Baudelaire's Liver (translated by Jarvis Belchard)

When the bellowing sky lowers herself, a sick cow 
On my tedious heart (prisoner in a house of dying men)
And gathering her skirts, the circumference of the flat earth,
Evacuates her gloomy bowels on a world of gloomy men;

When earth is a condemned lavatory by a deserted dock, 

In which Hope, like a poisoned bat over a dying fen,
Flies blind and drunk and breaks her stinking black wings
And smashes her rotten head against the damp ceiling;

When the rain hangs like ragged curtains from a nasty sky,
Or like the rusty bars of a plague-infested prison,
And a gibbering army of loathsome, hopeless spiders
Comes to build black webs inside our empty skulls,


All at once the church-bells roar with pain and anger  
And fling long-unpealed curses at deaf heaven,
Like refugees who, starving far from home
Burst into one last despairing chorus of a native ditty.

Rationing In Wartime

The tea is warm: surprising.

The cup is full, the spoon lies here
Upon the saucer; on the French toast the icing
Clings as on a bun; the marmalade jar stands,
Sticky and blue, there, on the tranquil tray.
Come to the table, you take the nice chair!
Behind that dark ring of browny-grey
Left on the white linen by the teapot-stand,
Look! you see the grated raw
Dry carrots which the nurse brought in, and flung,
On a ghastly whim, in with the canned
Pilchards. Biscuits and cheese begin
Our tremulous moonlit supper, and bring
The eternal taste of madness in.

Sophocles long ago
Ate pilchards on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid chubb and roe
Of inland fisheries; we
Find also in the can a thought,
Eating pilchards with a cup of tea.

This pickled egg
Was once, too, seen by Aristotle, what’s more,
Or one very like it: white, and softer than a pearl.
But now only I hear
His melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Suffering half to death
With the wind, after a night on Greek beer,
And all the baked potatoes in the world.

Ah, love, let us tea brew
For one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a sea of breams,
And salmon, halibut, and crabs of blue,
Hath really neither lobsters, nor delight,

Nor mackerel, nor cod, nor Dover sole;
And we shall have canned pilchards in a bowl
Topped with grated carrots. Though there is no delight,
Let’s eat, drink tea, and fuck. I’m much too tired to fight.

The Messiah

What’s this, what’s this ye’re sayin’ tae me—

Young Archibald Robertson’s coming tae tea?

Weel, get oot tha scones and dinna stint on tha relish,

A reckon his hunger’ll be mighty hellish

By the time he arrives

Frae St Ives.

Och, dinna fret, seid tha auld wife o’ Muchtie,

He’ll be comin’ wi’ Hannah an’ Dorothy Huchtie—

And they ne’er let a man gae frae Glasgee tae Rummach

Wi’out making shooer there’s good food in his stomach.

But he arrives

Frae St Ives,

Ye daft auld bat!

     Seid Willie McPhee.

A canna be responsible

For that,

Michty me!

     Replied tha auld wife o’ Muchtie.

Wee Archibald Robertson duly arrived,

His entrance wa’ grandiloquent, a trifle contrived.

What’s it like in St Ives?—they asked him wi’ a leer.

Fair to middlin’—he seid—A cuid murder a beer.

Blake And Convenience

William Blake had no idea that a rude Tesco

Would be erected near where he wrote London; indeed,

Few people appear to have predicted the growth –

Nay, the sprawl – of these inconvenient stores

(None of Hogarth’s paintings feature them and they are never

Mentioned in any volume of Scott’s not inconsiderable                             body of work). 

But Sir William Siggins (1782-1839), in a poignant                                     piece of pastoral

Entitled Asda, My Asda, conceived “A cavernous hall

“In which the populace quailed in thrall”,

A frightening foretaste of what (given half a chance) man                           will  do to man,

Which he penned after reading Kubla Khan.

Valleys turned into funnels, dales hardening into car parks

In Siggins’s horrific vision, presaged the death

Of the cottage industry – wherein the world spun

On leisurely looms and old men smiled in peace.

