Drowning a Mermaid

Drowning A Mermaid

I'm told it's often said by glorious ghosts  

Who haunt the Courts of Higher Excellence 

That survivors are not like the rest of us:

They survive and we are born to die.

It made no sense to think of you as young

Or of ourselves as three or four times older  

Than you would ever be. There was no point   

In asking where you learned to paint like that 

And if I'm ever asked, I say: From you.

But the virtue of your line was no defence

Against the kind of curiosity 

That kills the artist and ignores the art. 

The Mark Of Destiny (it has no formal title)

Derives its quasi-mystical authority 

From the stealth and anonymity with which 

It makes a promise found a promise kept

And steals the gift that makes the promise true.

It made no sense to think of you as young

Until the Mark Of Destiny contrived 

To make the child a child celebrity.

It's not enough to work; you must be seen 

And if you can't you must be seen to fail.

To go on working once your work is known 

Displays an arrogant refusal to engage.

Someone somewhere claimed - or may have claimed 

(The source was vague, but the authority 

Was unimpeachable) - that you had used 

Your age as an excuse for saying nothing

When it was clearly your responsibility 

As an artist and a seven-year-old 

To speak, when asked, of justice and the world 
And of the glory of the Lord our God.

My long sabbatical was an opportunity 

To swap the squalor of my little shed  

For three thousand years of maritime disaster 

And a tideless wilderness of dirty water.

I've occupied the best years of my life  

Among the wreckage of a world of ships.

The chambermaid has brought a cup of tea

And I'm amazed that I am still alive.

Unadopted Affinities

Unadopted Affinities

Twelve deaf children did not arrive at dawn 

With pick-axe handles to pound the stout old door

Until the welkin rang and good old friends 

Did not bring schnapps and old accordions.   

No street urchins called out as they passed by,

“The Latimers are off to Filton Squinney!”

The day the Latimers moved in,

One of someone’s special casseroles

Wasn’t waiting for them on the porch

In Gammy Belchard's periwinkle dish

With a request attached to return it Friday night –

 “Some neighbors will be dropping by for drinks.”

Filton Squinney didn’t bid them welcome.

From the morning chorus of obscenities 

To the nightly fusillade of human faeces 

Their life was a running sluther of abuse.

But Latimer was stalwart – even when

The neighbours ate his wife and children.

One night when the air is full of falling stars 

And all the world except the Latimers 

Lies buried in the fields of Filton Squinney,

A shining lamb will come to Latimer 

As he sits weeping in his garden shed

And bring him tidings much too deep for tears:

“I am Thredgar, Lamb of Lavender.

Death will never come to this gazebo –

Or pavilion, call it what you will.

The world that never used to be your friend 

Is now your oyster – but not your Shangri-la.

So I have come to be your missing pearl.”

The Account

The Account

There are many ways to achieve greatness, said Brodie,

Acknowledging the applause like a man holding up traffic –

This is one that worked for me.

And I watched him strip the girls in the front row

To their undies, figuratively speaking, as they leaned forward

To catch every nuance of his slithering tongue.

You might think I despise Brodie, or even pity him,

But you must remember that I’ve been there, done that,

And had a wife, a dog and a hearth

To show that men can change.

I’ve been lucky. Death always followed me

At a respectful distance, like an accomplished spy,

And my secrets have never been desperate enough

To die for. But Brodie reminds me of how it ends,

How it always ends when you live like a lunatic.

Nobody feels confident enough to mourn

And only comedians remember you.

The Great Receptionist looks up from his desk

And asks the usual questions. His understanding smile

Says he’s not afraid of parables.

I tell him about the things I hoped to achieve

And he gazes at me through the sky, patiently

Waiting to hear how it always ends.  He checks the form

And says: Occupation? He’s pleased to note

I have no regrets. And then he picks up his quill

And writes: Vagabond.

Old Sarum

Generosity, unchallenged fortitude

And a wealth of unrecorded history;

Flowers and birds and men with pointed hats;

Pretty girls with grave accordions

To accompany their songs of golden lads

Who will forever break their mothers’ hearts

And write the sweetest elegies known to man 

And die alone in droves for love of women 

Who died alone two thousand years ago.

Always late August, always half past five,

Dust and insects in a stagnant haze

Over the long grass where the bodies lie 

Unburied in a dream of perfect joy. 

We’re locked in honey here; we’ll never reach 

The bottom of the jar. When Jesus died 

It’s almost true to say the world rejoiced.

I was enchanted by your disbelief;

I want you fresh from hell and raw with grief.

Grief Is So Bracing!

A bitter wind from the Caucasus

Whips across Streatham Common, whistling in the trees.

It is March – and I have come to say goodbye to a friend.

A ring of magnolias surrounds me and I’ll wait

Until it’s safe for me to leave.

It snowed here yesterday, and patches remain

Like something they forgot to clear away. 

