Wolf Tongue

by Barry MacSweeney

  just like a book or Jew. Publisher it was thee, you.

  Delete longing I will not long for her up in the tree-line. Delete plaid

  woven Tunisian brought-home blankets I will not lay a bed for her.

  She reversed me my heart, she deleted me in very bad favour.

  Delete sunne I won’t smile in it the photographed poet upland bonny

  lad. Never. I will not I won’t I won’t ache especially for her.

  She’s a distant thing. It’s a special promise – I won’t ache for her.

  Each daw dawn in the argent slipstream I lie alone I won’t ache for her.

  When Mars goes to bed and I lie on my left side I won’t miss her a forlorn

  trance of Germany starres, I’ll kill my lips for telling lies.

  Delete Parliament, delete pushiest pout, delete plover west window.

  Paul Celan, Paul Celan, Paul Celan, Paul Celan, nothing left to bruise.

  Did you see the ovens, did you smell the awesome awful gas?

  I was in the so-called shower and it rained right down on me.

  I was so impressed I almost goose-stepped my way to the very front.

  Delete all swinging wands of the wild fell rose, no more headlong chases

  stalking the pearl moon which tonight is a broken opal crescent

  delete all clocks put back at midnight in the soaring pouring rain

  delete A1 crash victim Catherine through Land Rover windscreen

  dead on arrival Morpeth wrapped in steel & glass after Wagner concert

  delete her roadside brains long camelhair coat long late bus smiles

  her fast clicking shoe heels speeded and rinsed with Northern rain

  delete her forever lingering grin soon to be ruined & smashed completely

  facedown in a lay-by body crushed and crumpled like Christmas paper

  delete rain on the border at Hawick, delete beautiful rain in Glasgow

  delete the soft water of Scotland, the proud taps, brilliance everywhere

  clean drops dazzle off the cone-ends, off the sleeve-catching branches

  how eyeful it all is up here in the uplands, delete all nonsense, delete good sense

  proper behaviour delete upstanding citizen, terminate, erase, abolish,

  abrogate, annihilate, very late, annul, cancel, cease, destroy, efface,

  excise, negate, obliterate, literally omit, so close to vomit, one letter only.

  Our eyelashes flicked silently and closed together down the middle of

  Platform Two. I was a rich entrancing beast fulled with rampant bloode.

  Hands, four of them, delete. Please dad I’m only seven don’t hit me.

  Stop beating me over the head. All I wanted was to write a poem, I

  really don’t know why. It just came to your son a lad in the windrow,

  out of the snowfells out of the badly described sky. I know I’m an uphill

  wanderer, a poor citizen, a republic of tents, springwater my fancy & Pearl.

  See how I delight in it, you’re so disappointed daddy that you cannot

  control me. That, even at seven, is my eternal wish. My biggest dish.

  Look where we walk up a height & raining & the flame-tipped trees.

  Delete the chough the lark in the fastcut meadow.

  Beware me in thunder.

  Look at the buttercoppes down in the meadowbank, so yellow

  as I look again into my craving craven heart. I’m the hound inside

  your head, the suddenly-stiffening corpse in your bed, the long and lengthy

  beads of dread, right up here in the heather-glad Highlands, my lands,

  I will walk where the plover walks. Hold to it, stick to it. Be faithful

  to the very cause. I will forever be the Silver Shadow, the grey shadow

  standing tall & silent alone in the gardens beneath a silky opal moone.

  This severe thing, hard time knowing, delete hard time, sounds like Dickens,

  just a note penned in darkness, darling, trying to delete this severe thing,

  trying to replace the whole complete person, the whole complete poem.

  I will never ever wear three hats in one day ever again. Had hair then.

  Delete reality and endless punishment, O Daddy please don’t beat me.

  I’ll be as big as Charlie Dickens one day in my big lonely Elvis Orbison heart.

  I was quite alone in ruthless daylight, fastly sinking under an argent moone.

  Upcoming I saw the sunne, saw the light of heaven in a toilet roll.

  I looked at the yellow toilet roll – thinking it the sunne – & beheld its gaze.

  What happened to my incredible fantastic endless lovely fargone literacy?

  All you end up with is Pound’s petals on a wet black bough. Two lines.

  Delete. Beware, beware, the shredded torn paper of the silver starres.

  Delete all Pearls, beware, the cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river.

  Emily your crystal vision – the Soul has bandaged moments –

  delete the bite the ever-holding smitten grip, between your tongue & discreet lips:

  You yourself bright starre, unbroken in the petty fetters,

  delete her hairbun, when will you come in with Anne Sexton

  to see if I’m still alive? I’m depending on both or either of you.

