Collected Poems

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Collected Poems Page 23

by Peter Redgrove


  A lustrous great spider he fly-fed; he had become

  Clever enough to snatch them on the wing

  Wondering at how the beautiful webs

  Could yet be spun out of the corrupt glues

  That were the fly’s food; he mused upon

  Those husks caught up in orrery rounds,

  Emptied of all purpose, yet white

  And winged as angels. He knew

  The silk of his employment was spun by worms

  Of a moth, and dreamed of feeding that moth

  To his spider, the silk would be redistilled, radiant

  With the light and pulsing beauty of all the trembling moths

  That spin silk clothes for the babies of themselves

  Wrapped and cross-clawed like an Egyptian Karast.

  III

  The butterfly or the sulphur-moth sucking at her weed

  Is only one of the beauties; her transformation

  To thin taut threads under the same sun on which the spider

  Dances to eat her is another of them,

  The skeletal patterns of cracked shadows in the sun;

  And the beauty of the crabby lichen-back

  That chucks her loins from side to side

  Like Lola Montez, and tiptoes out

  To wrap on tautened lines her prey in bales,

  Is yet another, as he thinks

  Drowsily of sleep, that great spider

  Bending down to suck his soul from his face,

  Kissing face to face, and turning it

  Into that sensitive web which fills the nightworld

  And catches fluttering dreams for nourishment;

  So Renfield’s madness or peculiarity

  That loved the creaures so

  The rest of us despise, led him

  Fearlessly into the night of dreams,

  Young silk-factor, where he met the master, Vlad,

  Who fed him endlessly from thin soft hands.

  IV

  Who fed him endless streams of drops on wings

  Like mother’s milk, choice flies, and told him:

  ‘Be that spider whom you fear, I, Vlad Dracula,

  Will so transform you, as you wish,’ and showed him how

  Life flows in liquid drops, through fangs,

  Creature to creature, in chains of drops like webs,

  And whose work he did, so long as he was strong,

  Guiding the young white girls to dance

  Upon the webs without being caught by Death,

  Raising them to drink as It did, spiderly,

  Until fly-swatting Van Helsing clapped his fat palms

  Smack and said ‘No more of those,’ wiping hands

  Stained from the stake down immaculate spun hose.

  ORCHARD WITH WASPS

  The rouged fruits in

  The orchard by the waterfall, the bronzed fruits,

  The brassy flush on the apples.

  He gripped the fruit

  And it buzzed like a gong stilled with his fingers

  And a wasp flew out with its note

  From the gong of sugar and scented rain

  All the gongs shining like big rain under the trees

  Within the sound of the little waterfall

  Like a gash in the apple-flesh of time

  Streaming with its juices and bruised.

  Such a wasp, so full of sugar

  Flew out within the sound

  Of the apple-scented waterfall,

  Such a gondola of yellow rooms

  Striped with black rooms

  Fuelled with syrups hovering

  At the point of crystal,

  Applegenius, loverwasp, scimitar

  Of scented air and sugar-energy

  Shining up his lamp-tree tall and devious

  Given utterly to its transformations

  From sharp-scented flowers to honey-gongs,

  Giver and taker of pollination-favours,

  A small price for such syrups and plunderings,

  Its barky flesh, its beckoning fruit,

  Its deep odour of cider and withering grasses,

  Its brassy bottles and its Aladdin gold-black drunks.

  THE LAUNDROMAT AS PRAYER-WHEEL

  I

  The whirling pole bound up in linen,

  The Lord of the Dancing Axle-tree;

  There is a resurrection with a loud synoptic cry.

  We move from place to place like shadows of the whiteness

  Of these garments which seem woven of light

  As they draw out of the mechanical sepulchre.

  It is the night of the Mystery of White Shapes,

  The angel is here, a splendid presence, like electricity in linen,

  I fold the double sheet up, I wrestle with its wings.

  The dazzling garments like dead bodies light the tombs

  Of resurrection-devices, washing-machines in lines,

  There are dancers full of water in the drums

  That dance their twisty music to the coins,

  Elastic celebrants treading in the tombs

  Unwinding reels of flickering ghost-films.

  The tumbling shirts are scalded fresh,

  The hankies fluttering

  Like the leaves of a white oak in a blowy cave.

  The ghosts that appear in sheets!

  Whisk the sheets aside, and what is under? Puffed water,

  Geist, Gischt, gust or swimming foam.

  When the neutron bomb explodes, it is the garments that survive.

  A spotless white shirt falls shuddering to the floor,

  A muslin gown settles peacefully to the grass.

  He is clad in a cloud of fresh clothing warm and dry.

  A really white shirt feels white when your eyes are shut.

  The coffin-maker of Nazareth was a snow-white carpenter.

  II

  The superiority and glamour of a candid white garment.

