by Glyn Maxwell
It isn’t for laughter we play in our show.
It’s not at all funny. It isn’t for money,
it isn’t for love. But she laughed and her eyes
were the fog as it shrugs in the face of sunrise,
and her ribs were the sea in the shirt she wore:
we were sickened to follow its suck and its swell,
she was out of our reach, she had always been,
but that was our choice, if you see what I mean.
Something was done and she ran from a town
and I’m glad it was done or she wouldn’t have come,
but she wouldn’t have gone and she’s long gone now,
so I’m wondering why and remembering how.
Why are you laughing, we wanted to say,
till one of us did and we wanted to hide,
and her glistening eyes had no answer to that,
so we waited like birds for her swallowing throat
to be still and it was, and she stared at the ground
like a book of her own to be counted upon.
Everything here is made out of card.
Take light from the World and you’re left with the Word
which she seemed to be trying to show in the dust
as we crowded to see and could never agree
what she said after that – that our Maker was sick
of his Word? That our souls could be drawn with a stick?
That our Man was a rainbow, our Angel should hang?
Or the other way round? But which ever way round
there was nothing to do but the next thing we did,
which was take it in turns to repeat what she said
having tiptoed unnoticed away on our own
to the elders and olders who had to be told
what a creature she was and how little she knew
and how hard she was laughing and what we should do.
But I was among the ones crowding her light
so her shadow was gone but I wasn’t the one
who asked her to tell us what should have been done,
in a voice with arms folded and uniform on.
Something was done and she ran from a town
and I’m glad it was done or she wouldn’t have come,
but she wouldn’t have gone and she’s long gone now,
so I’m wondering why and remembering how.
And he asked her to say what the Maker would say
and a few ran away. I did not run away
but I want to have done, so I sit on this gate
where there’s nothing to wait for at all and I wait.
And she looked at who’d said it and looked at who’d not
and she stood and she started to speak from her heart
what the Maker would say. I can say this to you.
For who lives in this shell of a town but we two?
The elders assembled like stones in a boat
but it sailed as it could, while it could, when it could,
and then I saw nothing and now I see all
and I wait and there’s nothing to wait for at all.
And the wind caught the fire with the last of its strength,
the fire they began for what had to be done,
but the fire caught the town and it burned in my eyes
till my eyes were the desert an hour from sunrise.
And I talk of we two, but it’s me on this gate,
with an echo of wind when the song has an end,
but the wind didn’t do what I too didn’t do,
and we won’t breathe a word till there’s reason to.
One Thousand Nights and Counting
I love her stories but they’re all alike.
I don’t mean that.
And I’d only dare to think it on my break
and all I get to do on that
is piss this platinum – eat your heart out, Midas –
until I’m done
and trot like only tyrants trot
quick-quick in case I miss one.
Litre or two to go. Now when I say
they’re all alike
I only mean – I mean in a good way –
that she has certain themes (I’m like
a literary prof these days!) and they,
what’s the word,
recur: Aleppo, Baghdad, Cairo,
wherever the story’s set
it’s all the same shebang, but this last one
better not end,
dear, for that rosy glint on the horizon
is only something being sharpened . . .
Where was I? I was training a critic’s eye
on common themes –
as all my thunder starts to trickle –
I’m only like all storms,
all storms are just like me. Theme Number One:
the djinn: the djinn
I love, don’t get me wrong – without the djinn
you might as well read magazines
or lists! – but must they always come in jars
and rise as smoke
so horribly I can’t see any light
for one great swell of muck?
I only ask. I’m reaching for the soap.
I can hear from here
the clearing of her little throat, the clap
of olive hands – it’s just not fair
I’m who I am! I was the master here!
I mean I am,
and anyway, I’ve points to make,
a Second Theme. Ahem:
the chambers underground. There are always chambers
some innocent
tradesman goes about his day and wanders
into by some accident
and bingo, X has lost an eye, hey presto
Y lies dead,
and treasure’s everywhere, but cursed,
and stuff goes really bad –
I’m drying my hands as quickly as I can,
dear (I call her),
but not before I mention that a man
can dream, yes, in sound and colour
dreams are free, yet in your little tales,
Peculiar Soul,
they all come true – the smoke comes true,
revenge in a deep hole,
men without eyes and djinn with nothing but,
a sot who dreams
he’ll rule the world and lifts it off a plate
one morning, men in dog-forms
who begged to differ, dogs in man-forms
who knows why?
She doesn’t know, she’s calling me
by name now! What if I
just stayed here in these echoey cool halls
forever, free
of stories, free of her, among the smells
of lavender and lime and me,
the free will of the water? That can’t be,
for who but I
can end it, when she shuts the book
at dawn and meets my eye
and I meet hers? Nobody, that’s who,
when our eyes meet,
(her eyes so green) I will know what to do,
when the extraordinary book is shut
and her fingers touch each other. Till that day
I am content
to hear her poor preposterous tales
of how the old world went.
Flags and Candles
Flags line up an hour before they’re chosen,
wave back along the row at others like them.
Candles sit in boxes or lie still,
sealed, and each imagines what will happen.
Flags will not accept the explanation
of why they were not needed as they are now.
Candles feel they’re made of stuff that’s soft
for a good cause, though maybe not their own cause.
Tall flags love all flags if it’s their flags.
Small flags are okay about immense flags.
Candles doze in xylopho
nes of colour,
thrilled their purpose may be merely pattern.
Flags are picked out one by one. The others
muster in the gap and say Gap, what gap?
Candles dream of something that will change them,
that is the making of and death of candles.
Flags don’t dream of anything but more flags.
The wind is blowing; only the landscape changes.
Candles have the ghost of an idea
exactly what the wick is for: they hope so.
