Poetry N – The Recusant

Poetry N

On “ethnic cleansing”

If the Zeitgeist’s alcoholic

who shall abstain

but the occasional poet

who likes his elixirs to taste

of wines and beers and spirit,

not guns and bombs and blood;

who’ll not capitulate to bitter folly,

facilitate pernicious, unmarked diction,

or conciliate with innocuous daily drumming?

The journalist may—and has, that perennial enabler.

Hear him on the bristly radio and on the puffed-out TV screen

where high-definition picture’s the husk

of misdefinition of sound-without-end-amen.

But only wince at what you abhor

lest you be abhorred for championing

the paltriest of causes—

Right Words for Right Thoughts,

Namely, this:

Let us not call a holocaust a cleansing,

nor humor those who do without a cry—

Yet be wise enough, or waif enough, to know

that all we can do about it is to write

That our shard be stumbled upon, one smoky day,

in a whistling wind, by a teary, weary survivor

who’ll wonder what all the Cleansing Times were for.

Lament

Let nations fight like gentry—shiny knights

at tournaments where ladies still wore silk

and horns were blown to signal starts of fights.

If men have at it, let their kings proceed

in pairs, Harry to Harry, elk to elk.

And let no mortal make the ladies bleed

nor tear each others’ hairs out: let them be bred

like countesses and queens that tears be shed,

not blood. And by the stands of flags and cheers

let victors be decided, and their jeers

injure by shame sharper than violence.

And if a statewide conflict must ensue,

let those knights go, the rich, not me—not you!

But chivalry is slain: No modern prince

dare demonstrate deportment at the lists.

And millionaires are never sent to war,

only the millions, and the women too,

sans knights, sans lords, sans courtly chauvinists,

in numbers unimaginable before.

Please Don’t

Please don’t tell me Columbus discovered America;

there were persons here, still overlooked.

Please don’t say a policeman is my friend;

there were persons here, who overlooked.

Please don’t think Britain a democracy;

there were persons there, long overlooked.

Please don’t ask me to go back to Church;

there’s a preacher there, looking over.

Band-Aids®

Why did the Johnsons or the Curads ever

think to make their strips the color

of skin (well, Caucasian skin)?

I’d think a wound would better heal

if sealed in a bright, garish, opposite hue,

purple, green, heliotrope, or blue

so passersby might see that you’d been wounded, and where,

and refrain from grabbing and squeezing or slapping or scratching you there.

And as goes the flesh, so goes the spirit,

so goes the heart: If only we could

affix a flagrant and gaudy bandage

where we’ve bled and grown scabs, not so that

one might bring up the dark topic of how

the wound happened, but so that, without a word,

we might re-immerse in a world of people,

friends and strangers, and not worry so much

about being unintentionally slapped or scratched

in the unreal felt place deep within,

right where—. . . Well, haven’t you lived this yourself?

Haven’t you had to leave a room, suddenly,

when no one had the least of idea of why?

Some gashes like that, hueless and invisible,

seem to bleed and bleed, never stopping,

and get deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper

and deeper and deeper and deeper.

In Defense of Dorothy Parker

When bombs are humorous, they are not dropped

merely to destroy, not primarily, not in the end,

but conquer. The Slayer’s the Healer after all.

Ends might or might not justify the means,

but O what means we’re given in the meanwhile!

And every ball of fire slung over a rampart

is thrown to heat up what is holed up in

the fortress, sure, but also to provide

light. It is always night, under the skin.

When a fort is razed by a bombardment,

maybe that outpost’s better off without it.

A broken valentine is only placed

into hands that can tape it back together.

Likewise, the sting of wit is never simple.

The treatment for a sting is mudpacks, right?

So when the thing that’s hurled has been compacted

into a glob, the more effectively it lands

not pulverized into such feeble spatter

as smears which can be easily wiped off.

Oh, sure, the Object of our aim could duck,

but were she or I to land one, the victim

would have mud right there, handy, to salve the bite.

