by Ian Pindar
with only the wolves for company,
howling in the wind that whistles through its delicate wires
sending us to sleep.
THE KING’S EVIL
There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden
BOB DYLAN
A pox on all kings!
AN OLD WOMAN, WATCHING CHARLES II’S
ENTRY INTO LONDON, 1660
And it isn’t a question of money –
how much the monarchy costs –
but they set up a right by assumption,
by assumption binding posterity
And Thomas Paine began
the Rights of Man
in a room above
The Angel Inn, Islington,
attacking the very basis
of slavery
arguing that we are all born free
free and equal in rights
and have a natural right
to free speech, freedom of conscience,
life and liberty
Yet we are subject to one family:
the monarch
and close relatives of the monarch
and the monarch is first and foremost political
They sought to suppress
the Rights of Man
and indicted Paine
for seditious libel
and Paine fled to France
and was tried in absentia
and the jury was offered
two guineas and dinner to find him guilty
and the bookseller Thomas Spence
imprisoned for selling the Rights of Man
America threw off the yoke
of monarchy. France threw off the yoke
of monarchy. But we are ruled over
in perpetuity
by one family
and this is regarded as normal
in a democracy
bloodlines and blood fascism
in a democracy
destiny written in our veins
‘we high-born ones’, ‘we well-bred
with pure blood and pure breeding’
– ‘our superior genetics’1 –
born to rule
to master
No rational basis but blood
(and some idiot always says:
‘They know how to rule –
it’s in their blood’)
But Paine was clear on this:
hereditary rule
precludes the consent
of succeeding generations
and the preclusion of consent is
DESPOTISM
And the monarch will make retribution
the Tower of London
once a place of execution
and on Tower Bridge strange to see
the hair of the head disappear
the gristle of the nose consumed away
the eye sockets …
All deference is fear
and not meeting the monarch’s eyes
is fear and servile fearfulness:
‘To monarchize,
be fear’d and kill with looks …’
And the monarch is above the law
Crown Immunity
and the Privy Council shrouded in mystery
and the keeper of the monarchy the BBC
and every royal wedding is a funeral
for democracy;
and our elected representatives reprimanded
for mentioning the monarch in the House
and the misinformed multitude
wave flags and worship
wave flags and worship
a phantom at the rotten core
of our botched democracy.
1 ‘I was brought up to do this sort of work. It is training, experience and genetics.’ Prince Andrew, HRH the Duke of York (Telegraph, 24.10.09).
LES VACANCES DE MONSIEUR P.
P. lay in a narrow cot in what one might call
A state of profound erotic affection
For La Belle France and all things French. The only work
He had to do that day was to say
In a postcard that he was enjoying his holiday,
Then relax and spend the remainder
Of his time resting. He was eating the remainder
Of some kind of pastry – but what to call
It? Why bother with words? He was on holiday!
And he believed it made him an object of affection
Not to speak French, but to point and say
Nothing. Learning a language is hard work.
He was English, which everyone seemed to work
Out from his appearance, some remainder
Of home. In his postcard he did not say
He had been kept awake by the mating call
Of an Australian, screwing the object of his affection
Into a wall. For Australian backpackers also holiday
In Paris in November, when it’s cheap. I could have a holiday
Romance, thought P., but would it work?
Could incomprehension increase affection?
We might happily spend the remainder
Of our lives in silence, but could one call
It love without language? Who could say?
P. realised he had a lot that he wanted to say
To a girl in England and he spent his holiday
Pestering her with call after call after call …
Some days he couldn’t get the public telephone to work,
Others she was not at liberty to talk. For the remainder
He spoke openly, declaring his affection.
He knew little about love, but sensed this affection
Might not be shared when he heard her say,
‘You don’t have to call me every day.’ He was deaf to the remainder
Of their conversation. P. would try to enjoy his holiday,
Although from that moment on he had his work
Cut out. For even P. couldn’t call
This love or even affection. And that one phone call
Ruined the remainder of what he laughably called his holiday.
But that isn’t to say he was glad to get back to work.
CHAIN LETTER
Fastyng on a Friday forth gan he wende
Unto the bed wher that sche slepte,
And she was cleped madame Eglentyne,
Besely seking with a continuell chaunge
To change her hew, and sundry formes to don,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertaine:
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
(He is starke mad, who ever sayes
Ill matching words and deeds long past or late
Could by industrious Valour climbe
Above the rest, their discords to decide.)
Proceeding on, the lovely Goddess
Asleep and naked as an Indian lay,
Of such, as wand’ring near her secret bow’r,
By youthful heat and female art
Of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose
Wi’ favours, secret, sweet, and precious.
His look and bending figure, all bespeak
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion’d grief,
That he was forced, against his will, no doubt,
To own that death itself must be
Where there is neither sense of life or joys.
Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short:
Her eyes blazed upon him – ‘And you! You bring us your vices
so near
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
Stepping with light feet … swiftly and noiselessly stepping and
stopping
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore,
The irresponsive sounding of the sea,
Untouc
hed by morning and untouched by noon,
We can begin to feed.
Let us go hence together without fear.
I see what you are doing: you are leading me on.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent.
Some love too little, some too long,
Though both are foolish, both are strong
An’ they talks a lot o’ lovin’, but wot do they understand?
Consume my heart away; sick with desire,
I forgive you everything and there is nothing to forgive.
Now the mind lays by its trouble and considers
Openair love and religion’s reform,
The riddle of a man and a woman
All heavy with sleep, fucked girls and fat leopards.
Queer, what a dim dark smudge you have disappeared into!
Drifted away … O, but Everyone
is an enchanted thing
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less.
The songsters of the air repair
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours
Humanity i love you
and I am glad that you do not belong
Under a world of whistles, wire and steam.
