Emporium (2 page)

Here they come, judging

my parable,

the one about the highway and

the blackbird

The distance

between them

always already

expanding.

(You can see the whole thing as

a ceaseless, dynamic

movement.)

It is not solitude or the last

physical delight that

troubles you but night and its quick

arrows – the

fearful, the

threatened, the

miserable – but

you are your own

purpose,

at ease with a life

incomparable.

(So much leads to thinking otherwise.)

The rubble of sundown is

more than a way of commenting on

            the disease

            of civilisation.

                         In those long

shadows I lost my voice. I

lost the argument. My fingers slipped

You lowered           so that

The touch was

                                     and it excited us

Rooms and passageways.

We need to find somewhere

they cannot search –

the provocation of

a fire escape takes us

down

across town and

away from the losses of the day

the loosened thought of heat and

nothing to say.

So she was left to dissolve under a starless

heaven, reduced by perspective to something like

             a stick,

no ordinary suffering. 

The machinery of mud is good at living

with dead things. Bog angel with borrowed teeth and stones

             for eyes,

which close and listen for a voice 

that doesn’t cry out. I don’t know how she got there.

Did she even visit the nearby city,

             each street

arranged according to the movements 

of celestial bodies, where twin pyramids

keep twin volcanoes company? The sun rises

             every day

behind the temple, rain falls on

the ancient mud gods and the locals hunt or make

fire or love, depending on their fancy. It’s a

             great place

to shop for traditional items –

necklaces of human teeth, the sacrificial

harvest – and it’s fun to people-watch. Those people,

             for instance,

being led in procession:

             at noon

their blood will run in the streets. 

When one god

claimed to be

the only god

the other gods died

laughing

What is the

matter?

To speak of

matter

To speak in

matter

matter-word

word-matter

in matter

matter speaks

the Word 

Shell holes and standing water

             Brown metal open to

             the elements

Empty barrels broken pails

Corrugated iron weeds and silence

The silhouette of a man

hangs from a telegraph pole against a sky

    the colour of bile

Silent electric wires lead

    nowhere

    and in the distance

Rusted armaments puddles

Train tracks

Mud sucks on raw heels

The distant waterfall calls us

The constant sound of running water

            drips

            echoes

Everything sweats

            with moisture

In a clear stream

   a pocket watch among pebbles …

‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’

Warming ourselves by this brazier

Rolling cigarettes under the ruins drinking

           rosehip brandy

Gold has no meaning any more than

Charity

    We don’t drink

    the water

Goldenhair crawling with lice

                          This leech on the back of my hand

woke me I need a piss

A woman cries out in the night …

‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’

White stones worn smooth

Smooth humps of vegetable matter

                            steaming from afar

Weak sun of celebration

Late flowers among nettles

Pulling potatoes out of the peat

Salted herring at noon

This awful coffee

Yesterday the heat

The light receded the shadows tapered into long rays …

‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’

How comforting a light in the darkness

            Any light

Every fire is a woman – remembered desire

We got the headlights working again but

Nothing else then the headlights died …

At dawn above the trees a

Helicopter

Doesn’t land

Nor do we hail it

Not knowing

Where we stand

on a metal contraption of some kind

erected in the woods, the height of a man, 

can be knocked off with a black branch,

revealing tiny rivets, a bolt or two,

but nothing more of the machine’s purpose

than can be guessed at from its peculiar shape

and solitary position

out here where nobody lives or works or ever comes

with only the wolves for company,

howling in the wind that whistles through its delicate wires

       sending us to sleep.

There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden

B
OB
D
YLAN

A pox on all kings!

A
N
O
LD
W
OMAN,
W
ATCHING
C
HARLES
II'
S
E
NTRY
I
NTO
L
ONDON,
1660

And it isn't a question of money –

how much the monarchy costs –

but they set up a right by assumption,

by assumption binding posterity

         And Thomas Paine began

         the
Rights of Man

         in a room above

         The Angel Inn, Islington,

         attacking the very basis

         of slavery

         arguing that we are all born free

         free and equal in rights

         and have a natural right

         to free speech, freedom of conscience,

         life and liberty

Yet we are subject to one family:

the monarch

and close relatives of the monarch

and the monarch is first and foremost political

         They sought to suppress

         the
Rights of Man

         and indicted Paine

         for seditious libel

         and Paine fled to France

         and was tried
in absentia

         and the jury was offered

         two guineas and dinner to find him guilty

         and the bookseller Thomas Spence

         imprisoned for selling the
Rights of Man

America threw off the yoke

of monarchy. France threw off the yoke

of monarchy. But we are ruled over

         in perpetuity

         by one family

and this is regarded as normal

         in a democracy

bloodlines and blood fascism

         in a democracy

destiny written in our veins

‘we high-born ones', ‘we well-bred

with pure blood and pure breeding'

– ‘our superior genetics'
1
–

         born to rule

         to master

No rational basis but blood

(and some idiot always says:

       ‘They know how to rule –

         it's in their blood')

But Paine was clear on this:

         hereditary rule

        
precludes the consent

        
of succeeding generations

         and the
preclusion of consent
is

                      DESPOTISM

And the monarch will make retribution

         the Tower of London

         once a place of execution

         and on Tower Bridge strange to see

         the hair of the head disappear

         the gristle of the nose consumed away

         the eye sockets …

                                       All deference is fear

and not meeting the monarch's eyes

             is fear and servile fearfulness:

‘To monarchize,

             be fear'd and kill with looks …'

And the monarch is above the law

             Crown Immunity

and the Privy Council shrouded in mystery

and the keeper of the monarchy the BBC

and every royal wedding is a funeral

             for democracy;

and our elected representatives reprimanded

for mentioning the monarch in the House

and the misinformed multitude

             wave flags and worship

             wave flags and worship

a phantom at the rotten core

             of our botched democracy.

