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Wolf Tongue

Page 3

by Barry MacSweeney


  Gone.

  11

  splintering his crystal

  because he wants to keep his body in shape & not spread it around

  all over the estuary

  rapidly losing the social advantages

  of becoming a human-being. The

  parties you’re always

  never sent for. Death

  on the horns of the loudest guest.

  A final black laugh. O

  mega.

  12

  Shut in

  with ghosts.

  Restless amazons

  itching for a main course

  Death.

  Black satin.

  O

  away trembling

  ends.

  Speak he

  said why

  not try.

  Shut in

  the ghost of a hurt.

  One strong unflinching hurt.

  The trees dance by themselves

  and don’t recognise time.

  13

  The heart and

  hands

  burn. Quick message

  to the brain. Beyond

  simple colours and shapes.

  O

  smart.

  The poems

  it needs to have

  to see.

  Ghost

  of a hurt. Death

  on the horns

  of a tree.

  Elm.

  14

  Cutting his head

  on the rear-view

  mirror.

  She’s river

  offers

  too-late snow

  for a graze.

  Cine-cameras himself

  trickling.

  O

  smart.

  The priest

  saying ‘He’ll be waiting

  for you on the other shore’

  and you’re always seasick.

  Too late

  for abrasions

  too.

  15

  Not

  for priests.

  Hardly

  a valentine.

  May

  your garment marry

  the forest not

  knowing if

  or where the trees grow. Death

  on the trefoil.

  No one else’s blood and muscle.

  Leave it.

  Bike home

  alone.

  16

  Where

  do you appear

  when you go?

  Ghosting the

  footsteps. Some

  one else’s

  blood and

  muscle.

  Hardly

  a valentine.

  Locked out,

  you bike

  home

  alone.

  17

  I will have Fame

  the Nine will be mine

  Walpole slew that fact in

  vented a smart from the enclosure

  Death on a quill

  the Nine will be mine

  in the arms of Moloch

  land of the black goose

  18

  Bee-like. The randomness of (his) death

  the particular randomness

  of. Towards which blood he ran the soft

  floor of his eye A final showing. Up

  there they strap two rams to

  gether the.

  Walpole slew. No rose. No honey

  suckle on the vine. The rain

  Hurt

  with its own

  soft density

  falls.

  No.

  19

  High hearts

  are wrecked.

  They fall on the rocks and the rocks

  fall on them.

  Wrecked.

  What are you doing?

  Telling you lies.

  20

  Salt on his lips.

  The moon in his hand which is an idea.

  His heart-arrow snaps (curare

  in soup) because it is a twig.

  A road of bitumen is a road to Hell.

  A solitary tree in his youthfulness

  swelled inside him like the flesh it was

  when his heart broke.

  It is not Abyssinia it is only sand.

  What wet his lips was not salt-water

  but the roar of the sea, breaking.

  21

  Dismembering your lips isn’t the same

  as remembering them.

  Dis is hell. Remembering,

  a reference to it.

  Always the same red road

  (the scarlet boulevard which for Chatterton

  was a northern route to hell).

  It is a leaf which falls in autumn like a poem.

  Chatterton looked at Mole and did not hear it fall.

  For a moment, the poem was touched with gold.

  22

  A tincture of infidelity.

  A poisoned spring

  but Styx and stones did not bruise his body.

  Angered at the brown splash on the path,

  Walpole was one of them.

  Nor the cheesey triumvirate of ghosts.

  The stone of the mind was god

  and god

  the Stone.

  The road bends across into & up a fabulous rainbow

  of precious stones but it is only a 12/6 pill.

  The failed Orpheus straps on a sunbeam

  for the Dis-

  -honoured sword but it is a pill

  and seeing the Stone the poet

  Says

  23

  ‘The whole of Chatterton’s life presents

  a fund of useful instruction to young per-

  sons of brilliant and lively talents, and

  affords a strong dissuasive against that im-

  petuosity of expectation, and those delu-

  sive hopes of success, founded upon the

  consciousness of genius and merit, which

  lead them to neglect the ordinary means of

  acquiring competence and independence.’