A city seems between us. It is only love.
I take my curses back.
Only sometimes when a tree has fallen
In splendor and dissipation
In a world of sunlight where nothing is amiss
I feel as though I had begun to fall,
the whole misery diagnosed undiagnosed misdiagnosed.
Think of what our Nation stands for
Of Captain Ferguson
In silk hat. Daylight.
The light is in the east. Yes. And we must rise, act. Yet
He didn’t fight.
he played dominoes and drank calvados unTil
They put him in the fields to dock swedes,
And the craters of his eyes grew springshoots and fire
And forty-seven years went by like Einstein.
My mind’s not right.
I too have ridden boxcars boxcars boxcars.’
(An ode? Pindar’s art, the editors tell us, was not a statue but a
source for bugling echoes and silvered laments. The
Power of some sort or other will go on
In the network, in the ruin.
We repeat our conversation in the glittering dark.
One – someone – stops to break off a bit of myrtle and recite all
the lines.)
If woman is inconstant,
How I loved those made of stone. And yet poetry has
Tough lips that cannot quite make the sounds of love,
strange hairy lips behind
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
long legs, long waist, high breasts (no bra), long
confessions. Lady, I follow.
And still the machinery of the great exegesis is only beginning,
it will Invent a whole new literachure
From a cacophony of dusty forms …
O but what about love? I forget love.
The sun dries me as I dance
On the flowers of Eden.
Platonic England, house of solitudes,
I have hung our cave with roses.
O the dark caves of obligation.
I remember when I lived in Boston reading all of Dostoyevsky’s
novels one right after the other
And yet last night I played Meditations,
fugitive dialogue of masterwork.
Perhaps I’ve got to write better longer thinking of it as
echo-soundings, searches, probes, allurements.
A few months earlier I had taken a creative writing class:
‘The period in history termed Modern is now over’ it said.
Suddenly I feel silly and ill. This apartment
invents the world, holds it together in color of
your body waking up so sweet to me skin
we sit on the bed Indian fashion not touching …
I was working on a different poem.
It was words that detained us, though they do not reach
the crush of it, the variety,
in which history itself is vanquished,
When he names the forgotten names
as if they might start speaking.
OF TRUTH
There was such a truth once.
I remember it. We all shared it
like a candle in the dark.
During the war a piece of bone
got lodged in it, but you
didn’t hear it complaining.
In a cinema after the war
I saw it looking for its hat
under the seats.
It was smaller then, a little hunched.
I don’t recall the last time
we met. I think it was in Berlin.
I’d just been to the lavatory
when I came out
to find a girl in blue jeans
staring at a patch of oil in the corridor.
Something moved in the darkness
and I stamped on it.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
When Gypsies first appeared in Europe
ordinary people began to sit
on chairs and hallmarks were
required for silver objects. I intended to go
to Geneva to fetch my wife, but then
playing cards became popular,
and opera and privacy were
invented, as well as the
mechanical clock. Midnight struck
in a domestic interior.
TWO FIGS
Upstairs two of them were
posing in states of rhapsodic
abandon, their skin rough and
blemished, not like
those good-looking girls, genteel
sisters, standing against
Chinese tapestries in
Vienna. They squeeze
the hearts of men, are
sardonic, flippant and intense and
for their heads the season weaves
spring flowers
into a crown. A greyhound,
a mandolin, a fruit dish with
pears, two figs
on a table.
THE PROPHECIES
I
When Venus is covered by the sun
a broken nose will break its heart
and a question mark will hover over
a futon in Finsbury Park.
In February a man named Pixon or Pixer
will grow a beard in a disputed region.
Conversations will be interrupted, disconnected,
leading to the degeneration of knowledge.
A vixen will be lost in Leicester Square
and two peacocks will suffer paroxysms
in Hyde Park, near a cinema complex.
A woman with small feet will eat
salted squid in Chinatown
and strawberries, a prelude to sex.
II
In June the instincts will go
backwards, dragging the economy. Riches
will turn to rags and winos will be sober, ushering in
an era of Total Responsibility.
A man who fears his madness but rebels
against psychoanalysis
will leave his umbrella behind
in an area known as Luxor.
Late summer will bear witness to the erection of
stone fences, howls and ghastly cries near
London, New York, Paris.
Oh what abominable executions will occur
before the planets realign, and a boy shot and killed
in Colorado will be found working in a pizza parlour.
CASANOVA
He is unique, like everyone else.
There is no second chance, no afterlife.
All he wants is to be a real Casanova,
give his partner complete sati
sfaction,
clear his existing credit,
amaze his friends with his feats of memory,
save money on a lawnmower.
He can go neither forwards nor back.
They mock his accent, astonish him with their predictions.
He tries to kill his adopted son.
The walls of the room fall away to reveal
a cement horizon. He waits for his connection.
CĀRVĀKA/LOKĀYATA
Many wanderers and Brahmans who haunt
the silent and remote recesses of
the forest say: when the body dissolves
after death they who break the precepts of
morality are reborn in the Waste,
the Woeful Way, the Fallen Place, the Pit.
Don’t believe it. There is no other world,
no merit or demerit, no rebirth,
no karma. Nor is there heaven or hell
or fruit or result of deeds good or ill.
Trust only in things: hard things and soft things,
things that can be eaten and cannot,
fragrant things and things with an evil smell,
things movable and things immovable:
earth, trees, mountains and the lotus flower,
beasts, people and the music of the flute.
WINDOWS
If I had a window for every
dead plant I’d have a
balcony too,
jutting out like a statement of
fact and leaning on that balcony
in springtime
a redhead in designer shades
and nothing else
surveying with a smile
the dazzled traffic.
When workmen in yellow