The Broken Heart

In great men’s houses you must thread your way
Through files of menials, who pass your name
Like a watchword, till the Man of Figure
Commits you finally to the Man of Fame. 

“ ...may be pieced up again.” Your breath
Was full of butterflies. The curtains closed again.
Behind you, nothing. An empty moment. Boast
That zero, boast your shadow left a stain—

You, scorched star, Blind Jane, my lady accomplice
Dazzling on the balcony. But you died: 
A live wire, a little heaven of rouge—
No, nothing was too much for my child bride.  

Time Travel Is A Discipline Without Redemption 2

Time travel is a discipline without redemption

And mercy is unknown. Most travellers through time

Were kidnapped as children and taught to devote their attention

To the cultivation of self-restraint and perfect rhyme.

Swordsmanship, music and astronomy

Prepare them to kill without conscience on their journeys

And bouts of violent, nonconsensual sodomy

Encourage murderous rage at their academic tourneys.

On Graduation Day at The Academy of Time,

The Principal performs The Ritual of Deadly Violence

And inflicts catastrophic damage on every graduand prime.

Reconstruction would exceed by far the competence

Of the greatest surgeons and exceed the promise of their art:

Severed limbs, bloody trenches too wide to suture, 

Organs hacked from their fatty beds, private parts

Torn off, eyes crushed. Students must seek surgeons in the future

To restore their physical integrity; they gather up as best

They can what they have lost and make for the back of the hall,

Where time machines stand ready to transport them. Each guest

Who steps aside to let them pass can recall,

Or imagine, his own first journey – not gliding across time,

But picking through broken meat, searching cold pools

Of blood for fragments of himself; the human stink, the grime,

The well-wishers on all sides, the smiles of ghouls.

It takes necessary years to recover from the violence

Of the ritual. Any student traveller who chooses

To return before he’s regained the cosmetic excellence

Required to graduate from The Academy of Time loses

His eyes. Good students remount their machines and set the dial

To return at the moment of their hideous departure.

The illusion of instant restoration makes the Principal smile;

His hapless guests stamp and blight the air with laughter.

This Used To Be The Bed Of A Vast Ocean

Out on the Old East Road, where errors undermine

The necessary journey, the Careful Reader pauses,

Determined not to let mere necessity define

His purpose, or compromise his independent clauses.

A system of coordinated piles, with trusses

Slung between, once supported meaning and intent

With such clarity and consistency of style that buses

Full of passengers who knew what each other meant

Raced along the causeway against the rising tide

Talking of use and usage and abuse, of that and which,

Of what should be accepted, what had to be denied;

The angry ghosts that poison, the bodies that enrich

Our native tongue. The Careful Reader sniffs out those who died

For an old ladder rotting in a muddy ditch.

Against Nature

My widowed mother introduced

My niece to Hodge, a swine –

A vicious wretch whose natural gifts

Were poor to those of mine.

His winter jacket caught my eye –

A Danish army fleece.

I’d recognise it anywhere –

I'd given it to my neice;

And she had given it to Hodge,

Or so he said. A fever

Overcame her, so he said.

I advised him to forget her:

"Leave her to heaven and to those thorns

That in her bosom lodge

To prick and sting her.” And he said,

“Our married name was Hodge.”

Wholeness At Whitsun (translated by Jarvis Belchard from the original Latvian)

 Up in the southern sky

The sun’s ablaze 

With the promise 

Of shorter nights!

Ay, and longer days.

Down all the country lanes

Young Nature screams

“I am alive!”

Ay, and so green!

This is the life of dreams.

The sea’s a silent cake;

So slick the knife.

“Cut me a slice!”

Give me a bite;

This is the dream of life.

Ladies love to swim;

They’re gasping for breath!

Seizures and cramps

Bask in the deep water.

This is a dream of death.

Sunset, with Brent geese;

Gussets and broken seams;

Children in the air,

Salt and long grass:

This is the death of dreams.

Up in the southern sky

The stars are bright

With the promise

Of eternal life!

Ay, and endless night.

The Wet Ottomans

Book I: The Argument

The Ottoman – eh?  Let me count the arms.

