TWO MAGPIES
Two magpies watching the tide roll in,
Watching the gulls fly and dive,
Screaming their black-capped heads off,
Tasting the salt air; feeling the wind revive.
‘Do we belong here on the shore?’
One asks,’with the dead crabs
And the shrivelled sea-weed decomposing,
Hiding the broken glass that stabs
Our graceless feet, which sink in the sand,
Having no fine webb between the toes.
And what will we eat? Crack a mussel
Or two? Our beaks are useless for those.
Let’s turn our backs on the wild blue waves
And the crazy gulls who outnumber us fifty to one,
To the grey town, with its bits of trees
And its little parks, and the verges where some
Careless animal’s been hit by a car
And lain all night on the grass.
Or we’ll raid a nest and eat the young
Or the eggs, unless, alas,
A cat has been there first.
Maybe something will catch our eye
And we’ll carry it back to line our nest
Which looks like a pirate’ s treasure chest. Fly
Across to the factory roof, past the rusted
Bridge by the old canal, and there annoy
The mallard and her brood with our raucous cry
‘Cross the neighbourhood,’Two for Joy! Two for Joy!’
BA’ALBEK 1906
I seldom paint with an allegory in mind
And my palette doesn’t reflect nature;
But in this instance,
The horizon could be the future;
The foreground, the past in sharp relief.
Soon I’ll be painting cars, not camels;
And who’ll ride into town on a white
Stallion? Who’ll shake the trammels
Of this old world? No-one
Can remember how long the pillars
Of the temple have watched over
The sea. No-one cares. Time-fillers
For tourists. The guides invent a myth
Or two. The climb to the temple is worth
It for the view it affords of the sea;
Always a comfort, watching it surge back and forth,
Always the same big, wide, reflecting wetness
- And so easy to paint at a distance!
The town reminds me of the bricks
I played with as a child once;
Cool simple blocks of coloured stone.
I built the city of my dreams but it fell
Down - like this one - but with less charm
And greater speed. If Ba’albek crumbles, who will tell
Its story? Artists, ghosts and archeologists?
Its truth is lost and legendary.
Let them say what they will. Finished,
I sign my name: Csontváry.
The painting that inspired this poem is
here at the Fine Arts
in Hungary site
COMPOSING (For Michael Livsey)
Don’t write, for me, about the waves
Which were too far out to see,
Or the gulls that screamed like knaves.
It won't matter to what degree
Your music reflects the pagan
Graves carved into solid rock,
Or the mackerel sky in the heaven
We saw, or the chimes of the clock
On the promenade. And should I hear
A passage which leads from ruins
To a nuclear power station; or there,
In the fairground crowd, a childs’ balloons,
I’ll smile, but it won’t be what I want.
The Old Stone Jetty is no place for sleep
Or dreams; the cutting wind’s a callous giant.
We turned chilled backs on a shrunken sea. It’ll keep,
I thought, for another day. But which?
What I want is not the tides’ crash or creep,
Nor the breathless little rush up the shingle beach.
I want the sea we never saw. I want the deep.
CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
Tension, silence, expectation
A beginning.
Tension, noise, silence;
Audience inhalation.
A crescendo brimming;
Silence.
Audience exhalation.
Keyed up, listening
No climax;
Almost silence.
Audience exploitation.
Shock decibels,
Ears ringing
Prayers for silence;
Audience anticipation
Of silence.
No.
Crescendo, crescendo.
Audience in search of revelation
Of Art of
Silence.
No?
Crescendo, Crescendo, Cresendo!
Silence.
Crescendo climax.
Silence.
Pause before applause;
Audience participation.
CONVERSATION
SAID HE: I heard the radio today
Relate a funny story - and it's true
Concerning a Psychologist of note
Who has been given an award by his
Own peers for deciding that those people
Who claimed to be kidnapped by aliens -
Are right. Have you ever been whisked away
By exotic extra-terrestrials?
SAID I: That won't happen to me because
I am an alien but I do take
The odd human being back to my home
Planet Venus for...inspection, but
Mostly I observe.
SAID HE:You don’t look like an Alien
To me. You sure do have an excellent
Disguise.
SAID I: My planet is far more advanced
Than yours in genetic engineering
Therefore they sent me on this mission as
A girl so that no-one would notice me.
DEAD ROSE
At Summer’s end
At Autumn’s birth
Dead Rose nods her shrivelled head
And any wind
Or any breeze
Leaves her neck hanging by a thread
Until one gust
One heavy breath
Brings severance, rips her undone
A crimson swirl
Beneath the hedge;
A pot-pourri of Summer passed and gone.
