the wayward Word.
And what was the face of the Word?
A fish, a lamb, a pelican, a man?
A beginning and an end, alpha et omega.
The holy one from Assisi spoke for the wolf,
for the bird, the sun and moon,
that tongue-like flame;
and each, a mirroring pool, threw back
the image of a face-
the face of a sister,
the face of a brother.
This once-only earth our home
for work and play for us to mind,
in the features of the other
a mirroring pool
the Word we find.
The far winging albatross looks down
from silent stars on the darkened seas of our time.
Close
Ah, these black wings that hover and that tree
Standing, bravely standing, bold and verdant voice
Through all uncertainties!
The wind moves compelling music from
The forest glades and all high-reaching things,
Yet none from beaten earth and ponderous stones.
The unfenced deer, love’s emblem, know
The scented paths we trod, the sunlit and
The dark dense leafage of our lives.
We journey on together and alone.
The heavens mirrored in the silent lake
Shall sing our song.
Close
No, do not dream. The all-wise future comes,
So let it be and let the play move on;
The denouement will reckon all the sums
Yet to be paid and those that have been won.
Dreaming is for youth; instant proving fields
Invite the longing heart and lover’s eyes
Awake wild hopes ; the morning’s fancy yields
To the evening’s knowing which past time decries.
Dreams fashioned once our lives. Because our time
Has made us strangers, now we have no door
Or wall round which our roses climb
And we are turned to drifters on the shore.
And yet this castaway has dreams that cling
Like wrack to the rocks of the sea, that sing.
Close
The snow falls
and if it keeps on falling,
there will be nothing left in sight
but dazzling white.
On pole and bush, tussock and bough
are neat convexities of snow,
made by winter’s breath,
pale transience in the realm of death.
Grass, garden, houses, trees
and even sky
will disappear in a universal freeze.
Even you and I
may sleep or die.
Nature is now concealed
under this winding sheet.
Its green life unrevealed
in its winter retreat.
It will not stay like this.
Grey slush and blackened ice
will come then shrink away;
rich mud and autumn leaves
will nourish still
green shoots of daffodil.
Close
Clouds doing what clouds do –
the river doing what a river does –
the trees – ah — trees aflame so slow
to show us all that in them is.
Close
A lonely sock and a lonely glove
In the ‘Swan’ on a Saturday night,
Collided by accident, accident?
Sock said: You stood on my toe!
You stood on my toe!
Glove said: You gave me a terrible fright!
The lonely sock and the lonely glove
In the bar that Saturday night,
Decided to sit together, yes together.
Sock said, Can I buy you a drink,
Let me buy you a drink.
Glove said, You’re looking terribly white!
The lonely sock and the lonely glove
Conversed till ten o’ the clock,
About the weather, but not just the weather.
Sock said, Here’s to…here’s to …
Glove said: Here’s to…
You look so pink and sweet, said the sock.
Our lonely sock and our lonely glove
Met on a bench at Gill’s lap.
She gave him her hand, yes gave her hand.
Sock said: O my love, my love!
He really said: O my love!
Now Glove, how she wanted to clap!
The lonely sock and the lonely glove
Took a train to the southern coast.
She admired his leg, his elegant leg.
Sock said: Do you have a twin,
Do you have a twin like me?
Glove thought of the one she had lost.
Not exactly a twin, said the glove,
But we matched so well together.
He was the right and I was the left.
We loved to hold each other,
To enfold each other.
And now, as you see, I’m bereft.
As they looked at the sea and the sky,
Sock said not a word but Glove was brave.
Perhaps we don’t, perhaps we don’t
Quite match, she sighed,
She uttered a sigh.
As he walked away she gave him a wave.
Close
Terry and Ted sat down by the bay.
Ted said, “Ah!” as he gazed at the sea.
Terry replied, “It ’ould marvellous be.”
They agreed after lunch to sail off the same day.
In silence they munched a sandwich or two
Of marmite and cheese with cucumber too.
But Terry and Ted lingered on until dark;
By moonshine they walked back home through the park.
Time passed and Terry and Ted went back to the bay.
Ted said, “Oh!” as he peered at the sea.
Terry replied, “It must mighty vast be.”
So they sat and they looked for most of the day.
They kept themselves going on a sandwich or two
Of salmon and sausage and chocolate too.
Now yesterday Terry and Ted went down to the bay.
Ted said, “Ugh!” as he glanced at the sea.
Terry replied, “How restless it be!”
They slowly got up and thought not to stay,
Having munched for a while a sandwich or two
With quails’ eggs and wine and caviar too.
Close
Do not take me at my word.
It slips and slides. It hides
Behind glass walls, in glaring lights
The speech is always blurred.
Summer’s green and golden tide
Turns brown and black and in
This wintry time we hear
The Word being crucified.
Close
“What’s in your pack?”
“The truth”, I said.
“It cost me dear.”
My path by a river led.
I rested – but the pack
Rolled down and disappeared.
Clouds in the waters darkened,
Sad trees and flowers stared.
I dived – my loss was great –
But in that stream half-drowned
I reached a shore where all
That’s strange and new I found.
In the silence I could hear
What never I heard before –
The rustling of the Word that blows
On the sense’s shore.
Close
Who hid that honey
in these deep-petalled flowers
for you, wise humming bird?
Who taught these wings
to hold you in a moment motionless
for a timeless ecstasy?
“There is no ‘who’ in all this wonderment,
but only ‘what’, the rest is fantasy.
Genetic variables and chance
contingencies make up the plot.”
O then, dear humming bird, let’s make a place
way from all this frozen thought,
and let’s suppose that you and I
had once been friendly face – to – face
with gods and goddesses upon
a golden hill where grazed
some griffins and a unicorn or two,
had sworn our loyalty to one and all
with mingled blood and earnest oaths,
that we together would construct
a fair new-spangled universe.
We’d start with ecstasy and weave
from it a tapestry
of purest joy and make a sky
to hang it from and suns
to shine on it and eyes to gaze.
Mammoths and bees, wild tigers, swans
Painted in coloured threads would breathe
And stepping down
Would dance a new earth into life.
“ ‘Whereof one cannot speak, (my lofty poet!)
thereof one must be silent’, said L.Witt-
genstein, so cut your language down to facts.
All that is seen, inferred or otherwise
deduced by mathematics must alone
trace out the universe. Research
can never justify these empty words.
In honest brains there is no place for hokum.
So silence, please.”
In some high-windowed lab, my bird,
we’ll make research with microscope
and giant telescope to find the origins
of love and faith and beauty in
a flowering reed, and in the sea-mew’s cry
its ancient longing;
dig up the buried geology of soul,
and spy out all the galaxies of mind.
Close
Beneath the door of sleep
a letter sometimes slips,
private, unsigned
with no address.
No junk mail this,
for night-time minds
enough to give away
a message for this hidebound day.
Close
Looking up I saw
a cloud being born, hardly there;
so tenderly it grew
floating on the air.
Out of a wisp or two
there came a shape
I seemed to think I knew,
remembered or from sleep.
It also seemed aware
floating so happily
of my wondering stare
at its slow oh-to-be.
There it sailed so sure,
a fish, a dog, a bird,
just moments to endure
and then a tower appeared.