Everywhere I look the air is blue, colder

Than anything I have inside me. And I remember

All those things we can never remember forever,

Which he will never forget.

The magnolias surround me like sentries. I should know

More about flowers – when they bloom and when they die,

And what they mean to those who know.

But I will know when it is time. I feel the light

Fading, folding into evening,

While he is where there is no change.

And being here, I know it will never be time

To turn from the shadow and slip from the silhouette

Until I learn to be still in the light and forget.

My Terrible Vocation

The sheer immensity of my relief

Was far beyond the scope of words alone.

When fear is gone the world is much too big

To be confined to poetry or song.

It takes time and endless vigilance to learn

That time will not give back the things we've lost

Or heal the open wounds their absence leaves.

Blood that fails to clot denies the past

Its proper destiny, and the heart that fails 

To memorise the life in full will feel the dread

Of vacancy deprive it of the right

To learn from its mistakes and mourn the dead.

"So this is your brown study!" The prison governor

Grinned all round my room. "Calamity

Is a word that ladies use." His favorite phrase,

He said, was teaching opportunity -

"And here's an opportunity to teach!

 You start tomorrow. There's nothing to prepare.

All wisdom emanates from suffering -

My motto is your theme and you will share

"Your anguish with a privileged elite

Of trustee lifers who'll appreciate

The epic grandeur of your sacrifice -

But don't expect them to reciprocate,

"Acknowledge or admit benign intent.

Weeping and bleeding are their secret shame.

Your missionary tears and fertile blood
Will make flowers bloom in deserts of wasted time."

Damage

Sporting a bandana which was set – as is de rigueur with these things – 

at a jaunty angle, Mr Green came into town and laid waste

to huge swathes of what was formerly 

Upper Cleveland Street.

This was considered an act of mercy.

Those who knew Mr Green

affected a knowing insouciance, and men with commerce

at the hub of their lives, merely reinvested

their interest elsewhere.

All was fine and dandy

until the people began to stir.

Reconciliation

We know our will is free, and there’s an end on’t.

   Samuel Johnson

People often ask why God,

Whose Omnipotence is clearly beyond dispute,

Doesn’t lift a finger to save the starving children 

In war-torn enclaves laid waste 

By imperialist sacrilege, or – to be

Even-handed – offer comfort to the world-wide

Victims of Marxist tyranny.

What these people forget is that even religion,

In deference to the Enlightenment, accommodates

Free Will, 

And so to frustrate the will of Man would be

Against Philosophy.

Appointment in Wrocław

You travel beautifully.

Flight, escape, the fulfillment of a promise;

There is a world elsewhere and this is it.

You’re not depleted by the journey.

With every mile that disappears beneath your wings

You become more thrillingly yourself.

You step lightly from the plane

As from a refreshing shower.

You appraise the airport, pleasantly surprised

By its crisp decor and refreshing fragrance.

You appreciate the little things

They’ve done to make you welcome:

Lavender and white rose.

We chose a city neither of us knew;

We said we’d make it ours.

Nobody we know has ever been here -

And not because they chose to stay away.

We did our homework, vetted the place thoroughly

For any hint of cholera, terrorism

Or hostility to guests from overseas.

Everything we learned about the city

Stiffened our resolve to make it ours.

                             *

A city street, a rainy night. A night to be indoors.

The wind is more specific: A night to take refuge

From the wind - an observation that the wind

Might well have made a million times before;

The kind of thing Victor Borge might have said.

No matter where you thought you were

 - I saw his show in London and New York -

This was his city and he your genial host:

Welcome to Vienna... But this is not Vienna.

Because I’m always late

I arrive forty minutes early and kill time

By caving to a habitual conceit:

I’m in the wrong place.

I’m waiting on the wrong corner - and I know

From uncommunicable experience that a map

Will never help me relocate myself.

I used a map to choose our meeting place

Long before I had a chance to see this street

Or stand on this street corner, which seemed to me,

From studying the map, the perfect point of vantage

From which to see our city at its best:

To get to know its people at their best,

And learn its public ways, its secret life.

But now I’m here - if here is where I am -

This corner’s not the place I thought it was.

It doesn’t occupy a place of prominence

In any area that may be called

The Montparnasse of anywhere.

It’s not the sort of place where you can stand

Secure in the knowledge that where you are

Is where you always knew you’d be

When the time was right. The time is right

But these are not the people I was promised:

The auspicious, shining spirits who assembled

At a brilliant corner of my mind -

So similar in so many, many ways

To this unwholesome, half-deserted place

That the resemblance is, to say the least, uncanny -

Knew the sympathetic magic that drew us here

And would recognise, I’m sure,

The desperate inertia that keeps me here

And bids me in the stern voice of destiny,

Be still and wait.

Happy Birthday, Brucie!