  Listen Em: I like your solitude. Anne is drunk like me & far too rude

  and useless unreliable. She’s in bed too late. Drugs, drink, mad sex.

  One of you betrayed everyone, not you Em with your cheeky sparklespecks.

  It’s just not you: it’s more New York than New England.

  Where in heaven is my timeless bride?

  Where is she in her beautiful glide

  to the frozen bathroom at 3 in summer

  at 7am in the falling January snow?

  I’ll lie there alone and never, never know.

  Pang in the mouth I am terrified of Ireland,

  more so than the broken-down collapse of England,

  because in the Republic Finnbar would be found out

  for what he is. Guzzler, collector of demons, bar

  snaker, Baggot Street crawler, hater of Poseurs.

  Three bubbles in the glass of Jesus juice,

  every single glass, Aislinn, one more after the other.

  I stood on the edge of the world once, not caring,

  there was a woman in white before my eyes went black.

  Before my hurrying down throat became swollen & bruised.

  I’ll never be your flame. I’ll never be your flame in a bush.

  Ash, I am thoroughly poisoned, and no amount of

  endless Parisian beauty can resurrect me to the stand-up station.

  There was a six-feet man delete with a single silver argent starre.

  He cast a long black shadow, high-heeled, & unfortunately, it was me.

  O Tammy, I am but a fake prince, no horse, I stride all tall alone.

  Only the demons come to me at dawn and say in unison: you’ll be bonny once

  again one day.

  Delete the brightbairn, the laughing lad, the happy son, the singer of songs,

  the larker out-larking the breast-high larks, out in the mad spring meadow.

  Delete being under the hellhounds’ paws, padding over thee,

  right on your chestbreast, think yourself an upright man do you?

  I’ve always believed I stood on the earth blessed with angel wings.

  Even when I slurred terribly, mad with drink, my tongue was straight.

  Delete fast pastures, hound hound alone with the pack,

  hound with his vixen, and the endless need to attack.

  Angel hound wings, hellhound hymns, no matter how many, no matter how

  many, no matter how many, I will never like Sexton row to God,

  I am alone with the pack on the frozen bypass without a wincing jade.

  Houndangel wings, out of the sunne,
and into northern starres,

  hanging up your axe most prettily, O Em don’t tongue-flay me!

  Enemies say starchy but I say crispness & always tell the absolute.

  You’ll hide in my armlock, gently, for I am a passion prince.

  Passion has always been me, even before my swollen drunken days.

  Raw and savage and notwithstanding passion, all of me, all, all,

  swanne on the misty lake to the very end of my days. Dark, willing

  on my starre charger, high on the law, up on the fell, hear that

  very single solo bell, by a fastly moving running river and under a completely

  useless rainbow.

  Anne Sexton Blues

  I

  Woke up this morning

  in Newcastle Wyoming

  Atlanta Northumberland

  on the glory grain plateaux of Texas

  Anne Sexton all around my bed.

  Honeyfix thighbone lustmoan, she said,

  you’re not dead.

  you’re just mixing your breath with mine.

  Vodka on or off the rocks, and wine.

  Fierce delight possessed us while sober

  and mischief of a puckish strain: we were alone

  in the blues rain in the banjo snow

  in the cold blow of the Smirnoff

  and the Black Label.

  We stood within each other on the porch

  and encouraged the magnolias to explain.

  She put her gluey lips to mine, absolutely,

  lipstick and vine,

  someone grieving kissing a person

  about to be dead in Tumble Down Town.

  Her not me.

  A Catholic priest in her passion.

  I know you’re riding there,

  she said, country boy bred

  to Tyneside Texas: all the moths flying

  around the light in our head.

  Hands palmed, each side

  of the upturned face:

  man nails on man’s hands;

  woman nails on woman hands.

  Woke up this morning in bad Feral County.

  Anne Sexton’s detoxing palms all around my bluesy

  broken

  and banged down head,

  Alamo heart burned and betrayed,

  mixing her breath with mine.

  II

  The smart of my heart over you

  flows like levee water all over my scripts

  and streams and wishes and dreams.

  It begins to rain in the pepper groves

  but will not drown in the storm drains

  the strains of my George Jones dreams.

  Learn, fix-it-head, cries the high lonesome

  sound,

  learn Mr Maniac Blues

  it swifts through the jacaranda trees, head

  down to be educated O escape motif organiser,

  it is time you bridled up and went, to go:

  Horror damage consultant,

  heart bomb lover,

  flick of the wrist terrorist,

  Mr Big Bang Fascinated,

  drek tongue class act in the shadow of the mesa cast

  by the lonely song you bring.

  Fake casuals lack the urgency

  I need to search all scorchings:

  may their lethargy never cease.

