pomesonpoets

Story

2011-12-03T14:26:00.001-08:00

Red Zodiac

Tommy gradually began to realise that an X-ray and an extraction were not the same thing. An X-ray involved no taking out and was painless, whereas an extraction….The one good thing about the extraction was that Uncle Gerry was coming to take him there in the red Zodiac. There were Consuls on the estate, a grey Triumph and an ageing MG but certainly no Zodiacs. That was going to turn a few heads. The other good thing was that he was going to get an extra 1s pocket money on Saturday, which he calculated would make 2s .. 6d as opposed to the usual 1s .. 6d. When you added this to the 5s .. 6d he had already saved , it came to 8s which was one penny more than the price of the model Lysander aeroplane he was saving to buy. It was still there, in the window of the Ipswich Sports & Toyshop… Yet when Tommy awoke on the day, he felt a mounting sickness together with dreadful images of torture. His mother cooked him breakfast. Toast was not enough, she explained. He would get a headache on just toast. Tommy tried yet couldn’t eat a thing. Uncle Gerry laughed and even scoffed some of the egg while she was out of the room. He winked and wiped his moustache, knowing that if all the egg disappeared his older sister would be onto him.

Some time after the injection, which was a quick stab of pain, there was a crunch, a wrenching and a sound like a pencil being snapped. After the tooth was out, his mouth felt funny, trying to talk made him laugh, and his knees started to shake. On the motorway the speedo needle of the Zodiac went from 75 to 85 and touched 90. Tommy was forgetting about his tooth. They were off to see Haley in her caravan. She never made him eat anything, and she was often dressed in her costume, which was like a silvery glittering kind of swimsuit or bra. Still feeling drowsy from the injection, Tommy lay back on the comfy trim of the Zodiac’s front bench seat. His uncle was saying something about horse power, synchromesh and overhead cams. Tommy did not have much idea about what these were, just that they sounded good. When they got to the circus compound, Haley’s caravan door was open. She’d got him ice cream cake and cherry aid. Haley said the cake would be OK because it wasn’t hot.

After he’d eaten some of the cake and drunk all the cherry aid, it was time to watch Haley and Tearaway rehearsing. Tommy loved the sound of the big hooves careering round the sawdust ring. Suddenly Haley was up on Tearaway’s back whispering into the two pointed ears as they spun past. Steadily, she began to raise first one leg and then the other onto the horse’s brown back. A second later she was standing up and spreading out her arms for balance. Uncle Gerry’s moustache and his lower lip had parted company. Tommy, in his unmathematical way, wondered why the tent was getting smaller, and he watched as the performer effortlessly shifted her weight until, standing on one leg, she became a perfectly streamlined shape.

Card Player

2011-06-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

Card Player

A card player smokes at a folding table
on his balcony over the alleyway,
which is reached by other alleys and steps
worn smooth as a luck-stone always carried.

He says the air’s better in his domain
fifteen feet up from the morning clatter
of chairs and bottles. He’s cool up there,
though the tuc-tucs come and the stalls are starting,

and all over the city voices are stirring.
In his one-room palace his hand strengthens,
his quick hands flick as they flip his cards over
and as they land on the green cloth he exhales

with the “Ah…” of one who makes a discovery
and an “Ah!” and “Ha-ha” of sudden good humour.
Though the game he controls is made of frustration
he’s fifteen feet up from it, in an air

of elevated thought, an unshattered air,
and the card player delights in not knowing
what is going to happen next in his life
of cards. He smokes. Tea sweetens his throat.

***

Climbing towards the Light

2011-05-09T08:00:00.001-07:00

Climbing towards the Light

There’s a ladder I have to climb,
that goes up like a white trellis
into the blue sky. The sun’s already up,
nothing is in front of me but this.
The white rungs quiver, steady up,
sway again – it all takes time.

Too high now to go back down
I take my time and rest holding
onto the supports of thick-weave rope,
telling myself it’s easier to cling
than let go, believing I can cope,
cut off over a sleeping town.

Trouble’s already starting there:
business begins as curtains stir,
the whole mechanism is a clock,
vast, faceless and sinister,
without face or hands or safety-lock
to stop it. It works on air

as I do, and it feeds like us
and feeds off us – easy to forget
it is after all just a machine
that goes down streets in dry or wet,
fitting into each morning scene,
quotidian as the morning bus.

I don’t climb to get away.
I quarry into the sunlight,
the unburst bubble of dust-seed air.
Sirens, planes, birds in incessant flight
will soon make nothing of my dare –
resting, I greet the swaying day.

The Night Mirror

2011-04-29T11:24:00.001-07:00

I have recently made a short video of a poem called,The Night Mirror. If you would like to see it please be prepared to use headphone or speakers, go to Youtube and type in:

The Night Mirror wmv

2011-03-07T04:14:00.000-08:00

Joyce explains that the way to get an Amaryllis to bloom again is to keep watering it after it flowers, say in December, all the way throught to September as a greenplant. Then not to water it (much) from October to December. Then to start watering it again. This has been born out by the reflowering of Joyce's Christmas 2009 Amaryllis which she was given as a present.

Reflowering Amaryllis

That year of growing
taller and taller meant
you reached the ledge to bloom

dear Amaryllis
thank you for sharing this - well
that's what people say...

Feb 3 2011

2011-03-03T03:56:00.001-08:00

Feb 3 2011

net curtain, yard - our
Xmas 2009
amaryllis blooms!

Everything's been thought of

2011-01-23T05:39:00.000-08:00

I am delighted to be able to introduce this poem by guest contributor John Arnett:
Many thanks, John! Hope to see more of your work.

Everything’s been thought of

Celebrity culture
Media vultures
Electrified fences
Flood defences
No win no fee
Reality TV
Airmiles and turnstiles
BOGOF and log off –
Everything’s been thought of
There’s nothing we’re short of.

Binge drinking
Joined up thinking
Conspicuous wealth
Emotional health
Identity theft
Empty nest
Look away now
If you don’t want to know –
Everything’s been thought of
There’s nothing we’re short of

Attention deficit
Short term benefit
Trophy wife
Allergic to life
Superbugs
Recreational drugs
User name
Repetitive strain –
Everything’s been thought of
There’s nothing we’re short of

Radical preachers
Burned out teachers
Human resources
Rising divorces
Prequels, sequels
Botox, detox
Factory farming
Self harming –
Everything’s been thought of
There’s nothing we’re short of

We’ve encountered a problem and we need to shut down
We’ve encountered a problem and we need to shut down

Leicester Square

2011-01-16T14:23:00.001-08:00

Leicester Square Cover Image

I see myself in Leicester Square
which is a kind of overcoat
loose and comfortable to wear,
with bars and diamonds
and tree motifs,
and the weave itself
made up of tiny laughter
and griefs.

Walking through mile-high drizzle
the people here
are dressed to dazzle:
there goes a giant eye,
here comes the Planet Mars.
Some are dressed
as teen-age gangs,
a few as cinemas.
A woman smiles at me,
her gown a shimmering clock
that strikes on the second.

The carousel has run amok;
you can’t see the old grey-beard
who thinks it’s Derby Day;
the clouds fly past him,
Hitchcock’s Birds are coming.

Now that
is weird:
I know that girl
In the mini-dress –
I remember her corduroyness.

A ghost steps out
of a Silver Ghost,
a crowd of masked lone rangers gathers
gasps. Someone whispers, “Diamond!” or
“diamonds…” Is it Legs
or Neil or that man Bond?

I tighten my belt
as erically as I can
and amble on: it’s my coat that wanders
out of the lime-light
into the night, no cares
but The Care of Time.*

The Care of Time was Eric Ambler’s last novel.

Why I am not a Rockstar

2011-01-06T11:09:00.000-08:00

WHY I AM NOT A ROCK STAR
http://www.enotes.com/why-am/text-poem
A Tribute to Frank O’Hara (although I think I would have made a worse rock star than he would have a painter….

You first realise
about John and the red guitar
when you see him with head down
guitar neck up and the note
the fingers wanted from the red
guitar flies out at the audience,
thru the floor, accelerates
beyond its old shape, and the singer sinks deeper
in his groove and the bassist
is fine-tuning the cellar.

In the interval with a beer
pleased to see us,
he looks up quizzically, seems to see
a spinning falling coin
or as if lightning is spreading
across the sea,
the next set coming...

By the time we
get to Angel
there are more people
going home than occupying
the restaurants and bars.
John’s a moving point
a van thru N.London
w/speakers amp and mikes.
Part of him has gone to Phoenix
and the rest of him’ll wake up to
the book he left off reading.

And who am I – the guy
who can pump hell out of an upright piano?
or hold it all together on the drums?
My band is a wavelength
and my notes are in pencil –

today with a Staedtler 2B pencil
in a notebook that cost a pound.
The bracket opens does not close
and a line ends/
or at least another begins

Mark Bradford at the White Cube Hoxten Square

2010-11-17T15:28:00.000-08:00

Up here on the first floor
light builds across a surface
in swathes or shavings num
bers words and what is there
faintly showing
almost covered up is the life
of a city the way we live
through wrapped identities

I wait where there are no boundaries
in a place about another place
you almost know or knew
the oddly familiar radio chat
between jazz tracks is getting odder
the voice hip and subterranean
and two paintings that face each other on the walls

trying to work out the walls
of black sugar paper and masking tape
stuck at so many odd angles
it reminds me of the day I first tried
to read the Observer

now I the observer
consult these new equivocal maps
and begin to connect with
neighbourhoods snowed over
seen from the air
I feel safe – perhaps
The 44 panel picture downstairs May Heaven Protect
You from Dangers and Assassins is working

maps of a city/ city of maps
with gone street names… I envisage a force of nature
trees disappearing in the snow-night’s chiaroscuro
gazebos folded leaning flat –
or nothing really so much as
roads/ criss-crossing into some place you know

a balloon – as in the first humans airborne –
floats down the district called Josephine’s Shoulders

I wonder whether I should follow? / could I/
descending through air to find my domain
explore down orange roads

under five muted
bare light bulbs in the ceiling
I cast no shadow

________________________________________________________
Josephine’s Shoulders: part of a multimedia installation by Mark Bradford. May Heaven Preserve You from Dangers and Assassins: painting by Mark Bradford. Exhibition was entitled The Pistol that Whistles

Snapshot

2010-10-30T00:40:00.000-07:00

Snapshot

today Warner at least snaps the space
of her There by the railings
where she stood his lens might catch
some photon of her – not her yet there

the print he makes of this leaks emptiness
vacuum for his undelivered lines –

Click
on the image then/go further in
click plus to magnify the space
and plus again – go in and past
the grey railings to an edgeless frame
enclosing where his silence passed that day…
no more than pixelated air-bricks
sliding to no-texture ghostly white

Warner tapped the minus key/tapped
and came out to the railings once again
still wondering about the scene
the ground that held her/ the skills he lacked
to copy from the time they’d almost met –
the rainbow lens in pavements after rain
that seemed to follow her –
rediscover the tiny suns
and planets spinning
in the emptiness where she was

Brassai By Night

2010-09-19T05:50:00.001-07:00

BRASSAI BY NIGHT

In the darkness between lamps
the gutters babble in secret slang
he stops to record a curve
a pair of eyes widened by laughter

in the fluctuations of bar light
he sets up a flair across the floor
"kiss naturally, act nonchelance"
no nuance lost, artificial shadows

of smile and stance traced
from corner to elbow Sun
sunk down notes of a drunken music
a will to embrace Between the lamps

a man a moving shadow a lens
fluctuates between misty and sharp
what comes from the mist is sharp
fades suddenly The Paris mist

is moving fast under the streets
seeps into downstairs bars
- strangely lit the white tunnels
curve steeply away from Paris

Starting Right

2010-07-10T14:57:00.000-07:00

Starting Right

A courtyard, staircases you could almost
leap down landing to landing,
walkways, galleries, acoustic blast

as of a theatre – the bricks are handing
on the Elizabethans’ bloody past,
ills the state is still mishandling.