DON’T BLAME ME
Fiery agent orange,
Poison ribbon of the rainbow,
Cannot impinge
Its garish glow,
Produce a twinge
Or even throw
A tinge
Of sickly, sodden, dissipating light
On this disintegrating dinge,
Fails to combat the night,
The very fringe,
Where sight
Hangs on a hinge
And hopeless eyes cringe.
Voices crack little cries,
Whine an endless whinge
As the sun dies.
Somehow they scavenge
Another dose
Of what they crave for the syringe.
Blurred eyes close
As pain dissolves like a lozenge.
What one knows
Another will challenge.
What is history or truth?
Can only reality singe?
Who invented youth
And what will unhinge
Heads and wars and utter uncouth
Certainties? Don’t blame me. I won’t infringe.
I’m only passing on information.
THE FUTURE WARS OF MARTIN VAN CREVALD
No sanitizing nuclear bomb
No sterilized clean slate
No waiting it out in an underground tomb
No brave new world to repopulate
The book in every hotel room is starting to decay;
Every line and verse and chapter has been cursed.
‘Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.’
Blessed are the meek, they shall die first.
Turn back the crowded leaking boats,
Refugees at sea don’t matter.
Burn anything that floats;
Blast them screaming from the water.
“My long march from Tibet to Nepal took thirty days;
It’s my second attempt to cross The Roof of the World.The sky
Is close. I’m eleven, starving, stumbling and snow-blind.UN
says
We may send you back. You sound Chinese.You may be a spy."
Lost limbs on street corners, directing the traffic.
Heads on high poles search for bodies molested.
The hand that beckoned, nailed to the wall, static.
A voice whispers, “My lost Sierra Leone.” No-one protested.
HOLIDAY
Written after studying
Marlowe's Faustus’and watching a programme on Dante’s
‘Inferno’.
Double damnation, the key to salvation,
Swings from the end of a chain
That is held by the Keeper of Deprivation.
From the spring in his step it is plain
That your pleasure’s his pain.
He never limps;
Just glides through the main
Thoroughfare. Few catch a glimpse
But many hear a faint clink
And think it could be metal
On metal, as they have another drink.
None think it fatal.
Could be bottle on glass?
There’s a musical ring,
Reverberating with the shadows‘ pass.
Your thin soul I bring
For the Keeper, for eternity.
His chains are softer than love
Wrapped in diplomacy,
Dressed in the green grove
Of restless purity.
Begging is permitted on condition
It is filled with sincerity
And not part of your mission.
I hear the key and its Keeper
Approach. Don’t disappoint me.
Heaven has never been nearer,
But Hell is closer still. See,
Your senses are resplendant. They’re all
The weapons you will need - fear
Can be forgotten; it is small.
Your soul is salty as a tear.
Musical chains, musical keys, music of the spheres;
The world rocked to sleep by a dark lullaby.
In this light, nothing interferes,
Nothing would even try.
Blessed, sleep your soul away in a comfy cell;
It’s as warm as the womb at midsummer dawn,
And a pleasant change from Hell
Where both of us belong.
SESTINA
I Feel the Wood
I feel the wood
Come alive. Each tree
Fights for its own piece of sky.
One can hide like a flower
In a field
Of long green
Grass. There’s nothing so green
As a virgin in a wood,
Or a rabbit in an open field.
Is it safer under a tree
When lightening strikes? What flower
Can resist the sky?
I’m afraid of the sky.
Much too blue. I prefer green,
Especially green shade. It’s where I flower
Best, sheltered in the wood,
Protected by each tree.
One day, I wandered to the field,
That field,
All open under the sky.
It seemed empty without a tree.
There was a man sitting on the green.
He said, "What are you doing out of the wood,
Sweet fairy queen, with your face like a flower?
Don’t be afrighted so. Take this flower
An' sit wi’ me in the field.
Tell me stories of the wood.
Spend a little time under heaven and sky.
Why, your very dress is green
An' your hair as tangled as the branches of a tree."
He asked to see my favourite tree,
So, still clutching his bright flower,
I led him from the green,
From the hazy field.
He’ll see no more sky.
He remains in the wood
Under my favourite tree,
Buried with his flower,
Slowly turning green.
IN THE PENAL COLONY
After seeing a stage reproduction of
Kafka's short story at the Nuffield
Under the fake sun
Four men set the scene.
Under the false sun,
Four men, one machine.
Under our fast gaze
They are physical, sweaty;
Under our full gaze,
Showing no pity
Under a bright light,
A savage disrobing;
Under a dim light,
An intellect, probing.
Under the needles
Lives ecstacy, pain;
Under the needles
One man lies again.
Under our scrutiny
Is a disease.
Under us, mutiny,
Eager to please.
Under our eyes
The needles descend;
Under disguise
His muscles distend.
Under no protest,
Ready to write,
Under no protest,
The needles bite.
We still sit
Under the bright lights.
We don’t protest;
We applaud.
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