  Peace is a requiem without flowers

  and now we’re completely at war.

  Funny things happen: you – me.

  Feast upon this brotherhood

  of spanner menders, smarm monkeys,

  cross lingerers, stone rollers, fancy

  Dans and O’Hara babes:

  Here on the busted bottle porch and stairs

  there is only one sunne to ride into

  to smash our ever driven apology

  for sleep to smithereens.

  Your Love Is A Swarm And An Unbeguiled Swanne

  So there you are lying down here breasts

  abreast in the argent dawn

  and I lust after you and love you.

  The devil or the devil’s disciple’s

  will not take my sucking lips.

  He will not, will not, have thee: I will. I will put them with my lips

  and your lips,

  and they will meet and furnace the night and dawnlight

  in Miltonic chill and heat

  all fingers pointing.

  There is something to real love indescribable.

  Standing on a January morning hunched together on a gatepost

  when snow starts

  is like I hope heaven will be.

  Faces just touching.

  There is something about just touching

  which is touching

  beneath the start of morning birdsong, when peewits take off,

  breaking from cover

  and the musick of the becks and burns appear louder,

  miles away from traffic,

  and the sonata of the clopping of beasts through clarts.

  There is a lightness

  in this almost dark, snow brightening the fields, hardening the ground,

  when fingers smoothly, keenly, without damage,

  cause fantastic sensations within the people involved.

  Damp moss on the palms of the hands.

  Wet stile steps

  and the slippery burn bridge. Careful now.

  Winter hard thistle prick a real joy.

  More snow and it’s colder

  but our hearts and minds are hotter

  than ever before.

  A dawn of many beings and things.

  Strap Down In Snowville

  O hello, Othello, black and green bastardo,

  please be Mr Stepaside. I’ve arrived.

  It is dark now and always dark.

  And demons will step from that darkness.

  I am the Pookah Swanne MacSweeney,

  wingflap homme man, jalousie

  my daily trade – my eternal war game

  against you and the world, drunken to the last, flung

  to the lost in the final Labour council-run

  public toilet on earth.

  All moons waned and keeled, peeled

  of sanity and treasure of esteem,

  lollbonce on black plastic rim,

  bottle of Hennessy and a Football Pink,

  ’s’all I need, unbuckled pants ankle-dropped,

  now that the greenwood

  is stacked for fire, and me the inebriate sodden slave, tree

  destroyed by a legion of governments

  and the studied stupidity

  of the lapsed intelligence of the people of England.

  It is dark now along the river and always dark

  where we rievers and berserkers have our mad seizure way.

  Who needs life, when you’re sucking France’s finest

  and all the infogen necessary for amour of a breezy future

  without ballooning liver count is strictly in the Pink?

  Who here needs a bardic throne on Christmas Eve

  in the tiled cubicle of magic marker messages – Proper

  Gay Sucks: Ring this number. No Jokers Please?

  ’s’ all the reading I need before Harvey the Rabbit

  arrives pushing his white fur balls in my swollen

  face and the armies of rock-steady Goliath ants

  in bent Durrutti Columns proceed righteous

  from urinal drain under bolted door of this cuboid

  cubicle paradise hell, up the wall and into my eyes.

  It is dark now along my swan meadow river and always dark.

  The shutters at Boots are coming down for Christmas

  and my last chance to get better is going with the closing

  of the electric tills.

  We did not burn enough magistrates’ houses. We executed

  one king but did not drag out enough Tories¸ and hang them

  from the greenwood tree.

  These forever here in th
e snow-laden urinal are my hysterical

  historical regrets. Swan Lud, get my poster, did you?

  Freed from cognac bondage on anti-spasm Dr Dolittle

  sweeties I’m Swan as I like under Elvet, wings awry

  to bust a neck for once not quite my own in bent back

  guzzle down fast mode.

  I DIE HARD, Pookah Swoony

  Sweeney Swan Ludlunatic, revelling Leveller without

  sober reveilles to look for in the broken indices.

  Your sleek torpedo cowgirl heels have gone again

  and it is dark now along the weir and always dark.

  You’ll not return as long as I drink at fermented

  dementing demesning streams. But I’m all set-up!

  This is my toilet cubicle now! I can vomit as I like.

  Clap hands, here come the tinselled demons now,

  carolling away the broken night and broken angel me

  myself I&I yours truly Bob’s Your Auntie Mabel,

  downed by cognacflak, Spitfire tailrudder flutter.

  Bellyflop on Magwitch marshes, hollied demons

  rise from methane mist in one Christmas cracker chorus:

  Let’s hear it for the fratchy fractured Geordie ploughboy