from Blackwater Quartet, selection 43

Nomad Frescos

The autumn coppered in the early frost,
and deepened north to Burlington, Vermont.
I thumbed the final forty, cold and lost.

Arriving after midnight to a gaunt
porch lantern light, the caretaker came down
and stoked the woodstove for the strayed savant.

I slept upstairs, a room of plain dressed stone
he said was Robert Frost’s a decade back:
New England metres in the maples’ roan.

I worked waiting tables, up at the crack
to clear the plates then rush to seminar,
the race downstream to clear my bivouac

and meet my tutor polishing his car,
his old Mercedes’ ornamental star.                

                            *

A heady week with Myra, heated bliss
and naked restless recklessness, hi-fi
Rolling Stones across Sympathy’sabyss;

from Swarthmore later, the exclusive, wry
reminder in the voice/guitar cassette
she posted with the note, ‘my scented thigh…’

I sank to her luxurious soubrette,
her role as wanton where the stoked hearth sparked
through playful frets of chorded etiquette
.
She parted to her separate world, parked
car idling under acers’ shocked revue
of palette reds that fell as she embarked.

I hitched in William Meredith’s Merc, due
south, to my Mason-Dixon rendezvous.

                             *

Virginia at first light, Newport News:
Navy crews on shore leave stand unsteady
outside the Navy bars, anchor tattoos

fixed sorely by the twisted flukes. The sea
off Hampton Roads supports the ensign sun.
A rolled-Havana token welcomes me.

My uncle’s house, an antebellum run
of rosy brick and seasoned joinery,
percolates in pine shade’s Dixie frisson.

Aunt Nita shelling crab for snacks, TV
for company, shucked pink succulents
in porcelain tureens: ‘it’s Kennedy…’

We stand in newsflash, sea-husk sacraments
a scattered spoil of settled arguments.

                             *

Approaching Carolina, where Nag’s Head’s
driftwood bonfires beckon, ocean winds drive
through lovers’ enterprise. The weather shreds

our voices— fluttered syllables arrive,
flayed gutturals coaxing heaved coitus,
your face a broken flame the winds revive.

I turn up at the station broke, my bus
late, cousin James waiting by the Greyhound.
He offers poems: a Jarrell omnibus.

‘He teaches here at Greensboro, been found
dead; taught, I mean. Maybe you heard. A car.’
I lean against the juke: a wailing sound

in stuttered neon saturates the bar,
the cold, hard light of each unquiet star.

                             *

Kentucky froze, dark at dawn, dark at dusk.
The coldest winter in a hundred years
left ice drifts deeper than our lives, wind’s tusk

along the rivers tearing loose the piers
secured to summer’s memory. I work,
roped to factories’ high steel, hemispheres

of blasted rust. The journeyman’s berserk
ballet concludes in drifting fog of paint,
the drifter incognito through the murk.

Money measures freedom by restraint,
the escape from wind chill’s bitter hours
and road signs ragged in flurries’ crossfire feint.

The Gulf road: skies cleared to steamy showers,
to Florida’s January flowers.

                             *

The tourists head south: winter sunshine, palms
above hibiscus, golf on tended greens,
the snowbirds lured to windward weather’s calms.

For me, another day, the same routines,
on Ocean Boulevard designer names
reflected in the chrome the chauffeur cleans:

I paint their world in muted yellows. Flames
of palest tangerine rejuvenate
the guest house by the pool. The jigsaw frames

of tenoned cypress wood articulate
the glazed expanse, landscaped into vistas
the wealthy preen to purposeful estate.

I smoke dope with Cuban gardeners, grass-
high sprinklers fanning rainbows in each pass.

                             *

The chair of lacquered-white rattan, high-back
cobra’s hood of woven cane, rises timeless
through leafy terracotta. Bric-à-brac

of species flora’s flowers effervesce
within the shuttered window’s habitat,
the colours native to this wilderness

uprooted, potted brightly on the mat.
I work in heat the slow fan melts and spreads
across the table, soaks the verses’ tat.