“None, sah!” reports Midshipman Ripples;

“They’s made that way, and with no back neither,

“So as to offer comfort to cripples.”

Used in the empire of the same name

For adulterous romps and more, I suspect,

It arrived in America in 1789

As an “Ottomane of velours d’Utrecht”,

Bought by a Mr Thomas Jefferson,

Who happened to see it by chance

And used it to muse and relax on

After taking Louisiana from France

And writing the Kentucky and Virginia

Resolutions – secretly, mind –

So people would come for miles to see

The chair that had no behind.

Book II: The Events Preceding The Night In Question

“Jesus Christ, you need a steam room

“To dry these things out – they’re soaking!”

“How many are there – in total, that is?”

“Eighteen.”  “Eighteen?  You’re joking!

“Count them again, oh please,” pleaded Kate,

“Eighteen’s too many to rescue.”

How well she remembered the sodden ottomans,

Growing up under Ceaușescu,

As a young Romanian girl that year

When the floods came out of the sky

And everyone north of the Danube

Would kill for a pouffe that was dry.

Lou counted them from wall to wall

And, as she said, there were eighteen in all:

Two had disintegrated, three were just wettish

(Ideal for couples with that fancy fetish!)

While four were quite sodden and, as for the rest,

They ranged from drenched to damp at best.

“Do you think, if we turn the radiators on,”

Said Kate, skipping gaily upstairs,

“That we could dry them before Tim gets home

“And sees what we’ve done to his chairs?”

“This wouldn’t have happened in Jefferson’s day,”

Avowed Lou, grinding her incisor,

“But if we torch the whole fucking house,

“Then Tim’ll be none the wiser.”

Book III: The Ottomans On The Night In Question

Superindent Faraday puffed on his pipe

And surveyed the desolate scene:

A mangled mess of steel and glass

Where once Tim’s house had been

And he turned to Sergeant Keddie:

“What the blazes is this all about?”

“Blazes, sir?  A good one!

“Well, according to my snout,

“A man was seen emerging

“From the flames at about half-past five.

“If he’d left it any later, sir,

“He wouldn’t be alive.

“He claims it was his sister, Lou,

“Who set the house alight

(“His sisters live in Basingstoke

“But were staying overnight).”

“Let’s interview this sister, Lou,”

Said Faraday, looking tense,

But Lou swore blind she’d been asleep

And the mystery made no sense.

Faraday stared at the ceiling

And, perplexed, he scratched his head,

And pursed his lips and picked his nose

And eventually he said:

“This is no ordinary burning of ottomans,

“We’ll have to call in the Met.” –

For the strangest thing of all, you see,

Was that the ottomans were still wet!

Sure & Certain Hope

The next day I went to the Town Hall to register your death. I found the Register Office and handed over the documents I’d been given at the hospital. The clerk gave me your death certificate and a license authorising the funeral director of my choice to bury or cremate your body according to my instructions. On the clerk’s advice I bought seven extra copies of your death certificate. I was ready to move on to the next stage, like a participant in a treasure hunt. 

   While I was doing the paperwork with the clerk there was a man hovering quite close behind me. He seemed impatient for me to finish. I didn’t turn to look, but I could hear his quick, shuffling steps, never more than two or three in any direction, before he’d scuttle back as if to protect his place in the queue. When I turned to leave there was no queue. There was just this man smiling at me. He took me gently by the arm and led me out of the room into the corridor. We sat on a wooden bench.

   “I want to help you,” he said, “to understand what’s happening to you.”

   He explained that for some time to come there would be a vacancy in the air where you used to be—a vacancy precisely the same size and shape as you. He asked if I’d ever visited Pompeii and did I know how archaeologists located citizens lost in the volcanic storm almost two thousand years ago? Those empty pockets in the lava were eloquent impressions of lives, he said, and that was how he wanted me to think of the awful vacancy that had been occupied so brilliantly and for so long by you.

   He found it utterly understandable that I was for the moment unable to see beyond the narrow confines of my grief, but assured me that if I allowed time to perform its subtle alchemy, the sadness of a life lost would be transformed into a million happy memories of a life lived. And these happy memories (and this is where perhaps he took a step too far) would pour into that vacancy and then, when it was full, the magic would happen: this trove of remembered joys that was shaped exactly like you would step out of nature, wave a loving farewell and walk away from me into the radiance of eternity. And my grief would end.

