THE OLD MASTERS

These Art Museums often seem lustreless,

sterile and as impersonal as mausoleums:

they could never have been what the great

Master Painters would have wished or wanted.

Their marvels screwed into the very walls;

incarcerated anyway under layers

of glaze and slowly-darkening varnish.

Yet unexpectedly,  bizarrely,  today,

a gaggle of unseen, journeyman decorators

have flooded the gallery with the alien reek

of fresh, new paint. A suppressed coughing

ripples the disturbed air and heralds stranger

metaphysical transformations: for parched

pigments on scores of antique canvasses,

arid oils on old wood panels exhale

a sustained,  but distinctly audible,  sigh.

And now, the Old Masters themselves,

- invisible in adjoining studios or chambers –

bend once more over kettles of oak-tree bark

and bovine urine. There’s the sound

of lapis lazuli,  no doubt,  being smashed

and ground down to a vivid dust;

the preparation of linseed and walnut oils.

They habitually draw together into pairs

or groups to share good news; review

fortuitous innovations, techniques and tricks,

and thus conspire – in that stimulating stench

of wood-smoke, piss and stale hoof-glue -

to delight, to move and utterly astonish you.

In the midst of the ruins of Ilium

I abducted, in three woody cradles,

three tiny infants. I would plant them

in Chiswick far from the windy Hellespont.

If they germinate, I thought, those acorns

from the Trojan oak, I could amuse

my friends;  invoke the heroes

of that siege;  jerk a thumb

to the east and conjure up the field

where Hector, Ajax and Achilles perished:

preparations for a future time – then forgotten.

But all of four years on, beside the shed,

in a standing pot I noticed, one perfect,

green sproutling!  How odd, I thought,

for some obsessive squirrel to chose

such a spot to bury provender!

I found myself thinking then of Paris,

Helen and The Wooden Horse.  Only later

did it snap into consciousness that this

WAS one of those thrilling aliens

just doing what it is supposed to do.

It had sprung forth heedless of renown

and latitude or legendary blind poets!

Doubtless it was down to sly Odysseus:

he must had that gift-horse hewn, perhaps

from near-by timbers of identical lineage.

Now I must watch closely for catapults

and chariots, listen for the wind-rattle

of a westerly biting at a thousand sails;

hearken for Trojan beaten bronze

clattering against Mycenaean armour

and Achilles’ immortal, Iron-age shield.

It could have been no random simple accident

that called me out across the water, late

one August afternoon, to seek Torcello Isle -

that green mosquitoed, mossy fen – to contemplate;

uncanny moments when the water flushed bright pink,

or cyclamen, and synthesized an altered state;

the daily turn of trippers bouncing from the boats,

gone flouncing down to buy and barter tourist lace,

then on to reverence and honour holy sites,

before their picnic – meats with rosemary and mace,

and final hasty scramble for the water bus;

deserted night conferring magic on the place.

For all the forty residents and I the dark

was altogether like a living state of grace.

Such vastness, never tawdry, never opulent,

like Casanova’s City of the golden plate.

I stayed for twenty timeless days and rarely took

the boat to travel round – at restless chugging pace

the Lido, Grand Canal, Murano, Marco Square,

or see the loud Venetian gondoliers race.

Torcello, island with a secret inner lake,

where Emperor of birds; the noble heron, faced

a row-boat navigated through those thick canals

by Stephano, Franco’s younger brother, who had traced

a course for us, to Earth and Heaven’s interface.

           Night Samba. (Samba de Noite)

The garden lizard bolts like a green arrow

loosed, unintentionally by my slow advance.

Rashly it wriggles through the taut wire mesh

into the cage of restless marmosets.    

Skeltering round the walls in a frenzy it dodges

one, avoids another only to be grabbed by a third.

There is stillness for an instant as it hangs

like a stunned fish from a tiny mouth.

To my dismay, as it is pulled asunder

and eaten, the monkey’s eyes flashing     

around the pen, I see nothing here beyond

the ordinary and strictly commonplace.

Here in Bahia life and death are instantaneous.

No slow turn around of the seasons here, where,

 wasteland fires spontaneously in the Sun

and Biblical rains flood streams of garbage

down from the Favelas where teenage boys,

peering  from unglazed windows, prefigure

tired old men in identical coloured T‑shirts.

It is always eat now, or yourself be eaten:

It is make love as the carnivores make love

in a land without vegetarians. It is dance               

the Samba in the seething streets for days

on end with only snatches of repose.

Then, at the wake of the carnivorous Sun

as the geckoes pad fetchingly across the wall

and the neighbourhood dogs give voice

in unrelenting choir, only the giant ‘roaches

hold still, flapping their antennae at you,

before that sudden scuttle straight through

your legs like demented, tarnished spoons.

But you sink into the cool, deep pool

of electric fan‑assisted nights compelled

to study the time signatures of the singing frogs

the art of canine fugue,  the crickets’ genius

for polyphony.  Reflecting on the wonder

 of these you come to see that ‘though its drums,

its’ ‘berimbaus’ and slaves traversed the sea,

the Samba is fettered to the clay and marsh,

and sounds from within the sonorous ‘caju’ tree.

From Poemsapennyeach

A fine piece of work.  In every department this excels; voice, music, visual and text. Take a look.

I sit in one of the dives

on Fifty-second Street

uncertain and afraid

as the clever hopes expire

of a low dishonest decade:

waves of anger and fear

circulate over the bright

and darkened lands of the earth,

obsessing our private lives;

the unmentionable odour of death

offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can

unearth the whole offence

from Luther until now

that has driven a culture mad,

find what occurred at Linz,

what huge imago made

a psychopathic god:

I and the public know

what all schoolchildren learn,

those to whom evil is done

do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew

all that a speech can say

about Democracy,

and what dictators do,

the elderly rubbish they talk

to an apathetic grave;

analysed all in his book,

the enlightenment driven away,

the habit-forming pain,

mismanagement and grief:

we must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air

Where blind skyscrapers use

their full height to proclaim

the strength of Collective Man,

each language pours its vain

competitive excuse:

but who can live for long

in an euphoric dream;

out of the mirror they stare,

imperialism’s face

and the international wrong.

Faces along the bar

cling to their average day:

the lights must never go out,

the music must always play,

all the conventions conspire

to make this fort assume

the furniture of home;

lest we should see where we are,

lost in a haunted wood,

children afraid of the night

who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash

Important Persons shout

is not so crude as our wish:

what mad Nijinsky wrote

about Diaghilev

is true of the normal heart;

for the error bred in the bone

of each woman and each man

craves what it cannot have,

not universal love

but to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark

into the ethical life

the dense commuters come,

repeating their morning vow;

‘I will be true to the wife,

I’ll concentrate more on my work,’

and helpless governors wake

to resume their compulsory game:

Who can release them now,

who can reach the dead,

who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice

to undo the folded lie,

the romantic lie in the brain

of the sensual man-in-the-street

and the lie of Authority

whose buildings grope the sky:

there is no such thing as the State

and no one exists alone;

hunger allows no choice

to the citizen or the police;

we must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night

our world in stupor lies;

yet, dotted everywhere,

ironic points of light

flash out wherever the Just

exchange their messages:

may I, composed like them

of Eros and of dust,

beleaguered by the same

negation and despair,

show an affirming flame.

 I stayed in the harbour of the town.      

 High above it was the ruined castle.     

It was not mentioned in the guides:

Karystos then was not a tourist town

and the impressive ruin was not a part

of anyone’s concern as I could tell.

One day – the last of three or four

I stayed there – I set off to find

the way. There was a path that rose

from the backstreets of the town.

On rough-hewn steps of crumbling rock past

tangled gardens, orchards, fig trees;

 along ancient dry-stone walls

and through the scent of pines

the path pulled upwards. The climb

was timeless: the only record of

its length the diminishing size

of the harbour and the town below.

Although the seasonal wind was rife

the route was sheltered in a scented

warmth; tiers of sandstone dust,

pine-needles and footworn stone                                

embraced the smells of jasmine,                                    

mule-dung, orange-blossom and hot

dry-rot from long abandoned houses

clinging to the way. Three riders                  

and a riderless horse passed me

as I crossed a winding road.

