the powerhouse draws itself up
To attention like the old soldier
it is; I expect smoke from the broken
chimneys, from the colossal
Hearth-chambers, but those
are swifts coiling on the air
as the music coils
In the air that rushes
sonorously through
the river-doubled
Trumpets and trombones.
FROM THE VIRGIL CAVERNS
INTRODUCTION
‘The change of perception is godlike.’
Shirokov reported
in the Independent on Sunday
(2 May 1993) on the true
Use of the cave paintings;
the theory is that the boys
entered the Distant Hall
Crawling on their stomachs
through the mud
which represented dying
Through the synaesthetic ordeal
of the lower death-passage
where the animals seemed
To come alive, prancing
in the extended senses
of the Distant Hall
Thus creating in the candidate
his own particle
of shared subconscious
Which they brought out unbroken
into the world
through the other fissure, a Yoni
A few feet higher where they are clothed
with exterior cunt like a waterfall
that fits them for society.
I
Also the stone track
of a spiritual acrobat
there are clefts
And vaginal openings giving forth
a floor of jewels
and many formations;
There are spires
rising from the floor and pulling
from the ceilings
And often as they meet
they meet as folded curtains
draped on strong bars
Or as semi-transparent screens
pleated and folded,
a lamp
Shines as a rose through this alabaster.
These bijouteries
in formation
In a cavern like a garage
of old Chevrolets carved
in wet marble appear
In the flow of water
covering everything,
appear to be rushing forward and
They are not in fact
perfectly still since
like freeze-frame
They are moving through
the millennia too slowly
for any movement to be seen,
Though in their stillness
they bear about them the look
of racing through a mild rain-shower
Of mother o’pearl, speeding
down pearly thoroughfares:
bring your lamp
To the cavern
they are immediately present,
and wet, and rosy
With their presence.
II
The wet clock of stone
seems stopped
but all the surfaces
Are moving under the water
an inch
in a thousand years
The rafts of jade
and mats of creamy alabaster
owned by China
And stopped under England;
and the water-bright
stalactites or linghams
Slide as slowly
downwards by the same clock
in the caverns
Where hollow spires
spring up everywhere;
the maternal water-sculptures
Inherent in the rock
constantly in bloom
from within the stone;
The caves are filling up
with exceedingly slow
spires and mirrors:
The travelling church of the giants
comes to approximate stillness
in this rosy rock.
III THE ARRIVAL
So many of the walls
depict robed guides:
figures painted in ores
And looming through the ever-wet
walls; shining statues
upon whose heads
The waterfalls plash.
For the humans
whose smoky lamps paint
Their ceilings in sfumage
there are swifter guides,
Wills-of-the-wisp
Skimming the surface of the
underground lake
guide the penetrant oars
And there is slow lightning
pointing the arches, electricity
from the dunes
Rolling overhead …
there is an echo
like rubberlined doors
Squashily opening and closing, for
there is a ceremony
hiding round every corner;
And there are pillars of limestone
whose table-top is hollow
and contains
A serving of mud; collected for centuries,
small altars of mud
so heavy it is pure; everything
Here weighs heavy with purity; the sand
underfoot drifts heavy
because it is so pure,
Washed and rewashed
in the constant distillation
of the cavern waters;
The air is heavier here
because of purity, and the great
striding arches
Are pure in form because water
has worn them that way.
Close to these pedestals
In the presence of offered mud
the walls are more nearly
transparent, and the guiding figures
Have approached nearer the surface,
nearer to stepping forward
through the stone,
About to show their faces,
wiping away the limestone crusts,
like rubbing sleepy-sand away
With the backs of their pebbled fists;
a virgil has burst
Through the rock-grain with its scents and lotions;
whomsoever it is, a presence
passing through the Virgil Caves,
Passing through all the perfumes of Rock.
IV THE INTERIOR MOUNTAINEER
The hills hollow and chiming
like bells
to the gigantic labours
Of water building
its limestone cathedral,
excavating bells
From their native rock;
the notes of them
fitting each to each,
In their millions the first congregation;
the city of stone and water
creating itself
And telling us all about it
from larynxes larger than
terrene cathedrals
And from tabernacles reaching
round the world
where milliards sing
With each shower and gather
into subterranean waters;
and larynxes small
As holed pebbles
lined with crystals
like radio sets
Broadcast the cavern look
to lie
on hills that are
Caverns inside, small enough
to take home (you could not
take the hills home),
And listen to them there
natural trannies
tuned to the water-stations
Or right down to the dust
that is dancing
to mountain vibration;
And the dust
of the great bass explosions
in slate quarries whose air
Is full of stone
broadcasting. The face of
this climber
Is streaming
with creative water
as he swings himself down
Through the roof’s point
into the great hall
via the shakehole or doline
The water falling over him
like an armour of glass
his faded boilersuit charged
Shining and new
as dew is, ringing its bell.
Above us, on the exterior slopes,
Beyond the rock-roofs
these woods are thickly
stocked with stout pigs.
RESERVOIRS OF PERFECTED GHOST
(From the Virgil Caverns)
Acres of the sky having
floated down and settled in the woods,
the bluebell canopy spreads beneath
The green capes of the trees;
heaven is so full of sky
it cannot hold it – it falls
Into the woods, and spreads, heaven
skygazing in its woodland cavern;
bend down and pluck with admiration
A juicy stem; the blue bell
salivates glass-juice on your fingers;
lift this flower to your nose
It smells not at all!
it is all of them that smells:
the sun reaches through the leaves
And lifts the perfume out, gently
from these masses, so as not to break it; keeping
the shock of the blueness
As it issues from underground;
heaven must have gone deep,
to arrive so.