So love grows
out of the unseen
through forms it knows
to what has not been.
Close
A salesman came one night to my front door,
Late –a street lamp shining near the trees.
He stood there in the sodium light,
“I’ll sell you ten at reasonable price.”
His smile was silver and gold.
“No-one turns my offer down these days.”
He stooped above me and I think I feared
His dark assurance but was thrilled
To know the product was for sale.
A paper on a clip-board and a pen
Gleamed in his hands. “Sign here,” he said.
“What do I get and what’s the cost?”
“Hope, you get. Three thousand six
Hundred and fifty-two or so
More days of hope, of guaranteed
Continuance of the things you now enjoy,
The company of family and friends, the little things
You like to do, your being here on this
Unique and unexampled earth;
This place, this self, your memories,
Your joys, attachments and the quirky ways
That make you different will still carry on
For ten more years, assured, a warranty
You’ll never beat. Now sign here, please.”
He smiled his gold and silver smile.
I smiling too, “And what’s the cost?”
“Never a better time to buy. The devaluing
Of all human values makes it cheap.
You’ll hardly notice when it comes to pay.
The document declares, now let me read, ‘You must
Surrender any claims to some post mortem form
Of life, existence, consciousness or any kind
Of self perpetuation,; no wager a
La Blaise Pascal, no NDE or smuggling in some tags
From quantum physics and so prove that immortality
Can find a place in particle uncertainty’”
He paused, the lamp went out, I groped
For the lobby switch. “And must I sign in blood?”
“A very special fluid, they say, but somewhat thin these days.
A ball-point suits us fine. Black ink is best, enough
To take us to the end- for there we snuff!”
The dark was moonless; I found the entrance light.
We stood now in a deeper dark, tired and yellow in
The electric aura – bound together, no escape
But into that black void.
“Let’s sit and talk,” I said.
We reclined as best we could on wooden chairs,
Hands clasped behind his head, mine falling by my side.
“Time is the issue that we face, it seems to me –”
“ You’re right, ten years is not –” he intervened.
“Your ten-year offer could be measured out
In misery. Do you include
What can’t be quantified – like joy,
Or love or happiness?”
“ The small print says
That certain elements are the clear
Responsibility of the insured and can’t be guaranteed.
Our customer record, however, shows
You have no need to fear on this account.”
The gibbous moon was rising like a silver flake
Shaking its silver on the tree beyond the wall.
An owl tu-wooed – the moment filled with light.
At length I got up from my seat and walked
Over to the wall. The wind was rising,
Retreating clouds made room in that vast space
For the aureoled visitor to shine.
I turned around, the other was no longer there.
Close
Tanks trundle through a toadbrown haze
Reeled off for us all day and night
On virtual plains and dummy skies;
Armoured brutes in a desert blight.
They lumber on for freedom’s sake
Where mighty Gilgamesh aflame
For Man’s undying soul shook sun
And forests to write down his name.
And vision-driven Abraham
From Ur drove on his star-drenched cattle
To make a nation for One God
Now squandered in this human battle.
In a thicket of stars the ram kneels down
Before the age-long sacrifice;
Dumb victims die as nuke-heads scream
In the shocked and awful skies.
What once was, never ceases and
Its waves roll up around our feet
Now mired in nightmare stupor, past
And present in confusion meet.
Pink-faced youths from Illinois
Are hunkered down on a sandy hump;
Autonomous drones are out to burn
The living flesh by Shapur’s camp.
Through marble halls and perfumed gardens
Haroun al Rashid walked at dawn,
Unseen machinery made music
To peacocks and the sickle moon.
History is buried with the dead;
Truth lies and we must wait
Its resurrection in the sands of time
Lying beyond both fear and hate.
Close
This night in the bay the ocean heaves.
Stacked along the darkened reach
The high waves break like glistening sheaves
Are threshed and winnowed on the beach.
Above in the rigging of the stars
Old sailor Time aslant the mast
Looks down. The drum beat of the sea
Fades in the roar of a ship so vast.
The lights of the town flick yellow paint
Against the dark and splash the sand.
Between their improvised assault
And the white foam I wondering stand.
These pounding waves and stars that move
With infinite slowness and then I
Silent and motionless conceive
This present nothing can untie.
Close
Grey sky and falling snow
Birds flying the white dappled air
From tree to tree in and through
And then away and shortly back
Like thoughts in the dreaming mind;
The trees stand present unperturbed
Gathering the quiet snow.
Close
A flight of sparrows in the hedge
Makes musicality;
And all the traffic in my soul
Is stopped thereby.
The day is hung about with light
And paved with emeralds.
A dewdrop pendant on a leaf
The moment holds.
Close
Concealed among the things of everyday
Of papers books and plates of apples chairs,
Of clouds of sounds of children in their play
Of birds of course of voices from downstairs,
Of wind and waterfalls and then the smells
Of fruit of roses bread and the sea-breeze,
The touch of silk of hands of scallop-shells
There glides a phantom whispering ecstasies.
It does not give a reason stays not long
But comes and goes and rests about a phrase,
Hovers between the cinematic throng
Of things and the outward inward gaze.
Teeming like dust in sunbeams gleaming bright
Its particles of joy amaze the light.
Close
Four black riders came out of the sea,
Their eyes were of coral their beards of green wrack,
Resolute they came out of the sea,
And crossing the sand made a fearsome track.
These four black horsemen rode on black steeds
And trampled the grass on the purple dune,
Grimly they rode their black steeds,
Their armour gleamed in the light of the moon.
They left the shore, galloped over the moor,
They thundered by hillock and glen,
They galloped hard over the moor,
And reined their steeds at the edge of the fen.
They called to the waning moon overhead
And summoned the terrors out of the fen.
They called aloud to the moon overhead!
The screech owl to the night uttered, Amen.
The battered slain rose up from the mire
Clapping their bones with a hideous sound.
They rose with a stench from the mire.
The night was cleft with the yell of a hound.
They clambered around with rusted bones,
Their hollow breasts made a horrible sound.
Ghastly was the clambering of the bones,
And the scrape of the chains by which they were bound.
The four black riders got down on their knees;
Their coral eyes and green wrack beards
(In agony they got down on their knees)
By the acrid breath of the fen were seared.
The clustered dead now clung to the edge
And wailed to the jabbering night,
Piteously they clung to the edge.
The four black riders leaped at the sight.
They mounted their steeds ere the pale sun arose;
The battered slain sank back in a swoon,
They mounted in awe ere the pale sun arose,
And the water reflected the waning moon.
The four black horsemen rode back again,
Their eyes were of coral their beards of green wrack,
In furious haste they rode back again,
Bearing into that sea all their sufferings back.
Close
Late yesterday I was bewitched
As I walked up the slope.
A lady seated on a ledge
Was playing on a pipe.
Sunlight and shadow flew apart
And went their separate ways;
The water mirrored branches back
Although there were no trees.
The ripples spread across the pool
And lapped among the reeds.
And yet I know no stone was thrown
Nor moved an oarsman’s blade.
Now I must strive to climb again
The hill up which I came.
An ash-tree branch will be my staff
To guide me to my home.