We lie naked on a sunburst quilt, threads
of perspiration gathered to a cloth
of paradise, unfolding to the reds

of bougainvillaea. The viney swathe
of deep address upturns a pulsing sloth.

                             *

Consider this: the life one led leads here.
The hammock slowly rocks in mango shade.
Among bell-shaped stems the hummingbirds veer

in thrumming purpose round these Everglade
environs. Drowsy sun, the sky’s doubloon
patina sheltering the renegade,

he anchors in the shanty cove, afternoon
dreamless. To believe one sees, to believe
one rises to the life beyond cartoon

horizons through the patterns we perceive,
the patterns of enamelled flight where each
repeats, repeats within the mind to leave

a witness trace, so vagrant icons teach
an iridescence hovers out of reach.

Poetry and Other Animals

Poetry is inclusive. It doesn't require a passport or border controls. It's as familiar as your favourite coffee mug or your old TV remote. It requires Formula One attention to technical detail yet can be shrugged-off like a summer shower. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, you take it as you would a breath, but leaving plenty behind for others.

Poem-writing, however, is more pugnacious. It leaps at the scraps on offer, and is indifferent as to whether or not it takes your hand in the process. It kicks you out of bed, uses up all the milk in the fridge, and sleeps with your best friend. When you think you can't take any more, it allows a big teardrop to slip down its cheek, all the time looking at you slyly through half-closed eyes. Think of Marlowe; think of Larkin; think of all the hours you can never get back, trying to make a poem.

There's a reason why syllables in metre are stressed and unstressed.....

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 42

Weapons Lore

(Photograph of My Father, North Africa, 1943)

The strong were strong, the weak stood weak together,

where elegance was the eye’s contagion,

and slow winks might punctuate a martyr’s passion

or cue the awe-struck into song.

But analogy is not identity, and days nearly poetry

fuel tides, grass, and sky

with or without those fixed rotations

and firmament of stars.

The likeness is my father’s, the argument mine.

Flemish-bond brickwork, old buildings

in the Federal style, May wine and madrigals:

the causes we die for return

with the personal effects, preserved in photographs,

discovered in hometowns row upon row,

sweeter than rivers or marjoram needles,

as impartial as sunlight on date palm and laurel.

The day is a page from Ovid.

I sit in the shade of the noon verandah

examining the letters, and the face of the man

smiling towards armistice on a desert plain.

In the mute immensity of that first campaign,

his helmet cocked fedora-like against the sun,

the face falls away like a coin down a well.

The day is a page from Ovid.

The Kodak shutter trips,

the sergeant’s grin forever fixed

on the camel in the foreground, the nomad,

the officers and the automatic weapons:

to a prospect of civilians

the camel’s indifference to events

lends the scene a sense of easy justice,

routing any stratagem of spoils.

In the weeks to come that world would lie

limbless in a ditch, the insignia dead-weighted

under strafing skies and Panzers

dressing farm boys up as corpses.

Back home, letters addressed overseas

took weeks to find the steel-pot hats shot through,

the familiar hand under foreign seal,

the perfect copperplate unread.

Perhaps not the men schools are named after…

but when medals became children

and the children smiled, lapsing into liturgies

after so many years away,

it seemed prodigal enough, learning the land

through the fortunes of the people,

a mediocrity more powerful

than fear of death in battle.

When the war was over, our family had a house

with a room upstairs my father kept in mothballs.

Roof beams sheared the attic walls

and the floorboards trooped in cadence

to the shouts of a small boy worlds away,

the boots above my knees,

my feet curled seed-like in a foreign soil.

A German pistol lay oiled and holstered in a drawer.

An old man up the street from us

lost his son in the final days of fighting, the body

dissolving in a shell burst on the Rhine,

the tags and grip sent Stateside with the notice.

Next door, a man from the Pacific war

collected finger joints from Japanese he’d killed,

trading with recruits come green and glorious

from boot camps in the South.

