Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy (10 page)

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters

and the diameter of its effective

range – about seven meters.

And in it four dead and eleven wounded.

And around them in a greater circle

of pain and time are scattered

two hospitals and one cemetery.

But the young woman who was

buried where she came from

over a hundred kilometers away

enlarges the circle greatly.

And the lone man who weeps over her death

in a far corner of a distant country

includes the whole world in the circle.

And I won’t speak at all about the crying of orphans

that reaches to the seat of God

and from there onward, making

the circle without end and without God.

Undesirable you may have been, untouchable

you were not. Not forgotten

or passed over at the proper time. 

As estimated, you died. Things marched,

sufficient, to that end.

Just so much Zyklon and leather, patented

terror, so many routine cries. 

(I have made

an elegy for myself it

is true) 

September fattens on vines. Roses

flake from the wall. The smoke

of harmless fires drifts to my eyes. 

This is plenty. This is more than enough.

Who was it who suggested that the opposite of war

Is not so much peace as civilisation? He knew

Our assassinated Catholic greengrocer who died

At Christmas in the arms of our Methodist minister,

And our ice-cream man whose continuing requiem

Is the twenty-one flavours children have by heart.

Our cobbler mends shoes for everybody; our butcher

Blends into his best sausages leeks, garlic, honey;

Our cornershop sells everything from bread to kindling.

Who can bring peace to people who are not civilised?

All of these people, alive or dead, are civilised.

We sat up late, talking –

thinking of the screams of the tortured

and the last silence of starving children,

seeing the faces of bigots and murderers.

Then sleep.

And there was the morning, smiling

in the dance of everything. The collared doves

guzzled the rowan berries and the sea

washed in, so gently, so tenderly.

Our neighbours greeted us

with humour and friendliness. 

World, why do you do this to us,

giving us poison with one hand

and the bread of life with another? 

And reason sits helpless at its desk,

adding accounts that never balance,

finding no excuse for anything. 

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June’s long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,

you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear

    one more friend

waking with a tumor, one more maniac 

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness

    has come

and changed nothing in the world 

except the way I stumbled through it,

    for a while lost

in the ignorance of loving 

someone or something, the world shrunk

    to mouth-size,

hand-size, and never seeming small. 

I acknowledge there is no sweetness

    that doesn’t leave a stain,

no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet… 

Tonight a friend called to say his lover

    was killed in a car

he was driving. His voice was low 

and guttural, he repeated what he needed

    to repeat, and I repeated

the one or two words we have for such grief 

until we were speaking only in tones.

    Often a sweetness comes

as if on loan, stays just long enough 

to make sense of what it means to be alive,

    then returns to its dark

source. As for me, I don’t care 

where it’s been, or what bitter road

    it’s traveled

to come so far, to taste so good. 

Though there are torturers in the world

There are also musicians.

Though, at this moment,

Men are screaming in prisons

There are jazzmen raising storms

Of sensuous celebration

And orchestras releasing

Glories of the Spirit.

Though the image of God

Is everywhere defiled

A man in West Clare

Is playing the concertina,

The Sistine Choir is levitating

Under the dome of St Peter’s

And a drunk man on the road

Is singing for no reason.

I stand in the advancing light,

my hands hungry, the world beautiful. 

My eyes can't get enough of the trees –

they're so hopeful, so green. 

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,

I'm at the window of the prison infirmary. 

I can't smell the medicines –

carnations must be blooming nearby. 

It's this way:

being captured is beside the point,

the point is not to surrender.

No, I’m not bald under the scarf

No, I’m not from that country

where women can’t drive cars

No, I would not like to defect

I’m already American

But thank you for offering

What else do you need to know

relevant to my buying insurance,

opening a bank account,

reserving a seat on a flight?

Yes, I speak English

Yes, I carry explosives

They’re called words

And if you don’t get up

Off your assumptions,

They’re going to blow you away

When I can't comprehend

why they're burning books

or slashing paintings,

when they can't bear to look

at god's own nakedness,

when they ban the film

and gut the seats to stop the play

and I ask why

they just smile and say,

‘She must be

from another country.'

When I speak on the phone

and the vowel sounds are off

when the consonants are hard

and they should be soft,

they'll catch on at once

they'll pin it down

they'll explain it right away

to their own satisfaction,

they'll cluck their tongues

and say,

‘She must be

from another country.' 

When my mouth goes up

instead of down,

when I wear a tablecloth

to go to town,

when they suspect I'm black

or hear I'm gay

they won't be surprised,

they'll purse their lips

and say,

‘She must be

from another country.' 

When I eat up the olives

and spit out the pits

when I yawn at the opera

in the tragic bits

when I pee in the vineyard

as if it were Bombay,

flaunting my bare ass

covering my face

laughing through my hands

they'll turn away,

shake their heads quite sadly,

‘She doesn't know any better,'

they'll say,

‘She must be

from another country.' 

Maybe there is a country

where all of us live,

all of us freaks

who aren't able to give

our loyalty to fat old fools,

the crooks and thugs

who wear the uniform

that gives them the right

to wave a flag,

puff out their chests,

put their feet on our necks,

and break their own rules. 

But from where we are

it doesn't look like a country,

it's more like the cracks

that grow between borders

behind their backs.

That's where I live.

And I'll be happy to say,

‘I never learned your customs.

I don't remember your language

or know your ways.

I must be

from another country.'

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.

Till then I see what’s really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. 

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

– The good not done, the love not given, time

Torn off unused – nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. 

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says
No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel,
not seeing

That this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision.

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood. 

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can’t escape,

Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

I like these men and women who have to do with death,

Formal, gentle people whose job it is,

They mind their looks, they use words carefully.

I liked that woman in the sunny room

One after the other receiving such as me

Every working day. She asks the things she must

And thanks me for the answers. Then I don’t mind

Entering your particulars in little boxes,

I like the feeling she has seen it all before,

There is a form, there is a way. But also

That no one come to speak up for a shade

Is like the last, I see she knows that too.

I’m glad there is a form to put your details in,

Your dates, the cause. Glad as I am of men

Who’ll make a trestle of their strong embrace

And in a slot between two other slots

Do what they have to every working day:

Carry another weight for someone else.

It is common. You are particular.