I’ll pass the ledge where she was sat,
Hear piping in the air.
I’ll ask the starlight overhead
To bless my passing there.
Close
Escaping from the city din
A butterfly came flitting in
To a cool emporium of Cashmere craft;
Its wandering was both wild and deft.
(The wildness hungered for the light,
The deftness measured every sight.)
Along the shelves and shady niches
Filled with things in papier-mâché,
Boxes, bright and sparkling vases
And painted trays with metal glazes,
Like a dusky rag in a current of air,
Not pausing either here or there,
The connoisseur of flowering garden,
Of fragrant rose angelic warden,
(Deep heaven’s blue is nowhere there,
Where city shadows crouch and stare.)
Went lurching on and fixed itself
To a slender vase upon a shelf
At last – it stayed there like an ear,
Tattered and still, awake, aware.
(It listens for that distant sound
Vibrating in this aching wound.)
Close
By chance a fowler caught a nightingale
And drawing out his knife prepared to kill.
“I’m much too small to eat. Please spare my life.
I’ll tell you three wise sayings if you will.”
The fowler spared the bird and sheathed his knife
And bent his head to listen. “Never try
To bring about what cannot be achieved;
And never have regret for things gone by.
The third thing, please remember; don’t believe
The unbelievable.” Now once airborne,
The bird looked down and as she flew she sang,
” O foolish fowler, you have much to learn!
I have a pearl big as an ostrich egg
Inside me.” The disconsolate bird-catcher
Cried Ugh! regretting his too generous deed.
He sprang and with his net reached out to snatch her.
The bird now safely perched upon a branch
Remarked, “How foolish you have been, for now
Regretting what was past, you tried to do
What you could never bring about, nohow;
And furthermore, were ready to believe
A pearl big as an ostrich egg, id est,
Bigger than my whole body was inside!”
The fowler now began to be impressed.
Close
A troubled king leans on the balcony;
The prince his son has gone.
In the dark courtyard
The clashing of a horse’s hooves
Is echoing still.
The princess from the tower looks down;
Magnolia petals fall to press the ground
Already burdened with these flying feet.
The prince recalled
The golden light
Dropped from the blazing chandeliers
On feast and song and dance
Blinding the heart’s own sight
As he rode out to the desert lands.
A beggar’s hut beside the road
Leaned broken, battered by wind and sun.
A begging bowl lay on the ground
As empty as the sky;
The beggar and his daughter crouched
In the hut’s dark shade
When the shadow of the horse and man
Was thrown beside.
“Give me some water.” said the prince.
The barefoot girl ran to the well
And fetched the water in her bowl.
He drank, dismounted, shared their shade
And meagre home, a day then two
And then a week, to waxing and
To waning of the moon.
Thorns grew in that stony ground,
Clouds poured their ashes on those asphalt fields,
And rocks sprang to the sky and glared
Like an unsouled city passionless.
Long morning shadows shrank at noon
And backwards stretched by close of day.
******
The prince observed the beggar girl;
Her walk was purposed like the rising sun,
Her glance was like a swan in flight,
Her deeds were merciful like rain.
In the dark warp of poverty
She wove a crystal thread of light.
“Give me your daughter, beggar man,
To be my wife.” “A king’s son may
Not marry one so lowly poor;
Their destinies are night and day.”
“I love her as the sea-bird loves
The ocean, as the leaf the light.”
“She is my only daughter. I
Will die if she goes from my sight.”
“Then let me live with you and we
Shall share this burnt out earth,
And dream together of the stars
And wake to eat this sour dearth.”
The beggar fetched a casket from the hut
And opened it. A jewel lay within,
More costly and more precious yet
Than all the prince had ever seen.
Close
Now here and beside me or even within,
And then away and away in a long lean loping
Through boulders and burnt land under wasted trees
Its rage like a flame in a bending wind,
The wolf through grim mouth sucks the blood-marked air,
Its amber gaze hauling horizons and heaped shadows
Into the furnace within.
Ears tremble in the vivid space,
And odours spilt by the conniving earth
Confess its wonders to the shuddering nostrils.
Like a bright banner, shaking its mane to the dying sun
A golden horse arches the pounding plain.
Wolf howl hollows the black air.
Stone groans in the anxious light.
Turning and turning the radiant horse
Prances in sunlit circles
A spiralling sky-flame.
Wolf heart and horse heart now beat with one beat
Like two cymbals that clash with one clash.
Shoulders and mane thunder with delight
And golden hooves applaud the silvery dust.
The swinging darkness hiding wolf in its folds
Tightens like a noose,
And shadows enter those equine eyes
That roll in an azure dream.
Armed with fierce violence
The monster sheds its black rags
And flings its angry fire
Into the golden ring.
The steel trap shuts
On the staggering boom of the heart,
And teeth and jawbone snarl a road
To the leaping life.
The envious maw feeds on the tremulous tissue
Once woven on hallowed looms;
The honied blood falls to the ground.
The winged horse yields, its piteous head
Outstretched, its sagging flank a portal of death.
Strangely, a veil or a cloth of light
Lifts from the kneeling horse
And flies away in the night and the wind.
Hunched a huge hag, eyes and gaping teeth
Sulk in the cold cosmogony.
The ferocious feet straddle the silent carrion.
Bones, ligaments and skin, bewildered bowels,
Tongue and heart grieve on the callous floor.
Is now that hunger sated?
Can the music of the skull and spine
And sculpted bones so touch the memory
To trace again that shining form
Which once shook out its crimson mane
And soared above the golden plain?
Close
Each day I learn to hold the bow
and fit the arrow to the string
and gather all the powers I know
to launch the shaft upon the wing.
Where should it fly? where lies the mark?
It glistens in the curving blue.
Stay in the light; it falls in dark-
ness leaves behind no residue,
save a vibrating cord and pale
and trembling fingers near the heart.
So daily lingers here the frail
while eager powers of joy depart.
Close
Have you thought, “Oh,
When I saw that photo
Of a sun a hundred million years
Of rushing light away – ”
As vast as Saturn’s orbit, so they say,
And due to vanish, it appears,
In another million years?
Have you thought,
“There is another sun
As vast and almost as remote,
And yet no further than my hand,
Which may not be consigned
To the cosmic bin.
But travelling on a light path I may find
Within.”?
Close
Trees hedges fields and houses hang
From a thin sky a pale partition
Between these painted things and the deep night.
The clouds like ghost smoke move across
Weightless insubstantial merely
A movement of the hand may rub them out.
This world, this world’s a ragged coat
That hangs in the air; the banquet’s fragments
Scarcely fill a pocket. Through the tattered holes
A black sky looks.
May the dark now shine
And in its purple folds the gold
And jewelled branches silver-leafed
Like symbols blaze beyond the fields.
Close
And now that I have walked the measure of
God’s time, death’s smile companions me
Across these satisfying lawns and where
The dark trees net the sun-gold fishes’ play.
The autoroute’s banalities provide
No end of safe and perilous perspectives
Which speed towards me; invisible heights
Behind the morphine doze of clouds
Shout the glory of the unheard, unseen.
Turning the handle of a door that opens
Inwards a bird call beckons
And the immense sea rises.