  24

  With lips he prevailed.

  Salt on ours

  as if life were grievously wounded.

  Rain

  hurt

  with its own

  density

  dies. The sun

  too.

  Who else but

  Wolf is beyond

  reach, the silly

  mole?

  25

  With lips I have prevailed

  and a brain of fire

  now there are ashes in my head.

  I haven’t heard from you in months

  because I am afraid of that black sea,

  not needing the bathers in its foam.

  More than a tincture of infidelity

  more than a tight cock gathered in salt-sweat.

  Standing in the rain is like reading

  an inaccurate biography of you.

  An echo of a sea, raging.

  26

  A song in endless white night.

  Aguila. Lobata. Bucle.

  Taken away,

  whore-shipped like an onion, orange, carp.

  Its wings, teeth and hair displayed

  with a neat carnival touch.

  You have flown from me, gorged with my heart

  You have howled endlessly refusing to leave me

  You have reluctantly shaken gold over my nakednesses.

  What is left is not a fountain of golden purity

  but chains of lead around its flight of fire. –

  27

  the exquisite car

  comes holds all

  who go wanting

  to now we may

  not go

  back none now

  wants but

  stay and

  go not

  wanting

  28

  A heart-arrow (his random one) snaps. Red

  behind trees
is a familiar

  deep mark, so

  turn to love.

  Oh germ-cloud of tomorrow, Walpole

  was one, his

  illustriously fabricated ruby forehead glows

  off a U2 battery for the holy chair.

  Trees shiver with human condition &

  the temple is thick with smoke.

  29

  a dream of others. these aren’t

  warts this is a newspaper. has

  none of

  th’Other death

  in.

  Nothing random or decided in the grey plants

  here.

  Bathing under the moon which is an Idea.

  You

  Swelling inside on the saltnessness of air, Air, in

  side him for the youth it is, it was

  in your black sea, raging.

  30

  Inexplicable magnets (to human eyes)

  Draw out the

  Steel. The bullhead

  trout. It draws it, across

  country, from your

  feeble sinking heart. The

  heart sinks, heads

  for the stuttering plug

  & it’s a rare catch!

  It’s an Ideal which is an idea

  like eating your best friend. Chatter-

  ton ate himself in one brief rubidium glow

  & the birds lay down and laughed

  as the Great Sky Magnet

  drew

  him

  Up.

  1972

  Homage to John Everett, Marine Painter, 1876–1949

  i walk to the annexe

  to dust the marine paintings

  of john everett

  who is out of fashion

  but whose work

  i like better than anything else

  in the museum

  the sky is a dome

  of madder and brass

  and it is windy and cold

  a letter arrives

  it is very happy

  but the last line is sad

  and there is a p.s.

  apologising for it

  at tea time

  the street-lights come on

  with an extra-terrestrial glow

  it is still cold

  and as i ride my motor-bike home

  the wind makes my eyes water

  in many of everett’s pictures

  the forefront of the canvas

  is filled with the overwhelming prows

  of cutters

  as if the onlooker

  were a man shipwrecked

  clinging to flotsam

  or just drowning

  slowly

  the park is dotted with people

  three men from the park’s department

  are cutting down an oak

  planted by charles the first’s gardener

  a party of mongol children

  on a charabanc trip

  are playing with an orange ball

  of the only two portraits

  of everett

  the first noticeable contrast

  is that in the self-portrait

  he is in a bright blue smock

  with corn-coloured hair

  a clay-pipe

  and a ragged straw hat

  whereas in the painting

  by his friend and contemporary

  he is depicted as a rather

  sinister character

  with a lean face

  dark brown hair

  and pointed beard

  with a top hat

  and black opera cloak

  hunched in a deep armchair

  surrounded by shadows

  but all of his paintings

  are bright

  with large areas of stark white sail

  bleached by tropical sunlight

  and deep red shadows

  along the mast hatches and deck

  and the sea

  painted either very flat

  or in seductive blue swells

  almost like smoke

  the rough tasmanian straits

  the limpid bay at montevideo

  or just cowes week

  with a cluster of startling parasols

  many painted directly onto sailcloth

  sixteen voyages

  over forty years

  seventeen hundred oils

  the only painter

  to watch and portray

  the last years of the sailing ship

  and it is the seventeenth century dutch

  who hang

  1973

  ODES

  (1971–1978)

  for Elaine

  Flame Ode

  (for Elaine)