The beasts were pacing downhill

as slowly as the native tortoises do.

The castle, always in my direct view,                   

was nearer then: the town itself

 invisible behind the hunchback

of the hill. Far below the craft upon

the waters of the Gulf were white birds

 roosting on a cloth of deepest blue.   

I mount a dilapidated wall to glimpse

the sheltered, sea-side town but still

there is no sight of it. There are

warer-melons growing, recumbent

on the shaded earth of an ancient

garden; an array of implements              

idling by a tank of thick, green

water. Crickets sing me onwards

to a small white church – all stucco -

with firmly bolted door and stunted,

angular bell-tower. My way picks

steeply through an open field toward

a ruined farmhouse. The isolation

of the site diverts me from my path

to cross a shattered door frame,           

and step within. There is a scuffle

from a corner of the room so thick

with debris and I think of rats.                       

Then a movement brown and subtle

upon a cross-beam stark against

the azure sky. Two enormous eyes;

hollow, amber, stare right through me

then blink, just once, as only owls do.

This is the closest I have ever been          

to such a beast; the largest owl

I’ve ever seen. His eyes are wide

as pools and bottomless. His head

glides left, then right in that uncanny

syncopation that transfixes

tiny prey. A non-committal shrug,

a turn, and he launches into space;                          

one headless phantom soundlessly

disappearing beyond the ruined wall.

Graced with the presence of a god;

shocked into remembrance of ancestral pasts,

I can only stumble up and onwards.

My feet are heavier now though

the castle’s thick stone walls,

in disembodied mounds have become

clearly visible just one short climb ahead.

I reach an earthen cliff-face

dotted at the base with dilapidated

out-houses the walls of which

are hardened mud or cob. None of them            

have roofs and the inhabitants,

by the lingering smell, were

certainly colonies of goose or hen.

I circumnavigate the steep face,

clamber up a bank and from among

more pines can easily peruse

the empty shell. I mount the last

part of a slope amid a fierce

and blustering wind and make                       

an opening in the highest wall.                 

Down in the deserted snugness

of the place the rough carpet

of grass beneath my feet is brittle          

and stiff; punctured by the fractured           

limbs of rocks. I approach an arch

for a view of whence I’ve come

and must, with a reflexive snatch

at the uneven stone, hold myself

from being hurled, by an insane

wind, headlong at the jagged rocks  

below! The fury of that cheated wind

drains all my former power

and pioneering thrust. Holding on

as grimly as a baby chimpanzee

atop the highest branches in a hurricane,

I peer down at the miniature town.

Taking breath from this torrent of air

is near impossible. Shaken I withdraw.

Back with the malevolent grass

I turn about to seek some other

exit from the dell; retracing                                     

my steps slowly, by this easier,

wider route. I pass no signs,

no warnings, or fences to keep

the over-inquisitive visitor away.

But three years later, to the day,

I know I had already seen the object

of my quest far from that summit.                                 

I had climbed there for some insight:

a symbol for my earth-bound

search and found it there, in that

ruined farmhouse; was awakened by it

roused by those eyes that never sleep;

that never venture forth or back                     

from the vastness of the moment 

  –  the ever-expanding but elusive present.

.

The warders rub their backsides on the wall:
their ‘ten to six’ makes masterpieces pall.

While in the rooms the tourists come and go
heaving a Bridge of Sighs at Canaletto:

will Leonardo’s light-dimmed cave
still bear that reek of after-shave?

Which leads me to an overwhelming question -
will coffee help aesthetic indigestion?

I hear the schoolgirls giggling each to each
as Boudin pulls me to the beach.

Then, should I turn and ascend the stair
to see the Horace Vernet’s there?
I grow old. I grow old.
Don’t turn me out into the cold.
The local restaurants with pasta shells
are no more bearable than Flemish Hells.
The visitors come, the visitors go,

one  glazed eye for Velasquez, another for Murillo.

No time for you then, nor time for me
to watch the Sun set by a Turner sea.

No, I am not Rubens, nor was meant to be:

more the lonely sailor drifting helplessly at sea

wondering, “When will the mermaids sing to me
here within these caverns at The National Gallery?

………………………………………………………………………………..

By the way there is a reading of  Eliot´s Prufrock on the site in Live Readings and shows of other poets.

Is there anybody there?

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
knocking on the moonlit door;
and his horse in the silence champed the grasses
of the forest’s ferny floor:
and a bird flew up out of the turret,
above the Traveller’s head
and he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
no head from the leaf-fringed sill
leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
that dwelt in the lone house then
stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
to that voice from the world of men:
stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
that goes down to the empty hall,
hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
by the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
their stillness answering his cry,
while his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
‘neath the starred and leafy sky;
for he suddenly smote on the door, even
louder, and lifted his head:-
‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
though every word he spake
fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
from the one man left awake:
ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
and the sound of iron on stone,
and how the silence surged softly backward,
when the plunging hoofs were gone.

The Road to Mandalay by Rudyard Kipling

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea,

There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me;

For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the Temple-bells they say:

“Come you back, you British soldier;

come you back to Mandalay!”

Come you back to Mandalay,

Where the old Flotilla lay:

Can’t you ‘ear their paddles chunkin’

from Rangoon to Mandalay?

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin’ fishes play,

An’ the dawn comes up like thunder

outer China ‘crost the Bay!

‘Er petticoat was yaller an’ ‘er little cap was green,

An’ ‘er name was Supi-yaw-lat —

jes’ the same as Theebaw’s Queen,

An’ I seed her first a-smokin’ of a whackin’ white cheroot,

An’ a-wastin’ Christian kisses on an ‘eathen idol’s foot:

Bloomin’ idol made o’ mud —

Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd —

Plucky lot she cared for idols when I kissed ‘er

where she stud!

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin’ fishes play,

An’ the dawn comes up like thunder

outer China  ‘crost the Bay!

When the mist was on the rice-fields

an’ the sun was droppin’ slow,

She’d git ‘er little banjo and she’d sing “Kulla-lo-lo!”

With ‘er arm upon my shoulder an’ ‘er cheek agin my cheek

We useter watch the steamers an’ the hathis  pilin’ teak.

Elephants a-pilin’ teak

In the sludgy, squdgy creek,

Where the silence ‘ung that ‘eavy

you was ‘arf afraid to speak!

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin’ fishes play,

An’ the dawn comes up like thunder

outer China  ‘crost the Bay!

But that’s all above be’ind me — long ago an’ fur away,

An’ there ain’t no buses runnin’ from the Bank to Mandalay;

An’ I’m learnin’ ‘ere in London what the ten-year soldier tells:

“If you’ve ‘eard the East a-callin’,

you won’t never ‘eed naught else.”

No! You won’t ‘eed nothin’ else

But them spicy garlic smells,

An’ the sunshine an’ the palm-trees

an’ the tinkly Temple-bells;

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin’ fishes play,

An’ the dawn comes up like thunder

outer China  ‘crost the Bay!

I am sick o’ wastin’ leather on these gritty pavin’-stones,

An’ the blasted English drizzle wakes the fever in my bones;

Tho’ I walks with fifty ‘ousemaids outer Chelsea to the Strand,

An’ they talks a lot o’ lovin’, but what do they understand?

Beefy face an’ grubby ‘and —

Law! Wot do they understand?

I’ve a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land!

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin’ fishes play,

An’ the dawn comes up like thunder

outer China  ‘crost the Bay!

Ship me somewhere’s east of Suez,

where the best is like the worst,

Where there aren’t no Ten Commandments

an’ a man can raise a thirst;

For the Temple-bells are callin’, an’ it’s there that I would be —

By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ lazy at the sea;

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the old Flotilla lay,

With our sick beneath the awnings

when we went to Mandalay!

On the road to Mandalay,

Where the flyin’ fishes play,

An’ the dawn comes up like thunder

outer China  ‘crost the Bay!

The door opened easily and without a sound.

Its ramshackle windows filtered the October

Sun through films of organic dust.  Scattered

across the deeply-scored bench‑top the tools,

like relics, were uniformly shrouded

in ferrous oxides,  to the distant ‘Thack, thack!’

       of some neighbouring

       land-man’s busy hand.