Footprints going back along the sand
Mould the bitter waters and dissolve.
Glad wings press the darkness of the day.
To know their splendour in my night I pray.
Close
And it must come to this,
One day,
After the fire
A drizzle of dust into
The scooped earth,
The wind lightly, perhaps,
Whipping some particles away
On its slight breath
To fall like all its small quantity
Into the brown humus
And be mingled there.
No matter.
Here are the shards,
The broken testaments
Of a lived trajectory
Through sun and darkness,
Through a souled seascape.
The wind, the wind
Hears and the light opens
Its gates and the winnowed forms
Float on the far side of the air,
Unjoyful birth, unseen fulfilling
Unheard soliloquy,
Solemn effusion of dread absence .
Backstage whisperings prompt
The shadow-man
To rove my all remembrances.
In front the scene is vacant. Flood
Lights make the backdrop solid
Like a wall blinding the eye.
But somewhere the curtain is agape.
Those whispers that we dare not overhear
Fall in the silent cup
Of the prayerful heart
Turning to life now more knowingly.
Close
Mysterious shell, yet faultless in your form
Come from the sea-mastery of a sculptor’s hand
And thrown by the haphazard foam
Upon the sand!
Secret fingers in the deep
Have shaped your clarity,
The stars have reached into the ocean’s sleep
To etch your symmetry.
Perfection’s lines uncoiling like a spring
Between infinities
Have once breathed in the arcane whispering
Of lost divinities,
Their musing
Now scarcely sounding in the sea’s soliloquies,
But here, visible, fusing
Throughout these hand-held curving boundaries.
In the unbounded light and air
Ictinus built a temple fair.
Pediment, pillars, architrave
And roof all gave
Grave surfaces and lineaments
To form sunlit and shadowed places
And labyrinthine spaces
Endless breathing out and in
Luring the deity’s assent
To dwell within.
In the ruins of these stones
The dream of the divine lives on.
No-one now these fragments owns
For great Athene long is gone.
This form I lifted from the sand
Is such a house designed
By some unseen creative hand
Out of the will of active mind
That in this shell
Pectinidae may dwell.
Flower of the sea! O drifting petals!
Why were you chosen
To carry Aphrodite to the trembling shore,
Her beauty from the ocean depths new risen
To flow in harmony throughout all Nature’s store?
The forest where the sunlight slants,
Where moving shadows glide on moving leaves
And gold-fire gleams along the plants,
A breathless harmony achieves.
This scallop like a hollow dish
Or shallow cup is brimful with
The waters from a hidden spring.
We drank from it and beauty’s truth
Enlivened everything.
A million broken shells along the shore
Are stranded in chaotic heap;
Sea-blossoms of these dried up husks
Once carpeted the meadows of the deep.
So is it broken too the form
That carried Aphrodite to the souls
Standing with longing on the hither shore,
And nothing from the grey sea now consoles.
In the uncharted surging ocean
Of the wayward and authentic life,
Moved and tried by every motion
Of love and fear, indifference and strife,
And the fierce passions raging there
Beneath the lighting, thunder and the storm,
The cold, the burning sun and placid air,
Appears incipient, new, a precious form,
A vessel made to purge and purify,,
Perfecting every contour of the heart.
Now in its spiral chambers zephyrs sigh
And golden sails towards new dawns depart.
Close
So may my days be as the wanderings
Of tall giraffes across these graceful plains
For their divided hooves indent the ground
With a discerning pressure. Rains
That gather in the distant sky
Praise their bright ruminations and
The elegance of their slow moving by.
And may my nights be like these river deeps
Where hippos bathe drowned in their dreams,
Shuffling the silt like sagas washed
From far forgotten streams.
Emerging monstrous heads of bronze
Awaken in the star stirred dark to graze
Indigo shadows on the silver lawns.
Close
I feel these autumn colours have let loose
A dark and fiery wind sweeping away
Habitual rites and routine how-d’ye do’s
To tree and cloud and friend and memory.
My life goes bare. These gorgeous leaves bursting
Like a new spring will in some few days fall,
Their branches stark and naked outfacing
A gloss of sky; trees standing grave and tall
In silent memory of the songs of birds,
The primose laughter and the woodman’s axe.
One stands (and I so naked lacking words)
Arms wide at dawn a winter crucifix,
Embracing like its love the rising sun.
I know though much is lost, much more is won.
Close
Imagine all that is, is a wild storm;
Tempestuous particles in endless surge
And silence blanketing a fierce alarm
And peaceful certainty a violent urge.
In winter seedlings slow tornadoes turn
To burst in fury on the restless spring;
The winds of summer fan the fires that burn
And autumn’s mortal transformations bring.
The grass explodes on valley fields and braes,
And hurricanes still shape the twisted rocks,
The water fountains from the spinning trees,
And sunsets generate their evening shocks.
Behind the sleeping eyelids mighty forms
Are active throwing on the foaming seas
Of consciousness our dreams. Who knows what storms
Are native to the night’s constituencies?
And even in death’s kingdom there’s no rest
Or peace. Desires like hot winds burn and blow,
And passions fuel envy and disgust;
Attraction and repulsion whirl and flow.
“By reason of a mighty wind that blew
The sea arose”. And souls that longed for calm
Whistled like tattered sails, fearful, then saw
And understood: there walking on the wave I AM.
Close
Above above
Like a ghost in the deep-set night
Brushing the watchful stars
A white owl makes its flight.
For there beyond
Day’s noise the swish of grass and tree
And mountain die into
This dark expectancy.
And now within
The bird of night unlids its eyes
Unfolds its plumes of light
And hearkens to earth’s sighs.
The world renewed!
Nature dying is born again
The murmuring land is bright
With jewelled fields of grain.
Close
Travelling always through the night
Gently rocked by the speeding train
Sights and sounds and smells are strange
And pass and pass like a sad refrain.
Memories leap old passions clash,
Where is this journey headed for?
So much beneath the seas is lost
And I have gathered so little store.
Asleep are all the passengers.
I enter in my lonely space.
I sense the vastness of its forms.
There stands the other face to face.
The train flies on the whistle shrieks
And all the night begins to rise.
Like a bud within a crown of leaves
This now is mirrored in these eyes.
Close
Mind the gap,
the emptiness that we avoid each day,
the void that opens as we turn
the pages of a magazine
or waken in the dead of dark.
Oh mind the gap –
Ginnungagap, the vast abyss
Hanging like quiet air between
The fiercest cold and burning fire.
The giant tree grows there invisible
Its rankled roots all ravened by
The beast shuffling among the dead;
And in the topmost branch an eagle eyes
The firmament piercing its high blue walls;
While running reindeer chew the honied leaves.
That bottomless ravine holds death and life.
A crack split open by a blade of grass.
Mind still the gap.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Then Torricelli’s tube split Man
From Nature, turned the world to dust.
And why? For in that tiny space
above the mercury there was the void
and from it all the vast,
infinite spaces grew
to terrify the soul and made
abstract those images wind-blown
that shook the garments of the gods.
The door once firmly closed is now
ajar, a cleft to let night in.
Pray mind the gap!
The darkened chasm quarried from the night!