And there would be a miniscule chance that one day,

a ball might be slung back and we might play.

Rhyme #2: The Thing About Rhyme

The thing about rhyme is, if we start a sequence

back and forth, you and I, in fun

or seriousness, or both, and I start one

real late some evening when we’ve been acting like a couple of delinquents

drinking too much, or are just so tired you can’t think up

a retort to my lead-in, so we let

each other sleep, leaving the couplet

incomplete, why, then I’m certain to wake up

to inspiration, an answer to a beckoning breath.

Rhyme keeps us going, connected to something living, making

the give and take of life one, giving while taking

us through sleep, long nights and, I should imagine, death.

New Age

There have been holes

and there have been explosions

leaving holes

and other sorts of nothing

in their wakes. We are their wakes. But we’re

awake, so there is, in the holes,

hope.

Get up. Get up.

Get up.

Oedipus got up, Lear got up, Pericles rose again,

Philomela even flew, and Daphne sprouted flowers and spread

made whole again somewhat

from their despair.

Were they but fictional? Maybe, but certainly myths

are not merely untrue, but also more true.

I too have turned to a laurel bush, to a blind man

roaming the earth seeming to babble, for that is poetry;

I too have gone silent instead of inveighing or cursing.

And Poland disappeared once—and came back!

Get up! Get up! The Fall was a false start

befalling only once, and years ago—

Look—Nature heals herself and every year!

We have not yet!—I have not yet, except to be

stoned by scorn or ignored, as the ancient pagan seer

would be today by those who refuse to know

this practicer of old New Ages’ art,

by those who insist on remaining in the holes.

Thus has it been, thus shall it ever be;

this age, this era, this eternity.

So what? Get up. Get up. Get up.

Get up: Watergate, Irangate, Enron, Napalm,

Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, Viet Nam,

a-bomb, h-bomb, suicide bomb, The bomb —

even in the ancient world, even the chosen

people obliterated nations.

That’s nothing new. What’s new is the magnitude

WQ2and that we know about it. And in that there’s hope

if you are outraged and stay outraged but keep

getting up. Get up.

Get up! Any last day is the dawn

of a first day, a new age, another turn

of the spiral, which you don’t even notice until

you get off it and look back where you have been to try

to see where you are going—as when reading a poem.

Then you can be told, and see, you’ve come

full circle, but you’re NOT where you started, no,

you’re higher, lower, farther out,

further in, all of the above. Which seems impossible

but is so only in geometry, not in the growth of souls.

Not in the progress of the Soul of Man.

So get up, get up get up get up, World.

There have been explosions

and they have left holes.

Nothing stands up, nothing is symmetrical, or balanced,

or even true anymore. So what? Get up!

The Ghost may be only ectoplasm

so His nudge may be hard to feel.

But the spiral’s broadened even as it’s shrunk,

and the swallow is singing, and the darkling thrush flinging,

and the poet says get up Get up GET UP!

Christopher Norris

A Family Business

‘A Family Business’ has to do with Margaret Thatcher’s chapel-going childhood, her small-town petty-bourgeois social background, her rise to power, her domestic and foreign policies, and above all the massive and enduring effects of her period in office. The poem will I think be fairly uncontroversial in reflecting on her father’s likely influence but perhaps more of a red rag to various bulls in what it says about the tenacity, psychological depth, and morally damaging character of that influence. There are moments of comparative light relief but the piece is basically an exercise in Juvenalian saeva indignatio, or the sort of satire that takes no hostages and which extends no tolerant ironic allowances for human frailty or untoward circumstance. In fact there are passages where the indignatio almost overwhelms the satire and, as happens at times with TV shows like Spitting Image, the poetry takes on a decidedly angry – though I hope not abrasive – tone.