Beneath racks of pliers; rows of chisels

blunted with stillness was a family

of beech-wood, smoothing planes;

ochre rasps lay over sienna files.

The jars of tacks, nails, bolts, nuts,

screws and hinges, were rusted shut –

     preserving them

     like golden plums.

As I thumbed my way through these treasures,

disturbing recent and long‑abandoned webs

and inhaled at his material remains – I heard

the spirit of my paternal grandfather stir,

and wheeze a sigh of deep approval.

  A pile of horseshoes, mud-caked, were hard

     to the touch; the mud strangely

     metamorphosed to iron.

When I pressed a small, rusty oil‑can,

it cracked a line of mineral lymph across

my startled palm. From behind mouldy pieces

of farm-tackle, odd fragments of machinery,

the gigantic vice came to my touch.

And when, with my childish hands

     I wound it around, it groaned

     unexpectedly with pleasure.

Amid greying pyramids of sawdust;

mounds of scarlet filings; I studied

the ancient tumuli of departed mice

and beetles: the solitary leather boot.

Spread-eagled in the diluted sunshine

    the skeletons of crane‑fly,

    midge and mosquito hung

beside the mummies of comfortable moths.

Everything in that shed eked out

its substance on a time‑scale only boys

and old men would understand.  And now?

Any time,  much more than likely,

I’ll be the grandfather myself:

    my work-shed composed

    of note‑books, jottings

faint carbon hieroglyphs drilled

into loose-leaf files and folders;

my tools invisible lest for

abandoned fragments  

       and those obvious

       non-starters.                       

                                         English version by Christopher Logue.

 Tonight I write sadly.

Like,  for example,

‘Little grasshopper,

shelter from the midnight frost,

in the scarecrow’s sleeve.’

Advising myself.  

The night wind throbs in the sky.

Tonight I write so wearily:

write for example,

I wanted her

and times it was me she wanted.

Write, the rain we watched last fall

has it fallen this year too?

She wanted me

and at times it was her I wanted

yet it has gone that want.

 What’s more I do not care.

It is more terrible than my despair

over loosing her.

The night always vast

grows enormous without her

and my comforter’s tongue,

talking about her,

is a red fox barred by ivory.

Well, does it matter I loved

too weak to keep her?

The night ignores

such trivial disputes.

She is not here, that’s all.

Far off someone is singing

and if to bring her back,

I look and I run to the end of the road

and I shout, shout her name

My voice comes back the same,

but weaker.

This night is the same night,

it whitens the same trees,

casts the same shadows.

It is as dark, as long, as deep

and as endurable as any other night.

It’s true, I don’t want her -

but perhaps, I want her.

Love’s not so brief

that I forget her so.

Nevertheless I shall

forget her.

And, alas, as if by accident

a day will pass,

in which I shall not think about her

even once:

and this the last line

I shall write her.

I have a Condor in my kitchen.

I feed him on rancid meat

from the new butcher across the road.

My friends say he is an ugly bird.

I say, it depends how you look at him.

My condor is called Fred.

His droppings are pungent and acidic.

Fred is always disturbed when I clean them up.

Once he tore a piece out of my right hand

in protest.  It left a ‘V’- shaped scar.

Since then I tackle the operation

only when he is drowsy after a big meal

and I am feeling courageous.

He has wonderful eyes:

eyes that are harsh and unremitting.

He does not pull tricks.

He eyes me indifferently.

Most of the time I readily admit

that he is master of the situation between us.

I am content that he consents

to live in my flat, on his pile of sticks

above the geysir.

Since he nested there I have had to heat water

by other means and take cold baths.

The arrangement suits me reasonably well.

Fred insists on one flight each day.

He returns punctually – sometimes

with a pigeon or a cat – at dusk.

I will be sorry to see him go.

In effect I know what that will mean.

HE will be the survivor.

My bones will be as polished kitchen tiles

by the time Fred has finished me off

there on the mute-stained linoleum.

Rio de Janeiro is where it’s at:

      in our apartment large enough to swing one cat.

I wouldn’t call it particularly plush

      and the ‘social toilet’ doesn’t flush

              but it is two blocks from the beach at Copacabana.

It certainly rained and rained and rained last night:

      the frozen cockroach in the fridge gave me a fright:

yet more heavy rain the day that followed

     the skies it seemed had half the ocean swallowed

                but we are two blocks from the beach at Copacabana.

There’s an upstairs neighbour with a hacking cough

      and this morning the water was turned off!

No more tea-bags anyway for a cup of English tea

     though you shouldn’t think of tea or diminishing sanity

              when you’re just two blocks from the beach at Copacabana

There’s a cursing parrot swearing in fluent Portuguese

      at the next-door neighbour’s window – if you please –

and two floors down some other kind of bird

     with an eerie, cackling laugh that doesn’t speak a word.

              Very funny when you’re two blocks from the beach at Copacabana.

There’s no TV and the radio plays incessant Brazilian pop.

      Downstairs the porter thinks he’s a special kind of cop:

he gestures me to use the second, service lift

     with this insulting, ‘macho’ movement of the wrist –

                    two lifts, two blocks to the beach at Copacabana.

Every apartment block you pass has a fire-armed porter

      at the door or gate: some are tall, some are shorter.

our specimen is the latter and a little bald.

     Come midnight he looks to be extremely bored.

             Perhaps he sleeps there, two blocks from the Beach at Copacabana?

The disadvantages are numerous and multifarious

      in retrospect perhaps I’ll find humorous or hilarious.

After all it is Rio, that bustling, noisy and exotic town -

      though I haven’t seen much exoticism around.

                But we are two blocks from the deserted beach at Copacabana.

Reading with visuals and music:

when I hear that music:

the music of the very soul!

How on earth did he do all that

with mere words, our benefactor?

Making Kings and Princes human

and Man himself noble once more:

inviting everyone to come close

and taste eternity? And then

to do it again and again and again?

From one instant to the next,

unhurriedly and with optimum

clarity, the wedge of intellect 

worked into the knot of passion :

leaving us devastated, humbled.

There cannot be such another.

This boy became a Colossus.

Forget the remote Avon town;

the remote hamlet in normal sleep.

He became our harbinger of dawn.

The same dawn that we

habitually sleep through:

all of us, (and now so many),

and now we may lose him

and lose ourselves altogether.

Once encountered,  face to faceless

face and uplifted by his grace,

who would not miss him therefore?

And yet so very many

have never, never heard that music.

The declarations of love and intent,

the consequences of missing

the mark, the profanity of war:

tears and laughter, all in forms

and expression that exalts.

Yet, what can or do we do?

We forget and we remember.

We forget to teach and to listen

and we let inactivity

or the hectic, dangerous vices

engulf our so-called waking,

and master our sleeping souls.

Take any production of a play,

there is always at least a single actor,

one performance that counts;

one that, accidentally almost,

escorts you to the threshold;

shows you, and all your brethren,

that somewhere in the common self,

we were once the stuff of angels.

THE JOURNEY OF THE MAGI
“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

At first the trees were climbing trees;
the forests were alive with sound.
A country lad drank from the stream:
the river heaved the seasons round.

From secret fox-pad passageways
the towering clouds could not be seen,
but leafy, bird-thronged solitudes
taught natural, esoteric mysteries.

While summer reapers honed their scythes
old Willie Lot stood wreathed in smiles -
he crossed the Stour river twice
and lived at Flatford till he died.

John’s careless wonder then was such
that when he donned the ways of men
the young man turned to ink and brush
and strove to bring it back again.

My Mum and Dad, in former camping days,

would pack their tent and drive away

to pitch in country fields both near and far -

me squatting in the back of Dad´s side-car

or catching pillion-flies at a lively canter

astride the ´Royal Enfield´ then the ‘Panther´.

The gear was stowed in a trailer towed behind.

out of site perhaps but never out of mind.

There was this Norfolk farm I vividly recall,

where the land was flat and elms grew tall,

where Dad obtained permission from the pair

who worked the farm to settle there.

