Wolf Tongue
Page 26
O Robert it was almost where you left on the bus O Aaron O Dusty O Blackened Eyelids
I looked down upon a child today under the buswheels and knew whatever your name you would see
heaven and it would shine and be filled with pianos and trumpets and not be suppressed
and freedom would be written in moth-dust on every angel’s wings
and there will be the music of Shostakovitch and Poulenc when you wanted to hear it
and the monumental poetry of MacDiarmid and Mahon and all spirits would gather there
and tell you when you awake again what lemonbalm was and you and say
I looked down on a child and bonnybairn in blood today the day before St Valentine’s Day
Newcastle
13 February 1998
Totem Banking
(for JH Prynne)
The totemic fuse of non-events is rising like a fume
into a fakeless sky and then they are all disproved
by lapse into money greed and awesome self-possession
pathetic to the very bone fat and slavvering with wilful want
I seek them not but hold a flinty anger here on the high ground
no fat felines in this house we are lean and run like proper whippets
All sludge is there with bonus prize money cash right in hand
it sloughs upon the tide and happy too as the wallets scrap it up
wrestling with begotten tongues to say it’s mine it’s mine it’s mine!
how short of true possession grandly ridden of their ever sense
amusing I suppose from those who have never heard of Bartok
but also how disgusting and pathetic and barbaric and eternally
backward standing there reeling at the latest arts council party
whingeing in a will of creepdom in their total victim stance
may they lie forever all together in their poverty and blame
the exact stance of the universe is completely improper
dark and shining in the night perhaps a file for copper
used by Shelley or Bunsen burner where are we again
alone upon the brow reiving at the downside fierce pierce
where are we arrow that flash of fletchering into the dawn
airport what airport vast expanse is it what do you mean expense
there is an animal at loose in my heart what kind of animal
poetry and a hatred of the tamed animals poets have become
we often lie upon the dark shore beaten by the different tide
but never crush the opposition flash it into the lights feel yourself
not least the black ptarmigan as it wings its brilliant skywards way
towards grass-free Tarmac out on the Nenthead road how sweet
for slag to be delivered by tractor instead of straight wheelbarrow
by you with your broken hair and broken throat don’t mention it dear
Otherwise the wastrel pot is there but will never exceed us
for together we are lean and against all stupid wastage fantastick
it seems in the night how brill there are many people and many things
well that’s fine sit down have a cuppa and a dry biscuit too
not to mention a dead leadmine way beyond the height of our brows
fizz fume the distant dance the electric trance
the nowhere brood strangled connections failed
correspondents largesse merchants house of Mammon
how hard the ground to stalk across wrapped with wimps
moaners fruitless no ones yet still the Tarmac is gorgeous
crapping for a laugh in a country so diseased by pride & failure
under the allotments of heaven which nobody has noticed lately
for want of attention Punch and Judys all happy by the seaside
of their tideless lives what is that other word for jetteurs? Ah yes to
remember every avenue from the dim lights of Sacre Coeur
to Rue St Denis 1000 steps Laforgue nitrates washed down the pipes
ghastly importance peacocked around by strutting dwarfs
their time-frozen feathers lathered with crass shadows darkness
even they want so much without heading for it life on a raft
of brisking around the meniscus on a wing and a cheque book
rain so insistent flashing in worse than the collected works
of illegitimates everywhere as they treacle their supposedly upward
o scorched stars of yesterday homaging fromaging other failures
thank you Margaret who started this ill fire furred starred with greed
without moral combustion slack distasteful wallets extraordinaire
here we are then upon the gunmetal road without Pearl perle
rain sheeting down running now a river along the curve in the path
as we head for frontiers a handful almost not the ignorant or studied
by far between the blessed planets dearest you are there also
inventing many wondrous things and nothing nothing less than zero
can remove that from us not to name the names but we are there
applied to the advancement of history and all hoorays to that
and damn the rest to the banking system all false totems burned
April 1999
Here We Go
And all we could hear was the smelt of bottercoppes
raging in the morning air desperate for attention.
In the English mini-universe so many poetic fops
brick their baseness. Unavoidable powderpuffs mention
all and everything. The blankness is amazing. Grind
into the unblessed machine which is zero, phewed
to the volcano of nothingness. Sedgeless & despined
we flee the beautiful night towards the dawn, crewed
and ready: pulpit swabbed, sonar pouting in the foredeck
green as grass from every dog-filled park. Dry Salvages
pass in dreaded mist, by some. I am buttoned, drecked
of everything, tranced to matters, scorning savages
looning the horizon and the sky. Masters’ boys
and girls will fawn and fetch, like electroplated toys.