A Family Business

Three pews back on the right she sits, devout

And hanging on each word the preacher aims

At those few souls elect who know about

Shop-keeping and the providential claims

Of shrewd accountancy along with that

Fine double-entry scheme of things that frames

Their godly warrant for arriving at

New ways to optimise the current state

Of family fortunes. This they’ve got off pat

Through years of diligence to correlate

Their Christian faith with what attracts the most

Lucrative custom at the lowest rate

Of overheads or taxes one could boast

About in decent company and not

Raise pious eyebrows. There she sits, engrossed,

As he (her father) tells them how they’ve got

To lay up worldly goods as well as store

Up blessings that would pay out on the dot

At that last day of reckoning when the more

Astute among them who’d resolved to look

Out for themselves and theirs would surely score

Top marks in God’s panoptic ledger-book

Of souls redeemed. Not so that other bunch

Whose talk of social conscience showed they took

The gospel texts to preach some out-to-lunch,

Most likely socialist idea of how

To save us from the moral credit-crunch

That came of living for the here-and-now

Of private greed. On this he reassured

His restive congregation: they allow,

Indeed demand, a gloss for readers cured

Of such delusive notions and aware

That what most efficaciously ensured

The soul’s deliverance from its mortal share

Of sinfulness was not the vain desire

To give up, Lear-like, all the goods in their

Hard-won possession. Let them heed the prior

Since commerce-tested maxim that the way

To true salvation might instead require

That one give up those hopelessly passé

Ideas of soul-salvation that decreed

An end to acquisition and convey,

Rather, the soul’s as well as body’s need

For laying in enough to see them through

These testing times. Then maybe they’d succeed

(The alderman admonished) and undo

The ill effects of that false message spread

By liberals and social-hopers who

Believed the task of giving daily bread

To those in need of it was higher on

The to-do list than seeking to embed

The fear of God in human hearts far gone

In wickedness. His daughter ponders this

And other points in his distinctly non-

PC approach that some might take amiss

Though just the cure (she thinks) for that malaise

Of faith misplaced that looks for future bliss

In some fine programme for a higher phase

Of ethical advancement when the whole

Existing scheme will enter its last days

And then emerge transformed. She sees her role

Already as the messenger who’ll bear

His tidings from that chapel where the sole

Mark of success was rousing folk to prayer

And make of it a doctrine that would cause

Even old socialists, caught unaware

By her new gospel-truth, to doubt the laws

Of progress. These (they took it) should consist

In keeping their utopias on pause,

Projecting justice as a long-term tryst

With history, and – when medium-term defeats

Piled up – recalling all the chances missed

As evidence of how the world mistreats

Those visionary few who’d prove at last

The ones who got it right. In the mean streets

Of Grantham, Lincs, the Zeitgeist stands aghast

As those beliefs that once maintained a bond

Between ideologues of any cast

From centre-left to centre-right, beyond

Mere party politics, are felt to lose

All sense or pertinence and then respond

By self-destructing as the parties choose

Their lesser evil or, more often, opt

For some malign amalgam that would fuse

The worst of every world. Why had they stopped,

She wondered, those old Tories she despised,

Short of the perfect answer: to adopt

The techniques he’d successfully devised,