   “And this is something I’ll actually see?” I asked.

   “You have my word,” he said.

Losing A Sock

I lost a sock today – ’twas one of three,

And all the more maddening to me

As I had lost a leg at Waterloo.

Last week I lost a tenner in a game

And now I’ve not a penny to my name,

Only the other leg I didn’t lose.

                                    

Two weeks ago while swimming in the sea

I lost an earring that I’d had with me

Since I lost that leg at Waterloo.

I’d put the sock I lost inside a shoe

That fits the foot I kept at Waterloo,

Which is ironic when you think of it.

I have another shoe, another sock,

But neither fits the only foot I’ve got.

The trouble is they only come in pairs.

I’ve won things too: a cutlass and a ship,

And thirteen hamsters in a lucky dip

But socks are very difficult to find.

Perhaps the gods, or kismet, will be kind:

I’ve lost the sock, but I might find the shoe

Among the other legs at Waterloo.

This Is My Heart

I haunt the air you breathe, the food you eat,
The water you wash in, trust and drink.

When you enter the house,
I walk in front of you to clear a path.

I warm the spaces that you occupy;
And occupy the spaces you leave warm.

When you leave the house I say goodbye; 
Here are my tears.

I am custodian of all that belongs to you;
I am silent and leave no odours.

I take inventory of the house and contents;
It is my gift to belong

And yours to take possession of my gift;
And yours to take possession of my gift.

This is my heart;
I wait my turn.

Inordinately Fond

The air is fresh; tonight the wind will bring

Solace to the sweaty, even here,

Where sun has burned the hillside and the dogs

Eat the rotting remnants of a deer.

For our last intercession did the trick

And Power deigns to grant us this reprieve:

Shall we now stay and cultivate the soil

Or be the first to grab our hats and leave?

Angora is the softness of her bosom,

Dynamite the power of her mind;

How could I leave her when her faith’s forgotten

The innocence not even fear can find?

We’ll stay then, wrap ourselves in satin robes

As befits a naughty monk or friar

Dissembling in the tragedy, who hopes

To grant forgiveness in the face of fire.

We love this circus and its painted lies,

The bear who laughs, the antelope who frowns,

The ringmaster inviting us to share

His stricken smile, donated by the clowns.

We miss the imperfections in the home

Which others see and titillate their ardour;

But we are not designers: curse the gate

And keepers who exhort us to try harder.

We visited the land of songs and verse

And love and sex and jolly good boating weather,

And for this swift and hedonistic crime

Were shown the door and legged it hell for leather.

We only ask to live where we are known

Biblically, as Amos, Ruth and Paul;

And to Damascus, then, on route to which

The prophet said, when he was known as Saul:

Christ is risen.  Hallejulah, boys!

And, like a liegeman, venerate your Lord!

Let him seduce us, for his silver tongue

Is not as sharp or mighty as the sword.

And, like a liegeman, love the soil we own

For it will soon be subject to the bond

Which fastens us to service of that lord

Of whom we are inordinately fond.

Holme, Norfolk; July 28th, 1998

                                                

The low spring tide's at ten past ten;

Don't miss it - it will never come again.

The light of the full moon clings to your feet and stinks.  

It’s an hour’s soft plod through sweet sublunar mud
Down to the henge, there at the turn of the tide:
A circle, twenty feet across, of fifty-five split oak trunks,

Inward facing, sunk deep and shrunk to a low
Unmoving ring of patient, wizened elves
Around a shallow pool - spectators who dedicated themselves
To long-form entertainment four thousand years ago.  

Then they were a stockade ten feet tall;  an outer ring 
For Club-Foot John, the one-legg’d slow-motion target-diving devil,
To spot as he dropped from the upper sky, his fall scheduled
To take five thousand years.   But this was no climate for loitering.  