Down from the Bermuda triangle, one standing
holding the bicycle, the other sits on the last
step to the courtyard & does some quick rebranding:

white socks and baseball cap, and then the jeans
need something doing to them. Steadfast
and steady where the cross bar leans

his young mate waits, already dressed.
One black, one white – they have this understanding:
The right trouser’s rolled to the knee. Neat-pressed

the other is left long, an act of will.
The tall black boy is through and will ride fast,
stand on the pedals with handling skill.

His tandem sinewy, unharassed
gets neatly in the saddle – notwithstanding
us in the gods, their swagger isn’t sussed.
They slip from here, through speed and light expanding.

***

Sestina Camden Town

2010-04-09T11:39:00.001-07:00

Sestina: Camden Town

The war, the war on Man, the
war on woman, the ghost
assembled armies vanish in
their realms

Allen Ginsberg
Planet News 1968

Sometimes the railway is sunk
between embankments; sometimes it passes
over the houses and canals
of Camden. The railway is like
an old copy of Peace News
still running – if war breaks out or peace.

All of it is real, every piece,
the trains, the lives, everything that passes,
and yet at times it seems like stale news:
dead stories blown by the canals,
the ink gone blank as soon as it is sunk -
sunt lacrimae rerum, or something like

the late Evening News: a paper I would like
to read again, discover zones of peace
where minds were broken or a heart was sunk,
knowing the bedroom where the night train passes,
where dreamt roads become burnt-out canals,
and morning brings the shock of dreaded news

or freedom from it. And still The News
is dreadful, do what you like!
Below your room, above the canal,
the trains rattle on. The face of no-peace,
for all that, reaches you, draws level, passes
so close, you see its pain has sunk

because everything that matters has sunk.
Through roofs and walls more wireless news
builds up like static, enters, passes
through ether. The wagons sound not to like
their steel-walled cargo, passing piece by piece:
their screech is mirrored in the still canal.

Making minute threads of the canals,
up where the whole sky is greyly sunk
in sound – a plane, iron bird if you like,
just passing through… There follows a peace
which is Prussian Blue, the Planet’s news
at last - where Ginsberg’s cool news passes

low, reaching through absence into peace,
while morning Metro’s clutch of bleeping news
chirps at the Oysters and the freedom passes.

A Woman Magically Appearing

2010-03-20T04:19:00.000-07:00

To a Woman Magically Appearing
Twiggy Exhibition National Portrait Gallery
Feb-March 2010

You can look down
On all the decades of
Your Twiggy-life if
You sneak up the back
And along to the balcony
With the iron railings
And see the people
Looking in your eyes
And reading what you wrote.

Once in the not-quite square
Gallery w/its ornate marble floor,
There’s the one of you
With huge eyes soft-tone
Close up – you can see
The freckles and how you
Support your chin against palm
Nice fingers neatly folded
Just brushing lightly parted lips.

Then there’s Ronald
Traeger’s photos, dead at 32,
Blow-ups of you laughing
On the Downs or
Free-wheeling on a
Bicycle with small wheels
And big handle bars in your
Mini dress legs shot
Out and forward
In lace-up shoes and ¾ socks.

And there’s how they caught you
In the ‘70s “me as a woman
Not as a photo shoot” –
In a small interior your place
With its mod circle
Paintings + floral-quilted
Arm chair and the intimate
Architecture of you in a
Red evening gown,
And recently in the 2000s
Just as predictably blemish-free. And

The one that stays most
With me from ’67 – when we
Students with our sex stories
Walked in that rolling way left shoulder
Slightly pointing forward as
If this walking would make us
Talk better or be more alive
To the currents of the time –
It’s the famous one of you
At a Ticker Tape parade:
“Melvin came up with
The idea of making masks
From B & W photographs of my face
Which he gave to the
Crowd to wear…” and only
You are real in yellow
Mini-dress and black leather
Draped around your shoulders.
And you finish your account,
“Melvin and the art direction team
Won several awards.”

***

Edward Hopper Floating Curtain for Jonnie and Anne

2010-02-07T13:35:00.000-08:00

Edward Hopper Floating Curtain

each summer trailing from an open window
across the flat gardens or down the street
I see again that Edward Hopper curtain
a white promise lifted by the breeze
a presence of unshared regret
lingering across my vision/and the light
that comes and changes things
where all alone a woman
kneels on the bed and looks/I
not knowing if she knows just how
the light picks out the rumpled waves
the sheet she’s kneeling on in New York

in London that same light has come
to visit me in the just-before or
just-after I dial or log on boot up

it’s as if Edward Hopper knows my place
the way shadow is and how the light is straight -
straight as my trunk or table -
showing new across the carpet
like a lance from worship or silence
from some place other in the world
that came alight while we still slept

I daren’t go up too close
to those paintings at the exhibition
in case I get pulled through
into that bar somewhere on the corner
in America where loneliness
works by electricity or into a cinema
where the light is red and blue
against the tawdry lushness of cinema curtains
where an usherette lovelier than a film-star
shines in her polyester like a torch

come back home and look through a window
at a scene or part of a scene by Hopper/
it’s just a wall or a building or part
of a wall or of someone in another window
across the night over the street
and even though there is no message
on the answer phone
I still know Edward Hopper
dialled my number while I’ve been out

Once-The-Mission

2009-12-28T08:17:00.000-08:00

Once-The-Mission

Flatlands, eel grass, marsh harriers hover,
copper sanded estuary, reed banks;
paper and glass still prosper; vessels
like floating caverns, grey container-men
Harwich-bound, blank the docks. Pluck owns
the river – swifts weave through park's air space,
lion-cat stroked in the foliage,
Limehouse massage, in and out calls;
once-The-Mission flanked by bovver
is unreal estate, locked gate. Pranks
came at night, a skull-and-cross-bones,
concrete stained by graphic rain.

Search Party

2009-11-10T13:54:00.000-08:00

Search Party

The plans we make are dangerously at sea;
I note your natural confidence and ease
about train bookings, the itinery
that takes us to the Southern tip, then sees
us on a trail that winds intrepidly
into the depths of more uncertainties.
I go along with what you say, then freeze -
wanting to pull back from this unsettling journey.

And then the news that you haven't returned
from an excursion to a wild life park
over six hundred acres in the West.
You stayed to see the sunset as it burned
the trees, lingered there after it was dark,
a friend reported, or bare-facedly guessed.

Then, not worried for you or about you,
we thought we saw your form fly genie-style
emerging from a vase. Just how you flew
we didn't surmise, though it made us smile
to see you smugly calm and bang on cue.
Each day I have to walk a forest mile
on shifting floors, and ratchet up my guile -
no map or guide, the light our only clue;

and your penciled note: "Head for first light
and don't stop 'til the Asian birches start."
In truth I don't quite trust anyone here,
though I stick close to the camp fire at night.
They say there's a new danger everywhere:
seen from far, you couldn't tell us apart.

Under the restaurant's concrete canopy,
the terrace overlooks the lake. We float

above the gentle darkness, less weary
now that we have a bowl of matelote,
a table and - increasingly remote -
chance of a bed. This good, reviving Cote
du something starts to make me worry-free,
though deep down still anxious about the journey -

I've lost all track of you, and lost your smile,
expect to see it like a pale night light,
can't place the way it dimples into shadows.
Instead my watch's luminous blue dial
tells me we've still got hours to kill. I doze,
give up, decouple; it doesn't feel right.

I measure a chaotic football ground:
buses in perpetual movement commute
past me to an unseen moving-around.
The city moves on from route to crazed route;
the engines growl and rumble, shudder, shoot
into tunnels, a sharp, determined sound.
The smallest spat could lead to a dispute.

It's in this sprawl there is a slender chance,
split from the rest at last, of seeing you.
An out-of-town high street, a doorway where
an old kebab shop has a teashop air,
though the unlikeliest of rendezvous,
is where your elfin shape could take on substance.

In slanting evening light where crowds are massing,
wishing we'd thought to bring a camera,
seeing that not to act would cost us dearer,
we move with them, the group we thought was passing,
involved in scenes that get embarrassing.
When anger spills over, nothing could be weirder
than not knowing who it is you're harassing,
crushed against a costume and its wearer.

It's not so much the weight of others makes me
afraid, the need to shove and wriggle free;
rather, it's irony. I tracked you down
against all odds, and if in this strange show
I lose you again the joke would gain renown
amongst our peers. Hold tight and don't let go!

There's a small park near the hotel: I stare
at a white page and try to write this down,
before it peels off in the fresh air
of morning, floats away across the town.
Fact is, last night, over pizza and wine,
you told me the story of your adventure,
starting with how you climb through night to where
the stars shine bright as an amphetamine

high. It was here you had to admit being lost,
and how you stayed lost for, “over all
a longish time…" I write and scribble quickly
all that I can remember and recall
of you, your voice and what it said to me,
vaguely aware of coffee on the roast.

Molecules, Thin Notes

2009-10-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

Molecules, Thin Notes:
Towards a Psychodrama for Weldon Kees

The pencils sharpened long ago
are grey towards the point, the car
abandoned at the Golden Gate,
what make was it and how many
miles on the clock?

“I did my bit for old Miami,
stayed in a boarding house there,
three short weeks one Summer.
A waitress lost her job over me:
I lost my sense because of her.

I parked again in Lovers’ Lane
where the airliners fly low towards
their landing, and the railroad
meets the drive-in picture-house under powdered stars.”

The murder hunts the day of his disappearance
could have sirened the mystery of his loss –
a man pushed in a river for his watch,
a boy stabbed by a railway line
and grizzlier sadistic headlines, gone
like Happy Hour slates chalked for a day,
cigarette buts swept by a janitor.
Each passing year the headlines and the horror
replaced by new, and then outdone
by Armageddon archives of the bomb.

“I did my time in Mexico
jumping freights and hopping trains.
There’s no sun quite like that, burns
and purifies, steals up like peyote,
makes changes to the conceptual brain.”

Did he leave some molecules, thin notes,
tucked in to an Arthur Waley – undiscovered,
a poem for the last steps before the Golden Gate?
His apartment buzzed one last time
with a small bevy of gallery owners,
magazine editors, and Ruesch now working
on a film; drank and conversed about their man,
throwing no light. No light could be
thrown: his life, it seemed, like Robinson’s,
was constructed by one pencil
sharper than the rest.

“The subway cars I ride are knackered now,
the rooms I write about long since disbanded;
the syllables of dialogues that ended float
where the railway does something dramatic
before disappearing under roadway, houses, shops.
In hot July brickwork clings a flower,
course green and yellow: I’m untidy here,
all my senses peeled back. Do you mind if I join you,
shirt clinging in the heat, the static
where the screeching tracks head South,
the wagons open top?”

+++

Alan Ginsberg Dream

2009-06-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

Alan Ginsberg Dream

29/07/07

Alan: I decided to write down those memories I recall from the non-ego memory e.g,

When I was so little
I was barely a weight
in my mother’s hand…..

Then, I see in my dream, the reader has a choice between hyperlinks to reach the end of the poem. The hyperlinks become feely bags you can reach into and pull out the poems. Some of the bags are shaped like Teddies. Joyce knows some of the poems – she comes in as I am pulling out the one above. I wake up.

1946

When I was so little
I was barely a weight
in my mother’s hand

knitted shoes
the size
of her thumb

the beating
of her heart
was my Paris

the conversation
of strangers
London’s mighty roar.