Her preacher-patriarch, to keep his flock

Of listeners so routinely unsurprised,

Like her, by such hard sayings as would shock

Those with more tender consciences, upset

The ‘Socialists for Jesus’ lot, or knock

A hole in all things shored against the threat

Of old Jehovah. These might take the form

Of biblical remonstrance or be let

Loose like a kind of Benjaminian storm

From paradise that left its mounting pile

Of debris and propelled the shambling swarm

Of progress-touters forward all the while

Toward the same catastrophe whose dread

Event he’d conjured up. His graphic style

Left little doubt of how it should be read

By God’s elect as yet another sign,

If such were needed, that the daily bread

The Lord’s Prayer spoke of, like the loaves and wine

Of Canaan, figured forth the moral good

Of gainful trade. Let no-one then repine,

He cautioned, if the texts thus understood

Seemed lacking in those qualities that earned

The praise of social-gospellers who could,

By cunning tweaks, convince us they discerned

In scripture Christ’s intention to inspire

His followers, then and now, with lessons learned

From proto-communism’s book, or fire

Their fervent souls with some perverse new take

On the old texts that reckoned all their dire

Apocalyptic prophecies would make,

If suitably construed, a fine device

To turn his message right around and shake

Its biblical foundations. So they’d splice,

Those heretics, a secularizing mode

Of exegesis with the kind of twice-

Born zeal for some redemptive twist that showed

Them destined from the outset to that fate

Decreed for all who falsified the code

Of scripture since they thought such change of state

Pertained to Caesar’s realm or the domain

Of social justice where we might create

Some ersatz heaven on earth. This he’d explain

By citing verse and chapter week by week

Until his exhortations filled her brain

With their bewildering mix of bible-speak

And his own trademark brand of Poujadiste

Small-town ressentiment that made him seek,

Each Sunday, some occult sign of the beast

Now slouching close. Or he’d find nearer home

Some new and shocking sign of how we’d ceased

To honour parents, dutifully comb

The Good Book for instruction, hold in awe

The Ten Commandments, count the Church of Rome

Most grievously in breach of every law

Laid down for our salvation, and – his theme

In stressful times – acknowledge the deep flaw

In human nature. This should make it seem

Sheer hubris, so the lesson ran, to think

In terms of social progress or to deem

Us capable of virtues that would prink

Our defects out in any decent dress

That wouldn’t, on a closer viewing, shrink

Down in the undeceiving wash to stress

How chronically deluded were those folk

Who pinned our only chance of blessedness

To hopes like these. The truth of what he spoke

She came to think self-evident, and so

Considered it her greatest master-stroke

In later times of crisis to forego

All queasy conscience-searching and endorse

That same bone-deep and chapel-nurtured low

Opinion of mankind that had its source,

Not only in his fixed idea of sin

Congenital and passed down through the course

Of post-Edenic history, but in

His having cautioned her to disregard

All claims that ‘social progress’ let her win

Against old prejudices that died hard

Amongst their kind. This was the sort of tale,

He said, in which those progress-mongers starred

As heroes of an exploit doomed to fail

Since based on an agenda that proposed

Some secular deliverance from the vale

Of suffering whose significance he glozed,

Each Sunday, as God-sanctioned to remind

The faithful of that crookedness disclosed

In the sin-darkened heart of humankind.

