One Thousand Nights and Counting

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