1956

Being on the river
with my mother when
she was still young
enough to fall
on the pavement, pick
herself up & carry on –
luckily her glasses
not broken.

Tall just up to her
shoulder, sitting together
on the wood-slat,
cracked varnish seats
and reading the names
on the sides of barges
yachts & launches and she
knowing I am short-sighted,
saying: “You may
need glasses some day.”

196-

From the Summer
of being fucked up what did I learn?
That people we don’t know
are just as important as people we do,
and other people’s mothers and fathers and best friends.

That night I travelled up the Northern Line
thinking to sleep at my Auntie’s house:
all locked up and silent, forgot she’s
away the weekend – stalled me - I travelled way down
the Northern line to Oval, Cleaver Square
to tell Martin about my girlfriend
and having nowhere to sleep –
and chanting Martin, Martin to no effect, no
window slung open in reply –

Up the Northern line, back up again –
in Pond square I found a
parked car – the replica of Martin’s
black 1950’s Morris his parents ‘d bought him
second hand – knowing it’s not Martin’s car
I get in and find there’s a neatly
folded blanket on the front
seat – curl up that summer night
in door-mouse comfort, feeling
like a Camembert in a picnic basket
sleeping until 6.0 am, when I

stealthily slip the handle up & roll out
onto well-worn tarmac under green Highgate Trees,
remembering to refold the blanket

thankful for this unlocked car
in the morning when Ginsberg was
king of Czechoslovakia
and the May – headed back past Highgate Cemetary to
Achway, and Mum and Dad in Brighton
for the weekend, saying I
spent the night with a friend.

+++

Mallarme

2009-05-08T13:03:00.000-07:00

To a Woman Dreaming

O woman in the act of dreaming,
with your sweet misnomers, understand
how I can plunge into roadless bliss.
Keep my wing safe in your hand.

The freshness of evening light
fans you with the passing of each beat,
with a force so delicate
it pushes the horizon back,

quivering vertiginous. See
how space is like a vast embrace
which, sick of being born for no-one,
can’t pour itself out or calm down.

Couldn’t you feel the paradise
begin like a concealed laugh,
and flow from the corner of your mouth
to the depth of your one white throat!

Aegis of red sand beaches,
stuck in golden evenings – this is it!
This whiteness of closed flight you place
against the fire of a bracelet.

From the French of Stephane Mallarme

Peppermint Aero Green Box

2009-03-04T13:15:00.000-08:00

Peppermint Aero Green Box

What goes in to nothingness
comes out unscathed:
minute unnoticed changes

from dark swathes of inner space,
the leaves’ green tips of carbon flame,
tall pots new-staged in restaurant window.

The Gardener’s Hut looks out
as if from its own transformation –
traumatic or benign?

I don't know what's in the green box:
a glossy close-up curving back,
a memory that springs out at you.

I see a box where flowers were,
and where a nice girl sat reading
framed in April sunlight;

and the tulips lining up
were trying to catch her eye
while the taller shrubs looked on

and the poets stood very still
and tall pretending to be planes,
or floating seeds, amber tea

pouring through dry air.
Sometimes, on the edge of hearing,
they can hear the church bells

grandly inaudible and loudly not there,
waiting for the world to end
at the turning of a page.

+++

2009-02-15T07:09:00.000-08:00

Peppermint Aero Chutney

It was a fortunate misreading
the kind that over-rides the first
dull meaning in a magazine:

four tigers in a frame.
I see them painted by Rousseau.
One gate at least hangs open:

There's a barrier, ten foot tall,
of dull wood painted green,
where the flowers and pathways were.

The overwriting hand is poised.
I think of William Blake,
his birthplace up the concrete steps.

There's an old VW convertible
that often parks round there,
yellow as a plastic bee.

No shop front that I pass
and pass again is ever the same:
blue as surreal ceramic.

Why does latte come out black?
With spikes up close, they look
bigger than church steeples.

A lemon nestles among the apples.
Being very sorry, or just being...
Acting up or just acting...

Soho Side

2009-02-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

Soho Side

Walking the Soho side of Soho Square
I stop and stare: “Who locked the gate on us
in broad January day light?” I enquire
silently, where two girls chat and share. I suss
that they don’t care, don’t notice me; the gate
was never open for these sleek women,
whose English sounds quite confident and bright.
Staring on past them through the gate, it’s plain
to me: Summer has been padlocked away
by the cool giant who wants to ban our pleasure
of lying on worn grass in idle array
until there isn’t any grass – a measure
of potential, in one part of the melee,
for talking up a rapid urban culture.

Some more of Eugene Atget's famous images

2009-01-01T14:15:00.001-08:00

Some of Eugene Atget's famous images

2009-01-01T14:11:00.000-08:00

Documents for Poets

2008-11-16T03:11:00.000-08:00

Eugene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Atget

I call my current series: “Documents for Poets”: after consideration I decided for this, because it obliquely touches on the achievements of a famous photographer, who has been an inspiration to many.
The title is borrowed from the celebrated turn of the century Parisian photographer Eugene Atget whose images included Parisian precincts and suburbs where he sought and found relics and preserved masterpieces of a world that was disappearing rapidly. Much of what he depicted focused on the ordinary and everyday, which through his lens was mysteriously transformed to become dreamlike & iconic.
He referred to his photographs as “documents for artists.”
I therefore retrospectively dedicate my “Poetry Pivotal: documents for poets” to Eugene – a title I think he would have understood and tolerated.

Poetry Pivotal 1

(i)

In the window a canal,
bars spill out on the street;
no longer Summer, green September.

There are caravans of ants
on the pavement, trees, rooftops
and the bridge whose angles
pick up the sheen of grass;
pink dark glasses in the day
and glasses to drink from
at night. The motorway’s

curved boomerang shape;
a perfectly formed film star,
in an evening gown, steps
from a cracked walnut;

looking into the canal
her window glimmers.

(ii)

Overarching the concrete and glass
of the station’s restaurants and shops,
Paddington’s still girders –
like elongated yellow bees
the trains reach for clover
and the barley fields.
Once this station was an actor
young and handsome in the Age of Steam.

The past is still doing
its double act with now:
up and down the escalators,
customers who were once passengers
alight at different levels,

and, ranged in a semicircle,
the Station Orchestra is amply playing
the music of the brass, as if
breasting a river somewhere deep,
where, each with its candle glowing,
ride tiny boats across the stream.

A Poem by Phil Crick

2008-10-31T15:44:00.000-07:00

This poem is quoted from Treble Poets 3 Chatto & Windus 1977.

Quiberon by Phil Crick

"A ten-ton man
in a suit of stone
dozes face down
on the edge of France.

His green jaws nudge
the immaculate beach
and the low waves lance
a rift in his bone.

All ropes unreel
in his waterlogged heart.
He sways on his bed.
His vertebrae moan.

And he floats a long cry
down through the sand
that even the stars
and the quasars own.

Its echo shatters
the sky off Belle-Ile.
At sunset, too,
sea-owls murmur."

Heine Translations

2008-09-06T14:36:00.000-07:00

The following quotation from an old Peter Porter essay seems peculiarly relevant to my recent endeavour.

“Too many translators (and I include myself) are ill-acquainted with the tongues they translate from and know very little about the prosody and traditions of other languages. You can achieve useful results from this ignorance but that is not what translation is supposed to be about.” (quoted by Jon Silkin in the Introduction to his Poetry of the Committed Individual – A Stand Anthology of Poetry – Penguin 1973)

Poems Read in the Dual Language “Songs of Love and Grief“ selected and translated by Walter W.Arndt, North Western University Press Illinois 1995.
Walter.W.Arndt is a renowned scholar, poet and translator.
My versions are my own versions – translated from the ground up by me with the help of my Collins dictionary, yet guided and no doubt influenced by Arndt’s excellent and enjoyable translations. I have also been helped by the biographical essay in “Heinrich Heine: Poems and Ballads” translated by Emma Lazarus – Hartsdale House New York 1947. Without Arndt, I would not of course have had access to a selection of poems drawn from all the periods of Heine’s poetry. This selection highlights the many levels and complexities of Heine’s work. He comes over as very modern, not so much the achingly romantic lyricist the Liede composers latched onto. The poems in Arndt’s selection amount to a volume that has affinities with Baudelaire and the Symbolists.
Why on Earth with my rusty O level German have I taken the step of re-translating these poems? My only motive for producing translations of my own is the enjoyment it produces, the struggle and search for getting it right feels worth while – I imagine as an aspiring piano player struggles to get to grips with a Schubert sonata and gets a buzz when a few bars come out. I hope my “playing” of Heine does not upset the neighbours!
I also hope the results may be useful to someone else as well as me.

***

Wir fuhren allein im dunkeln (Sorry, can’t manage the umlauts in Word)

In the dimly lit coach
We travelled alone through the night;
We pillowed our heads and laughed
On each other’s hearts.

Then, as the morning light appeared,
My sweet, how silent we were:
Between us a new passenger,
The blind one, Love.

Wir haben viel fur einander gefuhlt

We felt a lot for each other
and got on perfectly well;
we often played husbands and wives,
only we didn’t bite each other’s heads off.

We hugged and cuddled a lot –
we kissed each other as well,
and then, on a childlike whim,
we started to play hide and seek,

and we hid from each other
so well and elaborately, we hid
that never on this sorrowful Earth
have we found each other again.

Sie haben mich gequalet

They egged me on
And cut me up:
One with love’s hot brew,
the other with hate’s cold cup.

They put poison in my drink
And brought me poisoned bread;
The one with warmest love, the other
With hate left me for dead;

Yet she who hurt me the most
And strafed my flesh with grit –
She never hated me at all
And loved me not one bit.

Gaben mir Rat and gute Leben

They lectured me and gave me good advice;
They showered me with faint praise,
And said that if I would only wait
They’d put in a good word for me.

Well – for all their good words
I could have wasted away from hunger,
If there had not appeared a more decent man
Who took it upon himself to fight my corner.

A much more decent man, he stopped me from going hungry;
Him, I will never, ever forget!
What a shame I can’t kiss the guy,
For I myself am this decent man.

***

Wie Schandlich du gehandelt

I’ve never told anyone
How shabbily you behaved;
I went far out to sea
And told the fish instead.

So, I have preserved your reputation,
At least on dry land,
While all over the ocean
I’ve branded you with shame.

Es ragt ins Meer der Runenstein

On a rock covered with runic signs,
I sit dreaming above the sea;
The wind whistles and the sea gull cries,
The wandering waves and the foam.

I used to love the travelling men
And all those beautiful girls:
I wonder what happened to them.

The wind whistles,
The foam and the wandering waves.

Meinen schonsten Liebesantrag

You earnestly claim
To know nothing about
My beautiful love note
That bore your name.
Tell me then, sweet dame,
Are you turning me down?
Ah! Oh dear - She’s crying…

Me, I hardly ever
Resort to prayer;
Then, please listen
To this request:
Dear Lord come to this
Girl-for-hire’s breast,
Shedder of sweet tears.
Make her better!

Wenn Ich an deinen Hause

When I happened to be passing
Your house this morning,
I was so glad to see you
At the window with your

Almost black eyes, sweet little girl,
And you looked so searchingly at me
As if to question, “Well, who are you?
And what’s your problem, strange, ill man?”

“I am a German poet,” I answer
“Well known throughout the German lands;
Where people drop the best names
There also my name appears,

And my problem, little girl,
Is shared by many in Germany;
Where the worst sufferings are listed
There also my name appears.

(It would be well worth {any one’s} while checking out Tony Harrison’s excellent film poem about what happened to Heine’s statue, after Heine died in the 1850s, to get another perspective on this theme! I have read the script and would love to see the film.)

