Blackwater Quartet (Endgame)

Two years ago I began posting poems here from the book cycle, Blackwater Quartet. The individual series titles, Constructing the Human, Theories of Fugue, Tsunami Muses, and Adventures in the Gothic, together with the single-volume edition (2005) had been out-of-print for several years, though the dedicated reader might stray across a copy in the corner of a bookshop on Charing Cross Road or on a 'rare and out-of-print' internet book site.

The poems were posted in a random sequence. Occasionally, I posted a comment but these were not necessarily to do with the poems. With Selection 117, "Four Last Songs," the series postings are complete (I should add that the "Prologue" to the combined volume appears on its own page elsewhere on this blog.).

To mark the completion, I'm posting a link to the pdf of the complete publisher file, as the poems appeared at the time of publication, although as can be seen on the book's Acknowledgements page many poems had been published individually in their own right in various journals and reviews.

Another book cycle, Relic Environments Trilogy, was published by individual title and in a compilation volume by Cinnamon Press, in Wales (2005-2011). I hope in the future to republish these poems here in the same manner as Blackwater Quartet.

I want to thank everyone, in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, India, Belgium, China, and elsewhere, who have retained an interest in Blackwater Quartet.

Blackwater Quartet

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 117

Four Last Songs

Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the

sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can

be calculated in advance, and it becomes part of the ceremony.

                                                   — Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes

1. How We Heard The News

The revelation Adam taught his son,

Seth, in the seven hundredth year, saying

large and small passions, signs in the heavens, smart cards,

make sure you are ready.

Of the Mahuzzims, honoured by the King

who doth according to his will,

New! Coming Day of the LORD and the 7th Trumpet

gathering of the elect, after the Tribulation,

Christ.

Dürer’s woodcuts, engravings of Horsemen another fine

Apocalypse.

One in five Japanese believe at least

somewhat in Nostradamus’s prediction,

everyone

to receive a mark, no one to buy or sell unless he had

the name of the beast, the number of his name.

It is man’s number.

After years of study, we at the Ministry are convinced.

The end of this world, the rapture

unveiling.

 

2. Devil

Shake off the Devil, tell the Devil

today he is a liar, he will not take your joy,

your peace, or disturb your spirit.

He is the one who made the following comment.

Dear Dr Freud, where shall I stand

and wait, old man voice

in skinny boy body?

The picture of Donald Duck,

the ambivalence, angel Donald on one shoulder,

devil Donald on the other,

in a manner against his instinct and his will.

The Devil was walking down the road

when, some distance away, he saw a man stoop down,

place something in his pocket.

The fight enters a new phase.

The neighbour brought in something

his wife found,

like curving horns. She said, speak Devil,

that I too may cast spells and work roots!

Red, twelve feet tall, extra ribs, blonde hair,

a thirty five feet wing span, I was just curious,

is it warm where you live?

I live in da desert. Here are my terms:

everything continues until the end.

 

3. Mouthpiece

Japanese bamboo end-blown flute,

as the crack spread along the shaft almost to the mouthpiece,

this time wet cotton string drying,

shrinking.

Every time he says I’m not who I was.

Under the gold and silver plate,

thick nickel, these chemicals leaching into the mouth,

the body every time, as time goes on.

Often buying another mouthpiece,

we want you to wait another month,

officials told him.

Hullo, Edison screamed into the telephone

mouthpiece, this time the nursery rhyme

Mary had a Little Lamb.

Then they moved the needle back.

I looked around once more, then try

keying the button adjacent to my rebreather

mouthpiece.

Time to go.

4. The End of Time

Time is an illusion.

The mystery was unveiled.

An enigmatic cross in the churchyard of a small resort

in the Basses-Pyrenees emerged as a true monument.

You see an old man.

When he notices you, he tips his hat

and smiles softly, says from Jerusalem

between the end of the world and the beginning of the world,

repentance unto Salvation by the Blood of the Lamb.

The pleading, I didn’t think would ever end,

O again, the same thing

happening again, as it was during Noah’s time.

By entering you are stating you have read

the following, understand and agree to these terms.

Two years after the release of his patriotic

Till the End of Time

director Edward Dmytryk was called to testify

before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

End times repentance call.