Shaped early to allegiance, where atom storms

translate a kanji script of islands,

I sailed into the glory days

photographed in Life.

The dead boy’s canvas duty pack

showed dark on the underside with stains.

When my father saw, he gave it back,

sold the Luger to a gunsmith for a twenty-dollar bill.

Years later, years ago,

Daddy took a twelve-bore

point-blank in the heart, in the street

where we lived my mother collapsing,

my sister asking what would we do…

I cradled the dead man in my arms,

my life the afterlife of April after winter,

rising from that broken season.

Some days so hard and holy:

to commit a world to action,

a man in the earth’s example

waiting silent as smoke where light

was brightening in the wood,

or take the cue from Adam, confess

through symbols of death and longing

and trust the world to break the fall.

The likeness is my father’s, the argument mine,

though at times I imagine him

alive again, whistling a war tune

like laughter in the dark, like the men

without fingertips pressing by me in the street.

Meeting him there, reaching out, I want to say, You.

But the face is blank and the voice soundless—

a Normandy beachhead, a rising sun.

Strange how people look alike sometimes,

barefoot at the fountainhead or sleeping in the park,

shouldering arms or infants: I could have sworn

he was the man I saw that day,

and perhaps would have spoken had I been certain,

but neither my father’s words, nor the words

of my father’s only son would serve

as tokens of the recognition.

I sit in the shade of the noon verandah

where some men learn to die quickly,

where from time to time even good men

go down with blood on their hands.

Their features frozen in an old refrain,

the figures in the photograph are smiling,

strong and familiar in themselves.

We sing the old songs.

States of Mind

Historically, there's always been a necessary distance between events and one's apprehension of them. The inverse is true today, where instant access to events in other parts of the world presents these events as issues that seem to call for an immediate response, whether as a call-to-arms, money for disaster victims, or simply a 'like' on social media in response to a celebrity endorsement or the posting of birthday photos on the timeline of someone who is the friend of a friend of a friend.

Many years ago, I think in 1965, I visited a battlefield in Virginia, the scene a hundred years earlier of a fierce conflict in the closing months of the American Civil War. I was previously aware of the battle, and its strategic repercussions. Indeed, in the visitors' centre there was ample information about the event, even had I not been aware beforehand.

To walk out among the ramparts and trenches, to view the field across which Confederate cavalry charged en masse, was an objective experience. To imagine the violence and danger to one's self was easy in the circumstances. But perhaps the more immediate effect was seeing relics recovered from the engagement - parts of uniforms, a broken sword, a belt buckle stamped "U.S." - that created a tangible experience for the visitor; people lived and died on this field. We knew it was true because we'd seen the colours in the faded uniform, the rust on the metal buckle. The example holds true for any event outside cyberspace, where the proximity to physical experience supersedes the video stream of remote imagery.

Now, because events are effectively broadcast into one's room on the instant, they retain a remote quality in respect of physical locality, yet demand attention as would a mewling infant. It's as if one lived inside a camera, and was unable to recover a sense of respect or repose within this agitated version of reality.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 41

The Weather Here

The tide drains down the channel to the sound,

along the mud flats of the upper creek

a string of smacks and pleasure boats aground

in stinking, gull-strewn shallows. In a week

recovered from the winter storms, from freak

winds tilting all to the absurd, we wait

where redshank skies confirm our compass fate.

Four Seasons in One Day

In recent times, meteorologists have announced casually that the beginning of Autumn is taken as September 1. They clarify their point by stating that they need to work in three-month blocks for weather trends and related statistics.

Autumn, in fact, begins on or about September 23, which is the Autumn Equinox, that is, days and nights of equal length. The next major seasonal date of note is December 23 (Winter Solstice, that is, shortest day in the year), following by the Vernal Equinox in March (equal lengths again), and then the Summer Solstice (longest day of the year).   

Attentive readers will note that the distribution of these correct dates (both descriptively and seasonally) is also in units of three months. The meteorologists' contention for seasons beginning conveniently three weeks early in each case is therefore disingenuous.