And if you think a farm a weird place to stay

then let me add, it overlooked a sheltered bay.

The man was willing for a modest rent

to let us use his water, pitch our tent.

We had some lovely eggs from him as well

when  Mum went off to ring the bell.

The strongest memory I still have

is of their extraordinary ‘lav´!

A double-seater for the farmer and his wife

side by side – cheek by cheek – for life!

A typical East Anglian outhouse made of brick

constructed over an echoing, gaping pit.

                 And I´ve never seen the woodwork neater

                 or more loving than on that Norfolk double-seater!

Go on surprise me! Let something

happen that is NOT totally predictable.

Like England saving the first Australia Test.

(Ok, you surprised me with that one…)

But let’s NOT have the next set of NHS failures;

or here in the West End, someone doing Big Brother -

THE MUSICAL – as yet more raw sewage

churns out into the cormorant-courted Thames.

Oh please, let’s have more of the unforeseen;

things that awaken the senses and the soul.

Gordon Brown for starters, renouncing

politics which he finds too morally corrupt.

Motor cars utterly banned from city streets

as they cause cancer

and weakening of the legs and next

all advertising vetoed for at least a year.

Let’s have free bus and tube passes

for everyone who hates their job:

Tesco’s closing down for good

as the management retires to the Maldives -

to watch the rising sea-levels.  Let’s have

police sirens that play the Match of the Day

theme across a deserted Soho, grave-quiet

as the five day power restrictions bite!

And Lo! the BBC finally kicks out

balanced non-opinion in favour of obvious truths;

releases Humphries, Dimbleby and Paxman

Hooray! and let’s hear it for the Royal Family

who’ve made a bid for Newcastle United FC

and clap those egg-faced news-casters

since they were directed to treat

their tele-prompters as operatic recitative…

Oh please let us all be surprised

again and again

and again and then

                    we’ll see what follows! 

12 Jul. 2009

and in the afternoon caught bull-frogs in the sink.

In the evening I wrote the biograph of a Gorgon

and spent the night spraying bright stars pink.

Tuesday I built a personal plutonium reactor

and Wednesday morning hosed the flat.

Wednesday afternoon I made a million, like Max Factor,

and dug up Regent’s Park for Roman artefacts.

Wednesday night I got to work again within;

I memorised the songs of  William Blake.

Thursday I tattooed a cuckoo, with a heated pin,

upon my chest – and then a snake.

Thursday night was altogether strange.

I flew about the streets of London in a cage.

Friday would take a month to log and rearrange

in words that you could follow from my page.

Saturday I bought two dozen butcher’s shops

and made a fleshy mountain out of steaks and chops.

      Sunday, as is ordained, I didn’t work:

     one day a week, at least, it’s good to go beserk!

Modigliani was a man

    with an admiration for Cezanne.

One must never say he couldn’t draw

   – a judgement many would deplore -

                 but certainly his elongated faces

                            and his vulnerable nudes of a certain

                                     verisimilitude shorn,

                                              could well adorn

                                                   the nave side wall

                                             of some secular iconastasis.

Black crayon on paper by Modigliani

………………………………………………………

As we walked more or less

aimlessly down-river

Time dissolved.

To my surprise

when I consulted maps

afterwards we’d covered

more than seven miles.

After we’d trudged

another three to Twyford

(from Sonning Mill)

on tarmac and paving stones

we both professed

tiredness and a longing

for the home-stairs climb.

With Henley well behind

I’d seen a tiny frog

wrestle though the grass

then a grebe dive underwater

and I began to count.

One hundred seconds later

I pronounced him Supergrebe!

Until you pointed out

he’s probably swum right

round the river bend

submerged and surfaced

in preferred and relative

privacy long ago.  Of course,

only he would know.

And perhaps the river

running  slow.

But not the road -

certainly not the road!

Unless it too could show

a similar contempt for time

in its restless contra-flow.

…Soho 90/09

What is this one all about?  Is it a poem?

Well if at the heart of a poem is a mystery. If it awakens something or makes your hair stand on end, if it prods and pokes at your feelings – either in a disconcerting way or a reassuring way – why then it must be a poem of some kind.

I remember Dylan once saying to a BBC Arena presenter who had asked him where his songs came from, ‘I don’t know I just write ‘em.’

‘But why do you write ‘em?’ he was pressed. ‘’Cos nobody says you can’t!’ he replied.

…

I am divider

provider

reconciler

and scourge

Realisation of form

dissemblance of matter

is all my business

and the antitheses of these

my hidden pleasures

It is I scatters bright ultramarine

before the prow of ships

makes ruddy the rim of Helios

commands the green canopy unfurl

I am Salome in March

Narcissus in May

Midas in Autumn

and Charon

constantly

Conductor of all transformations

I am the bark of transformation itself

I languish in bile and phlegm

ooze in saliva and salt

career in the eye

the testes

nestle in the ovary

and the egg

I am the cradle of protoplasm

and the infant’s destroyer

As for the Sun

I am the clandestine lover

consumed by his distant inferno

at his behest I serve

the Moon’s quiet longing

for continual sacrifice

It is I that moves all solidity to flux

all flux to mass

I weld the steely stalactite

to his lesser cousin

blast iron bridges

proud cities and civilisations

to traceless ruination

To those of you who would concur

I will be as remorseless with your conceit

as those who would demur

and I shall be equally remorseless

with the dead

when they awaken

I am

before the induction of language

and when the torrents of meaninglessness subside

it is I shall preside

over the grand silence

Can you see me

entrap me with your senses

if  you can

I will be Proteus

if  you will

That is a beginning

Who am I

?

…

Need a clue?  Try this!

Le Singe et le Masque

at any time

and now is such a time

the one gift I can offer is a key

a key to free

your own exclusive brand of liberty

but if it doesn’t seem to fit

or shines too small and insignificantly

or gives you minor unsettling e.c.t.

if it doesn’t match the colour of your daytime eye

and cracks the smooth complexion of your night

if it threatens you with excessive conspicuousness

or the opposite prospect of invisibility

kicks up the dust upon those near‑forgotten files

marked destitution

helplessness and vagrancy

begets a fear of knowing

you’re on your own

in hostile darkening forestry

smiles as it whispers in your ear

the finite prophecy

mocks your careful self‑sufficiency

and gnaws with tiny teeth

at the teetering ideal

of what you’d like to be

evaporates the dreams you’ve nourished

through proud adversity

alienates your closest friends

as fast as cockroach cake or hemlock tea

has you reaching for the covers

the curtains

or the front door key

and fantasising over meat

and kitchen cutlery

then wont you see

that gift is really hit‑man first degree

with a contract out on self‑importance

the commodity

like Solomon

we could entitle common vanity

Belo Horizonte, Brazil.  ’86.

The way I see these posts and pages now, today, they are much more like installations, happenings, songs, dramatic monologues, circus acts – even cartoon strips, events, games and graffiti rather than  ’poems’.  Why should that be?

If you look at just a few of them a theatre influence will soon become obvious. But then I ran a successful experimental theatre here in Soho for many years. When I split from that, around the time of a marriage break-up and divorce, these little ‘productions’  increasingly became the focus of my creative output.

And don’t be wrong-footed by what is, for me, a natural desire to give a completely different style of expression  to each of these individual entities; these animals, these virtual states of play or odd-ball experiments. Working with plays and players in such tiny spaces certainly left me with a hat-full of voices, attitudes and perspectives but most of all it was the intrinsic uniqueness of persons and pieces that in  getting up close often became revelations.

Yes, I trained for the stage and threw myself into directing stuff.  Even so I am not particularly a theatre fan. I love what actors can sometimes do – their grace and skill, their acts of Shamanism, their death-defying leaps.  Equally though I love painters, great films, a handful of poems and poets and songwriters and increasingly the wonders of a shamefully threatened, natural world: anything in fact, that makes my hair stand on end – while I’ve still got some…

The Tannery, Fez. Photo by Miyyassah al Thani.