Philister in Sonntagsrocklein

Worthy townsfolk in Sunday dress
Go walking through woods and meadows;
They shout and leap about
Like bucks to greet the Spring.

They see with misty eyes
How Romantic everything is;
The flowers, the sparrow’s song,
They suck it all in.

I, however, pull down the blinds
Of my room and make it black;
My ghostly personal friends
Pay me a daytime visit.

Stepping out from death’s kingdom
My old girlfriend appears;
She sits beside me and cries
And melts my heart to wax.

Ich hatte einst ein schones Vaterland

I had a fatherland:
There, the beautiful oak tree thrusts so high,
The bluebells nod peacefully.
It was a dream.

I was kissed in German,
German I spoke –
You can scarcely believe
How good that sounded:
The words, “Ich liebe dich.”
It was a dream.

Die Lorelei: Ich weiss nicht, was sol es bedeuten

There’s a story that is timeless;
I don’t know what it means;
I can’t get it out of my mind
It fills me with such sadness.

As dusk falls the air is cool
And peaceful over the Rhein,
Flowing between far mountains
Whose peaks still catch the sun.

A beautiful young woman
Mysteriously appears;
Her jewellery reflects the light;
She’s combing her golden hair.

Even her comb is golden,
And she sings enchantingly,
Such a sweet melodious chant
It’s wonderful to hear.

The sailor in his little vessel
Is overcome with grief;
He’s not looking at the jagged reef,
Instead he looks up to the heavens.

I think the waves will get involved
With this sailor and his boat:
A finale that, with her singing,
The Lorelei has brought about.

Diese Damen, sie verstehan

These women know just how to
Applaud my poetic genius;
They put on a special lunch
For me – and it of course.

Ah! The soup was delectable
And the wine livened me up;
The chicken was fit for the gods,
And the hare was definitely jugged.

I think there was some talk of po-
etry – at last, quite satiated,
I thanked them for having treated
And bestowed such honours on me.

Anno 1829

So that I can bleed
Conveniently to death
Give me a wide, white field.
Let me not suffocate
In commerce’s closed-in Colloseum.

They wine and dine so well here;
They cram their mouths on prosperity,
And their generosity is as wide
As the alms-box flap!

They deal in spices
From around the world,
Yet behind all the fragrant essences,
You can’t help noticing their souls
Smell of rotten shrimps.

Oh! That I were witnessing a great
Profanity: full of ritzy wickedness –
Not this insipid virtue
And morality of the counting house.

They walk with cigars
Stuck out of their mouths,
And hands thrust deep
In their trouser pockets.
Their digestion is so good -
Who? Oh, who can digest them?

You clouds up there, take me with you.
It doesn’t matter into which far distance –
To Lapland or to Africa
Or it could be Pomorania,
As long as it’s away, away.

Oh, take me with you… They didn’t hear;
The clouds up there are far too wise;
They climb higher when they cross this city,
And anxiously speed up their flight.

Es kommt zu spat was du mir lachelst

Whatever smiles
you were smiling
they came too late;
whatever sighs
you sighed too late –
long-since deceased
the tender feelings
in cruelty rejected!

The love you returned
returned too late –
it fell onto my old heart
like rays of sunshine
on a sarcophagus.

Only, I would
like to know
what happens to
our souls when we are dead.
Where does
the extinguished fire go?
And the air
that fanned it –
where to that?

Die Flaschen sind leer, das Fruhstuck war gut

The bottles are empty, the bacon sizzling,
The girls’ cheeks hot with rosy pinkness;
Hems going up, chemises falling,
They’ve started, it seems, to get undressed.

How white the bare shoulders; the breasts how pretty!
My heart stops, arrested in mid-beat;
Now they’re flinging themselves onto the bed
And parcelling themselves up with the sheets.

They’ve even managed to draw the curtain
And begin snoring in unison.
Like a lonely tower th’embarrassed poet,
In his room, surveys his slept-in bed!

Neuer Fruhling

Through the window
of this morning’s first
awakening, floats
the lovely carillon

sweet song
sweet little song
of spring –
ring out, little song

go far out
into the distance
ring far away -
you’ll come across

the house
where flowers are
just beginning
to appear

and when
you have found
a rose
tell it “Hello” from me.

Translated April 2008

Sea Air

2008-08-11T04:21:00.000-07:00

One moon, many shapes
nightly changing through August
many moons, one self.

The holiday air
is cool, like flasked juice - I walk
the sea-wall again:

gulls on warm air-drafts
glide still in stretch-winged ballet,
banner trailing plane.

Headlines in black and white, news -
a rasped flute happening -

the thermal cameras needed
for hidden earthquake victims.

***

This writing, a phase,
waxing lyrical, waning,
breathing in and out -

a tin-whistle player flauts
for copper and silver coins;
his breath makes music.

The miniature railway
is a great way to travel.

Camera Trouble

2008-08-06T14:02:00.001-07:00

Camera Trouble

It was a piece of plastic heaven,
My Kodak Brownie 127,
A ten-year-old’s quite grown-up toy
To bring delight and to annoy.
I loved to hold it, point and shoot
At everything from head to boot.
It was my I-pod and my air-guitar,
Without a film, I could click thin air.

And then one day I pointed it
Towards a stranger’s open door,
As we climbed the little seaside street.
Exploding like a keg of powder,
Out came the outraged occupant
With every right to rage and rant.
My father joined in to tell me off:
The opposite of Muzzeltov!

I’d stumbled at a tender age
On danger. Though all the rage,
The tempting trinkets of technology,
Seeming the perfect boredom remedy –
Those natty things will do you harm
Unless you stay completely calm:
No quicker way to burst your bubble
Than get yourself in camera trouble!

***

Pussy-Paws

2008-07-07T13:48:00.001-07:00

Pussy-Paws
Dreamt 02 - 3/07/08

In this flat that I do not own
yet feel at home in nonetheless
with a garden whose sound and scents
the old sash cords unveil,

She dives in from the night,
Skids on the window-seat;
fur: colour of the black
window thrust up to night.

She pirouettes and jive-arches,
turns, all tale and neck:
I stroke her from the neck back
in the way I know she likes.

All quick, sudden and pulsating,
with the energy of night life,
in a living room that’s better
than the one from the life I know,

taller and swishier, creamier,
with this one fine-tuned cat.
What can this mean?
What can it, save –

Pussy-Paws loves you.

SYPHON

2008-06-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

SYPHON

Long-ago, through
night and day
linked to now,
film-frame by frame:

a car door slams,
an engine runs,
sometimes there are voices,
sometimes none,

the long rumbling
of a train,
the almost-no-noise
of a drawer opening.

Silence like water-drops
suspended through walls
or ceilings, a click,
a throat cleared.

Summer is staying awake,
nightly responding;
Summer is opening
the lens of your eyes.

Second by second,
where rail-yards meet
the estates and part-buys,
the city’s pulse fades fast:

light is beginning
all over again
in a kiss, an embrace
that never stops.

Ballad of Lost Objects 2

2008-05-24T14:01:00.000-07:00

Ballads of lost objects
(ii)

With a roll of Kodak Tri-X in my Praktika,
camera concealed and disguised in canvas rucksack,
I came to the Café Nero on that Autumn day
When the sun drenched the plate glass window in light and heat.
We talked of illnesses and work and what retirement
could mean with low spending, Arts, London and Freedom Pass.
We stopped with the coffee drinkers and newspaper readers
for less than an hour, walked up towards the Tube,
the young fashion-wearers in their old high heels looking good,
and parted on the corner of Flask Walk, to walk
further into the fine day, I to shoot my roll of film.

Gingerly at first, framing the shops and then the Flask,
my shoot got bolder, quicker, aiming for contrast and shape.
Go for the cool word “Ginsberg” on the name of a close,
get down close to the cobbles for texture, low f-number.
Walk up, turn left, circle back to the Tube and fire off
the rest of the film at the branches of dusty trees
by the bus shelter; “ride” the 46 back home.

Rewinding on the couch with curtains drawn, there’s a snag:
Tri-X is ASA 400 – I’d forgotten
about the ISO settings, so used to automatic!
Back in the’70s you had to set the beast.
I’m 4 stops out and, disgusted, bin the film:
those bleached out prints would be money down the
drain.
Later, the nagging thought appears and won’t go away –
Those 4 stops out could well have been the key, a door opening..

+++

N.B. Kodak Tri-X is a black and white film still favoured by some photographers over digital. Some great B&W photos have succeeded precisely because of their high contrast “burned in” through aberrant exposures.

German Poem

2008-04-26T04:32:00.000-07:00

German Poem

Recently I came across this German poem. It was printed on an end-of-term exam paper from 40 years ago, in that type-written Roneo system, that made 25-30 copies before the copies became so faint they were of no further use.

There is no title and it seems to be identified by its first line which is underlined. The exam question asked us to read the poem and offer a prose translation of it. I vaguely remember that someone in our class foolishly and facetiously translated “grungolden”(umlaut on “u”) as Golders Green. The German teacher was not amused.

I can’t imagine why I kept this old paper. Perhaps the poem moved me in a way I did not grasp fully at the time. Or perhaps it is just my archaeological filing system which preserves and conceals at the same time. Now, re-reading it after the long interval, I hope the translation I offer - with the help of my Collins German Dictionary - is better than the one I did for the exam.

The name at the bottom of the poem is H.Heinze, which I assume is a typo for Heine. I’m not sure. There is a Helmut Heinze, who wrote novels and plays – perhaps it is him.

Grungolden und goldfarben leuchten die Blitzen auf…

Green-yellow, yellow-green
The lightening flashes
Suddenly across the sky:

I can’t be sure
Whether that’s you across the street,
As out of a charged cloud,
Heavy rain splashes down.

The heavy rain
Makes people run for cover –
Anywhere to find
An awning or a doorway.

While, I stand stock still
Alone on the pavement,
My Summer shirt stuck close,
The rivulets washing my back.

I saw you there,
From two Summers ago:
The love I lost.

I saw you
With your dark blue eyes
And pale smooth skin,
As the lightening flashed
Yellow-green, green-yellow,

And the rain,
In rivulets, anoints me
With your blessings
From two Summers ago.

Picnic

2008-04-19T14:08:00.000-07:00

History Society Picnic with Arthur Cubit

The celery dipped in salt,
no pepper, and the wine
chilled in the river, not
from the fridge. Sticking
to documented foibles we
laid the patchwork cloth
on the short grass, sloping
with the sun undulating in
and out across the Downs.

These moments feeling right,
we praised the books we knew
he loved, and his own re-
examination of Auden, in the Star;
and it seemed the atmosphere
pleased our distinguished guest.
Someone derisively
cracked a joke about his old
adversaries, the second Phalanx –
the first splinter of
the Socialist Collective.
Laughter spread through
the occasion from those
who could not see his face,
his eyes darkening; then

he spoke: “Is that meant to be funny?
What gives you the right
to mock the heroic, my
companions in struggle –
insult to the Working Class.”
Silence arrested our flow;
from behind me came
the scrunching of a plastic cup;
clouds undulated
across the Downs, like sheep
entering a pen.

I was glad I’d asked
Cubit to sign his poems
in the pub before the picnic,
in the safely atmospheric
wood and glass interior
where we have our
Saturday morning meetings
every other week.

Film Still in Camden

2008-02-29T14:47:00.000-08:00

Film Still in Camden Town

Went to Camden in sunlight
to check out the ready mades, cool
by the fish and flans, couldn’t find the water.
Outside on the street, thought about
the fire, the wreck burnt out,
rage burnt out, stalls, boxer reeling,
security guard with coffee and skinny ribs.

