“I sleep badly without her,
the white curve of her back isn’t there,
nor the the glow of her face turned towards me,
the taste of her neck, the smell of her hair.
I don’t know any more who I’m mourning,
they merge into one in my mind –
my goddess of tides and emotions
or a woman with a full moon behind.”
“I feel like an owl among the crows –
they watch me closely but do not attack.
Perhaps I look too weak and sleepy
to manage to fight back.
They seem so well-ordered
as they wheel into a flock,
while I am alien and solo –
the cuckoo not the clock.
They’re quite accepting of me
and even like me being there,
but I am more myself at night,
alone upon the air.
I dreamt of a bakery the other night
and woke with a heart full of such delight.
Noj is the name of the lovely man
who had the skill and had the plan.
I’d met a comrade on the road,
walking on stilts with a tasty load,
it smelled so good, we just had to find
where we could get some more of its kind.
We went off to look for this magical place –
a derelict block. just off the main ways,
it was near to our pub and it seemed alright
to make a diversion and go for a bite.
A maze and a warren, an unfinished plot,
but the ovens were working and the bread was still hot;
he also serves coffee that’s fragrant and strong,
you can drink it short or you can drink it long.
We sat down and crumbled the loaves in our hands
and ate it like that, without butter or jam;
it was wholemeal and filling, but light and delicious;
he asked for a name that was warm and auspicious.
I thought of ‘corn flower’, but cornflowers are blue
and could be confused with maize flour too;
someone else said ‘cornfield’ and that had its charm,
‘the fruit of the corn’ or ‘the fruit of the farm’.
We chatted and laughed and honoured our host
and demanded to know how he’d achieved most
of his vision with so little finances,
what would come next and what were the chances.
The future looked good and I wanted to stay,
I woke up so happy and ready to play,
I know I’ve felt that way before
and that, for sure, I will do some more.
I know I’ve met Noj and will do again –
he’s a cook, a musician, a drinker, a friend,
I know the place and where it is found –
not far from here or another town.
I know he’s long had this beautiful scheme –
it isn’t just me who’s had this dream –
it will all come back when I’m fully awake
then we’ll get together to party and bake.
rs 26.8.04
Don’t know ‘bout you but I can sense
the sounds of walking in the beat,
the clash of gourds and cooking pots,
the bells of beasts, the bangled feet.
Some music swings, slides and sways
with a camel’s winding gait,
other kinds, like ponies, trot
or tread as oxen, slow, sedate.
You may reject this as the work
of a wild imagination,
that we learn dancing in the womb
on our regular migration.
It may seem mystical or trite,
yet I’ve no problem with the notion
that our rhythms are the product
of former modes of locomotion.
Composers now quite consciously
choose the pounding of the wheel
on railway or road to give
their accompaniments a modern feel.
This has still to penetrate
into the roots of memory,
where our bodies catch the spring
to the step of melody.
But, thanks to our technology,
I can hear right round the earth
and all the way into the past
to where these patterns had their birth.
That’s why the drums can spark across
gaps in our cultural education
and teach the ignorant to move
without further explanation.
The journalists came to the country
to discover the truth, so they said.
“The good folks back home need to know
why so many are tortured and dead.”
The people didn’t want to show them,
they feared for their own lives, it’s true,
but the hacks persisted in asking,
’cos they had their assignments to do.
At last they found a poor boatman
to ferry them over the lake;
their expense sheets would scarcely notice
the twenty dollars he’d take.
So they came to the scene of the slaughter –
an entire village wiped out.
These words cannot do justice to the graves,
to the flesh and the bones spread about.
Though they almost were drowned while returning,
the boatman got them safely away;
back in the city they develped their films
and wrote their reports on that day.
The papers did carry the story,
it made the front page everywhere.
The newsmen felt proud of what they had done –
they’d make us all more aware.
But the death squads didn’t like the attention –
their public image looked bad –
so they gave the poor boatman four bullets
to go with the dollars he had.