2 June 1999
PEARL IN THE SILVER MORNING
(1999)
Cushy Number
Much desired landscape loved keenly several lifetimes
Our unregenerated soil-heap hillsides, bleak
and bare of plastic life: one everyday religion.
Your ghost spindrifts in the lead-crusted law,
in mist combed by bracken and fern. The old school
where you were humiliated and betrayed, thrown
back to the riverbank and cribs of marigold, head
shaved, now up for sale: bijou conversion possibilities
for the turbo-mob, weird souls dreaming of car-reg
numbers and mobile phone codes. They are taking
over from the Barbour vegetarians, who couldn’t
stand the nailed-down winters. Inside you, spectre,
an inarticulate fury. Me, tongue-boy, lathered with words,
and you, thee, fern-haired and Pearl naked. We swam
against all Tyne tides which rose from the sea. When you sink
towards the head of the hush, where the beck runs
out of the tunnel towards the west, brewing foam
as it goes, we’ll meet my adverbs ad infinitum:
tongue-stoned invisible prelate of the shaking holes.
Bare Feet In Marigolds
First always the birds, buds, the wind-driven wild
running burn. Each morning, each season, so high in the sky.
Before it turned into a barbed wire compound.
Wild freedom of Sparty Lea turned into a Nazi camp.
Pride brought it down to this, wild self-willed pride,
family difference, sister and brother, and wild unlifting
eve
rlasting vanity. Pull down I say pull down, but it
was too late. We stand together upon the peak and crest
your tongue still clucking and purring. You’re the real poet!
You point at
the clouds sweeping from Ireland towards the forgotten
sad hotels of Dunbar. Chucklehen, hazel-haired and eyed,
you always were the best. The two daughters you have now
in Haltwhistle and a strong husband who works from dawn
till end of day. Strong and upright and heavenly Tom strong.
I’ve lost my new love. Nowt, blown away
feathery leaf, upland wind.
Daft Patter
If anyone knows about sullen loneliness, you do
Yet there’s a grin in the wind, heartless and cold
There’s dark in the darkness, beauty of streams
I low my beams to you, from tunnel to tunnel
as if the frozen air had a distinct personality
Standing at the lonnen head, holding leeks, you
sawed my glance in half with yours. What keen eyes!
Such strange, out-dated clothes. What’s inside counts.
Leaning into the tall grass grandness of your alert stance
towards the west and the brilliant beauties of Ireland,
I know now why you took the sickle hook
backing the beasts into their shutdown shed
You chopped the gate for want of sound
but you had sound, all sound, my purr mistress
my fantastic slavver merchant, when we peeled the sky
together we had water and silence and fire and togetherness
the lights of all you didn’t say knots my life and all dreams.
Pearl In The Silver Morning
Slit of light across the sky above the city: 7 a.m:
raining and me wandering
Pearl in her moonshawl
in the sky gazing down at me – saying,
stay cool just like the frost on the lawns.
You’ll melt in time.
Your broken heart will be warmed again.
Just look at the upcoming sunne.
Anger is hot, and Bar you have too much of it.
Passion is fine, fine, a fine gripping thing,
like we gripped fingers
by the Prudhoe bluebell beds, but hot temper is not.
We were hot, but never blasted
were we
like the clearing at night of the Consett Steelworks
ovens before the Pharisees shut them down.
Do you remember the flames we saw
from the rim of the law
holding hands and although you spoke
it was my tongue and cleft palate
also containing music, music, music,
and we breathed
in each other’s mouths, so young – innocent even – and the flames high
200 feet from the ovens in the air
like Blake’s vision of Adam in the arms of heaven
of which you told me.
God help us
you full of talk of a city called Edinburgh
and me in silence so very deep we were so very much in love.
And the burns and sikes and streams
though shallow
were deep music to us.
You trout-tickler,
you flower-picker,
climber in willow trees, me laughing below
as best I could laugh, though you never thought it ugly.
Indeed the word you used was the word beautiful,
pinning cowslips behind my ears,
you patting and running fingers through our
beckwashed hair.
Lying by the marigold beds
bare toes entwined, then dancing under branches
before the elms ever died. But our mutual hearts never did.
Bar it is 7 and your raining rage
must cease
under my morning moon.
In my dawn shawl looking dawndown upon you
in your foot-striding fellhighhighupuptopheavyrainbeatingrainrain.