I walked up to the cross roads, a week later,
and took this photo, staring at the people-rushes,
one week after the fire before the railway bridge.
Camden Lock: business picking up, the car makes;
Photographed the Odeon letters
Making deep shadows, young actors
In the world, aggressive gait, ambling at me.

The fire again, the wreck:
think of starting a poem to a boxer
still sent packing, sickening reeling,
still packing punches, sickening blow.
He got it in the ribs; got stuck.

I photo-shopped the first car too much,
looks like a ghost car, only the central group
stand out: young actors against the station –
something about to happen; the beginning
of a film. I turned and walked past the flow
er stall: dozens watching this time real.
Ash falling, heat enough to twist metal,
red night sky reflecting on his smooth sweat:
the boxer, muscles rippling, keeps on coming.

Deep Roots

2008-02-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

Poetry Pivotal 2

These hesitations, advances,
doublings back & crossings out,
snakes-and-ladders, scrapings
at opaque prisms of light

a Tolkien ordeal of
winding precipices and milky depths
that takes me to the realisation
I am clinging to a secret

that leads and holds me back –
it’s the reason the horizon’s tilting
all ways, and why the poem
is suspended in a tunnel of jet

until its scraps and stages
gather into one shape and make
a faint beam for the next few steps,
a yellow circle for the white page,

the beginning of a re-enacting
in the arc of a new shedder of light
more positive than torch or match,
a strong light mirrored, sun

in a distant morning, reaching here.
My fighting black characters straddle
the bridge; lying back on a ledge
I drink the safe shadow and go on.

+++

The Shop in Soho

2008-01-02T13:22:00.001-08:00

The Shop in Soho

Madmoiselle Maigret and her detective
father outside the Algerian
coffee store on Old Compton Street:
in a culture of parkas
and hoods, his trilby stands out –
he a smoker of pipes, she
in tights and blue shoes.
Together they look
at the coffee makers, closely, considering…

a gift for Madame Maigret.
While she goes in to pay, he regards
this Soho, as if a Kasbah.
Alone on the pavement, he stands for Bonjour;
he stands for au revoir;
he stands guard
for Parisien Savoir,
for self respect
and the daily grind,
for love and the love
of the smell of ground coffee.

For tobacco
for Mystery,
pour La Vie.

+++

Kitchenware

2007-12-21T11:38:00.000-08:00

Kitchenware

All day they stand by –
the salt, the pepper –
to dispense their seasoning
on egg or broth or pasta:

passed from hand to hand,
pushed over, stood up;
and for tardiness
tapped smartly on the table.

Now it is night in the kitchen.
A faint gleam
from a street lamp
illuminates their glaze:

once more they are objects,
whose reticence breaks down.
In silence that clicks like ice
once more they are china.

+++++++

Tour Guide '85

2007-10-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

TOUR GUIDE ‘85

More than guide, our guide -
a leader who advises and, in
his young and handsome way, cajoles:
“Stay with the group and follow me –

Don’t linger, even for an instant,
I can’t guarantee your safety if you do.”
English spoken correctly with an accent
and with Romanian emphasis, panache.

With funny tummy, feeling groggy, must
Decide: should I get on the coach or not?
No looking back, we’re on, and being counted.
When we board the airy motor launch

with wooden slat seats on its deck,
“You can have a soft drink,”
he announces over the sound system.
“I recommend the beer.”

From the first sip I see why;
tasting that cool Moldavian draft
a new landscape opens up. After that
the stomach’s fine; the launch chugs on,

onto Danube’s wide waters
the sun turns to fiery ice;
and the rising notes of a young
accordion player accompany us

released with subtle and peculiar-to
-his region rhythms and flaring riffs;
as heat beats down on wood-hard seats,
the launch goes on and into Noon and lunch:

an old village on an island
where they farm all Summer for the frozen flood
of Winter; a pale place where chickens run.
The guide – now serious – explains, disturbs

the account of hardship is so grim –
and what he doesn’t tell us,
couldn’t tell us, though later on he knew,
the deprivation was both giant and wicked.

At last we reach the port,
the evening soft as feathers floating,
and we follow and do not linger,
reaching the upstairs restaurant by the water:

the harbour of Constantia where
we’ve stepped into a sea of good ions
and our guide has gone quiet, becomes
invisible, as here he knows we’re safe

being feted at the long wooden tables,
cared for by sisters of the revolution –
a meal that is simple, yet
amounts to a delicious nourishment;

the music entertaining, not too strident,
adds to the sense of the evening passing
full of light, and the wine, not exactly
flowing, is glowing with Arcadian life!

+++

Meeting House

2007-09-23T03:56:00.001-07:00

HOP GARDENS

Here where the convent
planted hops to rival Kent’s
and brewed their own dark beer,
a company of trees keeps watch
at high windows.
Their garden shadows
mingling, intimate
a saraband of centuries
or an old tango
from the slow Atlantic –

Now the Meeting House has
bells for several skills
and Saturday morning crafts:
electric urns for sacheed tea,
coffee or chocolate from a jar.
The bell the poets ring,
next to Buddhist Meditation,
is labelled, Tango Club: a wait
for poet - or meditator? – to let us in.

From the ceiling a hanging arc
lights up the central table
and, not quite falling on
our latest typed pages,
necessitates a leaning forward,
creates a closer gathering.
Sequins that cannot be sewn
colder than quartz & quicker
than the song of birds,
each different mind coheres
in a temporary fabric: glass leaves
collected to reflect and listen
as the one voice steps forward
to trounce the half light
with a flare.

Sat Chit Ananda

2007-09-07T13:58:00.001-07:00

chocolate cup cakes

in delicate white
corrugated casing
right up to the icing

on a plate on a
table cloth in the
house of a friend

shoes left outside
so not to ruin
the clean beige carpet

or the strip
of parquet in the hall
so when we ran

and shouted or
dropped dead
shot by a colt 45

it was only our
clean socks sliding
on the polished ice-rink –

at the signal
hands washed for neat
paste sandwiches

no cake until
these savouries were gone
washed down with tea

and then of course
the giggles as the amber
tea cascaded

into china cups
as if from somewhere safe
where it had always been

until at last -
the cup cakes
first bite through smoothness

into crumb-
ling cakeness
and more to taste

as icing melted
on the tongue
munching sweetness

which led in time
to more giggling more
amber from the pot

tonight

2007-09-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight

After a wintry August
to think I’m drinking this wine -

Let’s go to Oxford
set off early in the morn –
well, maybe, perhaps…

7/9/07

River Mole

2007-08-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

Crossing the Mole towards Box Hill

We parked beyond the rattling bridge, and took
The river path intent on walking far,
At our side farmed fields, slopes looming
To the left, eager as we’d seen
The clocks go forward, and the young leaves –
And, being older, my brother had a plan.

Before the stout new ones were safely laid
There used to be old stepping stones –
Moss-covered, weed-slippery, yet still there
Where swollen waters slid, their speedless curves
Leaving brown bubbles and a wake of silver;
And with our rubber soles we went from one to one,
That Spring day, climbed the steep incline
Of the wood-covered hill they led us to,
Hanging on to roots and trunks, until
We came to the strange tombstone
Near the summit, hidden amongst twigs and stems.

This man – the inscription clearly said –
Was buried upside down; the reason,
All the world is topsy turvy,
Walks the wrong way up, and so in Heaven
He would be the only one to enjoy
The trick of standing on his feet.

George Lavellier – just proud
Of the encroach of Nature – like
The stepping stones – his tomb
A statement for unwary ramblers,
Capsule of subversive logic; though the currents
Of fashion go noiselessly by,
He’s always hip and wittily eccentric.
I took him as a hero then, and benefactor
Bequeathing the best tonic he knew:
Subsequent decades confirm
From high up there, the illustrious view.

+++

Birdsong Memories

2007-08-08T04:41:00.000-07:00

Birdsong Memories

Twenty years ago, there were birds which used to sing volubly together – blackbirds and thrushes included – so loudly sometimes they used to wake us up. It was beautiful though not always popular. Most movingly, a thrush sometimes sang in Winter.

In the late 'eighties, Kentish Town’s dawn chorus faltered and stopped. In the 'nineties we used to have stentorian crows who would tell the whole neighbourhood off. Then we had a few pigeons, until by the late 'nineties even they disappeared. From then on it has been silent and – quite literally – “No birds sing.”

Until just the other day….See previous post.

Another Tale

2007-06-04T02:06:00.000-07:00

Another tale

A load of your sorrows pulled by a worry,
Just as you painted them, joined up the dots;
From these pre-numbered lines you start to see
A working donkey, sore-shouldered, trots

Through a wood, dust in its eyes, exploited.
What have you done with the blank page? Take heart -
Ink’s all that’s there – a touch of green & red.
They’re the cortex trudges on, not donkey and cart.

The donkey’s safe in a paddock with fresh grass;
Gladly she takes soft saddle-bags to market
Packed with the sage her owner has to sell…

And then erase the lot. Pack up your kit -
The pens, the brushes, paper that will pass
For real, next day another tale to tell.

Seventh Sense

2007-05-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

Seventh Sense

He walks through the forest, through light and shade,
Collecting lichens, herbs for his cell, thinking
That behind each tree is a hidden trunk,
A darker shadow hung before the glade –
The hardest part of living as a monk,
The space between each nodding asphodel,
A long time to call things. Self-sinking,
Self-doubting he walks on, ignores the bell

That calls him to a simple contemplation.
He goes into the profounder silence
That the roots themselves inhabit in their search;
Dark-sensitive like them, a seventh sense
Develops in him, like an intuition.
He stops to hug the birch and then the beech.

+++

Kenneth Hyam 25/05/07

The Sensual Crayon

2007-05-07T04:51:00.000-07:00

After last Sunday’s German-English dual lingo reading in the Meeting House, some of us were in the mood for more – translating, that is. Maria Esdovin and several other poets came back to the flat and sank a few Guiness Exports – a good place to start. Maria agreed to give an interview and reading of her own and I switched on my reel-to-reel.

Lucas: Am I right, Maria, in saying that you have been translating your own Perovian these days?
Maria: You are really right.
Lucas: Er.. do you mean that I’m 100 per cent right?
Maria: I mean I have my reservations.
Lucas: You mean I am not really right or I am only rarely right?
Maria: Yes, Yes. You are. (uncontrollable laughter from around the room).
Perovian is very…. Is very hard language to translate, especially as there are so few speakers in this country, apart from the small Perovian community in Kentish Town. Perovian poetry works by resonance and association –
Helen: Yeah,so does all poetry!
Lucas: Look – this is Maria’s interview. O.K.
Maria: No, Helen is quite right. It is just that the resonances and associations are very hard to grasp outside of original Perovian, especially in the dialect of the province I am from.
Helen: O.K. cool .(Sighs all round).
Lucas: So what are you going to read, Maria?
Maria: I’m going to read from my long poem The Road – only short extract.!
Lucas: Is it O.K. if I get this on tape? You know I’m recording this.
Maria: It is really alright.
Lucas: Um… yeh.

N.B. Anyone interested in reading a transcript of Maria’s poem and other extracts please go to:
http://sensualcrayon.blogspot.com

or click on my profile and click on the link for The Sensual Crayon

Bricks and Mortal

2007-05-07T01:38:00.001-07:00

Robert is now back from his adventures in Italy. We have come to an arangement.
He has a very unusual - even for Robert - story and instead of telling it on my blog he has agreed to have one of his own.
He says he thinks the internet has de-poeticised poetry and refuses to type anything except onto his ancient i-book which he then prints out as if it was just a typewriter. Yet, in spite of this high moral stance he asks me to blog his poems when he feels like it. O.K. Rob, I'll do it gladly 'cos I believe in yr talent.
For those who want to follow Rob's meanderings, then, click on my profile and click on the blog called "bricks and mortal."

