Collected Poems
Page 38
We don’t care why or how.
We’re happy enough with now.
No discomfort, no disease,
Gentlemen living at their ease,
Everything designed to please
In good Victoria’s reign.
Darwin, Marx, electric light,
The Church of England taking fright
As new ideas put old to flight
Were they right, I wonder –
Stay as you are, refuse to move,
Stick in your comfortable groove,
Sheltered from storm and thunder.
But destiny beckons me yonder
To dare the unknown, unseen.
Back to my time machine.
WORDS GETTING IN THE WAY
The man without words
Wants to be in love
Without words getting in the way.
What words could match
Her fairness of face?
What words could catch
Her grace?
The language of birds
In the blue above –
Even that’s unequipped to say
In the magic sand
What magic she brings
To all surround-
Ing things.
Why should I waste
Time and brain and breath
On what bores me to dusty death?
Let me taste
Her lips, not your words on mine –
Entwine her within my strong embrace
To a wordless man like this
A sigh can say no more
Than all of your bor-
Ing intellectual play.
How can I kiss
With words getting in the way?
I’m sick of each day
With each tiresome tome
That you drag from a special shelf.
I know a tree
Where poetry may
Proceed to hang itself
I’m sick of each night
That I spend at home
With a polysyllabic theme.
Insipid alien
Sesquipedalian writings
Make me scream
Don’t answer me when
I ask once again:
By all that’s sacred, how may
I hold her tight
With words getting in the way?
No matter how powerful or subtle or fine
I’m weary of working with words that you write
An actor enacting another man’s lines
But now that I’m seeing her, now it’s tonight
The things I must say are the things I must say.
It’s she and it’s I,
It’s her and it’s me –
No one but we
Tonight.
No poet need try
To fly in the way
Singing’s the right
Sonnets to say.
It’s she and it’s me,
And I and it’s her –
And I prefer
It so.
As soon as I see
The flame on her cheek,
Then I will know
Just how to speak
I’m sick of each day
With each tiresome tome
That you keep on a special shelf.
I know a tree
Where poetry
May proceed to hang itself.
‘SLAVERY’
Slavery slavery
Which he’s dressed up in his bravery
Up to some unsavoury escapades
I’m made
To moan in my slavery.
Slavery slavery
Which he’s returned from his knavery
Full of what he gave her and she gave him
I grimly groan in my slavery.
Slavery
Oh the anguish
No language
Cut off from my culture,
Served from my sect
The viper and the vulture
The tribal dialect
with a loincloth round my middle
And a priest upon the griddle
I would gambol to a fiddle
Made of human gut
But I’m cut
Off
‘NONE BUT THE COWARD’
None but the coward
Deserves the fair, for
Brave men die
But the coward’s always there.
What should a woman
Supremely care for –
Two live arms
Or a statue in the square?
I admit that bull or rogue ram
Will need an eventual butcher’s knife
But it’s not in my programme –
A medium sensual sort of life.
I don’t like to eat
Meat raw in my paw,
I prefer it dressed by my wife
Hardly empowered
To get in there,
I’d rather survive
And thrive
And if you’re agreeable, wive.
And, like every coward,
Stay alive.
I am, let one imagine
Lord Hamlet – one imagin-
-ation that can take in every side,
But wide to take a murder in its stride.
But not wide enough.
‘HE BOUGHT ME FROM A SARACEN’
He bought me from a Saracen
Who bought from some Turks
Who used me in the garrison
To build the public works.
Though he keeps me in food
And no longer in the nude
…
He bought me from a Grecian
Minister of works
Who’d bought me from a Venetian
Who bought me from the Turks
Who’d bought me from the Arabs
‘SEVILLA, SEVIYA – OR SEVIJA’
Sevilla, Seviya, Sevija – or Seville.
Call it what you will
It’s the same town,
Not a tame town – no shame at all
Nothing much happens in the morning:
They’re recovering from the evening.
Nothing much happens in the afternoon:
They’re waiting for the moonlight to fall
On Sevilla, Seviya, Sevija – or Seville.
Come here when you will.
Crane your necks at
All the sex at your beck and call.
‘I LOVE HATE’
I love hate.
