Wolf Tongue (3 page)

the fire-crowned terrain

                                   as the sea burns

wind

You can’t burn your boats when you live inland

Chatterton

               knowing this

Died

Rosy myth

                 bee-like

                              we cluster & suck.

There is so much
land
in Northumberland. The sea

Taught me to sing

            the river to hold my nose. When

it rains it rains glue.

           Chatterton’s eyes were stuck to mountains.

He saw fires where other men saw firewood.

One step ahead in recognising signals.

And leapt into the fire.

Chatterton (who was no lemming)

mistook the hill

for a green light.        Go! His final breakfast of pebbles.

The mullet used his body for a staircase

They float enviously around the meniscus on a raft of weeds

snorkels sparkling in the dewy light

He stood at the coal-face like Hamlet

and struck a match. Eyeballs

                                             melted into his cup.

At the pit-head

local idlers waited for news. There was only

a brief burst of laughter.

Underneath, the mole shook hands with english poetry.

The mole knows peace and solitude. He avoids

roads and tries not to surface near a cauldron.

Mole lay by the lad’s frayed body

and held his breath.    This is no ordinary parterre calamity

he thought (a blue tree

                                         grew from one eyesocket

In a spasm of indiscretion

he told reynard

who can’t keep mum.

Mole also knows regret.

Or

Shelley’s heart which later turned out to be

Liver

& the fish had a whale of a time munching english poetry

It still happens

Throwing snowballs at Sussex from Mont Blanc

Toppling into the copper sulphate sol

Out come the bastard files          a

Renaissance for certain

Before Chatterton arrives and breaks things up

With his meteoric tithe

All things (and the sea) with their own life

but won’t decide for you

A young poet’s life burns

Presses

         (july wind on Hartfell)

taking our hearts (and poetry) higher

as if to be cleaned

& not one fish with an answer.     You can’t expect advice

from someone you eat then criticise for having bones

because he wants to keep his body in shape & not spread it around

all over the estuary

(and poetry)

Why Chatterton lived in the hills

Chatterton knew

you may not return to the source

when you’re

it and

died.

At Sparty Lea the trees don’t want Orpheus

to invoke any magic

they dance by themselves.

Up there they

strap two

rams together the

hardest-headed

wins.   Death

on the horns.

The trees dance by themselves.

He stood at the coal-face like Hamlet

and struck a match. ‘Strange

tenancy for ghosts

of universal disfigurement.’ Splintering

his crystal

he married the fire

became his ghost

(with appropriate mists

the arrogant say Parsifal

his final meteoric breakfast of green light

out of the doldrums into Hell:

‘O save me from her, thou illustrious sage!

For every vein and pulse throughout my frame

She hath made tremble.’

Hardly

a valentine.

She hath (a courtly tone) made

tremble. Ann Hath

-away.

A neurotic birch leaf. A trefoil of.

Gone.

splintering his crystal

because he wants to keep his body in shape & not spread it around

all over the estuary

rapidly losing the social advantages

of becoming a human-being. The

parties you’re always

never sent for. Death

on the horns of the loudest guest.

A final black laugh. O

mega.

Shut in

with ghosts.

Restless amazons

itching for a main course

Death.

Black satin.

O

away trembling

ends.

Speak he

said why

not try.

Shut in

the ghost of a hurt.

One strong unflinching hurt.

The trees dance by themselves

and don’t recognise time.

The heart and

hands

burn. Quick message

to the brain. Beyond

simple colours and shapes.

O

smart.

The poems

it needs to have

to see.

Ghost

of a hurt. Death

on the horns

of a tree.

Elm.

Cutting his head

on the rear-view

mirror.

She’s river

offers

too-late snow

for a graze.

Cine-cameras himself

trickling.

O

smart.

The priest

saying ‘He’ll be waiting

for you on the other shore’

and you’re always seasick.

Too late

for abrasions

too.

Not

for priests.

Hardly

a valentine.

May

your garment marry

the forest not

knowing if

or where the trees grow. Death

on the trefoil.

No one else’s blood and muscle.

Leave it.

Bike home

alone.

Where

do you appear

when you go?

Ghosting the

footsteps.   Some

one else’s

blood and

muscle.

Hardly

a valentine.

Locked out,

you bike

home

alone.

I will have Fame

the Nine will be mine

Walpole slew that fact in

vented a smart from the enclosure

Death on a quill

the Nine will be mine

in the arms of Moloch

land of the black goose

Bee-like. The randomness of (his) death

the particular randomness

of.       Towards which blood he ran the soft

floor of his eye        A final showing. Up

there they strap two rams to

gether the.

Walpole slew. No rose. No honey

suckle on the vine. The rain

Hurt

with its own

soft density

falls.

No.

High hearts

are wrecked.

They fall on the rocks and the rocks

fall on them.

Wrecked.

What are you doing?

Telling you lies.

Salt on his lips.

The moon in his hand which is an idea.

His heart-arrow snaps (curare

in soup) because it is a twig.

A road of bitumen is a road to Hell.

A solitary tree in his youthfulness

swelled inside him like the flesh it was

when his heart broke.