Delve not to know its radiant depths;
dream not to mine its golden seams;
speak not to name its hidden gems!
But let its perfumed presence rise,
its silent offerings show themselves,
its green tree blossom in that wilderness.
And like an angler to his catch,
hold to that void, that emptiness,
or like a deer it dives away
into the undergrowth.
Close
A prow divides the silence of the seas
While waves of shadows flatter every fold
That shifts and celebrates the slightest breeze;
Conqueror of the realm of blue and gold!
Mother and Child rise from the ocean spray
Sailing before the wandering silver wake
That searches out the limits of the day,
Sea-rooted tree aflame for the world’s sake!.
Mother and Child! The infant finds repose
Where all the plenitudes of life reside,
And there unfold the petals of the rose
That fall and scatter on the swinging tide.
The stars assemble in her downward gaze,
Her feet are balanced on the glittering coils
Of the diamond-studded snake whose subtle ways
Have robbed the light who feeds now on its spoils.
Its parching breath and burning eye of steel
Will dry the seas and desolate the land;
Bruising the serpent’s head the virgin heel
Rests and ponders its terrors to withstand.
Creator of those sly and sweet techniques
And complex mechanisms that shroud the globe.
Its gleaming eye reflects a world of tricks,
Its dried-up skin becoming Nature’s robe.
But still are heard those distant echoings,
Sea-murmurings and meanings of lost skies,
The canticles of whales whose voyagings
Shine like wild wonders in their mystic eyes.
The Child awakes out of a rose-white dream;
His hand moves from the breast across a rift
Of tears to grasp the nails upon the beam
Of a tall tree, as one who grasps a gift.
The darkness settles on your silent form
And all its symbols like those flights of rooks
That roost in trees at night yield to the storm
Of the Passion and close their wings like cloaks.
Close
Come, Sabbath queen, the mysteries are now!
These sea-made stones though steeped in bitter juice,
Loosen their roots in Abraham’s anchorage.
Look, all the cyclamens reach up with their
Mauve tender flames that burn rigidities.
Whose hands untwist and twist invisibly
Those wisps of cloud in that bright spaciousness?
Great Demeter is veiled, her cheek inclines
In these blue heights, these eyelids long have been
Bereft and inconsolable, her cry
A black cloth laid on nature’s tomb
Unheard.
“And yet the maiden is not dead
But sleeps.” Here in Jerusalem the sweet
And bitter phantoms from the past harden
The morning air. The horses of the night
Lashed by Pluto through the field of blood,
Plunge their metallic hooves and yet despite
These terrors or the cries of ghosts She stirs
And from millennial sleep the maiden wakes.
The red anemones among the stones
Impassion once again the breath of souls.
This morning with the setting moon a bright
New sun is rising slowly in the East.
Come, Sabbath queen, the mysteries are now!
Close
The dying light of evening now has gone
and my bright lilies lost and crowded orchids
are laid aside on disenchanted lawns.
The stones’ oppression weighs on painful eyelids.
I remember the bells that swung in the sky
and the terrible clang ding dong derri die.
In the crazed lights of cities glossy sur-
faces print out the mobile human tide.
In myriad shadows mirroring the sour
anxiety of souls unsatisfied.
I remember the bells that swung in the sky
and the terrible clang ding dong derri die.
In cellars underground the soldiers fight.
Children and women cry somewhere above.
The men must kill or die; the long knives weave
and daub the mortal flesh in red and white.
I remember the bells that swung in the sky
and the terrible clang ding dong derri die.
My house is cold and shaken in the wind.
The laughter on the roof is poisoned rain.
A table lamp lights up the sickly mind
with obscure texts to dissipate the pain.
I remember the bells that swung in the sky
and the terrible clang ding dong derri die.
Close
This body soul packaged and pale
Carried on corridors of light,
Hanging high up a heavy weight,
Longing to fall from this too bright.
In this suspended vacancy
The world keeps turning on its pin;
Blind drifting clouds roll down below,
Stray drifts of feeling gather in.
Below the earth its gouged out valleys
And twisted ridges, wrinkled, old,
Expressive of an ancient pain
Where human joy has scarce laid hold.
Yesterday in the city’s noise
A beggar shapeless in the dirt
Offers her fingerless two stumps;
Who gives, who takes, and whose the hurt?
The leper that Saint Francis kissed
Has faded on that bygone page;
In the well-documented soul
There is no love but only rage.
For calculation finds offence
When wretchedness says Here I lie;
It tears bright consciousness to rags
And peels apart the passer-by.
Beyond the misery beyond
The proud anxiety, Earth stores
Compassionate waters that perhaps
May drown the leeches of remorse.
The plane descends, green fields appear
And shanties where the pitied poor
Mock our economies of growth
And our heart’s poverty endure.
Close
Dusk is assembling in the room,
Is falling on her shoulders’ stoop,
The marble floor and sloping broom
She holds to sweep the dust. A swoop
Of light reflected on the ground
And strangely mirrored on the wall –
A burst of sun from yonder found
Its way into the darkening hall.
It’s just a painting by some Dutch
Old Master who had learned the art
Of seeing common things as such,
Yet with the pulse-beat of the heart.
And so she stands her broom aslant
As if she shuffles in the dust
Impassive and yet confident
Her evening chore can put its trust
In this eternal quietness.
A mirror on the wall shows her
Featured in patient mindfulness,
Mistress servant of all that’s there..
Her broom ingathers dirt and dust,
And in an endless moment sure
That fractured light before her must
Mingle impurity with pure.
She’ll sweep together in one heap
Earth’s residue and that white fire
Which melting all the dross may leap
Into a novel form entire.
As once in the desert the enlightening word
In outcast and discarded souls was poured.
Close
Nearing the sea I hear its crashing sound
And the high crying of the gulls;
Those shallows, falls and whirlpools left behind
And all those distant hills.
Nearing the sea I fear its ageless might
And the salt waters’ ravages.
Beyond the shore sway pain and emptied thought
And hollowed silences.
Dark suns are setting now on yellow seas
And monstrous forms torment the deep;
But One like pillared light ablaze bestows
The blessedness of hope.
Close
Four black riders came out of the sea,
Their eyes were of coral their beards of green wrack,
Resolute they came out of the sea,
And crossing the sand made a fearsome track.
These four black horsemen rode on black steeds
And trampled the grass on the purple dune,
Grimly they rode their black steeds,
Their armour gleamed in the light of the moon.
They left the shore, galloped over the moor,
They thundered by hillock and glen,
They galloped hard over the moor,
And reined their steeds at the edge of the fen.
They called to the waning moon overhead
And summoned the terrors out of the fen.
They called aloud to the moon overhead!
The screech owl to the night uttered, Amen.
The battered slain rose up from the mire
Clapping their bones with a hideous sound.
They rose with a stench from the mire.
The night was cleft with the yell of a hound.
They clambered around with rusted bones,
Their hollow breasts made a horrible sound.
Ghastly was the clambering of the bones,
And the scrape of the chains by which they were bound.
The four black riders got down on their knees;
Their coral eyes and green wrack beards
(In agony they got down on their knees)
By the acrid breath of the fen were seared.