Postcard from Perovia

2007-04-07T14:13:00.000-07:00

It seems one of the last things Robert did before he departed Pero Airport for Rome was to send me a postcard. Sent almost a month ago, it has just arrived. It is a large format card with a typical Esdovian landscape, masses of ripening wheat - undulating not flat - disappearing to hilly grey horizon.
On the card Rob boasts of his visit to the controversial poet Noise Astute who is living again in Esdovia, his native province. The remarkable landmark house which he designed for himself has been "borrowed" by the authorities who say that its pear-shaped dome is ideal for the hush hush work that is going on there. Rob's journalist contacts say it is the government-backed Centre for Psychic Research. Noise's pear-shaped dome - entirely aesthetically concerved - is thought to possess remarkable properties for sending and receiving in paranormal experimentation - telepathy to you and me!
Noise is currently apparently housed in a local farmhouse where he enjoys views of his beloved pigs and geese from his two room apartment on the top floor.
According to Rob, Noise is planning to break his nine-year silence this spring. This has been partly triggered by reading the Mezzanine Esportu that Plautus posted to this blog a little while back. As pointed out this is a highly complex form, which takes years of practice to master. Noise was very moved to see it flourish from England and has replied with an Esportu of his own:
Yestremi testremi manu
clostroti whorly epran
Giggs Manchester United!
Acumentec tootie chestrud.

Robert has not bothered to translate and my schoolboy Perovian really isn't subtle enough. Nonetheless I have decided to blog it, as no doubt it is worth archiving.

More From Latin Rob

2007-03-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

At least this time he's had the sense to email me, so I can paste it straight into the blog.
I've edited out the first bit where he berates me for accuately transcribing his spelling mistakes on that napkin (some folks are never satisfied). Suffice to say that he's recalled some more of his day in ancient Rome (from now on, AR).
He was walking through the market in AR, when a messenger ran up to him - suspiciously not out of breath, no dust on his sandles - and thrust this into his hand proclaiming, "Ab amico tuo: ecce haec epistulae" or some such doggerel.
Sounds to me as if the waiter has slipped some grappa into his tamarindo!

Bright Sun In The Square

I wish I could remember more - the whole letter:
some fragments come, no photographic memory.
I recall hanging on each Latin word and phrase
with goatskin vino, hunk of bread and cheese
seated at ease in oleander shade,
it seemed penned by th'exiled Roman bard,
no need translate - my brain was latin-wired.

Can still see my Chaucer notes 'bout Ars Amoris,
which crops up in the Canterbuty tales:
"A lovers handbook by the poet Ovidius,
literary giant of the ancient world."
And I, reading this key letter just yesterday
can now mostly see shadows on a page
of freshly folded parchment, bright sun in the square -
I shoulda done that Dale Carnegie course...
Two things are even odder: as I write these notes
now in Amato with a rum and coke
that messenger just rode by on a Ducati;
second is doubt - the doubt within my mind -
not that I was there reading that mint papyrus
my doubt was whether Ovid was the author
......sorry protocol at the Amato says my time is up with this computer - to be continued.

News from Roma

2007-03-22T15:24:00.000-07:00

I had been wondering what's happened to Rob. Last I heard he was in Pero with Maria. Now it appears Maria is back - I ran into her today in Cafe EuroMed. She's very reticent about her visit to her homeland. Still no pubication date for her forthcoming volume "The Sensual Crayon"
When I got home I found a letter on the mat. It contained this. Typical of Robert not to include a letter - just the pome scrawled on a napkin bearing the title "Amato". Oh Well at least he seems to be having a ball.

ROBUTUS OVIDII AMICUS

Somewhere on the third hill
beside the railway line
above the Piazza Risorgimento -
home in on Google Earth
& you can just see it among the ruins
centuries old – the tomb of Robutus, my ancestor.

I found it, separate from the vaults,
a weathered slab, sloping encrustation,
almost erased th’inscription:

“Robutus Ovidii amicus
Corpus atque moenium generis muralis
Dithirambi et carmina pro Bachi pangabat
Coluit in Roma et in Roma
Ad suum moenium recurrit”

As I stood numbly trying to translate
I seemd to stumble, blankd – the empty world
replacd the full one, pod-like, dark
thousand-year preserver of seed.
stript of all photons a floating funnel
where Dante, Michelangelo and Fellini
could be heard laughing. Their
joyful giggles accompanied
my bumpy landing in a busy market
not far from… what recognised? Those toga’d
gents – such decorum at the Forum!

The speech I heard around me
not Italian, though it had the ring, was Latin.
That much I knew, marvelled how it bubbled
from their lips – mine also – my
hot lips! Spoke in Latin, for a day
down there.
Now, a touristo inglaisie
I transcribe these notes for you
my fine friends in Kentish Town;
I'm up among Fiats and Alfas again,
sipping a tamarindo in the Via Giadorno Bruno.

Perovian Song Bird Discovered

2007-02-18T10:36:00.000-08:00

The following dialogue was picked up on the mic input of a media player in the Assembly House last night. I have transcribed it making no alterations except where the sense would have been lost without them.

Rob: Your turn, Lucas. I’ll have a pint of Pride.
Maria: Another of those fizzy wines, please Lucas.
Lucas: O.K – a pint of Pride and a spritzer

(Bar noises and me ordering the drinks)

Rob: Cheers Mate
Maria Cheers
Lucas I got some nuts
Rob: So Maria why won’t you read us one of your…
Maria: One of my poems you mean?
Rob: Yeah – you are mean not showing them to us
Maria: Yes – but it’s the translation: I still compose in Perovian and then into English. It’s like with the Noise poem – I have to search for the silence and out of the …
Rob: Yeah the silence…the Word comes from that…translate your own word!
Maria: Anyway you did most of the translating. I gave you just the literal meanings…
Rob: Nah. It was mostly you luv. Come in – join the mob. You’re one of us now. Let’s have one of your pomes. I know you’ve got one with you be… cause you were writing it when I got here. I saw that notebook you’ve been secreting about your person.
Lucas: I seem to remem’er you used to be quite coy – at the Frenz House when you first went
Rob: Save some of those nuts for me, Lucas mate. Yeeh!! We all need to get the right moment – nahmeen? Maria this has got to be it….
Maria: Mmmm
Rob: Good on yer girl..
Unidentified
Voice: Someone turn the light out – I’m goin to sleep – turn the light orf.
Second unid.
Voice No, don’t do that. I’m still reading.
Maria Well – here goes then

Maria reads one of her poems from her forthcoming collection.
(For copyright reasons I am not allowed to blog it. Maria would not mind herself. It is a fact that the publishers and her sponsors – The Perovian Institute of New Writing – have expressly restricted any pre-publication. Let’s not forget that the P.I.N.W is an important contributor to the literary scene in that small but significant country and we should not disregard its wishes lightly. Even Noise’s membership was suspended for several years when he was suspected of Romanticism. The charge was completely unfounded, of course, but he was left out in the cold for a while.
N.B. Robert and Maria are flying Pero this week for a holiday and hopefully will be able to get permission, while they are there, for Maria to release a few of her poems in translation.)

Rob: yes.
Lucas I really enjoyed that – Thanks Maria. The images from painting and drawing were so strong!

Unident.
Voice You’re not one of them bleedin graffiti artists are you!

Mezzanine

2007-01-26T08:45:00.000-08:00

This poem has been translated from the original Perovian by Robert Trellisand and Maria Esdovin. As a Perovian speaker, and poet in her own right, Maria has been invaluable in helping Robert to produce the English version.

Noise's buildings have been largely industrial and domestic, innovating housing complexes and ergonomic plants for light manufacturing, but his early work was revolutionary.
It is said that he never fully forgave the authorities for rejecting his design for a building consisting entirely of Mezzanine floors.
In this poem, which is clrealy linked to that experience, Vecute's political reference are covert and extremely difficult for an English reader. The poem has nonetheless started to gain an underground audience, and it is hoped that a full annotated version will appear soon.

Mezzanine

It’s still there in the depths of me,
not far from the garden with its worn
grass and single tree:

it’s a storey on which many storeys
have been built – each year another story.
Tall and grey-clad now
I sway gently, imperceptibly
with the tremors and air-
disturbances of time.

In the depths of me, still there
and difficult to reach, since
all the lift operators were fired
and Maintenance were relocated –
and the stairs are dangerous!
On some of those middle floors
I wouldn’t linger, what with
well – you know – the rats
and the graffiti. I mean
the graffiti on the wall
and the rats on the bed:
those half-way-ups, where,
sucked away by the updraft,
towels disappear from window-sills.

It’s difficult to get back
to where I want to be,
and then – once there – I might not get back up
if my knee’s playing up.

Yes – it’s still there, a gentle curve of curtain,
those real brick walls,
multifarious brick, orange
and yellow and oddly tinged
as bricks are. Good old brick,
decent and honest – that’s what I miss!

It’s not the first floor
the one I’m telling you about;
it’s one up from adolescence,
or is it one down?

Any rate, it’s not
the central storeys that interest me, nor these
wind-buffeted facades up here,
where – to be frank with yer –
what goes round comes around.

Ah! If only I could get back
down there
down to my mezzanine
where you can talk to people from the balcony
or, if they’re playing football
with their kids,
just smile or do something
friendly and ironic with your eyebrows.

I’ve grown from the ground up
each year a little further
and – build we must – so I must live
with the building I’ve become,
realising I’m descended
from what’s below – what
was that Wordsworthian dictum?

Ah, Yes – the mezzanine
that’s what I was:
a balcony full of Summer
a ledge-full of scents:
the people who dwelled in me, friend and foe….
I remember once, one evening,
just before it rained,
somebody I once knew
succeeded in getting a glass of wine
out of the window, offering it down
in carnival gesture, as the taker
reached up from the… ground.

++++++

A Parish Mystery

2006-12-30T11:11:00.000-08:00

Robert dropped by the Bull and Last the other day with a piece of paper he said he had got from his grandfather's chapbook which had in turn belonged to his great grandfather. The piece is not dated but the chapbook with ballads by local pamphleteers was published in 1832.
When I faced Robert with the fact that he claims he is descended from the wall at the bottom of the road he looked me in the eye and told me not to be so f---ing patronising. Another thing we differed on was our explanations of the reference to Headlong Hallies.
Robert believes it is his great grandfather's tribute to Thomas Love Peacock - Headlong Hallies being people who admire or who are hooked on the novel Headlong Hall.
My interpretation is different - I think it is far more likely to refer to the comet which was in the sky during 1832.i.e Hally's Comet The Headlong Hallies would therefore be the types who fling themselves through life like a comet and have no repect for the polite orbits of planetary folk.
Rob and I can't agree on this but have agreed to differ - we are therefore jointly posting the extract from Great Grandad Trellisand. Would be grateful for the views of others.

We Headlong Hallies disrespect
the venerable spires and their elect;
and focus our nightly long conjecture
on heavenly bodies' architecture.
We look ...... (askance)
at dull doctrinalism;
our more aitheistic schism
regards the material itself..

We have transcribed the handwriting as accurately as possible, though can't make all of it out.

Waiting

2006-11-09T14:46:00.000-08:00

Waiting…

You could almost reach up
and touch the deserted balcony
above the busy street; its old
metal railings admit striped light
to a world you can’t quite see,
a forgotten stage, a proscenium
where a memory lingers, or a sense
of something about to happen.

Down in the streets, in pairs, women
walk, talk and laugh together;
men, in twos, stride manfully.

Two buses together
at the depot, ready to rumble
waiting for their driver,
are vessels, waiting to be filled.