The importance of first class light entertainment in time of war

Can’t be overstated. Historians say blandly,

As if it went without saying, that Churchill saw

Us through the last lot, but it was really Tommy Handley.

It’s That Man Again, which everyone called ITMA,

Sustained morale on the home front more

Effectively than Churchill and his gimmicky cigar - 

A pipe would have been much less of a bore.

“I don’t mind if I do” - Jack Train’s squiffy Colonel Chinstrap

Made us smile as the bombs dropped all around us.

“I go, I come back” - immortalised by Horace Percival as Ali Oop -

Is yet another catchphrase that continues to astound us.

Ali, though shouldst be living at this hour!

Where are you now, Mrs. Mopp? Wo bist du, Funf?

We won’t forget the diver, though storm-clouds lour,

Or that man who was always “up to his ears in bumf”.

Bruce Forsyth forges memorable catchphrases. Who could forget

His “Nice to see you; to see you, nice”, or his “Just for a lark”?

And his “Give us a twirl!”- as lovely Anthea ignites the set - 

Has brought solace and inspiration to men serving in Iraq.

Donald Trump's Horrible Buildings

To The Gate of Heaven 

Part One: Donald Trump’s Horrible Buildings

I

From here to The Gate of Heaven

Is a distance of just over twenty-nine miles.

The journey takes forty-one minutes in a car—

Thirty-seven, if there’s no traffic on the road.

But there’s always traffic on the road, unless you go

At dead of night. And no one makes that journey

At dead of night.

                               Go west down Fifty-Seventh Street

And make a right on to the West Side Highway,

Which, from 54th to 72nd Street,

Is never called The Joe DiMaggio Highway

Except on maps, and the dedicated mile

Is not so much a tribute to the Yankee Clipper

As a monument to Rudolph Giuliani’s vanity:

Nobody but Giuliani wanted Yankee Stadium

To be rebuilt on the Upper West Side;

And only Giuliani wanted it renamed

“Rudolph Giuliani Stadium”.

                                                       

There should be no delays from Fifty-Ninth

To Seventy-Second Street—there are no entrances

Or exits—but if by some mischance there are,

Don’t look to your right. If you’re held in traffic,

Look left across the river at New Jersey.

Practice saying “Hoboken”. Locate it

On the Hudson Waterfront. Frank Sinatra

Was born and raised in Hoboken—so sing;

Sing and wait and don’t look right. That way

You might not have to gaze upon Trump Place.

Between Fifty-Ninth and Seventy-Second Street

The fourteen ugliest buildings in New York

Stare out over the Hudson towards Hoboken

And Hoboken glares back with Sinatra’s baleful glare

That says “You’re all dead men” and means it too.

These buildings comprise Trump Place, South Riverside,

A zone of hell designed to indicate

Where Donald Trump stands on the Upper West Side.

Most of them are twelve years old or less,

And the most recent, 50 Riverside Boulevard,

Was finished—or stopped being built—three years ago.

Its defiant gaze of incompletion,

The pride it takes in lacking something vital,

Exemplifies the Trump aesthetic in action,

In fact this building is the Trump aesthetic

In its perfected form.

II

50 Riverside Boulevard provokes unease.

The word that best describes it is uncanny.

Trump’s work can be relied on to provoke

A negative response: anger, outrage,

Dislike, displeasure, mockery, contempt—

But this is something else. There’s rigour here.

The shoddiness of the materials

Displays a calculated recklessness.

The grimly ostentatious lack of care

With which defective elements are assembled

Adds conviction to the overall impression

Of abandonment, rather than completion.

Trump’s robust commitment to neglect

Asserts its baleful influence most clearly

In his trademark disdain for routine maintenance.

A deepening patina of filth emphasizes

The featureless flat plane of the façade

With its glum scatter of things that need to be

Repaired, replaced, removed, improved or done.

The dirt and the thriving rash of trouble-spots

Bring a strong suggestion of disease

To the building’s prurient air of stern rebuke,

But do nothing to conceal its dreadful nakedness

Or to undermine its mad belief

That it was built to drive men mad with lust.

Compelled by duty and perverse desire

To be exposed at all times to men’s eyes,

It lives to satisfy the need to see,

The urge to show.

                                 50 Riverside Boulevard

Is without shame; it is the absence of shame

Made manifest in the shoddiest materials

Available to man.

                                                The rash will spread

And tear into the fabric of the building.

All the neglected jobs, all the repairs

Not done, will disappear. The nakedness,

The ecstasy of shoddy workmanship

That cast a spell on all who witnessed it,

Will at last be covered and consumed

By a seething carapace of decay.

Donald Trump is sixty-nine years old.

Buildings that fall down are nothing new

And each one’s always shoddier than the last.

He’s always called them his babies—his early efforts

Often hit the ground with a cheerful thud,

But they’d get right up and keep on trying

And he’d encourage them. He’s always said

He’s more a father than a builder.