Near the end of time He will send

the Angel.

I know how the world is coming

to an end. I write this, not as I was.

Dance with me.

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 116

Partitas of the Soviet

In Moscow, I had met Irina, the contact of a contact.

She showed up in the hotel lobby,

wearing a magnificent mink coat, scored abroad.

Her English was charming.

I hadn’t requested that she drive, but since it was so cold out

she brought her huge American SUV.

We parked down near St. Basil’s.

She works as an interpreter rather than a tour guide,

as she had to insist to a Kremlin ticket-taker, he reminding her

unauthorised tour guides were NOT permitted.

She reminding him of her rights

to speak English wherever she wanted.

After the Mayakovsky, its beautiful mosaic ceilings,

followed by Revolution Square and statues

in the Soviet style,

we returned early to the hotel, perhaps too early.

I’m now typing the thong is like a subway car;

the bacteria go from rectum to vagina to the bladder.

She turns over, commenting

I really like the part where you have me say,

he makes a move to put me in his mouth.

I have nothing else to add.

After photo-ops at the cannon that never fired,

and the bell that never rang,

apart from the translation and clue-giving

it was worth several dollars having someone available

to snap me in the stations.

*

I had all that trouble with Immigration.

As you know, I’ve also not been well.

I went to the clinic, did the Herpes test.

Christ.

They gave me a number, anonymous patient 99565.

Irina had some potassium sulphate, or something.

We sat in her car.

She rolls a piece of gauze, dilutes the chemical,

touches the blisters, and the top of my head blew off.

I don’t think I’ll go back to the clinic;

Irina seems to know what to do.

Anyway, I’m better now.

They issued the visa anyway.

*

In Moscow, three months after

the thong incident reduced my poetry

to Dadaist gibberish,

I had actual proof of cat worship.

I had just turned a corner to find this little bookshop,

thinking I might get a book on mushrooms,

and what should appear but cat shrines.

In each shrine a sleeping cat, perfectly spherical.

The woman behind the counter,

giant eyes behind giant glasses,

obviously the priestess of the shrines, says

well, yes, Irina is crazy, but she’s nice to cats.

She decorates lamps

with little overhanging beads and cat photos.

I agreed this was crazy, but wanted it to stay this way.

As I photographed the priestess, she capped the Persian

in a smart boater, red-ribboned, and sang Irina’s famous

Cat Glorifying Poem # 2.

*

Gypsy children, panhandling,

some singing, playing musical instruments,

a few selling kittens out of cardboard boxes.

One woman there, just kneeling over an icon all day,

bobbing her head up and down over it.

During an exercise on clipping

unstressed vowels in Red Square, I was asked for my documents.

He said he was in barracks near the Three Monkeys bar,

if I had any dollars.

Seven metro stops up the blue line,

the massive statue of Lenin on the main highway.

*

At the Anglo-American school in Pokrovsky Hills,

I picked up her last e mail, salted with strings of garlic bulbs,

MIG-25s, John Lennon wire-rims, closing

I’m still here, somewhere, try Uzbekistan, kiss kiss.

From Samarkand to Fergana by train,

then through the Pamir mountains, Osh to Bishkek—

after a few days

I left that city by night bus to Tashkent.

By then I had her diary, high minded,

old fashioned writing, endeavours predominantly visual,

but with some structuring,

found and read despite the content warnings:

Nietzsche, karaoke bar lyrics, PIN randomly changing,

trashy blonde take

do-I-look-cute-in-this-sari, et cetera,

simplicity hidden

beneath misquotes of Russian poets pre-glasnost.

Why not, became her main motto.

I had a dream last night, about our house.

Writing this made me remember I’ve dreamt about it

often lately, though it doesn’t exist in this place,

or in this time.

In the same manner the Earth’s surface

divides oceans and continents,

and we continue as we do, pretending

everything is concluded, that it is possible

to conclude, everywhere

a static of images escaping, a virus uploaded,

snatching events, a helix of nine lives and after,

the way a rain of hailstones breaks the Moscow heat.

*

Last flight out— we rise and bank.

In the distance, to the east, precursor mist

shapes the mountain passes, each granite trail

cut blankly through the cloud.