Behind walls and windows people
are talking, or sitting and listening.
There are people going somewhere
or waking up at home
getting ready to go somewhere –
to staff an enquiry desk,
or get to their shift,
to meet in the park or
just to be in the park,
queuing for cinemas,
standing in bars,
on moving staircases,
like red cells in capillaries
or like droplets moving
in tubes of glass. Travelling

somewhere or returning
from travelling;
moving points in a panel
of sky connect up the globe….

And the stage, tiny and bare,
is still lonely, still waiting,
as the light alters,
for two actors again to enter
and play out their scene together.

+++

Ross's Riddle

2006-10-06T14:47:00.000-07:00

Ross’s Riddle

It was past the last station on the line
Where philosophers go to perpetrate
The overthrow by positive virtue
Of amorphousness and indifference,

In the ruins of a Norman castle.
A fine rain fell the day I walked up there,
Making the trees and vegetation drip –
As if dipped in an Existential ocean:

The records of our world were washed away.
Engaged yet uninvolved, energised and yet
Laid back, I headed for the old stone walls
Which would have been deserted, save for Ross

Who’d worked his primus up to brew some tea.
We stood under the partly crumbled arch
With our enamel mugs, unsmilingly
Discussing the cycle of lake, heat & rain.

“Look, Trellisand, it’s like your bath –
Evaporation and condensation
Make water run in droplets down your walls
It’s simple really – that’s what rain is, see.”

Naturally, I didn’t quite see, provoked
And grumbled, “The lake’s not boiling, is it?
So how can it make steam, evaporate?”
“Your bath’s not boiling either, mate. It’s heat

It takes and just the change in temperature
In water, air and upper air to make
The droplets form and fall as bloody rain!
What nature takes out, nature puts back in.”

To fend him off, I nodded and agreed,
Taking a rich tea biscuit from the plate,
Which presented miraculously dry.
The tea at least made sense and quenched my thirst.

His close-cropped reddish hair, and beard,
A little more unkempt, conspired to make
His thin face seem perpetually strained
As if from touring in a Hillman Imp.

And still it rained whitening the green landscape
Veiling near trees and distant houses, both,
In its approaching, disappearing mist.
My question came from deep down, welling up:

“There’s something I have come to ask you, Ross.”
He tapped his mug against a stone to get
The tea leaves out, rinsed, then sighing
Stood straight, “Well, Robert, spit it out – all ears.”

“What I’d like to ask is this,” I started,
“Would I, if I had done things differently,
Be better off than I am now? That’s it.”
His face seemed more inanimate than rock

Or stone – metallic, his eyes looked past me
Diffused and distant as the hills they scanned
Time had not stopped. I felt a heavy and
Cumbersome frame pass too close for comfort.

Then Ross began to speak. The spell was lifted
“Done things differently? I’ll say you have –
Differently from me and from all men.
What you mean, chum, is different from different

Ly. But, had you done things “differently”
They would not, then, be different – nor the same.
The difference that you ask about can be
Between universes only, you see..”

He trailed off in rasping cackles, showed
An unfamiliar set of tea-stained teeth,
And then, once more composed, restarted: “Rob,
The past has gone – alright, chum – quite gone!

Don’t dwell on it. Read the philosophers
And read the actual words they’ve written down
And look at knowledge and the verb to know;
In silence find the word you cannot hear.”

Down through the dripping meadows, having thanked
My man, I headed for the station, wrapped
In my own thoughts, replaying Ross’s riddle
In my head – noticed the trees looked greener –

The rain had stopped & a bird perched
On the station fence, grey and white plumage
Sharply etched, seeming too to take me in
Before it flew: “Now”, now the answer came.

****

Chaser

2006-08-25T04:03:00.000-07:00

A woman, calling herself Kentish Town, has appeared at the Torriano Meeting House. Robert thinks she is having a bit of a joke at his expense. Be that as it may, we went for a drink afterwards at the Assembley House and bought her a pint.
She thrust this poem at us which she says she is too embarrassed to read to the group. I personally think it's an amusing reply to Rob's poem, and Kentish has given her wry permission for it to go out as a posting on this blog.

Champagne is not my drink, it never were.
I see the point you're making about my letters -
Bubbly and white - but that's for smart go-getters.
Look, Mate, it's London Pride or Youngs that I prefer:
A well-pulled pint has white froth on the beer.
Simply explained, it's beer that breaks the fetters.
Do us a favour, let's leave the champers
Until our first book's published. Listen here:

This woman , or dame, drinking Thunderbird -
I think you undersell y'self there. Load a
Glass with a dram of whiskey, add some soda,
That's more like your style, Mate. On my word,
Thunderbird sounds like a hot-rod racer.
Scotch, Mate! I'm Kentish hops and your're the chaser.

2006-08-18T16:42:00.000-07:00

A visitor to this blog has asked me to publish this photo and the following poem - it is my good friend Robert Trellisand - the wall man of Kentish Town. Robert and I met at the Torriano Meeting House and we have talked about pomes a bit. That's Rob's letters, his mortal coil, you see there up on the wall just beneath the brand new job by a local artist.

Face to Face

Super-graffiti’d on my wall, a name –
Not Hollywood, L.A. and not New York
Those bubbly letters seem to fizz and uncork
Champagne, a white froth promulgating fame,
While my letters have no such fancy claim,
No glass to catch them, ice to make them work.
Mine are the fine fume a New World dame
Exhales when she’s got Thunderbird to walk.

I share my being with this pride of place
My dreaming mansion suddenly a commune;
What twist of Kismet, quirky stroke of Fate
To pair me with this jaunty fellow, face
To face with: .Kentish Town! I’ll say, Fortune
To stand by him; am proud to call him mate.

*******

2006-08-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

We reared him in the
kitchen with the spice and herbs -
feed him on sunlight.

hip hop beats

2006-07-22T02:53:00.000-07:00

hip hop beats
from the cafe on the corner
have spread through the square

2006-07-16T03:18:00.000-07:00

Just One Pint

"My poems just keep coming," mumbled Ant,
One sultry Tuesday, as he got up to read
His latest, to an aimiable sycophant
Who'd joined him in the Gardener and Weed

Suzanne could drink one pint while he drank four
And though he never seemed the worse for wear
She called a cab to take him to his door
And shared the mile to make sure he got there.

Now, helpmate, she whisperingly confided,
"I've sent your poems to the TLS."
The SAE came back, and soon derided,
Suzanne revamped herself, regrouped, no less -

She spends her Tuesday evenings poem-writing
with just one pint to see what it will bring

2006-07-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

In the heat that has become cool
the Beats have become the beats...

2006-06-17T05:38:00.000-07:00

Striped Space and Gardener’s Hut

They’ve made a garden stage of the old gardener’s hut
A piece of scenery within the garden’s heart
All winter a cage of wire went around the bench,
Scaffolding supports and January’s plastic sheeting
For the grass. Now – perplexing transformation –
The black-wood, plaster hut is clad in artful boards
That, portraying a full-size version of itself,
Encases and so protects. Lead windows, tiled roof
Proudly emerge from this suit of party armour
That guests surround in the hot June sunshine: they laugh
And touch, staying under the trees that rise untramm-
Elled over Soho Square – the Twentieth Century
Fox building and the Women’s Hospital stand up
As tip-toe lovers in their mutual height with branches
That stretch towards them in the grand manner of art:
In a white breeze the high leaves nod to sun-lit walls.
Where voices strum the air, quick heat wave seeds, light-borne -
Around and high over its pointed tiled roof –
Flicker down, striping the space of the gardener’s hut,
Tickling the throat that dreams of tigers, on the grass.

La Vita Nuova

2006-05-16T13:57:00.000-07:00

LA VITA NUOVA

‘From out of corruption of their woe
Springs this bright flower that charms us so,
Men rot and die deep out of sight’
- Richard Le Galliene

Amid the harsh lights and unfamiliar voices
I lost consciousness, spirit sunk
Within my polished breast –
Treading down through rocky passages
Where living creatures dread to go;
Like Orpheus I left the upper air
Behind, went deeper through the caves
In search of her…..

I slept until
The poet lifted me in supple hands
And placed me on the table by his desk.
A pale waxy light picked out a room
With books and notebooks, papers everywhere;
We looked at each other openly
Without the sense of either in control.

The lines around his mouth
Spoke of a fierce non-suffering of fools and lies;
The eyes, where fires of humour and of sorrow
Burnt side by side,
Soothed my jangled energies.

Spinning cab wheels rattled on the street outside
And still we sat, no place to go
Until he turned away
And wrote for several hours.

***

An affair of the heart deranged his mind.

I saw the trappings of the demimonde:
Decanter and glass
Guineas and bankers drafts
Wantonness of dress
Flask and file,
Figures I could not understand.
The words “casino” and “fortune” flew…

He did not fall apart.
At the spinning centre of the wayward wheel
The unfaltering stillness was.
His visitors, though some had
Artificial manners, were not false –
Orchids in the desert night, a bright
Gaudiness enhanced their beauty;
And when the pearly fog surrounded us
Magnifying absences,
Their abstract perfumes or
Some sweet remnant of the distant person
Lingered on…

Although inevitably
To some his face became a mask
I knew the weight of sorrow in this ocean
That kept him to his task.

To him I told my story,
My feline history – he it was who drank in,
As if rehearsing mordant wickedness,
The strange concoction of my former days:
The lost Lord, the mistress
Missed, for ever missed –
A sense of knowing
A knowing sense
Surrounded us.

We glimpsed a fresh city
Bathed in new splendour, better than before,
Where differences discovered prospered
And grinding poverty was less;

Both saw
A valorous resistance
With streets burning and bombs falling
In a curtained future
A violence beyond imagining.

I saw my old house hit; he his favourite
Drinking hole go down; now, here
At last was something he did not write about.

____

Encore

2006-04-17T10:09:00.000-07:00

Opening

Rehearsing in time,

the first tips are opening

their dream musical.

2006-04-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

Early

Too much light
inside the camera: my fumble

brought Autumn early.

shock

2006-04-16T11:21:00.000-07:00

Shock

A shock in the vastness
of Summer foliage: rustling
one leaf plummets
down

A Small Artifact

2006-03-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

IN CASE YOU ARE PUZZLED BY THIS POSTING, WHICH IS ABOUT A SMALL ARTIFACT FROM THE HALL OF LEIGHTON HOUSE, ALL WILL BE MADE CLEAR IN THE NEXT POSTING. YES - LORD LEIGHTON WAS A PAINTER AND THIS BLOG IS CALLED "POMESONPOETS", BUT THE SMALL ARTIFACT WHO BEFRIENDED THIS MODEL, WENT ON TO FURTHER ADVENTURES IN THE LIFE OF ITS SUBSEQUENT OWNER.....

A SMALL ARTEFACT REMEMBERS LEIGHTON HOUSE

‘Hotel garni de l’infini
sphinx & joconde de defunct monde’

The price they paid for me I do not know
Only remember the day I left my master’s house
Crated in straw
To start another life outside
My hall of Iznic tiles, the fountain’s
Everlasting litany –

Against the terra cotta sky
I leapt for him with eyes of yellow
Topaz – and he spoke to me
As a man speaks to an animal
From a defunct world.

****

The models came, gave their consent,
A model’s nerve, to be studied
Like specimens, their plastic beauty played
By day or artificial arc
For the absorbed maker to explore
Strip naked or hang clothes on, each
Crease or crinkle caught by sinew
Linked to skeleton, stretched
By toned flesh. The models came and went
Having changed and been changed
From woman into character, fashioned
For trained or untrained eyes
To lap around.
And when they left,
The curving banister of lacquered ebony
Wasn’t for then. Their stairs, a narrow
Exit from a dream, brought up the level road
Back to the city where seasons baked
Or froze, streets bubbling with bad ends.