]]> http://www.fredthread.net/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1558 0 http://www.fredthread.net/blog/?p=1501 http://www.fredthread.net/blog/?p=1501#comments Thu, 14 May 2009 22:29:35 +0000 admin http://www.fredthread.net/blog/?p=1501    

The toy train chugging along a flat line,

single-puffing solid steam-dots from the chimney ‘i’s’? 

or the washing line with jim-jams and jumpers and leggy-pegs  

all hanging downside top? 

But tell me when, 

 when did they change to teenie-weenie holders;

  little backpockets, purses

 and satchel-bags puffed out with good and bad

  personal sound-smells and feelings;

sight-tastes and all kinds of gestalts -

scenes in which you always seemed to get

the important part yourself?

And tell me when,

Young-person-of-the-world,

when did you start to vacillate

between awe and suspicion

for those slippery,  hand-me-down paper-tigers? 

And how long now will you put up with

those pirate databanks and alien formulations

that once overran your skiff and which so readily now

leapfrog back to the mind and to the psyche; 

to the lips,  the teeth,  the tip-of-the-tongue

faster than you can ever blink???? 

And when will you, from the inside out,

and in accord with soundest building principles,

re-construct the world with new-made personal,

 l’ego mots

(that’s lego-like wORd breeze-blocks)

and put them into magick

image-making-clusters or  chuffing holograms

which may just chug round and round

and to which others may respond

with curiosity, or fun, or some other kind of wordless  

reciprocation:

long after the wORds

or the sounds of the wORds

on the yellowing, papered air

or down in the digital waste-ground  

have all been totally recycled?

What is it?

Isn’t anyone going to say?

What is the trick?

or isn’t there one?

Is it, as I beginning to suspect,

as difficult as cycling up the side

of Snowdon say, in a blizzard:

or swimming the straits

of somewhere with one hand

tied behind your back?

How does one trim consciousness

as one would trim a sail?

How survive tempests, shipwrecks,

the doldrums and yet make some sort

of progress voyaging?

The hazards, its clear hit

from all directions as the weather,

never wholly, or even partially

predictable comes rolling in.

 And here amidships,

out of the elements, where the Captain

would command the crew,

there’s too much inattention,

currents of murmuring dissent.

Consider the house of ‘The Bountys’

Captain Bly just round the corner

from the Imperial War Museum:

even the professionals underestimate

the vehement action of the unforeseen.

An exact destination;

a resolute purposefulness,

an indominatable will

would all be helpful but the bo’sun

for one is prone to crucial lapses.

As for the cook and the ship’s doctor

(who’s too familiar with catastrophe

and given to periods of helplessness),

neither of them were present at the last briefing.

 As for the cabin-boy, the press-ganged seamen,

the powder-monkeys  - of course

they would not expect to be included.

Discipline is paramount:

the fact the open sea is always

the predator, helpful, but is there

nothing operating here above

the precariousness of Providence?

 Once the terror of the adversary

has been acknowledged there’s little

disposition from the poop

to take pleasure in fine-weather sailing:

to admire the flying fish, the dolphins.

And yet as certain great explorers,

sages and philosophers of the sea

have shown, there IS a style

of  Captaincy that maximises purpose,

realises a measure of wellbeing:

‘For the bounty of the commonweal.’

Is that it then?  Is that the trick?

Deliberate denial of self-interest?

Enforced self-sacrifice without reprisals?

The ‘Nays’ I think have it!

Unless there be schools

or Sea Academies which provide

on-going support, continuous study

before and after each mutiny, wreck

and battle fought at sea? 

And if there be such who am I to say,

(With such unruly elements

continually slapping, slurping

in the blackness of the bilge),

if any leadership committee

or board of governorship can ever come

to within one good stones’ throw

of the Holy City of Byzantium?

                     … Soho ‘93/’09.

William Bly's house in Lambeth Road. Photo Fred Proud 21/04/2009

a surprising detail from the same picture

From a drawing by Sam Proud.

 

 

‘PLEASE MISS,

THERE’S NOT ENOUGH GREASE

ON THESE CHIPS!’

‘Give me lovely sweaty chips;

hamburgers like sailing ships

awash in coagulating seas of oils –

never mind the spots and boils,

the warts, the rashes and the pimples

who wants creamy skin and dimples?

I can look equally demure,

innocent and pure.

‘If you give me double beans and bacon

and leave that fibre muck untaken.

You can stuff your ‘orrible ‘olefood!

It’s strictly for the stomach pseud:

they’d rather nibble like the rabbits

and other animals with sheepish habits.

No, give me loads of lard and fat

and lots of extra chips to ogle at!’

Around the size of the English blackbird this handsome creature can to seen all over Brazil, in the cities (where it keeps well away from humans) and in all rural areas.

He has two calls, the first is just like a prolonged descending toot on a Swannee-whistle. The other is so loud, and either so appealing or torturing (depending on your point of view as it will often be repeated dozens of times), that it has made the bird a living legend.

The same sort of anonymous Brazilian genius that named the nether part of the skimpiest bikinis dental floss, and beija-flor (kiss-the-flowers) for the humming bird, came up with Bem-ti-vi for him, exactly like his call; it means ‘I can see you!’

Salvador. Brazil ‘84/’09.

Pintagus sulphuratus …The Latin name for the species

Roma …The pomegranite tree.

There’s a small bar in the Santo Antonio region of Belo Horizonte belonging to Edinho and Heloísa who some years back found a fledgling bird in the street and brought him up with huge quantities of Tender Loving Care. Because of this they became unlikely national TV stars on ‘Globo’.

They named their bar-pet Zé. And Zé was free to come and go. He stayed for a number of years and got beaten-up a few times by the local birds who obviously sensed there was something odd about him. Anyway to crown this extraordinary saga Edinho commissioned a tattoo which he is very proud to display.

The bar-fly himself.

And Edinho’s tattoo.       

‘Let’s leave more space for intuition

and opt for the decisions of a sparrow!

We’ll never know in any case

if we’ve done right or wrong

until much later  -

perhaps not even then.

‘There’s nothing in the laws of government

that say we must we seek out

the games and hurley‑burley

of the bigger, bully‑boys.

‘We could for example, take a lesson

from the snake and slough the skin

that serves only  transient function;

emulate the Skylark’s scorn for rigid plans

and the hedgehog’s love of introspection.

There’s nothing in his passion

for the night that calls for intellectual analysis.

The Dunnock knows this just as well!

One of the many remarkable turret-like rock-forms in Goreme,Turkey.

 

 

How ephemeral IS theatre?

Apart from old photos,  programmes and what lives in the memory of the spectators, the production team and the actors themselves, in my view, next to nothing of the immediacy of it all. Even the odd poem, like this bit of doggerel, can do little except rekindle some old memories.

As a drama student there was a fantastical children’s play I was roped into that turned out to be a bit of a gas. I can no longer remember what it was called at the time but it had a formidable cast, in fact I believe a large proportion of the fifty student actors from our year at college.  And the year in question? I think it was 1965 or 66.  It toured schools around Kent and was dead popular with audiences. Later the play was published by Samuel French as ‘Big Noise at Fort-issimo’ but that was not what it was called when we did it.

In those days, not being much of an actor anyway I used to bunk off and collect road debris and other rubbish to make what were then known as mobiles – long before the ubiquitous and multifarious cellular!

The dilapidated toy train I played in that piece was something of a manic depressive and had a revolving fly-wheel attached by means of a pin and a bit of nose putty to the tip of my hooter.

MR. CHUFF

With hat like a battered chimney

(a topper with formidable dent);

and tights that rendered me bean-pole like

I strutted that engine all around Kent.

A circular sandwich-board I’d crafted

was slung from my scrawny neck:

it had my name and number written on it:

a broken, old lantern enhanced the effect.

For I was that sad clockwork train,

long-abandoned, continually depressed.

Poor ‘Mr. Chuff’ was my name and vocation

just gathering dust,  nigh laid to rest.

But the Playroom’s forgotten army;

a platoon of old tin troops

found me and disarmed me

with the promise of important use.

A brand new purchase of Star-ship aliens

threatened everyone with imminent  war.

And to go and face battle six rusty old soldiers   

needed help to cross the playroom  floor.

Ah!  The wheels I haven’t yet mentioned -

one each for my knobbly knees

and a fly-wheel to muster attention

spinning around in a current of breeze.

