when willows green yellow
and casual grace throws white
round naked branches
when almost is a yearning earth
of never quite forgotten
urgent hugely returning
delicate surge
of pulses quickening
almost
<>
waiting and aching
knowing
how brief the blaze
of almost
must be
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
Song of Solomon
a mistranslation – it seems – for turtle-doves
and a smug glee in scholars
till curiosity leads to
creaky quacks grunts squeals
and oddly plaintive trills
by which these carapace-d ancients
call from their solitary habits
for yearly company
<>
and after the anxious blind scramble through warm-dark sand
turtle-song is not in sound but sea
the pulse of plankton-surge
diving and swelling in weightless chords
to doze long days in the contented
wordless companionship of birds
I dreamed of Ithaca I think
and knew it not
after much swimming in circles
round a famed-for-wonders city without gates
through rising speeding water full of
small and slimy things
terribly dangerous
<>
on the seventh round
I saw perilous alps and caves of startling blue
where couchant lay a giant snow-white goat
on slopes too steep for horses
serenely licking ice
as my father’s wildebeest
once licked salt
its face was human
and his place was home
<>
I could not go to him
swam on dream-driven
then woke
and dared to name
where I had not quite been
Winter drags on – though the stars keep turning time and appearing consolingly on the horizon telling stories to while away long nights.
Orion
<>
Meissa, Bellatrix, Betelgeuse
Rigel, Saiph
Alnilam, Mintaka, Alnitak
Tabit, Ensis, Hatsya[1]
<>
Supergiants’ hero hunter
leaping from a toe-hold on
the winter-circle
into the turning year’s early dark
<>
Meissa, Bellatrix, Betelgeuse
Rigel, Saiph
Alnilam, Mintaka, Alnitak
Tabit, Ensis, Hatsya
<>
Cosmic womaniser:
striding in bright heart-leaps[2]
to drunken transgressions and blindness
till sunlight restored you
to boasts and battles
at last to death by insect and transformation
<>
Meissa, Bellatrix, Betelgeuse
Rigel, Saiph
Alnilam, Mintaka, Alnitak
Tabit, Ensis, Hatsya
<>
Neither fickleness nor vanity
diminish your light across more than
a million years of milky-way -
in either hemisphere you are
bright and dependable
directing the night-sky home
<>
Meissa, Bellatrix, Betelgeuse
Rigel, Saiph
Alnilam, Mintaka, Alnitak
Tabit, Ensis, Hatsya
<>
In other tongues you are
Luminous shepherd or
Wanderer
with three kings (or sisters) at
Your belt (or pan) – either way
<>
Meissa, Bellatrix, Betelgeuse
Rigel, Saiph
Alnilam, Mintaka, Alnitak
Tabit, Ensis, Hatsya
<>
there is within you somewhere
a lap of magnificent nebular confusion,
where stars are born
herded in tales across the vast dark
tracing
the luminous miles
between story
and measurement
<>
Meissa, Bellatrix, Betelgeuse
Rigel, Saiph
Alnilam, Mintaka, Alnitak
Tabit, Ensis, Hatsya
<>
by which mind and heart
try to close the distances
between one mystery
and the next
I have always liked Sylvia Plath’s Miss Drake proceeds to Supper with its unexpected compassion and tenderness. This one is rather less so:
like a bating eagle
she steps
through the door
<>
jasmine, lobelia, rose,
honey-suckle, rose, fuchsia
rose, clematis, hydrangea
<>
liturgy and jess
returning
order from the dark
<>
she tears the colour from the petals
seeking, grasping from the earth
the terrifying weeds
<>
fierce anxiety
soothed ruthlessly
by ritual decisions
<>
amongst the sweet williams
she pauses
consuming memory; inventing carelessness
<>
counting, placing
she goes on,
each one, each shape, each leaf and stem
<>
touched ceremonially before
she turns
into the house, where the others wait
Splendid Labyrinth of Commerce
I have seen the season’s best styles pausing on the bridges, posing – thrilled by or oblivious of the masses, who stopped in their tracks, who spilled from the calle into the campo, stupefied with anchorless beauty
Who ate pasta and drank spritz or ombra, braving the local dishes for the camera in the osterias, the gelaterias, bacarias