Such was the message borne by gospel text

And by the clinching evidence we find

From one historic instance to the next

Of promised heavens-on-earth that soon revealed

The age-old bitter truth whose import vexed

The social hopers since its only yield

For them was flat despair. She had no thought

That perhaps Alfred’s’s take on things concealed

Motives or interests of another sort,

That maybe his high praise for those who laid

Up earthly riches might find scant support

In holy writ, or that his daily trade

In groceries and far from generous view

Of average human nature as displayed

In everyday transactions gives a clue

To why his gloss on scripture took a slant

So sin-obsessed, so resolute to do

His fellow-mortals down, and keen to grant

The ultimate depravity of all

Those secular redemptions that supplant

The progress-shattering truth. That’s why they fall

Under proscription as the devil’s work

Which still (his constant theme) holds us in thrall

To heretic conclusions that can lurk

Unnoticed in the noblest hopes and dreams

Of liberals or those whose bright-side quirk

Was liable to bring their splendid schemes

Of social justice to the sorry end

Reserved for infidels. On suchlike themes,

With sundry variations, she’d depend

In times to come when moral or humane

Considerations turned out to commend

Some policy that went against the grain

Of pure self-interest, or that said we’d best

Seek public goods beyond what served to gain

The moral high ground only by the test

Of how far public feeling might be swung

To further private ends at the behest

Of corporate interests. They ensured a bung

By large donations at a timely stage

In her ascent to power, like those among

Her media moguls who’d been quick to gauge

The turning tide and just as quick to seize

Their chance giving her the full front-page

Vote-winning treatment. No surprise if she’s

So often, decades earlier, to be found

Head bowed, hands clasped, or silent on her knees

And inwardly to double business bound

Since destined now (she knows) to be the one

Who’d teach them all those principles of sound

Soul-management that father had begun

By laying down for the concentric spheres

Of chapel, home and shop. That’s why she’d stun

The global commentariat in years

To come by taking as her guiding light

A household politics where all frontiers

Like those set up, as if by natural right,

By Keynesian economists to flag

The private/public line would then invite

Her stock response: just take your shopping-bag,

Compare the goods and prices, figure out

The best deals you can get, be sure to tag

All items carefully, and then you’ll flout

That whole perverse doxology that held

It vulgar simple-mindedness to tout

Such homely wisdom as a lesson spelled

Straight from the shopping-list. Think too, since it’s

A thought one’s irresistibly impelled

To entertain, how perfectly this fits

With everything she’d later do to show

The male establishment she’d grabbed all its

Macho prerogatives so there’d be no

Conforming to the usual stereotypes

Of womanhood. Hence her resolve to go

That extra mile and silence all the gripes

Of those who said she’d lack the element

Of grit or sheer cold-bloodedness to wipe

Her conscience clear each time her actions sent

Some workforce home, some taskforce out to kill

And be killed, some directive to torment

The consciences of those who did her will

And knew the human costs, or a quick nod

To the Joint Chiefs of Staff that they should spill

Enough blood to convince the awkward squad

She saw things their way. Hard not to conclude

That something like her father’s vengeful God

Of petty-bourgeois rancour made her brood

Incessantly on old wrongs and project

The retribution onto those she viewed

Either as foreigners whom you’d expect

To act like that or ‘enemies within’,

Like striking miners. These comprised a sect

More dangerous by half since their chief sin,

In her book, was the kind that tore apart

The bonds of nationhood and laws of kin

By the fifth-columnist’s satanic art

Which, for her father’s daughter, always loomed

Largest of all those lessons at the heart

Of Judaeo-Christian culture that foredoomed

Some prophets, tribes or nations to be sold

Into captivity while others, groomed

For the lead roles in scripture, join the fold

Of God’s own folk. It was her father’s voice

That echoed in the history they told,

Those old blood-curdling tales, and in the choice,

When ratings slipped, to take her chance on war

As a well-known restorative. ‘Rejoice!’,

Her victory-message said, which meant: ignore

The near one thousand combatants who died

On both sides, and especially the more

Than one third of them drowned or fried

In the old crate Belgrano even though

The best intelligence placed it outside

The danger-zone and sailing on a slow

But steady course that took the ship far clear

Of anywhere its feeble guns might blow

A hole in her grand strategy to steer

The nation back onto the course of true

Blue values that transcended all such mere

Facts of the matter. So, if we ask who

Should, in the longer view, be held to blame,

Then working out which guilty foot the shoe

Fits least toe-pinchingly is not a game

Best played by asking simply who did what

In legalistic terms that link up name

With deed as if through some tight-fastened knot

Of straightforward agency. This fails to see

How few of the coordinates that plot

Our own life-histories are such that we

Can trace them back to origin and just

How many of them, subject to i.d.