This last had a simple pin axle

stuck to the end of a putty-long nose.

This little wheel with fins cut in it

spun round and round when I blowed.

The hard fought victory went

to the heroes,  the old, traditional toys.

It was super fun while it lasted

and it was great to be one of the boys.

But the end of that story I have to admit

is of no special use in my song;

yet the journey there that was started

has lasted a whole life-time along.

It’s something to do with performing;

of putting yourself on the line.

Nothing to do with Chuff-chuffs or Star-ships

but doing it YOUR WAY – at least for some of the time!

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Mr. Chuff

A mobile in the grounds of the College from that time.

 The photo at the top is of Robbo and Jeannie,

the Story-tellers from the same play.

A week before Carnival:

an ordinary bar in Cabo Frio

sixty kilometres east of Rio;

week-ending ‘Cariocas’ everywhere:

you and I,  Helvécio and Regina

drinking chilled  ‘Atlantica’ beer;

iced  ‘cachaça’  fleshed with native lime.

The tiny band plays samba after samba

throughout the night.  The ‘cavaquinho’ man -

a serious-faced ‘moreno’  -  sketches something

of the melody as seven others

shake out a genealogy of carnival rhythm.

As dawn was breaking one of the band

invites you to sing a Bahiana song.

Perhaps he saw it quickening in your eye.

At first you falter – an exile returning

to once familiar waters  –

then as the waves gather

you duck your head and re-emerge

with an oil in your eyes and hair as black

as the newly-departed night.

You struck out then, confident

in your full-voiced song of celebration!

‘Ah, querida!’  then we watched you dance

your dance of innocence and rapture.

The band were exalted.

My heart filled with an alien joy

as the ramshackle bar

flooded with morning light.

Your natural expertise

demanded recognition:

as we left the oldest man

confessed himself your ardent fan.

. . . . . . . .

Glossary

‘Cariocas’ Natives or inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro in Brasil.

‘Cachaça’ A white Brazilian rum made from sugar cane.

‘Cavaquinho’ A  small, four-stringed instrument something like

a small guitar in appearance.  (Also known as the ‘cavaco’:

“Moreno” Brown-skinned:  a very popular term never considered

offensive;  it focuses more on skin colour than ethnicity

‘Querida’ Sweetheart.

 inspired by

the drawings below.  The artist was then eleven.

From the drawing by Sam Proud

Wrong John Peg-leg.

 

“Yo ho ho and a bottle of blood!

Wrong John Peg-leg will cutlass you!

 With me shimmerin’ blade I’ve chopped

the seas. I lost me leg at Waterloo:

and left an eye at Charing Cross.

I’ve sunk more ships than Francis Drake

I’ve carved me name on the Albatross.

‘Ow many currants in a Christmas Cake? Treble it!

That’s ‘ow many treasure chests I’ve got.

Richer than an oil-sheikh that’s me!

 Of all the pirate pests I’m best!

But I always fail me driving test!”

London. ‘82. (Soho Clarion: Issue 47).

URIAH………….

The gear was stowed in a trailer towed behind:
out of site perhaps but never out of mind.
There was a Norfolk farm I vividly recall,
where the land was flat and elms grew tall,
where Dad obtained permission from the pair
who worked the farm to settle there.

And if you think a farm a weird place to stay
then let me add, it overlooked a sheltered bay.
The man was willing for a modest rent
to let us use his water, pitch our tent.
We had some lovely eggs from him as well
when Mum went off to ring his bell.

The strongest memory I still have
is of their extraordinary `lav´!
A double-seater for the farmer and his wife
side by side – cheek by cheek – for life!
A typical East Anglian outhouse made of brick
constructed over an echoing, gaping pit.

And I´ve never seen the woodwork neater
Or more loving than on that Norfolk double-seater!

Soho ´82

By the double banks
of rising bleachers,
epicentre of the impending celebration,
there is a fearsome Behemoth;
a truck with seventy speakers.
Including the band,
there must be forty
on the open roof alone,
about three tons
of electronic equipment
and a clutch inevitably
of the new ‘rock’ stars.

Close on three or four thousand
bland-faced crinkle-heads,
positioned in the road ahead
and clustered in the wake
of this monster and all across
the public square wait,
until someone with the studied hysteria
of a Brazilian football commentator,
screams an announcement into
an already distorted sound system.

Silence then. Nothing stirs.
Ten seconds later, the first amplified rattle
of drums and all the heads begin
throbbingandbobbing like beans
on a just switched-on conveyor belt.
The noise is deafening.
A single file of twelve military police
with ugly truncheons half a metre long,
stride impassively
through the throng.

They wear steel helmets
and look like combat paratroopers
but why they should be there is unclear.
No truly individual act
of spontaneity or criminal defiance
would be possible in that pounding.
There was no apparent passion,
poetry or release;
there was
certainly no samba.

Seeing her eyes were swollen
I ask, ‘What is it? ‘
‘It’s so sad,’ she explains
‘I was crying with frustration!’
Whether it is the march
of civilisation, the corrupting
influence of television,
or just that everything -
even the best things – must
change for the worst; I don’t know.
It was hard for her and in time,

I think it will be hard for anyone
to find regeneration when the great
traditions of celebration have expired.

Salvador, Brazil  ‘86.

And I’m not alone behind this mask
of intention: only the tourists bunched
nebulously about the sidewalks
(and rendering them impassable)
stare about them with a visible stupor;
confronting the consensus abyss.

It’s true. I have to concede now
the whole cavalcade is totally
incomprehensible to me;
just as I admit that I have never lived
my life in the City. On the contrary,
it is the City that has lived

some inconsequential fragment
of its life through mine.
Its needs, its sordid agendas,
its imperatives have wound
and rewound the mainspring of this
tick-tock, citizen-chronometer!

And on October mornings like these,
with the wind hacking round the corner
of Centrepoint like Masefield’s
‘whetted knife’, it’s clear the armadas
of ketches, barques and catamarans
are too otherwise intent to invest one tenth

of a piastre toward the possibility
of escape. In the Pizza Palace there,
sits one who attacks, with somewhat
overstated rapacity, his bleached-white disc
of dough smeared with vegetarian cheese -
while over there an olive-skinned couple

wrestle their king-sized mattress
onto the roof of their economy saloon.
Do they not see that reading even
the immediate road ahead is going to be
intermittently impossible
as their sagging mattress oscillates?

But wait! Only moments before there was
the chill flash of exposure. Somewhere
between that dull-red disc and the Slumberland
I have been lulled to sleep. I must set
my alarm-clock purpose anew:
lest I forget the blind man’s wakening to

exclaim ‘I see all men walking as trees!’
Why should I resign to half-life in the City:
ever at revelations´ brink; steadfastly pacing
from the unknown past to the not known
present as if I knew I knew nothing
with yet no trace of any reason for it all?

Soho, London. 1990.

     which comes in bouts

        not particularly looked for

           more often in fact arriving

              just when it was the last thing

you expected and definitely

        the last you thought you wanted

              for with the onset of clarity

                  come unpalatable truths

                       which eat away at illusion

the illusion for example

      of feeling unique which never

           felt the least like illusion

              or seeing in needle-sharp focus

                 how it is that Providence perpetually

torpedoes weak and careless effort

    exposes personal insignificance 

       and in that wreckage come

             forms of contrition that presage

                  elusive and longed for states of grace

The first of these will be a landscape, street
or garden particularly familiar to the deceased.
(Note that should other figures be present in the shot
then as far as can be reasonably ascertained,
they should not have been known to the deceased).

The second negative will be of the deceased,
him or herself. Eye direction towards the camera
this will be a full-faced, adult portrait,
neither close-up, nor long-shot. It does not matter
if the face is smiling serious or otherwise animated
as all are capable of producing good results.

It is of the utmost importance that the close friend
or relative will have agreed to be silent throughout
and when the eyes for example are seen
to blink, or some other kind of movement
be detected this must be signalled immediately
to the facilitator. A slight nod of the head
is the recommended, agreed signal for this.

