There is music where the young ones dance
Their mime of lust and love.
There are lights blinking, dogs that howl to the yellow moon,
Crickets that grate in the vines, a horse that munches beneath the olives,
A dainty cat that begs for fish, perceives his sympathetic heart.
There’s a yellow moon, a truce with fate,
Wine that glistens in the glass, swallows breasting the pool,
The sound of distant celebration, sailboats creaking,
Peace and calm at last, a place to meditate and wait,
Asylum on this island, hidden by the Greeks.
HAVENS
I set out on a voyage on the high seas
And anchored in many harbours.
In one they bade me worship many gods
In others they offered to kill me if I did.
In one place they bade me worship one god only
And in two others they told me the self-same thing,
But disagreed about His name
And told me I must kill the devils
Who thought His name was not The Name.
In two of these ports they said you can’t eat pigs
And in one of those they killed my dogs
And broke my jars of wine,
And in another they said, ‘You must drink wine –
It’s the blood of God and His body is bread
And it’s fine to be that kind of cannibal.’
And then I sailed to a strange place
Where they bade me worship no God,
Because there is no God,
And instead they worshipped tawdry things
That replaced God and in that manner
Were a pantheon of gods.
In all these ports the Books of God
Meant anything the faithful
Expected them to mean.
In the end, after many disappointing journeys
And threatening situations,
I said, ‘God damn you all!’ and hoisted sail
And sailed back out on the high seas,
Where God is in the wind
And the air of the soul is clean.
BUDDHA ON PRINCESSTREET
He crouches on the grey stone step, this sunshrunk tramp,
With greasy cap and matted locks, who holds himself
In Perfect Posture, all his face a map of broken veins,
His eyes tight closed, his grimy hands at rest;
And by his feet, his life, his plastic bags, his bowl that holds five coins,
His hand-scrawled HOMELESS AND HUNGRY HELP,
His sleeping bag, his well-fed, well-brushed, well-loved dog.
The sun’s come out of hiding, everyone’s surprised;
The happy tourists stream up Castle Hill.
His memories have raised him up, have climbed
And made a woodbine with his fantasies and dreams.
He might have been a sailor once,
Had pretty bairns, been chucked out by the wife.
His eyes stay closed, his breathing slow; it seems
He’s grasped the arcane alchemy that spins to gold
The salty jetsam of a wildly navigated life.
The sun’s come out of hiding, such sweet heat;
The happy tourists stream up Castle Hill.
It’s six coins now. His eyes stay closed. We do not think
To ask some explanation of his happiness,
Some stoned approximation to the truth.
He’s gone from here, his vagrant soul is wheeling high,
And soaring with the sparkling gulls,
His bold heart beating to the distant drum,
The glinting promise of his lovely youth.
The sun’s come out of hiding, pipes start up;
The happy tourists stream up Castle Hill.
BELFAST, AT THE END OF THE TROUBLES
By cloud and black hill the princess sleeps,
By quiet cold water.
Her soft grey eyes, her fine white skin,
Are dull beneath the dust,
Cobweb and broken brick,
Rusted iron and cracked tile,
Brass heart, knuckled hand and idle crane.
By cloud and black hill the princess sleeps,
Unkissed, by quiet cold water.
She has dreamed of dragons that grew too real.
But light breaks and she wakes at last,
Smiling, and astonished by her long sleep’s tears.
INNOCENT MEN ON BISHOP’S QUAY
In Limerick down by the river,
A lamp post told me to pick up after my dog.
I put him right.
I said, ‘Listen lamp post,
Think before you speak.
I’m English, I’ve got two cats
And they’re not keen on travel.’
But the lamp post was undeterred,
And said the same thing
In the same tone of voice
To the man who came after,
Who was certainly Irish,
But also had no dog,
And was just as vexed as me.
MANCHESTER, ON A DAY OF EXTREME HEAT IN THE 1970s
Summer squats on Manchester,
Leans against its chest,
Its fingers at the throat.
A mist of dust in the evening air
Sprinkles all the sunset on the city
Like a fountain.
In humidity and humility
A thousand reeking chimneys seep amongst the spires
Their sooty meditations.
The workers stream with rivulets
That glisten through the grime upon their shoulders;
They shake away the pearls of sweat
That glow upon their eyelids
Or glimmer on their foreheads like the opal.
Unfortunate city, drowsy as a hive,
Barely breathing, thirsty as a slave,
City of a thousand aspirations,
Longing only at this moment
For the old familiar rain.
SEVILLANAS
When the sun snags in the orange trees,
Then the young girls dance flamenco in Seville.
The man in the square, guitar perched high,
And eyes pinched tight,
Pours out his joys and his accumulated griefs,
And rasps the Sevillanas.
The grim cathedral disapproves,
The priests don’t watch,
But cabmen’s horses prick their ears
And prance and step out proud.
They love it as I love it,
When the young girls dance.
TURKISH COUPLE WITH A LIONITIS CHILD IN FETHIYE
Bravely they sauntered, hand in hand,
The little one between.
Slowly they went, their shoulders square,
The fish jumping, the flies hatching.
The imam switched on the azan,
But they strolled beside the canal,
Hands in the hands of their hideous girl,
Who couldn’t live long. They were not
Ashamed, they were parents who loved their child.
ON IPANEMA BEACH
The brown people, the black people,
The almost white people,
Immortal boys, the soft-hipped girls,
The lovers of the sand,
Children suckled at the breast of coconut,
Gold and gleaming,
Applaud the maestro sun,
Who takes his bow,
And sinks between two rocks,
And leaves behind
Another virtuoso day.