                            Rotten concrete,

Bricks like burnt toast, mortar with all the virtue

Of cream cheese, an unerring faith in money

Saved and an urge to carry on regardless

Of danger and to improvise solutions

On the hoof—these are things you’d find

On every building site that’s ever borne his name.

But 50 Riverside takes it, like he says,

To a whole new level.

                                      Trump the builder

Is proud of his ability to busk

Corrections to a building as it drifts

From true and starts to crack and stoop and stares

Down at the earth. On the fortieth floor

At 50 Riverside he raised the side that sagged

With a hastily constructed splint, built

Not to last from dunnage never meant

To bear weight, and boshed in the cracks

With a flimsy clunch made out of unwashed sand

From South Beach, Staten Island, mixed

With polyunsaturated garbage, decompressed

And held together with the gooey toxic waste

That’s produced in vast, illegal quantities

When deep-form industrial sumpage is conducted

On a massive scale.

                                   But don’t be fooled.

This opulence of unsound practices,

The joy derived from using useless stuff,

Trump’s preference for what is bound to fail—

None of this is down to laziness

Or ignorance or inattention to detail.

Confusion on this enormous scale

Requires a rare contempt for human life,

A loathing for the world and everything

It’s ever been, is now and will ever be,

A denial of all value, a cultivated absence

From one’s own life—or from the place

In time that it was meant to occupy—

And the energy to put it all into action.

Everything that Trump has ever made

Betrays its maker’s morbid fear of being outlived

By his own creations. His ambition’s nothing more

Than a need to be forever rich, famous and alive.

For him no world can be imagined

In which he’s not rich, famous and alive.

He thinks that when he dies the world will end

Obediently, like a TV set when he turns it off.

He likes to think that when this TV set

Goes dark, his death will erase everything

Ever broadcast, the memory of everything

Ever broadcast, the history of broadcasting,

The invention of TV, all published works,

All thought, all human life. He wants his death

To make the universe incapable

Of sustaining life—no, he wants more:  a universe

That couldn’t possibly have ever witnessed

Life in any form, even from a distance:

Barren from the start—a sleepless dream

Of perfect vacancy, fulfilled and unconfined.

He’ll die content, knowing that when he dies

The sky will be swept clear of every star,

All solar systems, galaxies and planets

And things he’s much too ignorant to name,

And—his peace of mind in death depends on this—

Of anything that threatens to go on spinning,

Shining, orbiting or remaining fixed

After his death.

                             Trump’s real ambition

Is to leave a black hole behind him. The irony

Makes him smile—legacy is for losers.

But how could his magnificent oblivion

Deny itself the uncannily familiar pleasure

Of not quite knowing his dream has been fulfilled—

That the last thing in the universe will be

A black hole to which someone he will never know

Has attached his name?

                                            You can stare for hours

At the windows at the front and not know

What urges you to panic, vomit, flee,

As from some vile anomaly in nature.

Something’s terribly wrong—that’s all you know

And all you need to know. If someone could explain

Why the windows look like rows of empty sockets

From which the eyes have been removed, the horror

Would remain. This is the Trump aesthetic

In its perfected form.

III

Last year I bet my wife a ruby ring

Against a pair of anaconda boots

That sometime in the next thirteen years

The City would issue an administrative ordinance

And raze Trump Place to the ground—and if I don’t pass

Through the Gate of Heaven before I get the chance,

I’m pretty sure I’ll get my fancy boots

Long before twenty-twenty-nine—and now

That Donald Trump’s decided to devote

His twilight years to becoming, as it were,

The Outcast of the Universe, I may well

Have them in time for Christmas.

                                                          And I’m sure

Trump Place won’t be the only casualty.

I’d like to see an angry mob burn down

Trump Tower. I’d like to see the world unite

In condemning the abomination that is

The Trump World Tower on United Nations Plaza.

And I would be quite happy to blow up

The Trump International Hotel and Tower

On Columbus Circle.

                                                      But, with luck—and since

No entrances or exits interrupt

The flow of traffic—it should be possible

To go from Fifty-Ninth to Seventy-Second Street

With no delays.

                              At Seventy-Second Street

No one seems to notice the discreet

(And discreetly undisputed) change of name:

The Henry Hudson Parkway seizes the baton

And carries it the length of Riverside Park—

Four slender miles of decorative lawns

And many discreet cynosures all the way

Through Harlem and—but I’ll stop there.

       Some advice:

Beware mudslides if you decide to pick up speed

In the shelter of Morningside Heights to steal a march

On death. Be of good heart, for there is solace.

There is a blessing in the falling mist

That settles on the honest penitent;

That issues from the true ekklesia,

The church within a church that also waits

Within the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine,

High above the Henry Hudson Parkway:

It is the living hope of all the world.