  Two hawks and a plover swoop

  above as we run the

  quiet

  band.

  Listen. The mountain spring is music

  too.

  (Clear swell

  of

  breath in

  poems.)

  We cluster in

  the busy grass &

  talk. Rise

  up & live!

  It is really distinct.

  Wing Ode

  The feet are white boats. Hands are

  unlocked keys of colour & shape. Love

  me. Feel me beside you

  and within.

  (Boats

  in April rain

  pools)

  I break my chrysalis

  & Rise!

  Walk as a golden man.

  New Ode

  Indigo robe her arm is wrapped within. Amber

  the hair and eyes of this woman. See

  them. There, the seal. Is

  broken, open.

  Shafts of gold in the pale afternoon.

  Plover.

  Lamb.

  Moon goes like

  a woman

  through time

  Un-

  broken.

  Chatterton Ode

  Time is a jagged mark upon the wrist. See

  the child does not weep. Or

  has any leaf upon his flaming

  side.

  He holds

  what blood there is in

  side an acorne-coppe.

  Spiky yellow buds

  between

  his making fingers.

  Bread.

  Cyanide.

  Jim Morrison Ode

  Peristalsis writhes a sudden knot &

  hangs himself. His micro-

  lunch burns.

  The lamb in his horned

  Calipers moves

  afraid. He

  cannot find. O riff

  of my pulse’s purple disk!

  Sheen & gloss.

  Snakes

  in heaven too

  Do writhe.

  Swedenborg Ode

  Influx of new crass mourning. Shrouds

  draw off the velvet caress a hand

  makes

  within yr breast.

  Is this a Thought-Robe? (See

  her gem of mind is a macrocosm.) This

  corresponds to something solid

  & Bright. We’ll

  attach our

  selves

  there

  Yet.

  Beulah

  She walks up. Stands in the air. It is raining

  gently and we are transported by

  urgency to stay.

  You

  are quiet & I am inside

  breathing slowly.

  ICI herbs

  quiver

  on the lawn. Come

  back. My throat

  is

  heavy with empty

  songs.

  Moon Ode

  what would life be without Johann Boetticher

  or!

  CLEFS DE LA PHILOSOPHIE SPAGYRIQUE

  under the pines

  of future death

  & Horbiger, owner

  of the leather circus, shades of Grosz!
r />   hideous and enchanting Thulean neo-paganism

  eternal ice of Peenemunde/

  (Beulah walks

  up

  Chatterton Ode

  sleek beasts

  in your equinoctial dreams.

  the song the song the song of

  Thule, progenital

  echo of crass teal, oh peach-

  tilted animal

  in the heart-park

  to whit

  a fried leaf of

  cyanide

  oaken saddle

  of premature breath

  the Nine will be mine

  Land of the black goose.

  Ode Long Kesh

  & tie strings together

  as the sky falls

  between the knees, fragrant

  lard-mouth. A planet in decision. But

  falls sunless towards

  the best uncle, Flapless Man. Sheets & Arrows

  on his bracken ankles, terse cloth

  in his worn digital pie. Last week’s

  Luddite, Tolpuddle broth of caps, Flapless

  leaks

  & the sky (his odd wife)

  fails to strangle inclinations

  between those sheeny

  thighs. Flapless

  never comes.

  Flop goes Flapless & the whole arterial mess

  back by the gas with an

  Irish supper. No doubt

 

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