It is not Abyssinia it is only sand.

What wet his lips was not salt-water

but the roar of the sea, breaking.

Dismembering your lips isn’t the same

as remembering them.

Dis is hell.         Remembering,

a reference to it.

Always the same red road

(the scarlet boulevard which for Chatterton

was a northern route to hell).

It is a leaf which falls in autumn like a poem.

Chatterton looked at Mole and did not hear it fall.

For a moment, the poem was touched with gold.

A tincture of infidelity.

A poisoned spring

but Styx and stones did not bruise his body.

Angered at the brown splash on the path,

Walpole was one of them.

Nor the cheesey triumvirate of ghosts.

The stone of the mind was god

and god

the Stone.

The road bends across into & up a fabulous rainbow

of precious stones but it is only a 12/6 pill.

The failed Orpheus straps on a sunbeam

for the Dis-

-honoured sword but it is a pill

and seeing the Stone the poet

Says

‘The whole of Chatterton’s life presents

a fund of useful instruction to young per-

sons of brilliant and lively talents, and

affords a strong dissuasive against that im-

petuosity of expectation, and those delu-

sive hopes of success, founded upon the

consciousness of genius and merit, which

lead them to neglect the ordinary means of

acquiring competence and independence.’

With lips he prevailed.

Salt on ours

as if life were grievously wounded.

Rain

        hurt

with its own

density

dies. The sun

too.

Who else    but

Wolf is beyond

reach,     the silly

mole?

With lips I have prevailed

and a brain of fire

now there are ashes in my head.

I haven’t heard from you in months

because I am afraid of that black sea,

not needing the bathers in its foam.

More than a tincture of infidelity

more than a tight cock gathered in salt-sweat.

Standing in the rain is like reading

an inaccurate biography of you.

An echo of a sea, raging.

A song in endless white night.

Aguila.     Lobata.     Bucle.

Taken away,

whore-shipped like an onion, orange, carp.

Its wings, teeth and hair displayed

with a neat carnival touch.

You have flown from me, gorged with my heart

You have howled endlessly refusing to leave me

You have reluctantly shaken gold over my nakednesses.

What is left is not a fountain of golden purity

but chains of lead around its flight of fire. –

the exquisite car

comes holds all

who go wanting

to now we may

not go

back none now

wants but

stay and

go not

wanting

A heart-arrow (his random one) snaps. Red

behind trees is a familiar

deep mark, so

turn to love.

Oh germ-cloud of tomorrow, Walpole

was one, his

illustriously fabricated ruby forehead glows

off a U2 battery for the holy chair.

Trees shiver with human condition &

the temple is thick with smoke.

a dream of others.     these aren’t

warts this is a newspaper. has

none of

th’Other death

in.

Nothing random or decided in the grey plants

here.

Bathing under the moon which is an Idea.

You

Swelling inside on the saltnessness of air, Air, in

side him for the youth it is, it was

in your black sea, raging.

Inexplicable magnets (to human eyes)

Draw out the

Steel. The bullhead

trout. It draws it, across

country, from your

feeble sinking heart. The

heart sinks, heads

for the stuttering plug

& it’s a rare catch!

It’s an Ideal which is an idea

like eating your best friend. Chatter-

ton ate himself in one brief
rubidium glow

& the birds lay down and laughed

as the Great Sky Magnet

drew

him

Up.

1972

i walk to the annexe

to dust the marine paintings

of john everett

who is out of fashion

but whose work

i like better than anything else

in the museum

the sky is a dome

of madder and brass

and it is windy and cold

a letter arrives

it is very happy

but the last line is sad

and there is a p.s.

apologising for it

at tea time

the street-lights come on

with an extra-terrestrial glow

it is still cold

and as i ride my motor-bike home

the wind makes my eyes water

in many of everett’s pictures

the forefront of the canvas

is filled with the overwhelming prows

of cutters

as if the onlooker

were a man shipwrecked

clinging to flotsam

or just drowning

slowly

the park is dotted with people

three men from the park’s department

are cutting down an oak

planted by charles the first’s gardener

a party of mongol children

on a charabanc trip

are playing with an orange ball

of the only two portraits

of everett

the first noticeable contrast

is that in the self-portrait

he is in a bright blue smock

with corn-coloured hair

a clay-pipe

and a ragged straw hat

whereas in the painting

by his friend and contemporary

he is depicted as a rather

sinister character

with a lean face

dark brown hair

and pointed beard

with a top hat

and black opera cloak

hunched in a deep armchair

surrounded by shadows

but all of his paintings

are bright

with large areas of stark white sail

bleached by tropical sunlight

and deep red shadows

along the mast hatches and deck

and the sea

painted either very flat

or in seductive blue swells

almost like smoke

the rough tasmanian straits

the limpid bay at montevideo

or just cowes week

with a cluster of startling parasols

many painted directly onto sailcloth

sixteen voyages

over forty years

seventeen hundred oils

the only painter

to watch and portray

the last years of the sailing ship

and it is the seventeenth century dutch

who hang

1973