Statistics using early data would lead to the conclusion, in the case of Autumn, for example, that Autumn included the first three weeks in September, which in temperate climates often spans a warm, dry period referred to as 'Indian summer'. Further, by ending at the end of November, in northern Europe at least, Autumn stats are spared the embarrassment of three weeks of icy December showers that would otherwise fall into the autumnal category. The result is that the manipulation of temperature and rainfall averages obscures true seasonal statistics.

There must be a logical reason for this shift of seasons. It may be that the levels of government benefits payments in certain sectors are based on statistical seasonal averages - winter fuel allowances, or similar - so that the massaging of weather data directly affects national funding to particular support schemes for families who require financial assistance.

In America, many years ago (perhaps even so today), there was a company named Morton that packaged table salt in a thick, cylindrical-shaped blue container. The picture on the container simply said 'Morton's Salt', with an image of a young girl holding up an umbrella. She was shown walking along in the rain, and beneath one arm she carried a blue container identical to the one on which she was depicted. The container's spout was open, and as the girl walked along in the rain, the salt was poring from the container behind her. The legend beneath the image read, "When it rains, it pours".

Apart from the beauty and zen-like brevity of the motto, one further point of interest was that the girl was wearing what was clearly a short-sleeved summer dress. 

Did she know if it was summer rain, or autumn rain? Are we now as she, in whimsical detachment, circling round and round in the wet, yet dry, a disreputable metaphor trailing away behind us, forever?

The forecast is unsettled.


 

  

 

All Strung-Out

The theory of multiverses has nothing to do with multi-tasking in poem-writing (What a thought!). It is rather the theory that many universes co-exist at once. Why has our universe three dimensions? Why can it not exhibit the qualities of five, or a hundred?

Naturally, the physical realities of living in a multi-dimensional space seem overwhelming, unless of course one does so, in which case such a reality would appear normal in most respects. 'Physical' objects might not be even recognisable as matter as we know it, and what of time - would everything appear without tense, past and future indistinguishable from present? If every object appeared and disappeared at will, there would be no noticeable transit; everything would simply be.

String Theory calculations indicate that in order for a three-dimensional universe to play-out, no fewer than nine actual dimensions need to exist. The three observable dimensions being extrusions of a larger group whose members remain entangled.

Perhaps somewhere, now, someone like you, or me, is reading or writing about the possibilities of an existence outside our known experience. Perhaps the cup of coffee you are making is made again and again in an infinite pattern, where we have all disappeared into other realities and returned again, moving between seconds, between the ghosts of seconds.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 40

The Interpretation of Dreams

Smoke, mirrors, a rest in the forest

alfresco,

sometimes a found object suggesting a whole mosaic:

glass marbles, beads, pebbles found on the beach,

everything I find interesting, not only

gold between layers.

New love songs, a new way of seeing—

if nothing else, I have become more brave.

When I look at you, I feel I am looking

into a physical memory.

…

The words of the inscription so filled with ice,

the letters are hard to decipher, this desolate spot, 54

degrees 54 minutes north latitude, 25 degrees 19

minutes east longitude.

French geographers and Lithuanian patriots are convinced,

the geographical centre of Europe is located

precisely on this unassuming hill.

A stone marks the spot,

only 15 miles from glittering Vilnius.

I think this is the centre, she says.

After all, they didn’t just think it up.

One day, we’ll understand what this is worth.

Here, we created a real process.

...

A January’s night.

All the windows are covered by different landscapes. The cold

draws them on the glass.

I light up a candle and open the door.

It smells of old times,

books, albums, toys, clothes.

I find a photo.

There are two people sitting side by side here.

They are smiling, happy.

The photo is really old, but very nice.

It’s in Lithuania. The weather’s good.

I open imperceptibly the other side of the photo,

and I see.

I live quite far from your place,

but surely distance doesn’t matter.

A few times I was nearly abducted in my dreams.

What I meant was that, in my dreams, sometimes women

approach me,

asking how do they plant the poppies.