The landscape will be first negative to be placed
into the enlarger and should be exposed
onto a sheet of photographic printing paper
in the normal fashion. With careful manipulation
of the enlarger charged with the second negative
the subject’s head and shoulders will now
be exposed, or super-imposed, onto the first.
The subject re-visits, as it were,
that once familiar setting, afresh.
This serves to create a kind of shock.

Next the print must now be placed in a tray
of developing fluid. A strict silence must be
observed while attention is fixed upon this
‘double image´ as it begins to develop
in the tray and when some sort of movement occurs;
the eyes of the subject, for example are seen to blink,
the lips move, or a change of expression be observed
(subtle or otherwise) this will be the moment
for the pre-arranged signal to be given.

The white light of the darkroom
will now be turned on by the facilitator.
(A dimmer, if one is available,
can be helpful – but this is not essential).
On no account should any attempt be made to fix
the print. Such a step could have detrimental effects
upon all the parties involved – including the deceased.

The period of the print darkening, through
all the middle-tones to complete black
as a consequence of exposure to direct light
is the crux of the experiment. It is probable
that the prospect of impending loss is what
will prompt further animation for something
will now be mouthed, or spoken audibly,
directly to the friend or relative,
although the communication can also be non-verbal.

The recipient will not be asked or persuaded
to reveal or repeat what they have witnessed.
If the recipient freely volunteers to relate
what they have seen or heard without prompting
then this can be beneficial to all parties involved;
the facilitator, the friend or relative and the deceased.
Finally, this experimental procedure should not
be undertaken lightly, or publicly, and NEVER,
under any circumstances be repeated.

August 1994. London.

have funny habits.

Mr and Mrs Dog do gym and jog.

Mr and Mrs Parrot favour grated carrot

while the Foxes and their cubs love social clubs.

I’ve nothing: against these happy families

with their all too human flaws; their unspoken laws;

their passionate resolutions

their hypocritical, unwritten constitutions;

their printed circuits, the banks of silicon chips;

their amateur theatrics, the melodramatic scripts;

their encyclopedias of trivia,

the repertoires of tragedy and farce;

the step by step manuals of firm enculturation;

the seemingly eager cast.

Nor their publically declared intentions;

their desperate face-saving interventions;

the accepted disparity,

the protested solidarity;

the genetic compulsions,

the frenetic revulsions;

the tensions and abstentions,

the aspirations, the deprivations,

the laughter, the hurt surrender

and after, the return, with interest, to sender;

the ‘go for broke´;

the hidden imperative behind the joke;

the affiliation; the duty;

the degradation; the beauty…

No, I’ve nothing against the general family ‘deal’

that a little gentle escapology won’t heal.

that will always be there.

It is only necessary to close

the eyes for an instant to remember

that doleful smile; the proximity

of your coffee-skin stretched

as a drum across

your delicate sadness.

Confronted with the restless wilderness

there was only your expanding sense

of homelessness: the sea

must always lay it bare.

I shall close my eyes often.

My vision begins with a cream horizon;

dark waters against the darkening heavens:

there is a thin line of radiance

edging left, then right, and the breeze;

the gentle breathing of a presence

that is guaranteed to conjure

moments such as these and engineer

the miracle of their complete recall.

Olinda, Brazil ´84.

Photo: Terezinha Borges

The Atlantic smoothes her shot-silk coverlet,

invites the early-retiring, over-sated  Sun

to sink within and dream the morrow,

but the once-deserted beach of platinum sand,

lofty cocoanuts and spent rock honeycomb

has filled with a multitude of charcoal forms.

A team of slow-heaving, local fishermen

gleaming from the waist like burnished ebony,

are imposing their silent husbandry upon

the pristine and painted sands of Paradise.

Close at their heels battalions of small kids

ape their serenity with ill-concealed excitement:

there will be explosions of exuberant abandon.

But first the host of spoon-shaped fish, some as

large as earth-bananas and the mass of seaweed

pocked with clams, are all closely scrutinized.

A solemn minute for the catch to suffocate

and two dozen pairs of swift, dark hands

rain silver manna into salt-encrusted baskets.

One of the smallest boys is screaming fit to bust.

In a naked frenzy he charges back and forth

along the waters´ edge a sea-snake in his fist.

No greater than his puny fore-arm he shakes it

nonetheless, as once the mighty Hercules shook

the Hydra´s ninth, immortal monster head!

At the gales of irreverent laughter the Sun

shrugs off his oyster-satin gown, ruefully

looks back at the soon-to-be-forsaken shore

and at the horizon´s brass rail slinks beneath

a crimson quilt of cloud to embrace the night.

Photo: Terezinha Borges

He grabbed me roughly by the hair.

He stripped me bare and flung me

to the parched, coarse ground.

He sucked me dry

and spat my fibrous pulp,

like a wad of masticated sugar-cane,

at the graffiti embellished walls,

the rank, white sand.

Always my lover

in a passionate, clandestine affair

he has come into his own here

in this vast cracked crucible.

He has blasted all of my body fluids dry,

crushed each drop of perspiration,

semen, blood, each crystal of urine

and salt into vapour.

Now I have been scattered by him:

an inconsequential belch

of foetid gas, along

the moving byways

of his underprivileged sister,

the  breeze.

Olinda ´84

a new piece that defies any attempt to put down!

Utterly resistant it will have no truck with notepads,

desktops, paper jottings, formatting, files or fonts.

It confounds utterly my need to type it, write or speak it.

There can be no visible structure, no rhyme, no assonance;

no shred of a classifiable rhythm (which will no doubt

drive all prosody academics to distraction).

Quite without form or substance, nevertheless it is

I am convinced, the most perfect rendering

of that which cannot be rendered:

the most concise expression of the inexpressible!

It is obviously the most important piece I have never written.

How can I even show it you, when it rejects all

of my advances and will no doubt continue

so to do long after all these struggles have ceased?

What am I to do?

And yet perhaps, if I am careful,

it will permit me to whisper this much

as it nuzzles into my palm

(when my fingers are slack and curled),

and shies away from all attempts

to ride it, to brand it or to break it in:

as it delights in eternal contradiction,

with its warm mouth, its jagged tooth,

its feather caress and shark-skin lip:

as it releases the odour of cobwebs,

mixed I should add with evening hyacinths,

cascades pollen into the air,

quickening the eye, the senses,

yet stinging passing limbs

as it sucks life-juices down to the husk,

crackles defiantly with decay,

and seethes with the vigour of Spring…

that I do accept its right to resist

and do salute its indifference.

I will strive to live, as I know must,

with both my lack and my longing.

………………………………Jan 2009

I don’t know. Some seem to swim along with the sharks very comfortably. Maybe the whole point is that there are too many of us that do so as it is bad news for everybody else! Anyway this gentle piece is about the coming back, the return to the alienated self.

RIVER STATIONS

An aimless voyager;

a tourist in my own city;

a novice in the role of pilgrim –

I was all of these, it seemed, and none of them.

I just cannot remember what it was

that prompted me to take the boat

along the cavalcade of River Stations

I see now that there were irregular,

careful preparations: plans so secret

that I was the last to know of them.

It was like looking in at my own window

from across the street and studying a face there

I know I ought to have recognized.

Or, like finding a pair of jeans so long forgotten

that wearing them again I am a stranger to myself.

Strange indeed that of all the available

transport systems I never thought before

to catch the obvious River Bus:

the stations were familiar enough.

I’d used them constantly as metaphors;

as allegorical constellations, in my work.

The unfamiliar, comfortable fellowship;

by-passing weirs and threading locks,

disembarking and re-embarking;

crossing latticed walkways made of iron

awakened my too long procrastinated, re-emigration home.

I was, and still am, the prodigal returning

to most loved places

he has never properly known. 

as I can remember with its high wire-fence,

its customs posts, its grim officials.

It was there before I broke the bonds

of isolation: it was there before

I discovered solitude.

Now the time has come for me to cross

the Border.  I have applied for my papers

and to renew my passport.

I shall take with me but one bag;

I shall then be able to turn, to move, quickly.

I am repeating simple maxims to myself

like “leap before you look”,  selecting supplies

for this essential journey;

honing my wardrobe to the barest minimum,

rehearsing goodbyes.

