Wolf Tongue
Page 3
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