Checks of a stricter kind, are such as must

Be put down to some shaping power that far

Exceeds the furthest bounds of what we’d trust

As hitched securely to the guiding star

Of unique personhood. One standard way

Of taking this is lowering the bar

Of moral judgment so that we can say,

In any given case, let’s just allow

That tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner

Since, everything considered, we can now

Much better understand that it was well-

Nigh inescapable she’d turn out how

She did. This means, should we elect to dwell

Intently on it, that his favourite line

Of pulpit-talk, his images of Hell

Mixed in with thoughts on how best to combine

True godliness with making all you can

Along the way, must lead us to assign

Her to a cool bit of the frying-pan

And not straight to the fire. Yet that’s to stretch

Forgiveness to a point where it would span,

If need be, every human vice and fetch

Up some fresh mitigating circumstance

With which attorneys might begin to sketch

A case for the defence. Then they’d advance

The cause of all whom adverse fate had left

With few of life’s advantages, or chance

Had thrown into a childhood world bereft,

Like hers, of everything that might have saved

Them from that home-and-chapel-sanctioned theft

Of what, for others, all too briefly staved

Off adulthood’s arrival. We must track,

It’s clear, some middling course between depraved

Since all-excusing attitudes that lack

The blame-idea and others that accord

Zero allowance to the way things stack

Up early on and right across the board

For those whose chief misfortune is to get

Themselves born into just that unexplored

Since deeply unappealing social set

Where piety assumes the sullen guise

Of lifelong forced sobriety and yet

Offers sufficient leeway to devise

Some handy tricks of conscience. These would leave

It free to pick and choose which rule applies

In cases where adopting a naïve

Or literal view of gospel truth could pose

Large problems, as when trying to deceive

One’s business rivals, leading by the nose

Some unsuspecting customer with cash

To spare, or keeping colleagues on their toes

With memories of how matron used to thrash

Them back in public school (such were the joys!),

Or thinking it good policy to trash

That ship with its four hundred men and boys

Rather than let a UN peace-plan wreck

Her god-sent chance of war to quell the noise

Of those at home who’d get it in the neck,

Like those at sea, if only she could fix

Things there as easily as from the deck

Of a Class-10 destroyer. These were tricks

She’d picked up unawares yet by a keen

Observance, Maisie-like, of that which sticks

From childhood through the sundry shifts of scene

In later life when lessons in their use

For ends of state will turn out to have been

(Since, so we’re told, the physical abuse

Was kept for shop-girls) the most lasting mark

Our Grantham grocer managed to produce

Beyond the chapel-door. Soon she’d embark

On the long quest for what might bring her power,

At last, to spread the message of his dark-

Side Manichaean gospel with its dour,

Self-implicating knowledge of how sin

Must shadow every act and thought of our

God-haunted lives. If all great crimes begin,

As some would say, in childhood’s auguries

Of innocence undone, who’ll think to pin

The blame down finally as hers or his?

The Sheath

At last he has the time to think about

to whom it had belonged, and what it held,

before it came to him, and then his wife.

He’d given it to her happily when she

admired it, once. In it she kept her emery

board. Before that, his slide rule. Before that,

who knows? A nacre-handled letter-knife?

A pair of manicure scissors? A pocket

level for a carpenter? Who cares?

He does, today, and wonders, as it sits

empty, high on his hutch, as on a throne,

a senile emperor, fine leather lined

with time, once-brilliant beading fading, but

if not enjoying the sinecure of

retirement, quiet about it, and calm.

Twilight is the Meetest

time for desultory assignations

like poetry, where the question of which

came first, chicken or egg, falls, superseded

by this response: that from every day springs forth

the dark, as from night, light. Which is both birth

and surrender, give and take, at once. Although

the western, younger faiths trump living in

the present, as the eastern override

fear of the Last and wonder on the First,

poetry’s spun in that faith where You Are

left-right in the moment, aware enough

of swallowing nights and half-digested days—

and vice versa—to make the piquancy

a sweaty-sweet unbearable rash, a near-bursting

dread to cherish and sigh for with one pen

as brush, chisel, polishing cloth, scimitar, and olive branch

brandished upward toward the winking eye,

out and down to the world, and you, for ever.

Heraclitus

He said that of the four, Fire

Was first, the font of Everything,

Though he too looked around and saw

Only Earth, Water and Air: that is,

Solid, Liquid and Gas;

Fire being ephemeral, and rare.

He had no microscope back then.

Who taught him how to look and know

The furnace inside every atom

Ablaze with energy

Inextinguishable?

That even crystal, ice and diamond,

Were far more hot than cold

Just in their being there?

That fire was

The word

Yes

To almost everything?

Someone

Must have given him

The Word!

And if In the beginning was the Word,

The Word was Yes,

And Yes was Fire.