P. lay in a narrow cot in what one might call

A state of profound erotic affection

For
La Belle France
and all things French. The only work

He had to do that day was to say

In a postcard that he was enjoying his holiday,

Then relax and spend the remainder

Of his time resting. He was eating the remainder

Of some kind of pastry – but what to call

It? Why bother with words? He was on holiday!

And he believed it made him an object of affection

Not to speak French, but to point and say

Nothing. Learning a language is hard work.

He was English, which everyone seemed to work

Out from his appearance, some remainder

Of home. In his postcard he did not say

He had been kept awake by the mating call

Of an Australian, screwing the object of his affection

Into a wall. For Australian backpackers also holiday

In Paris in November, when it’s cheap. I could have a holiday

Romance, thought P., but would it work?

Could incomprehension increase affection?

We might happily spend the remainder

Of our lives in silence, but could one call

It love without language? Who could say?

P. realised he had a lot that he wanted to say

To a girl in England and he spent his holiday

Pestering her with call after call after call …

Some days he couldn’t get the public telephone to work,

Others she was not at liberty to talk. For the remainder

He spoke openly, declaring his affection.

He knew little about love, but sensed this affection

Might not be shared when he heard her say,

‘You don’t have to call me every day.’ He was deaf to the remainder

Of their conversation. P. would try to enjoy his holiday,

Although from that moment on he had his work

Cut out. For even P. couldn’t call

This love or even affection. And that one phone call

Ruined the remainder of what he laughably called his holiday.

But that isn’t to say he was glad to get back to work.

Fastyng on a Friday forth gan he wende

Unto the bed wher that sche slepte,

And she was cleped madame Eglentyne,

Besely seking with a continuell chaunge

To change her hew, and sundry formes to don,

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertaine:

With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

(He is starke mad, who ever sayes

Ill matching words and deeds long past or late

Could by industrious Valour climbe

Above the rest, their discords to decide.)

Proceeding on, the lovely Goddess

Asleep and naked as an Indian lay,

Of such, as wand’ring near her secret bow’r,

By youthful heat and female art

Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose

Wi’ favours, secret, sweet, and precious.

His look and bending figure, all bespeak

A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion’d grief,

That he was forced, against his will, no doubt,

To own that death itself must be

Where there is neither sense of life or joys.

Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short:

Her eyes blazed upon him – ‘And
you!
You bring us your vices

so near

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

Stepping with light feet … swiftly and noiselessly stepping and

   stopping

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore,

The irresponsive sounding of the sea,

Untouched by morning and untouched by noon,

We can begin to feed.

Let us go hence together without fear.

I see what you are doing: you are leading me on.

What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent.

Some love too little, some too long,

Though both are foolish, both are strong

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

Consume my heart away; sick with desire,

I forgive you everything and there is nothing to forgive.

Now the mind lays by its trouble and considers

Openair love and religion’s reform,

The riddle of a man and a woman

All heavy with sleep, fucked girls and fat leopards.

Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into!

Drifted away … O, but Everyone

is an enchanted thing

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less.

The songsters of the air repair

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours

Humanity i love you

and I am glad that you do not belong

Under a world of whistles, wire and steam.

A city seems between us. It is only love.

I take my curses back.

Only sometimes when a tree has fallen

In splendor and dissipation

In a world of sunlight where nothing is amiss

I feel as though I had begun to fall,

the whole misery diagnosed undiagnosed misdiagnosed.

Think of what our Nation stands for

Of Captain Ferguson

In silk hat. Daylight.

The light is in the east. Yes. And we must rise, act. Yet

He didn’t fight.

he played dominoes and drank calvados unTil

They put him in the fields to dock swedes,

And the craters of his eyes grew springshoots and fire

And forty-seven years went by like Einstein.

My mind’s not right.

I too have ridden boxcars boxcars boxcars.’

(An ode? Pindar’s art, the editors tell us, was not a statue but a

source for bugling echoes and silvered laments. The

Power of some sort or other will go on

In the network, in the ruin.

We repeat our conversation in the glittering dark.

One – someone – stops to break off a bit of myrtle and recite all

                                                                              the lines.)

If woman is inconstant,

How I loved those made of stone. And yet poetry has

Tough lips that cannot quite make the sounds of love,

strange hairy lips behind

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

long legs, long waist, high breasts (no bra), long

confessions. Lady, I follow.

And still the machinery of the great exegesis is only beginning,

it will Invent a whole new literachure

From a cacophony of dusty forms …

O but what about love? I forget love.

The sun dries me as I dance

On the flowers of Eden.

Platonic England, house of solitudes,

I have hung our cave with roses.

O the dark caves of obligation.

I remember when I lived in Boston reading all of Dostoyevsky’s

                                                        novels one right after the other

And yet last night I played
Meditations,

fugitive dialogue of masterwork.

Perhaps I’ve got to write better longer thinking of it as

echo-soundings, searches, probes, allurements.

A few months earlier I had taken a creative writing class:

‘The period in history termed Modern is now over’ it said.

Suddenly I feel silly and ill. This apartment

invents the world, holds it together in color of

your body waking up so sweet to me         skin

we sit on the bed Indian fashion not touching …

I was working on a different poem.

It was words that detained us, though they do not reach

the crush of it, the variety,

in which history itself is vanquished,

When he names the forgotten names

as if they might start speaking.