Scenario

plane lands

hot

passport, taxi,

restaurant –

at least, there’s tables

it’s one

dream of world food,

sugar, diced eggs

a salted snake

– in the kitchen

prayers and gunfire

and it’s two

some come and go

but no one serves

although – there is a to and fro

and faces looking in

it’s three

eat we must

concoct,

or snare some bird

– is it possible

that no one comes? –

or make a blaze, unless

we’re wrong, and here one doesn’t eat, but celebrates,

or takes exams, or tablecloths

encoded differently

are not the strip

on which we eat

it’s four

of course, the morning staff

is gone:

there starts

a process of transition,

service from full to self,

and then again perhaps

a fry-up,

and at least

we’ve got the duty-free

it’s five

better at times to stay alive

than eat –

the gunfire

is more distant now,

the faces’ to and fro

is more a statement than a threat –

the cat

is not quite food

but not quite friend,

and will not serve us in the end –

it’s six

I know the scratches on

the record better than the tune:

it seems it’s one of mine: impossible

– in this strange town

neglect is king, no food and so

no memory, no

sugar and starches climbing up the stair, it’s

time to move on

Night Flyers

half-naked dreamers, they fly – diaphanous thighs –

over the frosted, coagulated night-cities.

They fall and balance, their dark membranes

taut against consciousness, memory:

gripping the charmer’s frozen tear,

they dance a happy ritual sleep, watching slime

grow on the roofs, slip to the pavements for the early cats.

Guilt, dusty bottles full of old leaves,

silver battlements: their world.

Wishful wanderers, they seldom look down:

unbalanced heights, the ivory smell of sleeping flesh,

and young, brittle fangs – these fill a fantasy.

‘Bats and unholy porcupines,’ cry the farmers

as the bodies kick: look, you may see them,

they will be high as willows, fast as tired brandy:

you may even see one squinting, ducking,

practising remorse.

If you are lucky, you might watch one enter

his window, squatting on thick air before the sill,

then bending glass like the mist of dreams, opening

red curtains with stars on them.

Dogs

Dog licks dog’s nose – porous, continental:

tastes alum, silver pistols, goats in a cage,

blood from orange hares hooked by one leg, for sale.

Skulls filled with minerals. Lizards, chocolate;

Indians impacted like coal

asleep

    Time is trapped here, time

to run round and bestraddle

this khanate. But no – he has forgotten

the history of the leash.

And learns again.

Beginning

Discovering the wheel was easy –

pawprints into fresh gold,

even mints:

some trees changed – not uniformly –

to red: the fog one knew would lift:

discovering the gold was easy,

paws under wheels: some mints changed

– the fog, one thought, would lift:

discovering the mints was easy,

fresh gold into ice-cream bricks

discovering the paws was easy –

covered in fresh gold

and fog and leaves.

Discovering the wheel was difficult

– bogged in wet gold and leaves:

wonder is easy and hope difficult

splay the toes, plunge and burn them

in broken codes – Intelligence? Slaves certainly.

Discovering the wheel was easy

– the trees hold off

going to red, are foggy orange.

Paws black after gold,

prints (and leaves) burnt off

discovering was easy,

prints into gold,

trees into fog

wonder: hope difficult,

changed.

Sack of a City

That night we ran their own harrows

over the tessellated pavements:

struck fire from bezils and sparrows

on stones in the soft cement.

The prongs of the harrows skidded

from prelate to small partridge:

as we raked over stone, heavy-lidded

emperors winced at the iron-edge.

Rome, June 1976

‘do you say “a mad heat”?’ well, no, rather

‘absurd’ – the ruffled thrush (or pinecone)

sits in his tree – What sort?

or kind, or kindness suggests

to keep a continent open for four people,

– can’t remember which country I left

my tennis racquet in – roses, today’s subject:

no – off with his hands is Arrabal,

and head is Freud – excuse!