Marmorata

St. Peter’s, The Vatican

marmor marmor marmor

clackle ackle ack

scuffle squish scuffle uffle squeak

And myriads of modern feet

shod in modern ways

circulate in semi-stanchioned chaos

in general ungenuflective

randomly reflective

on centuries-buffed, unsentimental stone

red ropes keep them amply apart

clackle ack

jackets, sweaters, sweatshirts

guarded over arms

draped over shoulders

tied around waists

might be forgotten but not like souls be lost

marmor

assorted straps and cameras

slung unslung and slung

commemorate the singular occasion

click

The multitude pounds lightly

their gasps and murmurs

soft and sweet, so they do not

drown out the omnipresent echo

the sanguine susurrations of the stone.

marmor marmor marmor

What buried bishops whisper through the marble?

marmor

What hard soles

tickle unread chiselings

now all but worn away

on coffin lids?

clackle

What smaller-personed sneakers

in innocent abandon

impressed irrespective of the times

slide and scrape?

squish

What agony or token

of what untamed apostle

is being

trampled on

only to resound

uffle

in what artists’ conglomerates of

what sundry styles that scream

out secrets through the silence of the stone

marmor scuff

for a quarter hour’s stroll

of a millennium?

marmor marmor marmor

clackle ackle ack

scuffle squish scuffle uffle squeak

Jim Newcombe

The Rise Of Leviathan

‘From whose womb did the ice crawl forth?’ (Job 38:29)

Who will say when or how the waters came,

when or how or from what atmosphere

the apparition of the poisoned waters came,

hefted aloft by its own dark bulk and splendour

from the pressure of its own abysmal bowels,

mounting to unleash

such labouring swells as bore the lush green world,

churning tons of carbon, mineral waste,

the sheer black glass of the larval hills liquidated

and dissolved.

Where on earth was impregnable

when out of the realm of ice and snow, as up from the kraken’s cave

came hell and high water,

the earth’s hymen breaking in hysteria,

the sea-valve cervix breaching the contractions?

Envisage now

the coastal barricades burst, the buildings skittle to the sea;

tall towers crumbling like labyrinths of sand.

Insurgent groundswells on the far horizon borne

yawn open, clash

down, fly through Tokyo like a stone

through glass, make a void of Washington.

London lies like shattered crockery

to rasp and scour beneath the solar wind.

Waves uprising like quavers on a bar-scale,

the pluck and sweep of strings fortissimo

and the overthrown kingdoms of the earth

like wasp-grubs to a bath of eels,

gorged in mad thrashing as

the fast waves, frothed and twisting, flash and coil,

thrust landward, spit disjecta

and the wild hash hail.

Who will remain to tell which way or how

the ocean bucked and reared, mashed with tidal slicks of gore,

the dark sky slit with rapid spunks of lightning,

the corpse-tide laid bare.

Lurid squalls pluther and slub from the navel of the world,

a dervish that radiates darkness,

gravelling the wreath of the ear of the wind.

Pillow lava havocs the ocean troves.

Replete coffers disgorge

the centuries-long laden junkets of spoil,

such plundered trash of scintillant booty –

the scattered cosmos of their sovereign crowns

never countervail the damage

in the telling climate of our time.

Now somewhere, beyond the limits of the land,

cleft hunks of crystal density

slogger in the billowing fetches of dark sea.

Metallic ice-bluffs, sabretoothed, wield out of the chaos.

Thaw-creaking earth-crust ripped clean through;

ridge-push; slab-pull; the breath of the tsunami

altering the matrix of creation; a watershed dis-

placing the great tectonic scales.

See the diaspora of unfastening ice dislodge

the mammoth energies within the mantle,

the swirling iron of the polar dynamo

whose jousting balances foreclose our ruin.

With hackles of coasting ice-crags

this apparition of the spectral waters comes

to violate in its virginity.

The stalking glaciers snap and collapse,

the rubble of the ages indistinct.