The teeth that growl and grate
And bate me.
So hate me.
Hate is the wind
That sweeps the winter clean,
Scoured and unskinned
By the gold and green.
As for love,
And the dove-cooing lies
And the eyes that glow –
Love can get up and go.
So hate me, hate me,
Make me tough.
I hate love,
I love hate.
I’d love the world more
If it would hate me enough.
Hate is the state
That turns men tough
I’d adore
The world more
If it would only hate me enough.
Hate me.
Hate.
A TIME FOR MUSIC
You’ve got to liv wiv zest Liz luv
If you farm port of a roman fleueve
On the riverain on the sane side
Where I’ll fake you for a ride,
An Avon of a joke
Inn Eden where you’ve been rest to soak
Down the wurling Winderpool
Of a swashbuckling machine,
Bint shrunk into a minikin.
It’s a long ford that has no crossing
And its lakes a tot of frank pakenhamming
With hots of katzenjamming
Chopping up the best back notes
To fate you
with flewts and notes
And a host of hobos.
I hope I’ve taught your dido heart
Numbling your private parts
In an anthem of praise I’ve raised
A cannibal in a hamilcart;
I shope itsall bean great greene fun
Liz luv and you’ve slept your cool
Sunlike a river hooligan
Assort of Rogue Riderhood cum again
In a bally Volga boat-school
My dearest moneybun
‘WHAT I’D LIKE TO DO’
What I’d like to do
To you
Is too painful to be true.
I’d like to
Thrust here
Grind there
Behind there.
Ooooo –
What I’d like to do to you!
‘EIGHT AND TWENTY YEARS’
Eight and twenty years
The Scythians scourged Asia
With insolence and oppression
But King Cyaxares smote them,
Smote them, smote them,
Brought them low.
King Cyaxares – praise him –
Toppled Nineveh’s towers.
King Cyaxares – praise him –
Had the Assyrian by the beard.
Lo, the empire of the Medes
Stretches almost to Babylon.
Praise the son of Cyaxares,
Our noble Astyages,
Who keeps the peace
And maintains our empires.
‘TO BE A KING, TO BE A KING’
To be a king, to be a king
Is a high and mighty thing.
The one who’s wise and not the fool
Shall wear the crown and rule.
And rule.
To be a king, to be a king
Is a high and mighty thing.
The one who’s strong and also clever
Shall wear the crown for ever.
For ever.
To be a king, a king
Is a mighty thing.
He who’s wise and not the fool
Shall rule and rule.
To be a king, a king
Is a mighty thing.
He who’s strong and clever
Shall rule for ever.
‘A DRINK. WHAT IS A DRINK?’
A drink. What is a drink?
A machine for cooling the throat,
Injecting speedy sugar into the pancreas,
Getting high.
Eating’s not a feast.
It’s an existential function.
Administering extreme unction,
The waiter’s not a priest.
A drink. What do they think a drink is? What is a drink?
A machine to wet the dry.
For sugaring the pancreas.
For getting high.
Highballs.
I don’t like it
What? I like it.
I don’t like it.
What? Liking it.
Liking these folks
Who like to be slaves
Liking their cokes
And Gillette shaves
Liking their bosses
And buses and bikes
Like the likes and dislikes.
The people don’t talk
They bully or whine,
They snort or they squeak
I don’t like it.
What? Your liking it.
I don’t like it.
What? Your not
Liking me liking it.
How do you stomach
The stuff that they scoff?
Even its look
Puts me off.
BED
‘Rest’, says my bed.
‘When all is said,
Rest, rest is best.
The day is fled,
All red,
Into the west.
Forget, forget
The men you met,
The book you read,
The bread you ate.
Sleep lies ahead.
Rest your head,
Heavier than
A chest of lead.
I am ready
To hold your heavy head
Steady,
Steady,
Steady.’
‘Heady.’
Ho hez hy hed.
BEAR
‘See – there, there.’
Where?
‘There –
A hairless bear,
Walking about the square.’
But you shouldn’t stare
At a hairless bear.
You wouldn’t care
For folk to stare
If you didn’t have
Your share of hair,
Like that poor bear there,
That hairless bear,
That bare bear,
Bare bear –
‘Black sheep?’