Seek that excuse for all those left behind,

oneself hung up like pyjama suits in storage

– but no, explain, the hands for masturbation

or for painting? No, for anti-fascism –

but in an afternoon we can learn roses

from ‘inside-out’, concrete, the names

are all of queens, rich ladies, peace –

enlarge your general knowledge; and someone wrote

‘Now can we write about roses?’ – roses

are here, parts named, unchanged since when

you learned that other scented language;

oak, not cypresses – ‘only the landmines woke him up’ –

sleeping through war to find roses all over

in different languages, the parts unchanged,

learning so slow the names of roses, rich ladies,

– it’s there still, black falling in the night, and waking

to thrushes, ruffed, to roses under palm-trees.

The Beast

I am the beast, the keeper/kept,

who mustn’t bite but can

with one shudder

destroy gardens:

not good or evil, key to the ape,

radical needs sent – via the key –

alone to the forest: chews trees, pisses:

at times watches humans in their

civilisation:

sometimes eats a gazelle

slowly learns the logic

and friendship of the leash,

the evening walk, lights

going out

This City Reaches to Africa

betrayal, melancholy, nostalgia,

the soft vices: underground,

stone-lit, blue and cloud fixed:

big marble faces without eyelids

bubble sulphur down their chins,

faience, majolica, palms trained

underground, all underground.

Dogs with white eyes, half-skulls

their magic sold separately or gone for good –

clawmarks, strawberries, a cherub;

silver, turquoise, hooks for mermaids

shaped like asparagus, loaded with barbs

explosive

tribute – indulgence granted

to the soft (no peace, no rest, the black seas

thrashed and clawed by half-fish) – reaching to Africa

through suburbs filled with restless artisans

giving, taking, accumulating:

betrayals betrayed a thousand times

gnawing and burning still, the hammers

tap like heartbeats in the bad dream,

fretful, memories, making the marble flowers

for empty palaces.

The Dream, ’76

clumsy with words he carpentered

– many nails to fix the logs: an early house

pioneered, with too much money, all the animals

their skins dried out, the white hares trapped

incontinent: the stock original, wasted,

too many nails to fix the green logs firm,

flop the furry bodies down, then start

to say goodbye, the primal

remittance turned to water – medium of beer,

wine and rye: stocking up the bar, now

letting go, farewell, farewell –

the nails criss-crossed to make the family house,

too many nails, words to say goodbye:

clumsy with words

spent shells, tumble down the wolves –

epithalamium. Sanctus, farewell –

‘the shots rang out’, the biking season’s here –

a nice cold beer

sweetens the word, logic tacks the logs –

remorselessly hammered  ...  restless for the open green

Farewell. Sanctus, farewell.

We Must Have

done wrong to end so bad:

God was always terror,

now masked and armed

completes the trial.

Kill him again,

God of the kingdom never come,

God of the sphincter,

nursery rules: bang, bang.

He suffers for our sins,

but so do we, lambs with the wolves

still snapping round.

started wrong, to end so bad:

annul. Bring justice, then,

let them all pay, all of them,

me too, cancel out

the nothing, dreams of running,

morning sweats: let no man

fear

dismissal, prison, gun

will come

no roll of drums,

no cell change,

no nature adding wrong –

just God:

fear Him, in the woodcut,

down go the bankers, down

the politicians, profs –

rest wait: fear the Lord,

saved or damned,

nothing was built,

so much vanity

for nothing: too late

for comfort

in decline.

God loose among the greedy men,

              they shall have nothing

              like the rest

Life in the Middle Ages

Novels are about people – they

have to be, but poems can be language-bound,

those moist angles, flooded, frozen.

The cat with the black tail, crying for my dinner –

I don’t remember: nor she remember me.

The telescope is off the Belvedere,

trees, green when last I saw them, fields,

yellow and reedy, under varnish,

the sleeping empire between empires, tempera –

and what is left without the leaves, tonguelike, rustling

– a stern country, and industrial.

Resting? Winter, but for some

a hardening

Romans

tough Romans test

their mortality

through others –

’roos and narwhals,

armour of ivory, teeth

red like chessmen

lymph in black sand

guts all over

tenderness: hardly

beauty a marbled smile

there must be

moments

with cats indoors, all

anger spent, demons

down under

a less precocious

curiosity for death,

waves not breaking,

wheat where no armed men

guard

a field of flowers

where no dust brings

geraniums to the brain

no drums and horns,

just

a caress, another test