The price of truth can be heavy –
when you’re poor, twenty sounds like a lot,
but tweny’s not much compensation
when for a bonus you get yourself shot.
Our ‘civilised’ liberals worry,
shake their heads and ask again why:
why the rich do such things to hold on to power,
why do so many poor people die?
Stop asking your self-serving questions.
Stop pretending you haven’t a clue.
Journalists and mercenaries doing their job
and they’re doing it all just for you.
Click on the bar below to listen to this piece read aloud
Click on the bar below to listen Leonard Cohen’s song Alexandra Leaving
The ground is wet, the smell of petrol strong,
the weather’s been intemperate again –
just when we think that winter should be gone
there’s sun and snow and wind and freezing rain.
Mimosas are outlandishly in bloom –
the yellow sprays, like tansy gone deranged,
they look like giants who’ve strayed away from home
and haven’t learned the seasons have been changed.
Even magnolias already light their candles –
each pale pink flame it struggles with the light,
this is not the season that generally handles
such luxuries as gently as it might.
Some have been released, while others are imprisoned,
and more are torn to shreds without a fight.
Many are forced to disappear for ever,
or come back dead or scarred and never right.
Everywhere you go there is more pain and terror –
unfinished business poisons every road.
We live and die and look for buried treasure
and think the secret’s written in some code.
Look to the sky, you cannot see a border,
though you are lost or safe where you belong.
We search for sense amongst all this disorder
with lies and numbers, histories and song.
I thought I saw a bindweed flower
amongst the rosemary,
a slightly pink convolvulus
between the blue-green spikes.
Puzzled at this odd relationship,
I peered more closely at the spot.
A mushroom? No, a single blushing petal
blown there by a sudden gust.
I looked back at the rosebush on the terrace –
more heart-shaped wreckage on the ground,
though other blooms remained in place, intact,
Summer must be leaving town.
Even the glueworks looks romantic
against the pastel paintbox sky, flamingo-blue,
the rococo vent-stack stands content-
edly exhaling smoky arabesques.
An emblematic swan parades between
the crowned heads of the water-lilies while,
further on, the peach and iron of the water’s gloss
is barely puckered by the breeze.
Along the path the scabbed-up bitumen gives way
to saffron-coloured gravel, wreathed in dusty green;
a hulk awaits reincarnation with its rotten planks –
an accidental masterpiece of texture, tincture, transformation.
The countryside is squeezed by power-lines,
tower-blocks and motorway until the town
inserts post-modern pastiche phoney arches,
brick-skinned on otherwise quite bland facades.
This pretty picture’s elements are disconcerting,
as intrusive as the stench of boiled bones,
but lover-like I squirrel it scenes like this
to get me through the colder months to come.
In the front-page picture
she stands there grieving,
head bent.
Even in profile
the resignation on her face
cuts under the ribs
of any observer
like an ice stiletto,
to make you catch your breath
with dreadful expectation.
There amongst the green bushes,
under a tree,
she weeps in silence.
Only when you unfolded the paper
could you see,
did you notice
her feet were not on the ground
and the rope at her throat
pointed like a rod
to heaven.
I don’t know why
I find forests so intriguing,
more than open fields and plains
or even heaths, where as a child
I first found a playground in the wild.
Maybe it’s the promise of discovery
of things that cannot easily be seen –
secret places, covered ways,
fragrant with the scent of sap,
fresh leaves, humus, fungus and decay.
Somewhere, around another corner,
behind the screen of greenery,
a cabin or a cavern or a den,
some animal, that’s glimpsed for a while and then
is lost inside the labyrinth again.
These spirits of an older time,
whose skins are atlases of years,
whose dresses flatter for a while
and then are shed as out of date,
recycled with each season, not just dead.
Only when I stand next to the ocean
or view the backs of houses from a train
and stories I don’t know arise
and break like waves then the shore,
does this sense of strangeness feel the same.
The trees breathe softly, nod their heads and whisper,
holding up their fingers to the sun,
digging toe-holds tight into the earth
and, where they are together in a crowd,
make an emerald city next to none.
19-20.9.09