The clustered dead now clung to the edge
And wailed to the jabbering night,
Piteously they clung to the edge.
The four black riders leaped at the sight.
They mounted their steeds ere the pale sun arose;
The battered slain sank back in a swoon,
They mounted in awe ere the pale sun arose,
And the water reflected the waning moon.
The four black horsemen rode back again,
Their eyes were of coral their beards of green wrack,
In furious haste they rode back again,
Bearing into that sea all their sufferings back.
Close
Maker of silver, brooder of darkness endless-
ly running river between
these banks that rise and steeply stoop,
and frown beneath the rosebay,
shuffle among the stones and lean
to listen to the landscape’s dialect,
the waters’ uncomplaining syllables
and tales that none suspect.
The broken territories of the sky
are almost buried in its shadows;
but here and there
blue chasms open up and gaze among
the inevitable stones and endless waves,
and quiet pools with dark trees overhung.
Night and day
the river runs, the same but ever changing.
In the bronze sunlight its armoured torso gleams,
and in the night its cassocked breast in prayer
breathes in the star-filled silent choir.
But ever, mocking river, you’re a thief,
filching the glory of the day
and in your faded garment hiding
the mysteries of night.
The trees stand at the very edge,
deep-rooted in the damp dark earth.
The moisture climbs to secret rooms
for consultation with the light.
A paradise of green incorporates
the space and weaves
its whisperings in the swallow-shuttled air.
The mouthing waters at the roots
mimic the language of the trees
and learn their sage biographies.
The river remembers.
The unforgetting streams in distant hills
have tasted heather, soil and stone,
and heard the skylark and the peewit sing.
Like silver snakes they slide and soon they and
their recollections are all braided into one.
Rain- battered river
loosening its swollen flood
thrusts its amber waters
through the iron gorges,
to violate in harsh forays
the innocence of meadow grass
under the sullen clouds.
The thunder rolls across the valley woods
and pigeons cower among the wetted leaves.
The darkness swells and splits, the startled light
makes bare the spattered waves.
Healed by the dawn’s soft wind
and bandaged by grey skies,
the convalescent waters turn
to the day with shining eyes.
The laughter of the children in the afternoon,
playing with broken chains of silver as they bathe
in a shallow pool beside the current’s rapid run,
wakes up the river god, who deals
in life and death.
Upstream in a scooped hollow water eddies race;
A boy I knew was drowned under its rocky shelf.
I see his white face float each time I pass the place.
Death nourishes the river.
Autumn’s decay and carnage feed
the tumbling life.
The full-fleshed salmon fed in tropic seas
sniffs out its native waters and against
the rushing spate rides home to spawn
On gravel beds and then to die.
Like bread the broken corpse is strewn
along the stream for those to feed upon
who too must make the long descent
to the far Atlantic deeps.
So in your shadowed crypt a sacrament
of death and resurrection is played out
in speechless images.
How many ages have
you danced your sacred rites?
For how long have you known
what human beings scarcely understand
after so much sorrow and defeat,
and suffering done?
In the sun glow of the afternoon
tree-shadows edged in oranges and blues
surprisingly,
fall on the deep lost pools;
inbreaking light-shafts in the dark
transfuse
the colours of the sky.
In the music of your singing way
from distant hills to ocean mouth
all is measured and each breath
that shakes the dew suspended on a leaf
into the stream is in the sway
of law and harmony.
“All rivers run into the sea;
but yet the sea is filled not then;
unto the place from whence the rivers come
thither they shall return again.”
Close
I think I know
What people mean who say
That they are tired
Of being always who
They are.
Even a stout oak
Can be covered over
By clinging ivy;
Geese honk monotonously
On their usual morning flight.
Is then this clinging garment
Of encroaching sameness this
Diurnal going on between
Sleep and sleep, this me?
This all?
Yet when the moonlight breaks
Out of the lattice of my heart,
When birch leaves flame
Against the blueness of
This inward sky,
And when your presence pours
Its mystery into my dark,
I know
I am most happy then to be
This I, this nothing.
Close
Soon, soon, I hope that I’ll be home again,
Wearied of travels, conversations, loss
Of innocence and grace, to the quiet rhythm
Of trees that change each season’s dress
To fit the play before my window’s gaze.
The play recalls a distant dream of home:
A narrow stream, on sunlit afternoons,
That gurgled brown and thirsty in between
Long bending grasses and the lap-warm turf
Where every summer clumps of primrose kept
Their solemn promise to a callow boy.
Then home became a part of being alone.
The dreamer by the stream was filling up
His satchel on the grass with all the hopes
That hovered in the blueness of the sky;
And some of love and strength and beauty fled
Like seedlings scattered on the fertile wind.
If they were gathered up by flocks of birds
Then in their storehouse I would find my home.
Beneath tall beeches on the Jura hills
Are pale anemones and copper leaves,
Last summer’s wrinkled vestige, and below
A temple, solemn as a Sphinx
Upon its hill, a winged citadel,
Home for the word, balm for the wounded word,
A dwelling for the resurrected word
That feeds the restless souls along the shore.
The wide expanse of ocean rolls its gaze
On the wild sea-bird whose voice is not a cry
Of desolation but a singing loom
Weaving the sun and sky and breaking wave
Into a seamless whole. Its home
Lies in its longing and the beat of wings.
Close
King Lewis sits on high,
His daughter at his knee.
A cavalier goes passing by
Poor as a barren tree.
“Oh I shall marry him,
My lord, nor let him go
In spite of mother’s whim
Or you that I love so.”
“Daughter your love must change
Or in that tower you’ll stay.”
“Rather the tower, I pray,
Than my love will change.”
“Hola, my soldiers there,
Bring twenty armed men
And lead my daughter fair
To the tower’s fearful den.”
Seven years she spent within
Nor a soul saw she more,
The eighth was to begin
When her father came to the door.
“My daughter, how is’t with you?”
“Indeed, right poorly sire.
My flesh is wasted through,
And my feet swell in the mire.”
“Daughter, your love must change
Or in the tower you stay.”
“Rather the tower, I pray,
Than ever my love will change.”
Fermez
The sky beyond the roof,
So calm, so blue!
A tree beyond the roof
Sways fro and to.
The bell I see in the sky
Gently rings.
A bird I see on the tree
Plaintively sings.
Dear God, O life is there
With its simple joys.
The town murmurs over there
With a homely noise.
O what have you done, you my friend,
Shedding those tears,
Say, what have you done, my friend,
With your lost years?
Close
We sat together in a little room.
We broke our words like bread
and shared and drank the silence.
There were four of us.
The one in front of me had travelled far;
temples and seas and mountain paths
were tapestried behind his talk.
Another on my left knew pain.
Embraced by many lovers she
with joy had made a garden wild
and written in the air her book of hours.
The third built palaces of thought;
he rarely left his room yet in
that narrow space imaginations teemed
and soaring reached the ears
of angels. Now
that little back-street room
like an acorn
grew in an instant to
a mighty oak walled by the sky
and windowed by the stars.
Close
Your footfalls, offspring of my silence,
With slow and saintly measure,
Towards my couch of vigilance
Approach with icy tremour.
O pure and holy shade,
How your remembered steps are sweet!