  As though wrapped in light, like a white-washed house,

  I study the radiance of my shirt with my eyes shut,

  As though wrapped in lightning, among the thunderstorms.

  Men clothe themselves in dark in imitation of the clouds,

  They darken their white clothing to show obedience

  To the natural courses, the tinctured farmer bends

  Over his muddy fields as the rain-clouds do.

  Toiling in mud will not reproduce the lustre

  Of low clouds as will acacia or indigo.

  The naked body is vile, and lacking in speech,

  The clothed flesh belongs to a man of eloquence

  Whose skin of alertness converses with the hugs,

  The featherings of movement, whose skin

  Instructs him that a garment is a reservoir

  Soaked in strength, and fabric a tunic of kisses

  Like the heavenly tube through which the earth flies,

  Arraying to their seasons, echoing.

  Even the rain is white, and has a white belly,

  Is affable, and clasps the gowned body

  With its soaking grip in lighthouses of lustre.

  LECTURE OVERHEARD

  A great white ear floating in the sky, listening. I say

  That your hair is but the beauty of ashes of blood

  Passed out through your skin. I tell you how

  We all live in our manacles which are

  The food-chains forged by the sea.

  Light Pours on to the brine, and the little creatures

  Which are green dust thrive there, to be eaten

  By the larger: small creates the great.

  We munch the daft-eyed herring of that union,

  We lift the salty waves of its flesh off the hairy bones.

  The great tree of water flourishes over the sea

  And begins walking on its visible roots

  And then rain storms over all the land.

  Holes are blown in houses, and their roof-scales

  Lifted off the hairy tim
bers. It lightens and

  Dissolved nitrates leach into the soil, the great

  Thunder-voice utters fertility. In its echoes

  Rings of trees spread out and protect our land

  From the leaky repeated visits of the white water-engines

  Of dazzling rain cranked out of the depths.

  Grass spreads its tablecloths, and the cattle feast,

  Our feast feasts. We pocket ourselves

  Under open stone books and gravestones

  But our substances distil in needlework

  Of water back to the sea and there become

  Dust-creatures and the shock-eyed salmon.

  I have carved a large spider in wood

  I have incised its globular body with the food-chains

  Which wreathe about its jaws. See, the spider is hinged

  At the edge of its carapace – open it – there is

  A little carving of a baby, smoothly-grained,

  Nestling deep in its spider-box, the future

  Nested in the spider. The great white ear

  Passes on, having overheard. We listen to the sea

  Which renews, you can hear the reversal

  Coming and going, with its sighs. The great ships

  Pass by in chains, loaded with provisions.

  GUNS AND WELLS

  I

  The artillery-men wait upon the big gun,

  They have its banquet piled

  And ready in greased pyramids,

  They serve the long fat shells like cannelloni,

  The gun munches with an explosion.

  Molten tears silver our countenances,

  Vomit of metal plates the cornfields,

  Men blow away like smoke in the ringing brisants.

  No doing of mine, says chef-commandant,

  I feed the guns only when they are hungry.

  II

  She tells me the polished skull of a traitor

  Lurks in this well still,

  His comrades gave rough justice,

  Over the parapet laid his bare neck,

  Cutlass-sliced that smuggling head,

  Which dropped like a boulder

  And is down there to this day, she said,

  Polished nearly to nothing,

  Bobbing in the well-spring,

  Folding and unfolding in the polishing water,

  Almost glass, and papery-thin,

  Ascending, descending on variable cool water,

  Nodding upon a current which is a spine,

  Spinning like a film of faintest shadow

  Or flexile churchwindow,

  Reflating when rain fattens the spring;

  Then a sunbeam

  Strikes down the brick shaft

  And there gazes upwards, revolving in the depths,

  A golden face; then the sun

  Goes in and the water goes on polishing.

  THE WHITE, NIGHT-FLYING MOTHS CALLED ‘SOULS’

  I

  Their bodies all uncanny slime and light,

  I brush silvery maggots off my white bible.

  We are copies of each other. Bound in leather

  The book crawls among us with a loud voice,

  Dead men’s matter wormed into chapters

  Between the first communion doeskins.

  Worms are the messengers rustling in the print with quills,

  Masters of God’s word, the bible bookworms;

  We are dead men’s matter, gene-edited,

  Say God’s bibles, covered with worms.

  II

  The moths flutter at the candles like clothed ladies,

  Like long ladies in Assyrian gauzes;

  The moonbeams twine through the flowers creating nectars,

  The moths sip, and reclothe the moonbeams in light leathers

  And dusty gauzes like Assyrians for their dances,

  And these moonbeam moths sup at the candles

  Like soft explosions.

  The sunshine falls on meat, creating liquors

  The blackflies sip

  Dressing bright sun in greasy leathers,

  Tight shining leathers, and like Assyrian dragons

  Trample on my bible-hide and kneel roaring

  At top pitch, dabbing with their suctions.

