Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.xiv

from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

1937
 

In Manchuria, I sat up half the night

with the Emperor’s consul, observing with contempt

the vacuum sea of planetary break-ups,

and other transient phenomena.

The movements of living beings

in our resettlement campaigns

had no external references

to the positions of the comfort-women.

Their melodies were ‘sighed for’.

Moon Mountain above the Nu Jiang Gorge,

tortoise clouds, the network delta of lakes

and extremes of the seasonal,

bore an authentic authorial haunting.

The shamans there maintain that ghosts,

in search of human victims, are attracted

to those whose souls have been fractured –

these, dishonoured in the Kiao-Chow raids,

ending here at our whim, under a sky

full of absolutes.

We agreed such things must be accepted,

these tendencies towards flesh and rage.

Both of us a little drunk perhaps,

he said he sometimes recalled an image

from a former posting – one midnight, losing count

of the arrests, his old friend Arturo Mauritius

spiriting integers across the municipal gardens.

Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part1.xiii

from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

Inquiries after Donne

Early Modern seduction strategies

They said they didn't want a list

Think of the sonnets, they said think of the lovers

Sin, the use of allegory and images of beauty
The themes of deception or self-deception

Connecting diction and image

The use of the word heaven, the nature of Hell

Is it hellish, how does it work
Is his vision effective, consider

More and more, in dreams, returning, the hind

Running in the woods, in the waste land

Sleeping only in coffins, the sky opening

I row in the dark on the beautiful Thames, wired to the dead

North winds coiling

With this larger sight gifted for him

I take his share

Going up in the moon, drunk

In my pocket the beach

Earth is not any more in earth, it is where I am

All its terminals, and anything good in the terminals

In the soaking sheets

And, on my eyes, the insane wicks, the candles

Night

In an old dream, in the vague country of things

That die, in what I see, in what I know

In what I think, in what I live

A displacement of directions with the night

Suddenly, evil

A pure substance in the mouth, in many mouths

In the walls, in these arms

In the tower, in the black back of time

In the pre of these things

Of nothing, nothing

Of all that I see that is necessary, not of my choice

To put yourself in sorrow

Of place, in grace

Protesting, from the geographer’s globe to the tear

From the tear to the deluge, protesting

At this violent yoking, conceit and device

Death takes care of us, death wearies

Of this, of me

Playing dice at the bottom of the tomb

In fingers of fine night, naked

I bleed on the sea of tigers, nails and heavy flowers

From the lips

One drop of blood to be sewn

I look at the past, returning
Memories, laid down in the seconds
I will have imagined
I could invent you
By counting each one of your bodies in my dreams
Slipping past shattered forms, names

Our doubts becoming us, our silences

Idylls, and confinements

The years are the cause

It is in the teeth

Full in the teeth the language goes

Announcing his sorrow, it corrodes the linen

The simultaneous registers of one voice

The collected works recited, after that

One asking if she could sleep with me, the detectives

Let me go

Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.xii

from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

Mr Poe, Considering the Raven in Its Parts

One must be minded to such things,

set down in sulphur and the habit of desire.

I have not been as others were.

I have not seen as others saw.

In the country there, I was hoping to recover.

Indeed, I had been much improved,

or so Annie had believed.

The bottle, the laudanum, my stories,

could not lift me to her good intent, catching

the room, her voice in it, the house

meant to hide us and recover us;

I had hoped to be much improved.

I shall explain something of the times:

Father a friend of Lafayette, my Mother

English (I was schooled near London,

and proved myself apart from other boys,

the rude mechanics of their verses).

I believe you are acquainted with the facts.

At their deaths, my sister and I to others:

I knew our lives had been saved.

A child, I knew it, and Father’s friends thanked God

to see us so – the Allans kind,

but more insistent to the business later, and I

to soldiering, and the subtle mark

that sets a life against itself.

Later, my books set, and I, so seeming, made,

in lectern halls in Richmond, Baltimore, New York, 

a fine, mad sweep was also fixed, my mind

turned to deeper shades.

I had a pretty turn of phrase, but never saw

its coin, my poor dear wife

swallowed whole in the task of it, in the lesion

shaking my brain.

I shall explain something of time.

Out of it, one becomes it, its tenets

of days and conversations long past.

By what other means shall we become ourselves?

I died one Sunday,

in opium filth and fever, and I wondered

that I continue thus, perplexed

by the humanity of strange and beautiful works,

in the spirit rhythm of the possible.

And here lies the mystery,

in this bar room, within a street

more brightly lit than all Baltimore,

a person introduced to me as Elvis –

a time soldier festooned in precious stones –

stands upon a stage, calling

to the crowd, of love that is tender,

and of the coming true of dreams.                                

Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.xi

from Book I, Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

The Afterlife of Thomas Hardy

On Portland Sand

waters slide – sleek,

a sable halfling creek

of seashell contraband.

The kites, crescents

of hoisted blue,

spike or crash, the wind too

much or little, the sense

of distance lost

in spirals, set

against each flaring jet

of tug-line Pentecost.

The trippers wade

the ribbon reach

of something less than beach,

and will it to be made,

passing along

low meadow, black-

thorn scrub and tangled tack,

to catch the sea’s sarong

of wavy green,

a change in light,

a blink of second sight

that’s conjured to the mean,

but cannot tell

which ghost they thought

would join them there, caught 

within the light that fell,

 

the plot offhand,

its curious

refrain – a footprint fuss

of fraying tides and sand.

Relic Environments Trilogy: Book I, Part 1.x

from Book I,Part 1, Mystery Tramp Eclogues

The Plan of a Dictionary, 1747

 

Sir—I too am a student of meaning,

of sounds and recalcitrant hopes, a thing

the tongue holds, turns, and lets by, and therefore

intimate with scope and detail, and for

my efforts in the matter stand apart

from others, viz, a servant of this art.

Persons of like bearing; ruffian, priest,

all in their places high or low, the least

of whom considers his fellow’s words, knows

them as they were known from infancy, blows

a merry smoke of guile or trust. It reads

against itself, for signatures are seeds

in dusty soil, and will not make a crop.

The meaning heard is understood. The sop

who listens, hears. Who calls a horse by name,

understands the measure of the road. Shame

dogs the rest, whom for bough imagine bow.

My point is this, describe a farmer’s plough

by its purpose to that industry, set

it to its furrow, and meaning will be met,

truly. All things are so, all words and ways

by which the mind is pricked, all signs and days.

For my model, schoolboy Latin Grammar,

keen Rhetoric, and Shakespeare – hammer

and forge, the New, and so metamorphose

to lead this nomenclature by the nose.

How the book runs, Sir, words in their habit

and condition, I will undertake it –

improve the state of these asides, infer

this humdrum civility of manner

a dirt beneath the nail, yet not offend

subscribers it may by and by befriend.

Our follies may be dressed, and for amusement

stripped of any sense, through taste, argument,

and the subtle starting of alphabet

in sequences according to this set

of bold parameters. Be advised, this

enterprise is Hydra-headed, its hiss

and slither précis to its bite and fire.

I remain, Sir, Yours – Sam. Johnson, Esquire.