O gods! the very gifts I bade,
Come to me on your naked feet.
And if with ready lips you wish
A longing sigh to quell,
And nourish with a kiss
The one these thoughts indwell,
Then hasten not this tender deed,
Life and death have me in thrall;
Awaiting you has been my heed,
And my heart-beat was your footfall.
Close
What perfume incarnate so subtly merged
With rich aromas of pale lambent oils
Is sweeter than the Night whose singing lulls,
Whose breath prevails among the roses purged!
What lover’s kiss is lighter than her own!
And oh! her eyes, immortal stars! What woman
Can such a fire from her dark glances summon!
What voice is like the wonder of her tone!
So farewell then, my patient friend! This hour
Is rare. This evening calm, this watery shore
Have offered up unearthly love to me.
I love this beach that bears my lengthening shadow;
I love this night, this moon with its white halo
And the sad murmur of the dreaming sea.
Close
The Departure of the Prodigal Son
Now to set out in this bewilderment
Of ours that yet does not belong to us,
Which is like water in an ancient font
Whose trembling mirror’s image it destroys;
With all confusion clinging still
Like thorns about us – yet set out
And man and thing,
Which we no longer saw
(They were so common and so everyday)
So to behold, sudden, forgiving, fond,
A new beginning, near at hand;
To sense the impersonal and
Ubiquitous occurrences of grief
Which filled the cup of childhood to the brim –
Yet still to set out, hand unhanded,
A cicatrice that’s healed, torn and rewounded,
And yet set out: but whither? to uncertainty,
An unconnected cosy land,
And which behind all actions, unconcernedly,
Will be a backdrop, garden or a wall.
To set out: whence? from stress, heredity,
Impatience, dark expectancy,
Unreason and all foolish dole:
To take all this upon oneself, in vain
Perhaps, to let the burden fall,
To die alone, unable to explain –
Is this a new life’s entrance call?
Close
When Helen was betrayed who gave you bread,
Was raped and dragged across a raging sea,
The storm was lulled; the sea-god said:
The Evil be
With you who Hate and Horror shall bring home.
The sweat of snarling horses and the cries
Of haggard men will break kingdom
And marriage ties.
The hands that reach to violate the fair
Will dig the graves of Trojan dead.
O goddess bright, your wrath prepare
And chariot dread.
Comb, comb, in vain, the long dark locks of love;
Make music in the chambers decked with flowers,
For bitter arrows fly above
And down blood pours.
For heavy spears, the noise of war, the lust
Of battle you at last may not escape.
And your adulterous nape
Will writhe in dust.
Now turn to see those Greeks that do not pause
To thrust and drag your race in ruins down,
And you with vengeance crown.
You tremble as
The fearful stag that lifts its head to gaze
Across the valley where the grey wolf lies,
Stops feeding, runs a maze
Before it dies.
So Paris, traitor, lover, conqueror
And victim, see Achilles’ wrath destroy
The winter’s thrift and greedy for
The flames of Troy.
Close
Don’t try to know what life’s about,
And a banquet it will be for you.
And let each day so follow through
As on a child meandering
With every wind there showers
An abundancy of flowers.
To gather and to keep all these
The little child’s without a care,
Gently forgoes them from her hair
That were so happily caught there,
And holds her hands of tender years
Outstretched to gather more.
Close
Thus I struggle away:
Wandering each day
In dreams forsaken.
Then wide I awaken,
And with a thousand rootlets break
Deep down into life –
And through pain and heart-ache
Out beyond life I grow
Beyond time’s flow.
Close
I love the dark hours of my soul,
In which I sense deeps more profound;
In these the daily life that has been mine,
As in old letters, I have found
Like distant legends worn with time.
From these I know that I have room
For a second timeless spacious life.
And sometimes I am like the tree
That full-grown, whispering, above a tomb
Fulfills that dream which boyhood past
(Round him its roots are warmly clinging)
Once lost in sorrow and in singing.
Close
The leaves are falling, falling as from far,
From distant gardens withering in the skies;
Their falling seems a gesture that denies.
And through the nights the heavy earth is falling
From all the stars down into loneliness.
We all are falling. This hand too falls.
And look at others: it’s there in all.
But there is One who holds this fall within
His hands with infinite tenderness.
Close
We know nothing of this going hence that
Will not share its secrets. We’ve no ground
To be amazed or show our love or hate
To death yet through the mouth of the mask the sound
Is strangely twisted to a tragic wail.
Indeed the world has many parts for us
To play who always want a pleasant role.
Death also plays but does not try to please.
Yet when you left us on this stage a streak
Of reality broke sudden through the crack
Through which you went. The green became more real,
And sunlight and the woodland truer still.
We go on playing. Anxious and with pain,
Reciting lessons, learning now and then
Some gestures, but your being, far away
From us, t hat has been whisked from out our play,
Can sometimes overwhelm us as the glow
Of that reality sinks down in us;
And for a moment we enraptured play
Real life and give no thought for the applause.
Close
Youth! horizons only horizons,
birds flying and heroic sails
dipping in a silver grey
horizon. The garden high
with trees we climbed-
the broken fences.
At the window a sad mother’s face.
too, silver grey and lost
to the beat of far horizons.
Between two silver greys –
Good-bye, good grief
be with you,
still silent at the window
as the rough road wends away.
War came and broke the rules,
broke lives and nations,
broke open secret boxes,
made smart demonic tools.
Tropical seas, wild forests,
shining dawns and burning suns;
an army tent in the monsoon mud
north of Rangoon and the Shwe Dagon
when Little Boy unpacked a cloud
of death at Hiroshima.
Take off that uniform forget
the magic spell, the perfumes,
the dark-eyed faces of Jakarta and Penang.
Find again your home. (How green the grass is!)
Take up your studies, be the feckless student.
Try painting to relieve the boredom of the law.
So what is art? Il professore, show me!
Those summer days in 1948
Masaccio, Uccello, Della Francesca,
Ah! how beneath the Tuscan skies
Your language opened heart and eyes.
In Florence,Venice, Rome, day after day
all day I questioned the ideal in art
in looking and in longing for.
“I hate and I love .Why do I do so,
you may well ask?
I cannot say but it crucifies me.”
Buber’s I and Thou began
Breaking through the shell
and thou and thou and thou
were shaping out a soul.
The shrouded form of Notre Dame
squats like a sibyl by the Seine.
Deep murmurs in its darkened spaces
and sunbeams painted on the paving stones
were food to me.
Standing on a bridge alone,
nowhere to go,
no ogre underneath the arch,
(the indifferent waters flow)
I met a stranger whom I knew,
an unknown friend came into view.
In city streets and by the river’s edge
I walked the light and shadow of the mind.
The swirling waters of the Whence and Whither
Mirror the golden branch of Who.
“To find yourself you have to lose yourself.”
Wanderer with no prospect,
jobless, what might anyone expect
of me, a motley creature?
So I decided to become a teacher.
A teacher teaches having the truth;
A student listens lacking the truth.
Possible. Let’s try again.
A teacher teaches lacking the truth;
A student listens having the truth.
Sounds better. Now expound.
The teacher knows the truth’s to be uncovered;
The student listens for he knows the truth’s within.