TSUNAMI
The tidal wave
it rushes upon the coast
so fast everything
Seems still, hangs for a moment
like veined stone
over the off-white hotels –
It speeds-in faster than tigers
running, its body striped
with currents and bannered
Armies of kelp, this great Crystal
Palace toppling overhead,
inside you can see
The boarding-houses and chapels
twisting over and over,
the arms of the dock-cranes
Knotting and unknotting
inside the glossy flank;
inscribed on the wheeling
Precipices are shining
whirlpools deep
but stable as if drilled,
Snaky corridors;
he dives into one
of these vaginas
Before the wave-head
champs him up
in foaming teeth,
And he is crest-carried along
like a pilot
in his cockpit,
Pilot of Leviathan, while she
roars and falls
without ceasing to fall.
He is buoyed
in his personal maelstrom
and makes a safe touchdown,
Face-skidding
on blackmirror mud
that is salty
And without horizon, or circumference,
like God’s Hinder Parts;
the hunched green wave far-off
Is still pouncing under its cape
and shouting as it goes
and shuddering still
As I am shuddering.
ELDERHOUSE
(Falmouth Café)
Elderly and most
dignified in her whitesugar
coat, rinsing the plain
China cups for the dishwasher,
I requested tapwater
in an ordinary tumbler
And this started a procession
of courtesy-gestures, in turn:
ran the tap over the back
Of her hand until it was cool,
turned it off, off on
to give me the clearest
Available; I thanked her
with my best smile, to which
she replied ‘Have you
A pension-book? if you have,
go to the British Legion,
they will give you a free
Meal …’ I smiled and said
I would do this in
a couple of years, and smiled
With more care and repeated thanks
keeping my voice slightly
high and elderly
Which it was anyway though I did not quite
have the pension-book, not quite;
smiling we parted,
She like a white officer, and I had
contacted a friendship
Of those who have grown old
and offer me a glass
from the elder house of waters
With a ceremony that was private and kindly meant,
drawing the water, in white, as if
she had been and was still
In service in a great house
Among the waters;
the friendship of those
Who learn to grow old
where our rooms are readying,
old as waters.
LAWN SPRINKLER AND LIGHTHOUSE
(at the Lizard)
A water-sprinkler seen in the seaward meadow,
a complex ghost-pulse
seen, low in the meadow
By lighthouse-beam:
a dew machine,
a complex ghost-pulse
Beaten out by the beam
sweeping the meadow
a screen of mist against which
The lighthouse beam pumps carousel,
the screen pulsing in itself,
and the beam swinging across,
The cycle of each drawing
together, and drawing apart:
the sprinkler’s almost invisible
Dewy head bowing to the great beam.
white shadow of the spray
of the water-ghost vanishing
And appearing again
in a new place,
pacing out its ghost-circle
Under the orbit of the lighthouse,
in the beam, white, faint
like faint chalk
On a dusky board, in the shadow
of the whirling beam, felloe
whirling round its nub
Above; below the spray beating in
several soft arcs of a shining house traced
under the lighthouse,
And with a turn of the clouds
the full moon with its clouds
full of its light.
LIMESTONE CAT69
for N.R.
I
I throw a pebble in the lake
I see the shape
of a sitting cat
In the moment it leaves
my hand, enthroned cat
it breaks the roof
Of the lake, the one pebble
fills the surface
with its shape:
The vibrating depths
organise themselves
into that shape –
In the lake’s dark
the stone cat comes
to life, prowling
Like a night-companion. The mass
of waters forms itself
round the small host
Which enters the church of waters
and alters them, each ripple
is aroused in a purr-shape,
Which touches the lake’s rafters,
in invisible chanting.
II
I search the shore for another cat
to throw after the first
and find only
Buddha-stones – I throw
Buddha in a pebble and again
the whole lake
Reorganises itself, something calmer
sits down in its centre, but the cat-ripples
prowl round
The seated sage who ripples
in his own time,
Buddha and cat who
Seeks his lap
throug
h the whole lake,
cat and Buddha –
The same water in different
sequences, cat prowls
like a walking-master
Who can with gold discs
see in the lake-dark,
Buddha sits.
III
I find a pebble
like a child sleeping
a stone baby curled
Up into itself; if I throw it back
into the cradle of waters
it will wake up the cat,
Then the Buddha, then itself
in child-signatures, wet echoes,
as it rearranges the water,
Anything, it depicts
anything:
Catlake, Buddhawater,
Sleepingchildlake;
I threw a cat-pebble in
to alter the religion
To alter the water, like a woman
pinning a cameo to her collar;
the folds of her dress,
The coiler, fall
into a new pattern,
of its own accord,
Shaped by everything.
HUGE OLD
(from the Welsh Virgil Caverns)
These are the huge old
may trees so full of flowers
they seem already woven into gardens
On Hay Bluff
the air like childhood air:
on the Pilgrim mountains
Silkier.
Trees pour ghost
from tree to tree;
The torrents of scent
splash into flowers, the flowers
splash back again into scent;
Each small flower blows
sweet smell like a swirling fanfare:
the health of it
Is like low thunder, the great
escarpment bending forward
with a pressure of silence;
The silence is scented even in the core
of the wind-shadow.
BUZZ
I feared the miracle
of the next day’s waking,
my bed was jammed against the wall
On my right, there was wallpaper
with a vibratory pattern I forget,
it went 3D and on the
Other side was a sinister organist
playing his metals: it is now
the organs on my right side
That are vulnerable, groin and pancreas.
I wanted mental marvels
from simple sleeping pills
And caffeine tablets,
got some from laburnum seeds,
safe when dried.
I fixed a little box with a buzzer in it
on my bicycle-front to ride to school with,
to signify I was being charged up
Or electrified by the journey, batterybuzzer;
the bicycle bell was for emergencies
that would break the trance,
Collected Poems Page 37