Flags have learned you can’t see flags at nighttime,
no way, not even giants in a windstorm.
Candles learn that they may do their damnedest
and go unnoticed even by old candles.
When I wave flags, flags think it’s the world waving
while flags are holding fast. When I light candles,
candles hold the breath that if it came
would kill them; then we tremble like our shadows.
Flags know nothing but they thump all morning.
Candles shed a light and burn to darkness.
Rendition
It was quiet in their zone. They liked to call it
The Zone, it gave it borders.
But it gave the quiet an edge, it gave the quiet
a hum, more like a drone,
more like an engine coming through so they called it
Home. Then it went quiet.
Would you look at that, they said. They called all things
things that made them quiet.
They found a man so quiet what he knew
was everything there was to.
He was quiet when he was asked why was he quiet.
And he was asked why was he
LOUD when he was LOUD and he was LOUD
for 97 seconds.
Why are you loud, they said, you were so quiet.
He answered in both forms.
Why is it dark again, they said, it was light.
Why is there Guns n’ Roses
playing, it was not. Why does this light-stick
leak, do you think it’s busted?
The Tinsel Man
What with the year we’d had it was in the air
to ditch that holiday but the thing is old,
it’s always held,
so it isn’t up to us and to be fair
the children like it.
So we prised the coffin-box and the cold breeze
was all our yesteryears, while on the road
by the wayside
the man himself was spotted, his big face
not understanding.
That days arrive as dates is not a thing
he gets, so to be hoisted shoulder-high
hip hip hooray
and to be crowned with tinsel in the morning
sunshine was something!
And we laughed into the town, at the great fools
we were again, and we took his weight in turns,
we wrote new lines
for age-old melodies, we banged the bells
in our tradition.
And he was fed before he had a chance
to ask to be, and had his pick of girls
and was all smiles
but didn’t pick and they just stroked his hands
as he stared at us.
Who knows if he remembers this is what
we do with him? Who knows if he believes
the town behaves
the same way every day? Who gives a shit
is another thing.
And another thing is timing. It was noon,
then it was after noon, and the white sky
so recently
blue in his brain was white so he gripped his throne
and with his language
fought to stop it leaving him. His words
were belted out so loud they meant one sound
till that one sound
meant nothing. He was focused on some clouds,
then other clouds.
Mime was all. We think what he meant was Fight,
They Are Everywhere, They Are Coming! But the sun
blushed the maroon
the girls had worn and was gone from there. It was night
and he didn’t stop
wailing till the dawn came and the sun rose.
We leave him to his Morning Victory March
to the near edge
of the wood as he sheds his terrible old clothes
and decorations.
Mandelstam
Knowing no word of his I embrace his every
word. They’re all there is. He died for only
them. I imagine the obstinate syllables
of his name like a bothering hand on the lapels
of Stalin now and then. I imagine him
having it brushed away. Neither of them
strikes me as caring greatly about the dull
ache the other makes elsewhere in his skull,
not even when those closest to them come
wondering What are you going to do about him?
Only a slow accrual of discomfort
can do it, and only at night at a point where hurt
and thought converge and clarify the future
with nothing but new words, whether a line
begun forever or one jotted sentence.
Element It Has
It may not be the same, what we appear
to thrive or slow or fade in, though across
its white expanses steadily we stare;
the only common element it has
is loss, and it may differ in the terms
it gives it. And it thickens with the days,
thins in the night as if it more than seems
a carbon thing, afflicted, prone to what?
To us, as if obscurely hopes or harms
can come to it, as if it walks the street
in love, abashed, abused – as if it, too,
expands to wonder at the point of it –
contracts to desperation in the blue
morning, helplessly expands anew.
Dust and Flowers
Everyone ever was shuddering past
In a rubbishy cyclone of them and the dust
And my eyes were attempting to follow some face
I would lose in a blur like a chariot-race
So I’d try that again, and to anyone seeing
I seemed to be one who was stuck disagreeing
And shaking my head sort of slowly forever
Like somebody chronically stupid or clever,
When you broke the surface between it and me,
And you stood there as quiet as Sunday will be
While we’re having a Saturday – I was the same
For no time at all, till your face and your frame
Were nodding my head up and down on its stem
Like a flower in the rain at the height of a storm,
But afterwards too, like a flower in a breeze,
And always, which doesn’t have flower-similes.
Anything but the Case
Do me my elegy now, or I’ll scrawl the thing
I scrawl as you’re going or screw in a ball when you’re gone,
Or you and I write unaware in each other’s tongue
That you or I ever set foot . . . Or do what our son
And/or little daughter got done: got our brilliant names
Pricily grooved in marble by one skilled
In times of loss; dream iridescent dreams
It’s that first Saturday. Let this hour be filled
With anything but the case, so that Time the clerk
Goes panting in horror from gremlin to error to glitch
And his screen is stripes and he knows he saved his work
In one of a billion files but fuck knows which,
And he lets us alone or, at worst, as we tiptoe by,
Feels we’re familiar, can’t f
or the world say why.
Empire State
Departed I could see her
from my new room in Manhattan –
loneliest of letters
in the tallest word in English.
It’s like she’d crept alongside,
a great bejewelled someone
at the dark edge of a party
we could not stand any longer.
And still at the wide window
we considered making contact,
she haplessly three-coloured
and I knowing all about that,
but we settled for the vista
through the traffic to the water.
Since nothing lasts forever
was about all I could muster.
Kaspar Hauser
My dream of her
was memories in heaps and the whole morning
at her age now
I think of her
is memories in heaps. In the great daylight
I do nothing
but see stars
like the wolf-boy they sat down in a world
of nonsense.
Cassandra and the King