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

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

http://astronomypictureoftheday.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/coma-cluster-in-coma-berenices-constellation

/Suetonius: Titus reginam Berenicen,

cui etiam nuptias pollicitus ferebatur,

statim ab Urbe dimisit invitus invitam[1]

Winter’s late midnight approaches and

faint on the eastern horizon rise

the stars of victorious Ptolemy’s merely human queen

pale and fine as her golden hair’s anxious

thanks shorn for that ancient altar

and snatched into burning permanence

where the whirling tales of careless gods

affably dance the years’ indifferent  divinations

<>

300 circumnavigations later her namesake’s

credulous prayers

crashed soundlessly

against the voracious walls

of Titus’ crumbling empire

without astronomy’s cool comfort

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

she proceeds to breakfast

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

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.

II

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

III

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.

IV

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.

… 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

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