IN KATHMANDU
Dead hog in the river,
Caught up on a pile of the bridge,
Swollen and stinking, festooned with litter,
Painted in filth,
Marooned in the Holy River,
Coated with Hindu dead,
This trickling mud,
Gleaming and grey,
This Holy River,
Thick with the ash of the ghats.
LAST YEAR
Last year we met among the trees
And lay down in the flowers.
Those flowers have bloomed again
And new leaves bud on the bare boughs
Of the same trees.
I think of how my body fails,
Of how I lay in other fields with other loves,
Of how the world has been my bed.
You shouldn’t have said you might return one day.
I’m vagrant now in my own house.
I waste whole days at the window.
I wonder how many times the sun must set,
The moon rise, the seasons turn,
The stars revolve, about this house.
It seems unjust, and I should be ashamed,
That spring should make me sad,
When last year we met amongst the trees
And lay down in the flowers.
I’M GOING BACK INTO THE GARDEN
I’m going back in the garden, for this is the season you wandered off.
I’d like to see if spring will bring you back.
This garden was ravaged by winter, I think the fig tree’s dead.
The tulips, at least, were secure in the mould.
This garden was Paradise once, but then the rose fell sick,
The vines grew mean, the wind burned out the leaves.
I sang to the beeches, ‘Your boughs are dishevelled,
You’ve lost your pride. I’ll drink your health in wine.’
My mind was tortured once, but now my strength’s returned,
Enough to lift a jug, break bread and dig.
I’m going back in the garden, to clear some space for the rugs,
My lutes and lanterns, pillows and bowls of fruit.
All these jubilant songbirds, I wish I knew their names.
I’d send them cards, inviting them to sing, should you return.
IN THE WOODS NEAR SWEETWATER
This soft turf, this dark peat
Composed of leaves and fallen trees,
Is the same turf I walked with her
In the awkward days of greatest strength,
When we were lovely, barely formed,
Yet never better formed, and
Never more aflame,
Never faster carried off by
The disingenuous lying promise of life.
I remember a rusted car,
Bracken as high as our heads,
A hurtling dog with a branch in his jaws,
Anxious to fetch, anxious to please,
A silent lake, a quarry of sand,
A tunnel of rhododendron.
We were poor at conversation,
Poor at holding hands,
Poor at love, frightened of love,
That love constrained by buckles and bars.
I swear she was fashioned of velvet,
Cinnamon, honey of thyme.
Her voice was warm and low.
I swear she was formed by a mischievous god
Giving me something to aim for,
Something to fall short of,
An apple I could not grasp,
A summit I could not reach.
As wasps and mould devour the damsons,
Small and sweet and wild,
Scattered in these woods like words,
So all our days have been devoured,
That tumbled from the branches,
Like unsuspecting birds.
IN MY OWN HOUSE
I passed you by in my own house;
I was one of the fittings – inventory –
Something large that moves.
I restrained my hands, withheld my touch,
The kiss, the loving word.
I was drifting merely, from one solitude
At this end of my own house,
To a further one at the other,
Demoted from lover to bursar,
Convenient but inconvenient,
An indentation in your paragraph,
Space in your double spacing,
Tangible ghost in my own house,
Sleeping apart in the same bed,
Loved by others outside,
Dulling with dust in a corner.
They darken and tighten, my tarnishing strings
My timbers unglue in the damp
At one end of my own house.
You at the other, the music dead in your heart.
AN INCOMPATIBILITY
It wasn’t her tawny, sunwarmed flesh that put him off,
Nor her long, entwining limbs, her admirable skills
With hand and mouth and tongue; nor
Her fascinating conversation, her sympathetic heart;
Nor her willingness to move a thousand miles,
Forsake her land and give up everything.
It was that she sang so badly, her voice was thin and small,
And he was all musician, music was the most part of his world.
Her intonation made him wince;
He couldn’t bear it, the keylessness, the breathiness,
The pauses wrongly placed, the notes held on
Or cut too short, that made him long to put
A pistol to his tortured head and black it out,
Her execrable singing.
SHE LAID SIEGE
She brought me gifts of eggs and cakes,
Drank tea and laughed, and sympathised,
And paid attention to my righteous tales.
And then,
With teams of bullocks and horses,
In the owl-lapped dead of night,
She dragged up ballistas, catapults, towers,
Lethal engines of war.
One day at dawn, while I still slept,
As frightened larks fled up from the heath,
As buzzards gathered above the fields
And rats licked their lips in the ditches,
She came upon me slowly, bold beneath
Her sturdy tortoise of shields.
And last, most fatal of all,
She made a tunnel beneath the moat,
Beneath my ribs, a fathom deep,
Below the footings of my stubborn heart,
And broke the stones and sapped the walls,
And undermined my well-kept keep.
SHE WAS PLAYING SCHUBERT
I remember you best
When you were twenty,
Clothed in nothing but
Your waterfall of hair.
Your locks were black,
Cascading to your waist.
Your arms were white as moonlight.
You were very petite.
There was nothing about you
A painter would have changed.
It was summer;
All the windows were open
Like welcoming arms,
And you were playing Schubert,
Naked before the piano,
Your delicate fingers teasing the keys.
Your impudent purity
Silvered the room,
And all your life was before you.
King’s Lynn 2017
BLACKBIRDS AND ROBINS
I saw blackbirds and robins this morning
And thought of you,
She wrote from her office in town,
To me in my home in the wilds.
I wondered what to make of this;
Such a phantom stroke on the cheek,
Such a distant kiss.
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Copyright © Louis de Bernières 2018
Illustrations © Donald Sammut 2018
Jacket Illustration © Petra Borner
Author Photograph © Ivon Bartholomew
Louis de Bernières has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2018
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The Cat in the Treble Clef Page 4