Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.v

 from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

 

26 Piazza di Spagna

Rain, dull days of it – a pocket of sleet

empties in the fountain of bees and suns.

First one, then twos and threes, yellow-ray

umbrellas open on the Spanish Steps, where

Mussolini’s mock-heroics nail each building to its time,

fascisti graffito SPQR – a camp commemoration

bull-necked on the plinths.

In Prada, colour-wheel handbags

for schoolgirl Japanese… what else…?

My father came through in ‘forty-four,

between somewhere and anywhere. I have a photo,

of him in Army-issue shades, leaning on a Jeep, 

in one hand a Chianti bottle, in the other

a Lucky Strike.

Time accommodates, healing nothing here.

The rocket taxi carves new shortcuts

through the crowds –’Don’t worry, Mister,

I drive Roma plenty’.

… What else…?

Rain, dull days of it, sleet

waited-out in doorways – time and raw colour,

the cough that killed Keats.

Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.iv

from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

The English Beach

 

The winds are from Africa. As far as the Azores

the weather continues warm, sieving pumice

through hibiscus plums and reds.

The waiter tops the flutes before he goes—

star-shaped cuts of melon in the bowl, not less

than other shrines, makeshift of the same eternity.

The clouds are in the mountains, firstly,

patternless humidity drawn shoreward to the cape

in sunset ransoms of late rain.

Above the dialect of childhood faces,

a sticky milk ripens in the fronds. We name it

with labials, with burnt-cork vowels.

A gritty skirt of language, of empty pleas,

of the names kept from us always,

the playa decorates this old volcano.

On islands the sun holds close, strangers

dance to phrases of lost love, dovetailed to the middle bars

where, higher still, trade winds bridge the cold calderas.

Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.iii

 from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

The Wall

We waded back along the creek,

lugging the creek stones one by one, the rig

sloped axle-deep in water, the weight

of each load seizing on the springs.

Across the spill of shallows, we looked

at what we’d done, and said, Enough for now.

In the field, we struck the seams, grading

each for size, edges sounder

where the hammer bit the stone,

the shale of shells knocked loose to firmer stuff.

Soil dug back, we took a level, squared

the cut, a chop of spade ramping it true.

Nothing of a slurry mortar,

the pudding mix a trowel takes − instead, nooked

tightly into shunted stacks,

from the chinks flush-joints appeared.

A sky of high sun baked the length, by then

a shout from end to end, and still it went.

We fetched the lost meadows, their stands of birch

and willow, the hill routes.

We hauled them whole, their birds, and the grasses

bright-backed with gentians, set them round with stone

coursing sure for boundary, a fix of stars,

the years.

Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.ii

from Book I, Part, 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues 


Honour
From the eaves, a few melt-water drops,
painted in reed shadow.

He waits upon the figure a little way off,
the kinsman knelt in frost.

The one kneeling gathers up time,
and with it folds the gutting-knife.
The other hears a heartbeat pass
and, stepping forward, fans a longer blade,
from the butterfat of neck the jet,
on perfect falls of snow
its sudden signature.

In Murakami’s Norwegian Wood,
a scene: two friends sitting on the roof
watching the surrounding town
as it burns…

I’m white trash, not Japanese,
and it was the mountains to the east, and I
not making a move
on the girl I was with, but otherwise
the scene exactly the same, the injuries too,
exactly like my own, the way she said
I had to wait my turn.

The clouds of smoke looked amazing,
the fire on the mountain a billowing, tincture red.

Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.i

from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

Syncopation 

The archbishop warned Il Giornale
Avert your gaze The mirror must be covered, or risk believing
The images it contains are true  

The membrane writhed, distorted where the verses
Pressed forward

Wrangling through silver, the burst sacs
Pooling in the carpet spirals

A wobbly first-step, cautious, then
Quicker as the page was turned

Relic Environments Trilogy: Précis

Portrait of the Artisit as King of Ravens


Ragged figure in a leafless tree
 
Pilgrim, what visions now

*

A long pause, something other
Than silence, how it ends

In the margins, ghosts 

*

A slipknot of couplets
Corner-creased
I remember her beautiful, blood-tipped toes

*

Beneath this road, another

Older still
And beneath that road, a path

The wind’s width, winding

To the place I came to

To be named

*

A chill in the weather
The sundial clouded-over
*

The world drowned, the memory
Still with us, the hint of cumulus
Over picnic lawns 

Next time, heart of stars

*

Hauled from the depths, a fish
 
In its belly a scroll, ancient

What the writing said

*

The Israelite’s choir rehearsed Salvation

Death itself conquered, acappella
*

Against mud-brick walls, babies' brains

 
The Old God, resting: My Son is coming

But until then, more blood
*

Constantine, sick of heresy, agreed
Father and Son divine beyond Logos
Gaul to Byzantium, from
Boar-thrones to the See of subterfuge, a Creed
Of parchments scattered on the table
To the Bishops at Nicea, raging, What remains
Is the Bible, what falls off

Is out

* 

Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be
Required of thee

At the edge of darkness, strange lights

*

Rain-shaped, mobbing gusts

Umbrella domes cracked back, each ribcage sprung
Against black

*

The Shark God, delicate as flowers
Glides between the boats, through watery stars

In lagoon houses, incense for what cannot be changed

Smoke and small offerings, lost souls
Waist-deep in waves

*

Russian soil, revolution’s red hammer
And after

Bony, gulag fracture dust

The avatars, their glistening scales

Dead ocean karma, these postures of submission

In the shadow of waves
Stravinsky grinding treble clefs

*

Venting in the rigs, the Pleistocene
Ignites across the canopies

Metal spires, trailing black flags

In the distance, the pipeline, west with the sun

*

The saurus nothing could catch
Sunk now in tar

Resin, buffed amber, within it
Fossil bees in flight

Old men, staring into the fire

*

In the shaving glass
A man born the year “Parsifal” premiered

The cut-throat edging his jaw, he pauses
Taps soap scum in the bowl

Turning to me, the air nicked for emphasis
Don’t ever get old, boy

No good will come of it

*

Swifts arc, snap-turn
Squealing, the house sheared

From its shadow

*

Pencil-stroke reeds, dirty skies
Seamless in tidal pools

Still, black water
A coin of the realm interrupts

Nothing is accidental

*

Moonlight swallows the lanes

Behind us on the path
Shot-silk hanging from the trees, the way
We came

Deciding dark from full

*

The felled oak opens the sky

Isobars thread the grain

Scratching lazy circles
Counted back to Harold’s reign

Years marking drought and wet
And now this sudden space

Tell them I rode the weather’s needle

Tell them you found me
Watching stars come out

*

Pulls bird-shaped paper
To the wind

Lifted, lightly passing
Observing, in sunlit air

The movement overhead, at its limit

High streamers

*

Everything, she said
Always adds up to this
 
Beneath blood-tipped toes a numeral
The waves catch

*

The raven’s plumage, not black alone
Not studied jet, in this light
Violet bass notes, oily emerald
Ghost I came with