  The little bony flies come to the Bible

  Because it reeks of sacrifice. O God,

  Burnt offerings like blue candles of the ghats

  Twirl in smokes of fat to Your motionless courts,

  And we brushed the stout Baal-zebub flies away

  That wished to wing Your meat, and clothe it, God,

  In white maggot-skin, like bibles. The Lord’s talon

  Out of thunder slashes meat, scorches off the skin

  Like opening His book, and He snuffs the odour,

  Clothing the meat-nectar in the Lord God; and Who

  Brings His own untouched flesh to His pregnant Bride?

  III

  The wireless at midnight gives out its hum

  Like a black fly of electricity, folded in wings.

  A moth like a tiny lady dances to the set,

  This hum is light to her, a boxed warm candle,

  This set has inner gardens full of light.

  Our baby, like a moth, flutters at its mother,

  Who mutters to her baby, uttering milk

  That dresses itself in white baby, who smiles

  With milky creases up at the breast creating

  Milky creases, and milk-hued water

  Hangs in the sky, waiting for its clothes,

  Like a great white ear floats over us, listening

  To the mothy mother-mutter, or like a sky-beard smiles

  And slips into its thunderous vestry and descends

  In streaming sleeves of electrical arms

  To run in gutters where it sucks and sings.

  SONG

  I chuck my Bible in the parlour fire.

  The snake that lives behind the bars there

  Sucks at the black book and sweats light;

  As they burn together, the codex

  Flips its pages over as if reading itself aloud

  Memorising its own contents as it ascends curtseying

  Like crowds of grey skirts in the chimney-lift,

  In particles of soot like liberated print.

  The vacant text glows white on pages that are black.

  The stars, those illustrious watchers

  Arranged in their picture-codes

  With their clear heartbeats and their eager reading stares

  Watch the guest ascend. Around us in the parlour

  The inn-sign creaks like rowlocks.

  The drinkers glower as my book burns,

  Their brows look black

  Like open books that turning thoughts consume.

  Then all at once

  With a gesture identical and simultaneous

  Of reaching through the coat right into the heart

  They all bring out their breast-pocket bibles

  Like leather coals and pile them in the fire

  And as they burn the men begin to sing

  With voices sharp and warm as hearth-flames.

  The black pads turn their gilded edges and

  The winged stories of the angels rise

  And all that remains is our gathering’s will

  Which assembles into song. Each man sings

  Something that he has overheard, or learnt,

  Some sing in tongues I do not understand,

  But one man does not sing. I notice him

  As my song takes me with the others. He is

  Setting down the words in rapid shorthand

  In a small fat pocketbook with gilded edges.

  PHEROMONES

  (Pheromones are ‘external chemical messengers’ given off by the body. They are said to communicate profound emotional and physiological effects from person to person.)

  Dreaming of a dog, whose nostrils

  Are his lightless e
yes, means

  Murder and riches; under the sunshine

  Blazers bright as bluebells

  With brass buttons yellow as butter;

  The strong light

  Shooting down the polished walking-sticks,

  Running in sticks and streams,

  Calls like trumpets

  To the game;

  The sea hedgehogged in gold,

  Frogged in it, like a great blue blazer:

  The great doorman with the labouring heart.

  In this heat your scent is a snapshot,

  Your spoor streams from you like a fragrant picture.

  Your fingers

  Sniff down your glass and walk into my lap.

  It is so hot

  My sex is a shelled snail,

  And I excuse myself from You

  For my nostrils wish to savour

  The self-scent of my own sex

  This gathering promotes,

  And so my smelling fingers tremble first

  At the eternal curry-smell of the brass handle

  Of the metal of trumpets of the Gents

  That it never loses or ever could lose;

  Doubtless a dog would know its master

  For over the brass in thinnest films are laid

  The identities of all who have here touched themselves.

  I bend my nose to the knob, for I swear

  The champion of tennis employs this place;

  I would know his sweat anywhere

  After that magical game:

  He filled the court with the odours of his perfect game,

  Excellent musk, wiping his handle;

  Let the trumpets call his prize!

  I enter and am girded with personalities,

  Long ghost snailing from the bowls

  And gutters; my own genius mingles with that

  Of the champion and the forty-seven assorted

  Boozers I can distinguish here in silent music,

  In odorous tapestries. In this Gents

  We are creating a mingled

  Essence of Gent whose powers

  To the attuned nose

  Are magnificent indeed

  And shall affect the umpires

  Who shall agree with what their noses

  Tell them strides viewless from the urinal

  Where the gentlemen sacrifice into stone bowls

  In silent trance. Oh how

  The tennis champion strikes pheromones

  Under my guard with his far-sighted nose;

  He has brought us to heat which calls him

 

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