Who lay in the gondolas and listened to love songs passed from voice to voice across the glimmering refuse, admiring the balance and grace of gondolier bodies in summer, singing and spooning the water, calling, not thinking of the gathering of wits required for the rest of a lean damp year
Who stumbled into the churches, blinded, where children played with opposable thumbs games glowing in cupped hands and parents hurried through tri-lingual floor-plans, peering, taking furtive photographs
Who stared and wondered - at the ghosts and the remains and at those who lived their too familiar daily lives surrounded by overwhelming splendour
Who strolled out at midday when brioche and coffee begin to curl as wine and basil about the Corte de Millon, where perfect swordfish will be served before the theatres open
Who were lost in the silence left by the porters’ ‘attenzione!’, retreating seeking consolation for those who will never be Tiziano, Tiepolo, Tintoretto, Lombardo, who are dead yet more alive than these will ever be
who came belated and must sit in the campos and paint beautiful watercolours, but never quite enough for saints – paint only their buildings not the saints themselves, no halos now, but those of steaming pavements and miasmic evenings, which must sustain pulchritude enough for grey habitual winters and not only between Epiphany and Lent, hollow as the relic altar, seek a holiday from self behind the masks
of glossy papier-mâché, eyeless in the windows promising heroism, glamour or failing that, thrilling faceless encounters for a camera against despair:
the long-nosed Plague Doctor and horror imperfectly averted
the smiling Cats and nights agonised with howling
Hunger and Greed, the mocking comedy cast of original ruin; the soul exiled to the face
And last, the Devil’s unheeded warning, laughing: all, all casino now.
What petrified mud-coated, inverted, submerged forest holds breathlessly this stone fairy-tale in the deafening light?
Santa Maria! Solitude! Sorrow! Grace!
Child-mother, so exposed with your ancient baby at your naked breast,
Santa Maria! Whom no-one thought to protect , but painted you graven, inhuman and left you to the clamouring petitions,
Santa Maria, the constant tiny needling flames begging for things you could not give – trapped in stone, in gilt paint,
Santa Maria, when now and then a miracle broke through – they took you from the garden and put you in cold marble where petitions falter, Santa Maria, without Wisteria, unheard beneath
the million shuffling feet of pilgrims without faith.
Touch is forbidden, Santa Maria, but do eyes burn as candles did?
Experience is a jaded miracle, chased everywhere Santa Maria
Formosa; della Salute; del Gigilio; Gloria dei Frari; dei Miracoli; dell’Orto
Everywhere, everywhere people come and go, come and go, come and go
Not all is sold, sold, sold to the highest bidder.
Though sold this door to the East; this confusion of palace and cathedral;
sold holiness for splendour;
sold the golden glory of God for winking cupolas visible across the rival sea -
selling still glimpses of magnificent Byzantium.
All the gold-leaf of the world cannot cover the bloody riot, rape, rapacity - bloodlust of Crusaders astray – singing drunk with death as the burning city fades and they return to this serene city for sale.
Still still still
selling forgiveness for the sight of stolen relics
now only in gold-rimmed postcards – soiled redemption of ersatz experience:
pauses for snapshots of that exquisite bridge haunted by unheard despair
collected merely against the ruin of an everyday sold in turn for this.
To be in this city at tourist time,
(where history is bartered imported plundered rarely made
where Eros spreading like an oil stain infects indolence
where cracked well-curbs rise from the stone dry, dry, dry as dust too hot to touch –
no children laughing in gardens, no amethysts in mud)
is to see only the relentless commerce in the market places, on the bridges, in the schools, the campos and the churches, and the churches . . .