We have always walked together so long.
In the long grass we walked and walked forever so long so very language long
and I could say so once you had the slate in my lap.
My tongue blank – FOREVER, word we wrote on a slate, remember
when you taught me? – only my hands and eyes moving now – two
daughters we could have had –
but I am looking kindly and lovingly on you
Please do it
– cool your raging fire lovelorn heart – for me.
And love me – forever.
We Are Not Stones
Darkly-harnessed light will fall like a shawl
and be the hunky-dory
death of us all. A hawk-wing death,
a shrike strike death, a death in a lair.
This mossy path, frilled with feldspar
to prick your pearly toes, fresh from the marigolds,
the little stile not squeaking now, lubricated
hinges, hymns to the silence of adult interference,
new sunken screwheads glinty in sunlight,
the death of the white linen: our cot-death.
It was all, all of it, all for us, from the wonders
of our mysterious heaven
to the trout’s opal seed-sac bubbling with jewels.
The water was anointment water,
a cool upland baptism. You, you
were Delilah and Mary-of-the-tears,
of the unspoiled lips lapping rushing whitewater.
Milton was a blind man and we knew nothing of him.
Paradise Lost to the ears of his daughter.
Where are they now, our camps of wild primrose?
Now we are adults too, all grown-up.
You’re there, I’m here, miles from our happiness.
We are not stone, but we are in the grinder.
Everything is lost, and we are dust and done for.
INDEX OF TITLES & FIRST LINES
(Titles are shown in italics, first lines in roman type.)
After copulation, 62
All aboard, it’s party time, with, 206
All of you with consonants and vowels, 211
alone on Ranter’s Rock, 159
And all we could hear was the smelt of bottercoppes, 317
‘and the warm weather is holding’, 42
& tie strings together, 41
Angel Showing Lead Shot Damage, 230
Anne Sexton Blues, 263
Argent moon with bruised shawl, 197
Arrest me asleep, crashed out, 238
Banged my right hand, 202
Bare Feet In Marigolds, 321
BBC monochrome newsreel flickers, 74
Beak Ode, 55
beaming Anaconda of parthian monumentalism your, 45
bee-like, 68
Beneath the worm’s eye view people. The clubfoot, 132
Beulah, 39
Blackbird, 82
Black Torch Sunrise, 74
Blitzkrieg Homage, 311
Blizzard blossom’s pink fumes: between, 304
Blizzard: So Much Bad Fortune, 212
Blossom Ode:Eltham Palace, 66
Brother Wolf, 23
Brown stamps forever, 312
Buying Christmas Wrapping Paper on January 12, 222
Cavalry At Calvary, 206
Chatterton Ode (‘sleek beasts…’), 40
Chatterton Ode (‘Time is a jagged mark…’), 37
Chaucer came here, 66
Colonel B, 88
Comb the crawling morning chill chilling sky in search for vodkafire, 255
Crepuscular phantoms energise manhood, soap, 48
Cry and she wanders, through, 50
Cushy Number, 320
Daddy Wants to Murder Me, 225
Daft Patter, 322
Darkly-harnessed
light will fall like a shawl, 325
Dark Was the Night and Cold Was the Ground, 208
Dead Man’s Handle, 255
death beholder, 46
Demons, big-hatted and hard-hatted, far as gutter-toppled, 237
Demons in My Pocket, 238
Demons Swarm upon Our Man and Tell the World He’s Lost, 244
Disease Ode Carrot Hair, 51
Don’t Leave Me, 295
Down from the rain-soaked law, 198
Dream Graffiti, 67
Dunce Ode, 47
Eva, my eternal spanked love, and Speer, before he went, 312
Far Cliff Babylon, 78
Fever, 203
Finnbar’s Lament, 179
First always the birds, buds, the wind-driven wild, 321
Flamebearer, 170
Flame Ode (‘and the warm weather is holding…’), 42
Flame Ode (‘Make your naked phone call moan…’), 57
Flame Ode (‘Two hawks and a plover swoop…’), 36
For Andrei Voznesensky, for her, 12
Forgive me for my almost unforgivable delay, 218
Fox Brain Apple Ode, 52
Free Pet with Every Cage, 220
From The Land Of Tumblestones, 207
Fusillade of the sun’s eye-piercing darts, 216
Get out the shotgun put it in the gunrack, 220
Gnashed fervour licks down like fire, 233
God bless you little girl the lean dry hand, 189
God forgive me, 179
Good morning Pearl, good morning John, 204