I shall memorize snatches of poems

to bolster my uncompromising intent.

then barter all of my books,

records and tapes in return

for protestations of remembrance,

trade my stocks of dried beans,

rice and pasta for prayers of deliverance.

My bag is all but ready.

Across the border are unfamiliar lands,

lands of un-trodden dimension.

I know across the border

everything is unknown.

Now there can be no turning back.

I have feathers because they are so light,

mustard seed, wheat and barley for planting,

tiny white pills to sterilize the drinking water

and my scout-knife,  with 28 blades.

I have not set the day:

it could be any day now.

The border, always a feature of my landscape

will become my present; beyond the border,

always a mystery, will become my knowing.

Once across the border to return

will be unthinkable:

I shall not even consider it.

There is a bird that comes with the fog; 

under-cover he glides and wheels overhead.

Like the mist he seeps in from the sea:

his shape as unfamiliar as the familiar

forms enveloped in his strangeness.

Only patient, troubled eyes will discern

his presence; perceive the figures

he describes.

                      In the time of trooping

men ascending the abandoned slopes;

the time of heaving shoulders against

coils of vapour; you must use the creeping

mist to tune your ears – then you will

hear the manifold exhalation – see the bird.

He rides the mists like a veteran;

hovering on currents of grass-breath:

on the sighing of the fog-marchers. 

Yes, the bird has come again.

I recall a wonderful piece of graffiti whitewashed in giant letters onto a long wall in the Tufnell Park area of London. It was at the height of the Women´s liberation movement and soon after the landing on the Moon. It simply proclaimed.  `IF THEY CAN PUT A MAN ON THE MOON WHY DON´T THEY PUT THEM ALL THERE?

Onto the first poem.

And that eleven year old was Sam Proud, of Proudspark.  The brains and inspiration behind the present website.  So, all thanks to him!

THE GINGERBREAD ALIEN

Run, run, as fast as you can
you can’t catch me
I’m the Chewbacca
Gingerbread Man!

Fly, fly, as high as you will
you won’t beat me
It’s Chewbacca Ten
Whoever-you-are nil.

Skip, skip, as quick as you like
you can’t fox me
I can get across rivers
on me Star-Wars bike.

R2D2 SQUARED

Skeltering round the walls in a frenzy
it dodges one, avoids another but is grabbed
by a third. There is stillness for an instant.
It hangs like a stunned fish from a tiny mouth.

To my dismay, as it is pulled asunder
and consumed, the monkey’s eyes flashing
around the pen, I see nothing here beyond
the ordinary and strictly commonplace.

Here in Bahia life and death are instantaneous.
No slow turn around of the seasons here, where,
wasteland fires spontaneously in the Sun
and the heavy rains flood streams of garbage

down from the shanty-towns where boys,
peering through unglazed windows, prefigure
tired, old men in identical coloured T shirts.
It is always eat now, or yourself be eaten:

It is make love as the carnivores make love
in a land with no vegetarians. It is dance
the Samba in the seething streets for days
on end with only snatches of repose.

And here, at the wake of the carnivorous Sun,
as geckoes pad delicately across the bedroom wall
and the neighbourhood dogs give voice
in unrelenting choir the giant ‘roaches

Hold still, flapping their antennae at you,
before that sudden scuttle through your legs
like demented, tarnished spoons. And you sink
into the cool, deep pool of electric fan assisted nights

Compelled to study the art of canine fugue
and the time signatures of the singing frogs;
And as you reflect both long and hard
upon the crickets’ genius for polyphony

You’ll come to see that ‘though its’ drums,
its berimbaus and slaves traversed the sea,
the Samba is fettered to the clay, the swamp,
and sounds within the sonorous ‘caju’ tree.

Salvador, Brazil. ‘86.

We can each of us attest how understanding
extends attending forms of light.
Yet with all expectation hooked to that fierce Titan
and our lesser satellite we are diminished.
Endlessly the knots of flesh and bone

are patted to and fro, cat and mouse, from death
to life, life to death in tawdry pantomime.
We would be damned indeed
lest for Stellar miasma settling discreetly
for this remote and near abandoned zone.

Like powdered snow it sticks
to my Cheshire Cats’  Star-cradle  strung out
from my translucent finger ends to my alchemical
ductless glands.  My single-lidded sense
cannot perceive it any more than prayer alone.

Yet at times the infinitesimal weight of it
smothers Hydra-headed protestation;
renders mindless repetition absurd, unknown.
Where the mighty mustard seed descends
‘I am that I am’  is invisibly sown.

Taxi drivers will take you anywhere
you like tonight at their own expense.
Private cars are ice cream vendors’ vans tonight
as nomadic hordes of tourists grab
advice from local residents; just where to find
the tastiest grub; the cheapest hotels
and they didn’t even have to ask.

On such a night as this policemen,
if they see you with a camera, will offer
to take your picture, pass you their helmet
for a more arresting photograph.
Streetwalkers will give you a car wash gratis:
and if you haven’t got a car they’ll
solicit an invitation to clean your windows.

A team of three card tricksters
are playing ‘Snap’ for a stake
of chocolate buttons before the biggest
audience you’ve ever seen.
In Berwick Street there are more smiles
than daytime satsumas; more paper hats
than cabbages; more kisses than cucumbers.

(And tonight kisses are tokens of goodwill
with no over or under tones).
You can stake an apple or an onion
at The Golden Horseshoe Casino and win
a jar of ‘Charlie Chester’s Home made Chutney’.
As old ladies emerge from Victorian blocks
with paper streamers in their hair

the familiar throb of doleful disco
has been superseded by the irresistible
hip sway of the Samba and the Bossa Nova.
No, there’s not an electric amplifier in sight.
as Carnival sets the streets alight.
With drums infectiously loud and bright,
tawdriness transforms to sheer delight

and joyful innocence,
upon this Night of Nights.

Soho. ‘84.

With Toni steering our fast capsule

we left the authorised thoroughfares.

Not daring to pause, even for an instant,

we gazed about ourselves in wonder.

For here were unknown landscapes

of lakes, prehistoric mountains – the woolly

animals upon their slopes like white-nits

clinging to the pelts of beached Leviathans.

Tell-tale traces of urban air clung

to our clothes in that cockpit; fear-induced

secretions clogged our pores, but our eyes

drank deep the majesty of wilderness.

Subtle changes of colour swept across

folds and gullies, steeps and escarpments.

The plumes of vapour, wafted by an alien Sun,

wrought a sublimity that forced we City fugitives

to stare in rapture; to unclench our brows

and separately capitulate to private

and renewing disorientation.

The gradations of mauve, pink; dun and ochre;

the tints of lavender and rose unmanned us quite:

delivered us, as if miraculously, to a point

of raw newness. The pell-mell route we had run,

constantly fearful of discovery, faded.

We had been dropped, without preconception,

into these astonishing, silent valleys: our prize

and our curse. For sooner rather than later, we had,

by Time’s rod and its fabric of trysts and promises

to return to our slavery and leave this paradise.

Closely monitored by the once barely-noted

militia we were again strangers;

the ’silently observed’ in a sterile metropolis.

We are ‘the disorientates’. We are pregnant.

We are the lost cosmonauts with contraband seed;

memory seed; promise seed, that with each

half-breath opens to another order of understanding.

Soho, London. April ‘93.

Ragged robin seed from The Kew Millenium Seed Bank: Photo by Rob Kesseler and Madeleline Harley.

The photograph of course says much:
there she is, on her morning hands and knees,
scrubbing away at bare stone while Bovril,
Guinness and Schweppes mark the time.
The image is evocative in as many ways
as there are persons and professions;
ruling principles and pointless platitudes.

But have you ever seen anyone so alone
and intent on their work and in such
a public arena? As a young couple,
with two small kids forever coming down
with this and that we often needed
the all-night chemist. Yes, I remember
‘Boots’ on that side of the Circus:

the bleak, night atmosphere – the addicts
waiting for their prescriptions – and how
it all changed. That’s what the photo says
to me; dependence, cash and class.
Convenient lies and change itself
seem the only constants – until
we recall the less visible verities;