I taught the endings of the French
imperfect tense, the rules of algebra,
the kings and lords of England
and Henry’s wives to unprepare
the boys and girls of London town
for a life unknown.
A grey death was mastering the soul.
I fled to total freedom a la A S Neil.
It aimed to break some chains
but lacked a key to the prison door.
There on the bridge of George the fourth
a book came to my hand that
would not let me go.
To the coming time of slaughter and insanity
it dared to speak of wisdom,
of the wisdom of humanity.
But the words were blown away
in the howling winds that rose
from out of the abyss.
“Between the body and the spirit lives the soul.”
The station tower looked down
on the early morning traffic
and city workers hurrying by;
two strangers meet, he takes her case
and they walk together to a waiting destiny.
Like a lonely cabin in a riotous storm
with breathless gales and a wild sky,
timber thrust on timber
joist on joist,
we tumbled into a sweet and boundless joy.
We joined in holy wedlock
in the 13th arrondisement;
a dubious stranger with a hole in his sole
found anchorage in your trusting love.
Take the seeds and plant them deep
in children’s hearts!
The day will come when they will reap
a fruit invisible.
These hopes were gilded but their gold
gleamed like a speck of dust
where Intuition found a place
it could unfold.
There is no truth that sighs alone
in mountain top or ocean deep
but lives in wakefulness;
while sleepers dream their nightmares,
turn and groan,
others vigil keep.
We harbour in friendship and trust,
but a ship and its crew adrift
on the way that the albatross goes
see the bitter salt sea come in
with the rudder swinging free
when the Word’s on the sighing wind
but only the sigh is heard.
This sky’s awash with deepest orange
raw crimson clouds below
half hidden by the black tree-shapes,
the eye has nowhere else to go
and the heart follows
singing aloft, aghast at that dark earth
as evening dives to night.
Remembering the child alone
walking a night-dark road, street lights
left behind, unseen hedges rustling and
solemn, overarching trees
near to the stars in that black height,
knowing a presence there
piercing the heart with eager ravishment,
vanished when the lamps of home
beamed on the hill.
Shadows race across the ground darkening
hedge house hill field wood lake
and burnished rock sucking the light
from every flower the grass and flowing wheat
and waters’ thousand eyes;
their lost light gathered up like gold
in another land.
Yes there were moments on the way.
The autumn leaves are falling and
the blustering rain makes fresh their dyes
helter-skelter on the sodden earth.
Why all these riches at my feet
And dark storms in the sky?
Close
In the baby’s open gaze,
as I press these tiny feet,
a stranger I meet.
In the closed eyes of the corpse,
cold hands on the winding-sheet,
myself I meet.
Another approaches in the street –
A stranger and myself I greet.
Close
Consider all those unseen hands that haul
The iceberg from its massive wall
And drag it through the freezing sea
To float just where it has to be,
So all those hands on deck, just think,
Experience the Titanic sink.
Close
There is a house where I remember
The shuddering of frames and doors
In frozen nights of dark December
When sounds were heard that were not ours.
Cold tongues slithered through the cracks
Telling us tales from the wild night;
They froze our hearts and chilled our backs
And thrilled my spine the fire despite.
That fire was burning in the hearth
Wagging its flames to scald the eyes,
Groping my face with drowsy warmth
And grabbing my childish sympathies.
In that house that I remember
Two voices cackled in my soul
On frozen nights in dark December-
An icy cry and a fiery call.
That house, these voices now are lost;
Yet the thrill of the chilling wild
And the lure of the fire-born images
Live on in age as once in the child.
Live on or are but mental things?
Well, now between these glowing embers
And the frozen air a Sun-Rose flings
Its fragrance on these dark Decembers.
Close
In a soft bed I lay dreaming
of wars, cruel ends, death and suffering
that rumbled on in me
when I woke up.
We walked together to the shiny sea
by sunlit paths,
green shadows in a columned wood,
the open heath with rushes
and wild flowers out on holiday –
over tufted yellow dunes wind-shovelled
down to a wide sea-fingered beach.
The wetting tide has ebbed
from purplish sands stretched taut along the bay,
low hills and setting sun stranded in hollow pools,
and ghostly waves that combed the green sea wrack;
This hovers within me deeper than dreams
yet bearing me up with the weight of its gaze.
Dusty Miller’s gone from town
Some time ago.
Is he living or is he dead?
Neighbours tell me they don’t know.
Now they have no bread,
Neither wheat nor rye, nor white nor brown.
The windmill stands upon the hill
Where the corn was ground.
But then the wind and rain drove through,
The rafters came unsound.
The battered sails are all askew
And no-one calls now at the mill.
The wind still blows among the trees,
The clouds drift on.
The axle of the hollow mill
Gives many a groan.
The voices in the dark are shrill
And piercing like an icy breeze.
Sky workers weave platonic forms
In golden lands –
A sign from him who went away.
He now imprints with playful hands
Before the break of day
His seals among the brooding storms.
In hearts there grows a mystic wheat
That’s never seen.
Go, grind the grain in earnest strife
And knead the dough in times between.
The bread of life
Is here for all to take and eat.
Close
Three sisters on the blasted heath
Dance a metallic beat;
The ground is pounded underneath
The wildness of their feet.
The sisters scream with the devil’s voice,
‘We are the only show.
You’ll see you have no other choice
Wherever you may go.’
‘I am the data’, cries the first,
‘I am made of bits and bytes.
I make of everything the worst
And I decide your rights.’
‘The outside never knows the inside,’
The second leers in glee,
‘For every itch is on the skinside
So there’s no inner me.’
‘Only the present knows the past,’
The third one then spits out,
‘The future I myself can cast;
There’s nothing left to doubt.’
They howl and dance beneath black skies,
No stars are to be seen.
They swear to-morrow’s sun will rise
And grass will still be green.
Two stand and watch upon that heath.
One drinks their words like wine,
The other swallows them like death
And asks for a further sign.
‘Although you will not wear a crown
In this dark and broken age,
On undiscovered skies look down
The stars of your lineage.’
Close
When the rose light of morning spreads above,
When veils of mist disperse along the lake
And in the woodlands cobwebs catch the sun,
Then all my petalled sympathies awake.
Nectar flows in secret for the honeybee.
Live in the joyful presence of the yet-to -be!
In mud-baked homes the women speak and move,
Their gestures hallowed by old suns and moons
That long ago have set. The things they love
Are servants to them but less things than runes.
Nectar flows in secret for the honeybee.
Live in the joyful presence of the yet-to-be?
These echoes promise too the unborn world.
But now all things are alien, feed desires
Or bore the soul, and everything that’s old
Stares from museum walls where hope expires.
Nectar flows in secret for the honeybee.
Live in the joyful presence of the yet-to-be.
I pushed the door and open wide it stood.
The landscape that it showed, strange and unknown,
Was waiting to be witnessed, skies that glowed
And hills and fields and streams and I all one.
Nectar flows in secret for the honeybee.
Live in the joyful presence of the yet-to-be.
Close
David plays the lyre and so cures King Saul of his mad intention to kill him out of jealousy. David had saved Israel from the Philistines by killing Goliath and was much loved by the people.