Until the gondolier-uniforms lying like broken dolls in shop windows under the Rialto reveal
another city without gloss:
on the Campo San Stefano,
the bag-sellers, turn musicians and make impossible promises
without dough in Campo San Maurizio
Vivaldi spills endlessly into the night beyond the ticket lines
without bread on the Campo San Barnaba
feet cool with swimming fruit and darting fish
without silver on Campo San Margerhita
a rabbit hops coniglio on my daughter’s pages
without cash in the Rio Tera degli Aassassini
ice-cream drips from dark street tables,
in the Calle Toletta the smallest stone lion stands absurdly fierce;
at last in the Rio Terra Colonne, the storm waits to relieve the strange sticky words
uncouth on tongues learning to sing,
finding the tiny double-knotted dragon in a lost sotoportego.
And, east of the city, smelling the earth again to see ancient couples holding hands
as sparrows flit uccelli in a piebald shade;
chatter with exuberant joy in crumbs and dripping taps.
My Year 12s and I just got to the end of Hamlet, extraordinarily wonderful – as always! Images of such power and sorrow in the final act. And reading Hamlet’s words about defying augury in November just makes one think of the Leonids (doesn’t it?) and the power humans have so often given the stars over their lives – whether in the portentous flight of comets, the more mundane weekly/monthly astrology or the simple small promises of trust in divine providence. None of it very reliable, of course, but fruitful – perhaps.
Leonids
… the wandering stars … stand
like wonder-wounded hearers
Hamlet V i
earlier nightfall
rubs out
the differences of place
makes all
familiar dark
<>
Earth in measured dance
towards the Kuiper Belt again
erases years
until the shooting light
once more spills belief
in providence
smaller than the portents
of 906, 1630, 1833
but still as radiant
and full of seeming promise
inviting wishes
<>
the shower ends
and heaven hung with black
is vast and space again
where cast off
rocks and dust and ice
- indifferent wake of passing comets -
flare briefly
into wonder
<>
till the wounds
of time and space
return
It sounds enchanting doesn’t it – the very flame of love; but it is Claudius speaking and the full quotation is: ‘There lives within the very flame of love/a kind of wick or snuff that will abate it’. Which is much less cheerful. In a similar way (to my mind anyway) I have been possessed for a while by an image from Elizabeth Bishop – of snow not dissolving on the sea from her Imaginary Iceberg. Somehow from the marriage of these two emerged this (with some Antony and Cleopatra as well as Othello thrown in):
The very flame of love
We’d rather have the iceberg than the ship
Elizabeth Bishop
to see a cloud that’s
dragonish – a blazing glory
in an evening sky
was to mistake you
for an iceberg
when only snow
lay on the sea
brief fractals sinking
melting invisibly
into the liquid salt
<>
no winking crystals
in the restless swell
to break the light
or to preserve
the untouched alps
rising from the
fleet monstrous deep
as chaos comes again
The long awaited inspection finally came – on the last two days of term. This seemed a particularly cruel way to go about it and makes one suspect the motivation behind all this to be less than supportive – unless of course they are simply uncaring and unaware of the rhythms of a school term, which also would be criminal!
Anyway – I have also had reason to think again a lot about Louis MacNeice’s Prayer before Birth and the tone seemed appropriate to the situation:
prayer before Ofsted
they have not yet arrived
let not the queen’s tall servants come near mind
i fear that HMI may with their targets shoot mind
with observations quell mind
with missed judgements rule against mind
<>
let them not forbid
lessons tangential winged -
full of discoveries in thoughts unlisted
<>
forgive mind the compromises she will make
with their quantified take
on the ineffable mystery
which they carelessly bury
beneath the fake, the PC,
the bureaucratic weight
of their need to slake
their need to control
the possibilities
of wonder and despair
<>
may mind refuse to rehearse
their lessons, their parts, their cues
their crushing plans, initiatives –
thinly disguised rules
for quiescence lulled
by the flimsy markets of variety
where mind dims
a little more
each day
<>
let not the merciless midges of measurement
damn mind to passive mediocrity
with the last feeble twitches of a social conscience
choking on satisfactory hypocrisy
which frees the heart for selfishness
arse covered by risks assessed and targets met
<>
let not mind turn
murmur-less to dust
