Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy

by Neil Astley

  as the bidding rises and falls.’

  Then I went back outside and found Fintan.

  I showed God his hand as he sat on the rails,

  how he let it trail down and his fingers played

  in the curly back of a ewe. Fintan’s a sheep-man

  he’s deep into sheep, though it’s cattle he keeps now,

  for sound commercial reasons.

  ‘Feel that,’ I said,

  ‘feel with my heart the force in that hand

  that’s twining her wool as he talks.’

  Then I went with Fintan and Liv to Refreshments,

  I let God sip tea, boiling hot, from a cup,

  and I lent God my fingers to feel how they burned

  when I tripped on a stone and it slopped.

  ‘This is hurt,’ I said, ‘there’ll be more.’

  And the morning wore on and the sun climbed

  and God felt how it is when I stand too long,

  how the sickness rises, how the muscles burn.

  Later, at the back end of the afternoon,

  I went down to swim in the green slide of river,

  I worked my way under the bridge, against the current,

  then I showed how it is to turn onto your back

  with, above you and a long way up, two gossiping pigeons,

  and a clump of valerian, holding itself to the sky.

  I remarked on the stone arch as I drifted through it,

  how it dapples with sunlight from the water,

  how the bridge hunkers down, crouching low in its track

  and roars when a lorry drives over.

  And later again, in the kitchen,

  wrung out, at day’s ending, and empty,

  I showed how it feels

  to undo yourself,

  to dissolve, and grow age-old, nameless:

  woman sweeping a floor, darkness growing.

  KERRY HARDIE

  from Of Gravity and Light

  (enlightenment)

  What we need most, we learn from the menial tasks:

  the novice raking sand in Buddhist texts,

  or sweeping leaves, his hands chilled to the bone,

  while understanding hovers out of reach;

  the changeling in a folk tale, chopping logs,

  poised at the dizzy edge of transformation;

  and everything they do is gravity:

  swaying above the darkness of the well

  to haul the bucket in; guiding the broom;

  finding the body’s kinship with the earth

  beneath their feet, the lattice of a world

  where nothing turns or stands outside the whole;

  and when the insight comes, they carry on

  with what’s at hand: the gravel path; the fire;

  knowing the soul is no more difficult

  than water, or the fig tree by the well

  that stood for decades, barren and inert,

  till every branch was answered in the stars.

  JOHN BURNSIDE

  The Bright Field

  I have seen the sun break through

  to illuminate a small field

  for a while, and gone my way

  and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

  of great price, the one field that had

  the treasure in it. I realise now

  that I must give all that I have

  to possess it. Life is not hurrying

  on to a receding future, nor hankering after

  an imagined past. It is the turning

  aside like Moses to the miracle

  of the lit bush, to a brightness

  that seemed as transitory as your youth

  once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

  R.S. THOMAS

  Stationery

  The moon did not become the sun.

  It just fell on the desert

  in great sheets, reams

  of silver handmade by you.

  The night is your cottage industry now,

  the day is your brisk emporium.

  The world is full of paper.

  Write to me.

  AGHA SHAHID ALI

  The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

  S’io credessi che mia risposta fosse

  a persona che mai tornasse al mondo,

  questa fiamma staria senza più scosse.

  Ma per ciò che giammai di questo fondo

  non tornò vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,

  senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

  Let us go then, you and I,

  When the evening is spread out against the sky

  Like a patient etherised upon a table;

  Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

  The muttering retreats

  Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

  And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

  Streets that follow like a tedious argument

  Of insidious intent

  To lead you to an overwhelming question…

  Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’

  Let us go and make our visit.

  In the room the women come and go

  Talking of Michelangelo.

  The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

  The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

  Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

  Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

  Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

  Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

  And seeing that it was a soft October night,

  Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

  And indeed there will be time

  For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

  Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

  There will be time, there will be time

  To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

  There will be time to murder and create,

  And time for all the works and days of hands

  That lift and drop a question on your plate;

  Time for you and time for me,

  And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

  And for a hundred visions and revisions,

  Before the taking of a toast and tea.

  In the room the women come and go

  Talking of Michelangelo.

  And indeed there will be time

  To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’

  Time to turn back and descend the stair,

  With a bald spot in the middle of my hair –

  (They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)

  My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

  My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin –

  (They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)

  Do I dare

  Disturb the universe?

  In a minute there is time

  For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

  For I have known them all already, known them all –

  Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

  I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

  I know the voices dying with a dying fall

  Beneath the music from a farther room.

  So how should I presume?

  And I have known the eyes already, known them all –

  The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

  And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

  When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

  Then how should I begin

  To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

  And how should I presume?

  And I have known the arms already, known them all –

  Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

  (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

  Is it pe
rfume from a dress

  That makes me so digress?

  Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

  And should I then presume?

  And how should I begin?

  . . . . .

  Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

  And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

  Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

  I should have been a pair of ragged claws

  Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

  . . . . .

  And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

  Smoothed by long fingers,

  Asleep…tired…or it malingers,

  Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

  Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

  Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

  But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

  Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

  I am no prophet – and here’s no great matter;

  I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

  And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

  And in short, I was afraid.

  And would it have been worth it, after all,

  After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

  Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

  Would it have been worth while,

  To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

  To have squeezed the universe into a ball

  To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

  To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

  Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’ –

  If one, settling a pillow by her head,

  Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all.

  That is not it, at all.’

  And would it have been worth it, after all,

  Would it have been worth while,

  After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

  After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor –

  And this, and so much more? –

  It is impossible to say just what I mean!

  But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

  Would it have been worth while

  If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

  And turning toward the window, should say:

  ‘That is not it at all,

  That is not what I meant at all.’

  . . . . .

  No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

  Am an attendant lord, one that will do

  To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

  Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

  Deferential, glad to be of use,

  Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

  Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

  At times, indeed, almost ridiculous –

  Almost, at times, the Fool.

  I grow old…I grow old…

  I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

  Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

  I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

  I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

  I do not think that they will sing to me.

  I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

  Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

  When the wind blows the water white and black.

  We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

  By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

  Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

  T.S. ELIOT

  A Confession

  My Lord, I loved strawberry jam

  And the dark sweetness of a woman’s body.

  Also, well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,

  Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves.

  So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit

  Have visited such a man? Many others

  Were justly called, and trustworthy.

  Who would have trusted me? For they saw

  How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,

  And glance greedily at the waitress’s neck.

  Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness,

  Able to recognise greatness wherever it is,

  And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,

  I know what was left for smaller men like me:

  A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud.

  A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.

  CZESŁAW MIŁOSZ

  translated by Czesław Miłosz & Robert Hass

  O Taste and See

  The world is

  not with us enough.

  O taste and see

  the subway Bible poster said,

  meaning The Lord, meaning

  if anything all that lives

  to the imagination’s tongue,

  grief, mercy, language.

  tangerine, weather, to

  breathe them, bite,

  savor, chew, swallow, transform

  into our flesh our

  deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,

  living in the orchard and being

  hungry, and plucking

  the fruit.

  DENISE LEVERTOV

  From Blossoms

  From blossoms comes

  this brown paper bag of peaches

  we bought from the boy

  at the bend in the road where we turned toward

  signs painted Peaches.

  From laden boughs, from hands,

  from sweet fellowship in the bins,

  comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

  peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

  comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

  O, to take what we love inside,

  to carry within us an orchard, to eat

  not only the skin, but the shade,

  not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

  the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into

  the round jubilance of peach.

  There are days we live

  as if death were nowhere

  in the background; from joy

  to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

  from blossom to blossom to

  impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

  LI-YOUNG LEE

  The Simple Truth

  I bought a dollar and a half’s worth of small red potatoes,

  took them home, boiled them in their jackets

  and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt.

  Then I walked through the dried fields

  on the edge of town. In middle June the light

  hung on in the dark furrows at my feet,

  and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds

  were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers

  squawking back and forth, the finches still darting

  into the dusty light. The woman who sold me

  the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone

  out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses

  praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables

  at the roadside stand and urging me to taste

  even the pale, raw sweetcorn trucked all the way,

  she swore, from New Jersey. ‘Eat, eat,’ she said,

  ‘Even if you don’t I’ll say you did.’

  Some things

  you know all your life. They are so simple and true

  they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,

  they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,

  the glass of water, the absence of light gathering

  in the shadows of picture frames, they must b
e

  naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.

  My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965

  before I went away, before he began to kill himself,

  and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste

  what I’m saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch

  of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious,

  it stays in the back of your throat like a truth

  you never uttered because the time was always wrong,

  it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken,

  made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt,

  in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

  PHILIP LEVINE

  Sweetness, Always

  Why such harsh machinery?

  Why, to write down the stuff

  and people of every day,

  must poems be dressed up in gold,

  in old and fearful stone?

  I want verses of felt or feather

  which scarcely weigh, mild verses

  with the intimacy of beds

  where people have loved and dreamed.

  I want poems stained

  by hands and everydayness.

  Verses of pastry which melt

  into milk and sugar in the mouth,

  air and water to drink,

  the bites and kisses of love.

  I long for eatable sonnets,

  poems of honey and flour.

  Vanity keeps prodding us

  to lift ourselves skyward

  or to make deep and useless

  tunnels underground.

  So we forget the joyous

  love-needs of our bodies.

  We forget about pastries.

  We are not feeding the world.