Moon scruples the massed, vast tidings;

the abrasive grind, hiss of scalding ice-blocks

covenants with no man.

Raking, shivering repercussions mist

and vapour, the steep and hacking waves.

Such gouged offal condemned

through corkscrew slippage and welter

to the bone-littered belly of the deep.

Each peninsula dunked like a sop in broth

into the unfathomable, out of true interior.

It is the ground prancing like a marionette.

It is the ice wielded and snapping in the melt,

the turmoil of the bleak tide roiling,

the massive ice-plates cracking and colliding

and the risen waters the risen waters

the hydra-headed, self-consuming waters

rising –

Doing it for Charity

Aficionado of good will

Helping underdogs

Sour tastes ruin gesture

Impressions’ moral fogs.

Always some obtuse star

Corresponds to global tears

Liquid grasps concern, relief

Avalanches in arrears.

When ‘idols’ act unacceptably

They’re shrouded by gold aura –

Bigwigs zip up criticism

In jiffy-bags of Pandora.

“People in desperate need” –

Tomorrow – “savage brutes”;

Building cycles of discontent

Napalm for heated disputes.

Below charred bodies, captions flash:

“Win a week in the Fjords” –

Casual suffering in laps of the press

Patients barking in their wards.

Potholed roads, unfunded troops,

Incomes balanced on loan –

If weights of past deception lift

Charity should start at home.

James B. Nicola

But Poetry Is Metal Work, In Fine

Is the legacy the bowl or its contents, particularly

what it contains when empty? That’s the thing

with literature, it isn’t what it is,

but what it is not, and evokes, that is the legacy.

The jewel-laden bowl looks different

to every century, every generation, and to each

dazzled glance or focused pair of eyes,

the ears that hear the echo of the hammering

in Byzantium, Drumcliffe, or up and down my hall.

Ashok Niyogi

Mizmaze

across the road

they have started a takeaway

for tiny Narcissus flowers

“big appetites welcome”

the mitzvah of Mithras

is muffled in the scent

of autumnal flowering

of roadside trees

that impart shade

and unexplained allergies

dictionaries fall apart

like a life hitherto sequestered

by intrepid dreams

the imaginary roles

of nobody as a somebody

like a short penultimate syllable

before the sleeping pills take hold

from the colored center

of small white flowers

fragrance unfolds

Alistair Noon

from “station / street”

5. Tobacco Industry

A rustle in the bushes

as a patrol van passes:

a Vietnamese woman

hurries through a mass burial

of untaxed imports,

her expiry-dated permit.

Baseball-capped, spotty and hooded-topped,

you, with your Pitbull vanguard and Alsatian at the rear,

walk where Stalin’s artillery growled, and fear

sank its teeth into the legs of the shelled,

refugees in their own cellars,

and for seven days all exercise stopped.

Down where they founded the city

in the years of chivalry and pillage,

the weapon popes banned as the Devil’s –

for its seventy-kilo recoil –

competes with the air pistol and rifle

in a local Moloch’s shop window:

quality has always sold.

11. On an East Berlin Street

Where the Roads Department pulled down signs

to put up the new, you pad your way, not

quite steadily, thin-jacketed in Spring.

Cousins once removed ask what fibres you wove,

knots you tied and threads you broke,

want a list of all your complicities.

The specialists who looked in on you as you lay

in a waking coma – so they diagnosed –

want to know what you were thinking

but can’t quite believe you remember anything.

12. Two Tenements

On one, disrepair has skimmed first letters

off “ream”, “utter” and “ilk”.

The spatter of grenades

sticks to the grey cornerstones.

The second, peach-tinged, frames a glass door.

Fixed above is a bright-lit sign –

seaweed which predicts a shore:

“Events”, “Consultancy”, “Design”.

13. The Operation

Where the anaesthetized face once stared back,

rented mesh keeps strollers

out of the next block: from the top floor,

chipped furniture dribbles down the chute

into the skip to be driven off

with the drilled and extracted kitchen walls

whose contracts the new owners won’t extend.