And so it is with weapons.  The reluctant soldier

Sheathed his cutlass when picking his nose; Alexander

Would never have dreamt of taking his sword to bed with him

(His boys being allergic to sharp metal) and conquered

A goodly swathe of the known world with elegance,

Always appearing in person.  Not so in this age

Of digital destruction.  Men with unseeing eyes

Can raze communities with the appliance

Of software.  And so peace must too embrace

The new technology.  The movement is a broad church,

All faiths and races and every known

Peccadillo are catered for.  Simply download

Details of the war you want brought to an end,

Double click on the dove icon, type in “No more

“Brown trousers, please” and click OK.

A special site for the use of the deaf

Is under construction.

March 19, 2003 (translated from the English by Rod McKuen)

Eleven a.m. arrives

On Fifty-seventh Street.

Uneaten marmalade

Is hissing on the fire,

With a dentist’s bill unpaid.

My second glass of beer

Froths over the white

Tablecloth of the earth,

Saturating our private lives

With the yeasty smell of death:

Oh God, I’m already a bit tight.

Alcoholism can

Often cause offence—

From Luther's time until now

It has driven vicars mad,

And also a good few women.

From what bottle sprayed

This unwholesome geyser, God?

I’m in a low dive now

With a lowlife called Burn,

I'll have another one

And then we might adjourn.

Thucydides liked a brew—

That’s all I’m prepared to say

About Democracy.

I’m going to the loo

When I’ve finished this piece of pork.

While I'm in the lav

I’ll try, my love, to read your book—

And oh, while I’m away,

I’ll have the same again.

This pork tastes like beef.

I think someone’s pulling my chain.

In the front bar

They don’t tolerate my abuse.

I suppose I can’t complain;

It’s a reasonable ban.

My life is down the drain

And I have no excuse.

Have I told you how I long

For a nice piece of bream?

From behind the bar they stare.

I have an awful face;

I think I’ll sing a song.

Ah, here comes Jack Tar—

He’ll be here all day:

His trousers make men pout,

But I always have to pay.

I’m starting to perspire;

I’ll put on some perfume;

I might take him home,

Or we might go to another bar—

It depends on his mood.

He also looks a bit tight

I’m going to say something lewd.

I’ve got a nasty rash—

I’ll have a glass of stout

And perhaps some fried fish

(And as for what mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

I don’t give a flying fart).

My words, you say, are too close to the bone.

Each woman and each man

Craves what I cannot have:

Not universal love,

But to be left alone.

I’m in the bloody dark.

I've kissed goodbye to life.

I’ve got polyps up my arse,

And a face like a dying cow;

“I will take my fork and knife

And do justice to some pork.”

My helpless bowels quake;

They cry justice for well-practiced fouls:

Who dares release them now?

I’m going slightly deaf—

Will anyone hear my clamorous bowels?

That is now my voice.

I’ll have a slice of pie.

I met a man on the D-Train

Who had the most remarkable feet.

We walked to the Port Authority

And he began to cry.

I had a piece of skate;

He preferred to eat alone;

Hunger allows no choice;

He threatened to call the police;

I must have bream or die.

I rarely go out at night,

I rarely wear socks or ties—

And never underwear.

I still need that shite—

I’ve unleashed another gust:

These are messages.

May I, composed like them

Of Thanatos and rust,

Beleaguered by new shame,

Denial and despair,

Have another glass of the same?

Waving The Cosmos Goodbye

“The telescope tells us so little,”
He said, applying a gobbet of unhealthily viscous spittle

To a grubby rag and wiping it vigorously into the eyepiece,

“But every jot and tittle

“Contributes something, however nugatory, to my peace

“Of mind. Now, hand me my veal-and-ham pie please.”

Remember, this was fifty years ago and more.

That day, I walked out through the observatory door

A sadder and a more stupid man

Than I had ever been before.

The great astronomer seemed determined to scupper my plan

And paid me less attention than his flan.

That day I burned my research papers and resolved

To buy a farm. With my hopes dashed and dissolved

What greater comfort could I find

Than to be alone with a few sheep? My mind revolved

No more with the cosmos. I felt my terrors unwind

As I walked among lambs. I left the stars behind.

And yet, as I walk under the clear skies of Devon,

I feel something far more deeply interfused begin to leaven

My contentment. The lambs are white

On the dark tor, like snowflakes on the back of a sleeping raven,

Or intimations of a better heaven in the long night

That once robbed me, thanks to the great astronomer, of all my           delight.