No, that hairless bear
Glaring around
The square.
‘I’M WEARY OF WORKING WITH WORDS THAT YOU WRITE’
I’m weary of working with words that you write
An actor enacting another man’s lines.
But now that I’m seeing her, now it’s tonight,
The things I must say are the things I must say.
It’s she and it’s I,
It’s her and it’s me –
No one but we
Tonight.
No poet need try
To fly in my way
Justify the night
Say sonnets to say.
It’s she and it’s me,
It’s I and it’s her –
And I prefer
It so.
As soon as I see
The flame on her cheek,
Then I will know
Just how to speak
‘HOW DARE I DARE TO DREAM’
How dare I dare to dream
That all I dream is in vain?
And dare I dare believe
That sweet joy
Springs from pain?
How dare I dare to hope
That such a lowly thing as I
Could steal himself a pair silver wings
And fly,
To dare the heavens
Where she in beauty
Dares me –
Unworthy me,
How dare I head the call
That bids me claim the final prize?
I’d stumble and I’d fall – before her eyes.
How dare I dare to dream
That all I dream is not in vain?
And dare I dare believe
That sweetness
Springs from you
How dare I dare to hope
That such a lowly thing as I
Could steal himself a pair of silver wings
And fly.
To dare the heavens
Where she in beauty
Dares men
Unworthy me
How dare I hear the call
That bids me claim the final prize?
I’d stumble and I’d fall – before her eyes
‘HIS BOWELS ARE OF GOLD, HIS VEINS OF SILVER’
His bowels are of gold, his veins of silver.
The blood of his veins is rubies fine-powdered.
His head is a city, strong of wall and turret,
His member is the straightest tree of the forest…
‘I’M SICK OF A KINGDOM WHICH IS A JEWELLED PRISON’
I am sick of a kingdom which is a jewelled prison,
Of the wine of bondage and the roasted meats of
servitude.
Give me the free wind of the morning and the sun
that burns not from malice,
And the brook for wine and the berries and nuts
of the wild wood.
I am sick of kinds and princes, for their words
are an emptiness,
Their favour is water in a furnace, their smiles
; are shadows.
A voice within says: the king is but a king,
But you Gyzat, are a man and a free man.
Your nobility outreaches the king’s hand and
outtops his crown.
‘LEX FOR LAW AND ORDER’
Lex for law and order,
Peace within our border,
Factory wheels are turning,
Here’s an end of yearning.
Loyal hearts are burning
With patriotic joy.
Lex is our boy.
‘I WOULDN’T FRIRK URANUS’
I wouldn’t frirk Uranus,
He gives me a pain in the anus.
I wouldn’t frirk with Neptune,
Neptune’s tune is not a hep tune.
So pounce on me, Puma.
You’re no idle rumor, right?
I’m in the humor,
So pounce on me, Puma, tonight.
I don’t want to frirk with Mars.
Mars is covered with stars and scars.
I don’t want to frirk with Venus,
That blind kid Cupid would get between us.
So pounce on me, Puma, etc.
‘HERE ON THE FINAL PYRE’
Here on the final pyre
See that page with its curled ends
Rolling into the fire.
Here’s what the poet sang:
This is the way the world ends:
Not with a whimper. BANG.
‘A BIRD SAT HIGH ON A BANYAN TREE’
A bird sat high on a banyan tree,
Carolling night and carolling day,
And on the heads of the passers-by
And each bemerded passer-by
Cried loud in anger on that bird
Carolling night and carolling day,
Wiping from his eye.
And still that bird upon the tree,
Carolling night and carolling day,
Ignored the plaints of the passers-by.
Let us like birds upon the tree,
Carolling night and carolling day,
Ignore each hairless passer-by,
And say…
‘BEASTS AND MEN ARE MADE THE SAME’
Beasts and men are made the same –
Here a one and there a two,
And with these three they play the game
Of doing what they have to do.
‘OH, LOVE, LOVE, LOVE’
Oh, love, love, love –
Love on a hilltop high,
Love against a cloudless sky,
Love where the scene is
Painted by a million stars,
Love with martinis