This way, this way, that and that way,

that is how they plant the poppies.

Yes, I would like to learn more about future dreams,

each guest bringing a symbolic gift.

Rabbit, let’s run. The sky is falling.

…

We made our way

down a street overhung with chocolate gables.

My guide presses an unmarked buzzer,

and we go through a darkened hall.

There are people he says he knows,

but no one speaks to him.

They are more interested

in the vodka and herring on the table.

I try the local dialect, they all look up for a moment,

then return to the herring.

It’s then I tell them who I am.

The most beautiful woman I have ever seen

walks over, says to me in such a way I know it to be true,

everything you need is here.

A fish the size of a mountain swims through the room,

bumping gently between us, sliding past.

Does this gaudy morphology mean anything to you?

Glimpses turn into shadows.

The fish moves in unison with other things. Yesterday it was

a tiny metallic fish she wore. All the elders

remember it that way,

turning in the river current, nothing moving,

the vodka burning in my glass, blue, blue.

…

Another incident.

I felt like something was coming straight

to me. At first I thought it lightning, but I thought

how does this happen with no cloud in the sky,

and much the same outside as the day before?

When the practitioner did her analysis, the results

were so astonishing, she repeated

the measurements over and over again.

Fireplaces were blazing, or appeared to,

adding to the shadows thrown across

wooden floors, the stone walls, the way your eyes’ greeny gold

held the world.

…

After months waiting, the envelope.

You open it carefully along the fold, not spoiling the return

address.

You read the letter,

the winter night leaning against the window.

But you are already standing in sunlight, the high thin cloud

a Cyrillic notation on deeper blue, soft

tipped wheat waves brushing against you as you walk

towards her, through the door

she promised would be there.

…

In that place, two rivers converging, and there

your life, a promise

farther apart, with no hope of broad valleys.

Farewell to the lovely lakes, a meeting place, a town

at the coming together of the two rivers,

embracing the enclosed spaces,

woods, meadows, rocks,

refusing to lift your memory into the stars.

How water is healed describes the long wave,

earth’s gravity grid, the 12 faced zodiac

the result of braiding, pushing, massaging the symmetry,

allowing information to move

between worlds,

latitude, longitude, the confluence neither entirely in the mind

nor in the place,

contained in the memory of people.

Your passport, a passport photograph:

you in the red dress, water becoming ordered and full of life,

braided like this, in the snow melt

our revealing angel.

…

From the south,

a waiting anchorage, clock pulses, no conversation now,

only the minutes waiting.

We haven’t that long to live,

waiting for palms

surrounded by endless coral reefs, a hammock,

the distance long and difficult,

the stillness between notes and pathways all changed.

I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago.

I stare at the photograph, and imagine you

returning to this new life.

You are sleeping, or nearly sleeping. You say

each drowsy breath will only complicate you— trust in me

and fall as well.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 39

Ulysses

A river rises,

and somewhere at the end of it

the sea, as though salt itself

was a new direction.

When I was a boy

chasing wavebreak on the shore,

I saw the shift of each alliance

fill footprints with the grains.

A great endeavour passes,

keeps oar-time in the mind,

from a simple setting out,

war fleets and the dead battalions.

All this fine weather,

the ship’s hands tacking hard—

we ride the wind’s fuse

to a burst of knots.

The deck lifts

rolling on a shelf of swell, then

sudden sink of senses

where wave-trough tips the bow.

To the east, a needle of smoke:

Troy scattered, broken

by the hoi-polloi of heroes

caught in beauty’s undertow.

Siege stones pave the plain, the glint

of grave shields starry with the gods’ intent.

A common purpose came to nothing,

a distance without landfall.

We are buried in bronze,

and cannot distinguish the mouth of hell

from the line of cupped sail,

or slack sea deep with journeys.

Sacrifice is a cold fire,

around the earth a darkness,

devouring, a murderous whim

calling each of us by name.

We offered blood for safe passage.

The slit throat sang from the ashes…

the walls without consequence… city.

The wide blades pull against the tide.