I saw the hopeful women
As they came and went, the space around
Each curve of shoulder or curl,
And watched the silences
Between the laughing words.

***

About the time the peacocks came
Hubbub of dust and builders shook the place;
There was a face he could not let go -
It was the look from those eyes that stayed all night,
And when the hall was finished
The sky became a memory, the blue-tiled
World of art more real than any other.

Down by the fountain we would wait for him,
She in her latest plunging dress
As the small hours expanded and dawn,
Fabled through coloured glass, broke free
Across the tapestry of tiles,
I, crouching behind the pillar still,
About to spring.

*****

Second Version

2006-02-24T15:06:00.000-08:00

“Who Lives There…?”

A large White-fronted house,
Gravel drive and crocuses
On the lawn – no wonder
I was nervous when you said,
In answer to my question ,
“Let’s go inside and have a look!”
Without a moment’s pause
You walked up to the great door,
Pushed it open, led me in
Through a hall where no-one
Stopped us, past the readers
At the shiny tables and the high
White shelves of books, the undisturbed
Uncluttered world of books
Returned and borrowed. You took me in

To the Library that still
Seemed a private residence – I followed,
And returned again through
Season’s pendulum…. in winter,
In the crisp blue air when snow
Through floor-to-ceiling windows
Covered the sloping garden to the Mole;
To Poetry, winter-warm in orange
Grey and green, with ghosts
Of the danger-driven, of global war
And paranormal loves.

I found the forms of lives
Florescences, the print that danced
On a white page
Like twigs or buds with gloves of snow:
Each individual crystalline shape
Unique and waiting in a private place
You showed me, shared
When you boldly pushed the door.

++++

Foyle

2006-01-24T13:46:00.000-08:00

FOYLE’S…

You’ve drawn a character
in whose terse style resides
a goodness just beyond
the reach of words
for an actor whose
metal can stand
the scrutiny of white dawns
through blackout curtains
in a time of Blitz
of prolonged war
& temporary respite
in love’s uncertain arms;
taking us back to daily stress
false leads and true alarms.

And as for this man’s passion
all too clearly fate
has bottled up its streams
kept it pure –
love for a son, self discipline
and more
keep him at work for days
and nights worth fighting for -
his name, an epee, rings like steel to sting
whoever’s crossed his calm clarity
others might mistake for duty,
his namesake is a building familiar to
the users of a round patch of lamp
on the page of a book bought
in the Charring Cross Road:
browsers of shelves
in life’s reflective mirror –

it too – that dusty-dreaming place - hard only in defence of liberty.
His England is where the sky slopes
and the land billows in the still morning air,
the sound of a plane or a car in the distance
or a blackbird who sits on a fence and sings, as no-one else has.

Your Reading

2005-12-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

Your Reading

It was a clear night
With a moon in the wintry air
Visible in the crowded sky
And a stillness
About the freneticism
Of the streets –

I walked as far as Soho,
Out by Foyles and
Stretched my open palm
In the direction of your reading
Then went back
Where I’d walked
To follow my tracks
Like an old cat
In search of pizza and wine.

And for a while
You did come with me:
Your “garden” which
Fell “so slowly into the
Brown stillness of Autumn,”
The rat you saw
Boldly in front of you
In the moonlight –
And I thought just to be
With someone who listened to me
Was alright

Since you too were listening with me,
Listening to the café
Listening to the streets:
The low stories from the upper storeys
Basement stories
Floating up to the street –

And I stopped worrying
About missing your reading
And was reassured by the thought
Of your blue-covered book by our bed and
How often you wrote “blau”
And “blaue” and how the last line
Of one of your poems*
Was a metaphor that
Wrapped round my schoolboy wanderings
Perfectly tuned to my adolescent heart
Like an eerie mist from somewhere far,
And how again you are here
Still burning, Georg, your obscure star
In the blue air.

“Lass, wenn trunken von Wein das Haupt in der Gosse sinkt”
Georg Trakl 1887-1914

Sylvestre

2005-11-13T13:49:00.000-08:00

SYLVESTRE:
FROM THE FRENCH OF TISANE TASSANI

When I drink from the sap of the tall evergreen
And I feel the cool Earth enter my veins
In gratitude – what can this gratefulness be?
And who for, but for the being of the tree?
The woodlands where I walk are so green,
With so many species of bird and animal
That in awe I draw back from all explanation
And drink from my five senses, as from a well.

I have no flock to care for – I am a woodlander
In five-hundred year old thickets & unfathomable glades
No congregation or pastor joins me here
And there are no young folk to go on promenades:
Then, let me give to each perfectly formed leaf my blessing
That together we make the sweetest murmuring.

________________________

Rob at the Torriano

2005-10-29T03:12:00.000-07:00

Rob At The Torriano

You struck me as the kind of awkward fellow
Who puts up all around himself a wall –
All through that first evening at the Torriano
You hardly spoke and wouldn’t read at all.

At first I liked you; then I wasn’t sure.
Just when I tried to speak you’d look away.
Not quite unfriendliness, it was more
The signal that cancels and will not say

What its intent is, doesn’t let you know
Its giver’s disposition nor morals neither,
Makes no declaration of being friend or foe
And just to be polite not worth the bother…

And then one Sunday night we had a drink;
I poured yours; you thanked me with a nod
And that was when I first began to think
That you were strangely noble, nobly odd:

While others jauntily made pitter patter
You were good at keeping your intelligence in check
Since all our nitter-natter really didn’t stir
The poet in you from non-verbal dialect.

You said you’d read if someone asked you to
And so I volunteered and called for “Robert!”
“Yes. Robert’s next…” and so you got the cue
And gradually became quite extrovert

Within our clique of poet-citizens:
Doers & dreamers, some with and some without a trade,
Who focused inwardly with self-inflicted lens
On Orphee-like vocations, vows secretly made.

Your sonnets were of love, a girl you’d known
Back in the eighties, still besotted by her:
You’d pushed on with technique and then grown
Out of it, swapped it out for something higher

So th’t rhymes and half rhymes alternated
Quatrains refigured, chiming back to front:
Your listeners thought the sonnet-form was dead
Until the winning couplet rich in understatement

Closed with your matter of fact enunciation
Which could’ve informed the Tannoy on a railway
And in its very flatness caught the imagination
With narrative as well as imagery.

You had a story which I liked and almost
Believed: that you, a tall homunculus,
A big and solid person, not a ghost,
Were yet an apparition living in the midst of us.

You said your home and origin had been a wall
From which you came, a fully functioning person,
And how you watched the pageant of us all
Pass by – seeming to get better, then begin to worsen.

One summer night you showed me where they stand –
The old wall letters over Kentish Town
Half faded out. They read: RTRELLISAND,
Your mortal coils, you say, the name and ground

That you can fade back into and emerge again
From. No one ever saw you do this of course
Except a gang of kids out in the rain
Who tricked you rotten with eggs and milk and source.

***

Double Take on a Library

2005-10-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

Double Take on a Library

A large White-fronted house,
gravel drive and crocuses
on the lawn – no wonder
I was nervous when you said,
“Let’s go inside and have a look,”
in answer to my question
as we passed -
without a moment’s pause
you walked up to the great door,
pushed it open, led me in
through a hall where no-one
stopped us,as we traspassed -

past the readers
at the shiny tables and the high
white shelves of books, the undisturbed
uncluttered world of library books
returned and borrowed. So, deception over,

you took out a book, and still the Library
seemed a private residence – I followed
and returned again through
season’s pendulum; in Winter, in
the crisp blue air when snow
through floor-to-ceiling windows
covered the sloping garden to the Mole,
to Poetry, winter-warm in orange
grey and green, with ghosts
of the danger-driven, of war
and paranormal loves.

It was there one day alone
I borrowed Laurence Whistler’s “Yestermorrow,”
took it home to read and wonder
at this grown-up’s super-sorrow,
who found new words for love
and for that dark expectancy:
the time that was not yesterday
nor yet the unbrought
day that we must live.

++++

Over Earl's Court 1969

2005-08-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

Over Earl’s Court
A polluted haze
Passing for bluesky, as night
Fell and the Moon came up

Oddly small, like a tennis-
Ball in mid-lob –
Her neat bed sitting room
A chip of the old block, where

Someone has come to see
Her poems, take her for a drink.
Her man-friend’s gone
To a commune she is slow to join

Preferring her youth
Over a garden dreaming
From work’s free tiredness.

The night they landed on
The Moon she carries on
Her London night, a pub
Or two, strolling to discuss

With this self-confessed poet
Th’irrelevancy, the unMoonness
Of such a project; a man
In the pub next to them
They notice
Smiling blissfully down

Past his beer, more like
Into something deep
Inside the Earth or in them
The universe, knowing

The journey in at last.
It’s as if he’s come
From some cold place
To this warm interior.

++++

Back in that ageless bed-sit
She took the small chair
He the bedspread low divan

Her sheaf of poems
Balanced on his lap, approving
And assessing, saying them
Good, not overpraising

Advising, “Work some more
And publish later….”
She knows her bed sitting room
Feminine, thick-carpeted, cool

Must one day come to be
A stage set, bare boards ‘n’ cobwebs
Where ghosts will dance

A last quadrille under
The architrave that disappears
To another floor – why

Doesn’t he dance her now?
Quick-step through the open window
Whisper, “Publish tonight”

And fall through space
With her to a landing no less real
Than Apollo’s? She wonders,

Sees them sprawled
In a crater in the garden
Dark foliage overhanging…

Her own slenderness
A soft reed unbroken,
Lodged in his memory …a kiss, then,

Wishing the commune well
Sensibly going some place
Down the carpeted stairs

The blue, polluted
Passing-for-night colour
As the Moon sets.
……..

From the German of Robert Reinick

2005-07-11T14:03:00.000-07:00

Juchhe!

The Earth is so beautiful -
Just how beautiful
The flocks of birds know -
They lift their light feathers
And sing such Spring-like songs
In the blue heaven up there.

The Earth is so beautiful
Just how beautiful
The river and lake know
They reflect in a clear mirror
Garden, town and hills
And the people walking there

And the singer & the painter -
They know it, and many others besides.
Whoever does not paint it sings it
And whoever does not sing it
In his heart - this joy -
It sounds louder than ever.

In Soho Square

2005-06-26T00:57:00.000-07:00

I inhabit a world where everyone is a poet
Where trees and buildings are on equal terms
And none may inhibit either's privacy.

Adult Reading

2005-06-25T05:45:00.000-07:00

(i)
One hot day
when the leaves were fully out
green blotting paper given
to soak up poison from the air
citrus-gathered, close
lint for pain,

I waited in the car
with a Listener, alone
and how the reviewer said
these are grown-up poems
to share things with
that know of hurt, when
the world has gone to bed...
at night: skimmed on

to light on images, quotations.
Later bought the slim, dark
volume to take with me
into days and nights
discovering your shade and light
against a white page -
a sanctuary of adult reading
or so it seemed.

(ii)
Years later
after the Reading at the Voicebox
I queued up round the long table
where you sat and finally
reaching you, said,"Hello!"
saw you look up and
for a moment feared those
perspicacious, alert brown eyes

and needn't have
"Nice to see ther're some men
around." Your joke
wry and inclusive, just for me

and you
as your pen wrote your name.

The Storm?

2005-06-24T10:47:00.000-07:00

These stays are ample
for sail or for trim

How come loose and
flapping
adrift on the high seas?

Herbs lost
and pages water-logged

th'entire fragrant garden -
the man we touched.

At A Window

2005-06-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

He drew beauty
all together
drew in
a great puzzle

Neptunian curator
of the new

Sea sprite elevator
jocular in phonetic mimicry

wise guy
sailor
of vision, creator
of 1000 poems.