As the sea rose, his imperceptible downward crawl

Became an imperceptible rush for safety.   The creature
Watched his blank become a wink, a tidal feature,
And adjusted the aerodynamics of his fall

To make a headlong dive.   When his terrified fingers 
Touched the surface of the pool - 1912’s
The date recorded by the watchful elves - 
The cheer was so profound the echo lingers

And returns at these deep tides.   His fall goes on.  
Now John is an inverted oak.   The root, cut flat like an anvil,
Juts from the middle of the pool - it’s the diving devil
’s club foot.   In thirty years it will be gone;

John will be lost under the sand, under the sea,
But tonight he’s here.   And so are we.

A Christmas Game

Prince Woltan Çaid he’d be here at dawn

But never appeared.
Cerdig, Chief of the Saxons came inÌead.

Arthur, King of the Britons,
Always Çaid

Cerdig reminded him of Rupert Davies in Maigret.

He arrived like a peal of bells

When heavy Çnow
Has Ìranded the congregation in a church with no eleÀricity.

Cerdig Çaid when he was aÇked, “There’s always truth,

And behind it lurks
Another Çomehow more elusive truth”—

Like Jack the Ripper waiting for the Salvation Army band

To finiÇh Silent Night

Before he goes to add a little quiet to the evening.

Had Prince Woltan appointed Cerdig to appear

On his behalf,

Or had Cerdig Çeen to it that Woltan would never more

Come to Camelot at ChriÌmas time,

Nor e’er Çee the bright day break

Like a blessing o’er the Tomb of Gwaelod Gar?

His dagger was like a melting icicle

And he Çeemed as one

Who had drunk the fine ale of immortality.

“Thou art the lord of equivocation!”

Quoth Yorath,

Margrave of the Jutes-in-exile. “Sea-horses fear thee

More than men, la!” InÌead of Çilence,

Clear birdÇong

And the bleat of diÌant lambs Çeeped in

As from an older world that knew not men.

“It’s ChriÌmas,”

Whispered Cerdig. “I forgive all wrongs

Within my power to forgive—ay, Yorath,

E’en thine!”

Fate that day hung like a Ìring of indeciÇive pearls

On the throat of hiÌory—or nooÇe around

The neck of time.

The rising miÌ, the falling Çnow, the brazen Çmiles,

The rumpled Çheets, the blazing Çword, the hiÇÇ

Of resin flaring in the great hearth, 

The pealing bell, the broken limb, the healing kiÇÇ.

Casino Royale: Death Saves The Day

Brothels and baccarat: a fortune in figures,

A taste for the whip and a gift for addition:

Finances the union (all workers are liggers),

Pays for his pleasures and bankrolls ambition.

Arithmetic measures the pleasure of winning,

There’s no game to play if you know in advance;

It’s not Graham Greene, there’s no pleasure in sinning,

No sense of religion and an absence of chance.

But the law is not subject to rules he might play by;

The brothels are closed all over the nation.

World domination must wait in a lay-by,

Mr. No-Name takes stock with some stern masturbation.

With odds short against him he cleaves to the long game,

He’ll play at the table he knows he can’t leave,

Draw a bead on his quarry, James Bond—Mr. Wrong-Name.

Vesper Lynd is the card that he’ll keep up his sleeve.

SMERSH’s income sans brothels is vastly diminished:

The union laundered the money The Banker

(Their name for Le Chiffre) supplied—now he’s finished.

What use is he now that he’s nought but a wanker?

Death’s not familiar with Royale-les-Eaux,

Death loves a casino, Death loves a big bet—

And there’s something besides that Death doesn’t know:

Death has a double that Death’s never met.

James Bond laughs at fate and fears no man alive,

Obeys the dark summons with carefree aplomb;

Royale’s a long drive on D1015,
Just north of Dieppe, near the mouth of the Somme.

Vesper steps out of the cone of bright light

That sprays like a shower on the horseshoe-shaped table

As Death wanders in and sits at Bond’s right;

She’s unseen in the dark in her sheath of silk sable.

It goes badly for Bond from the very beginning,

Le Chiffre takes bank and he won’t be unseated;

The numbers keep coming, he knows that he’s winning

And he goes on and on until Bond is defeated.

“If you were a number I’d permit you to write a

Postdated cheque—to me all names are tox-

-ic, but especially yours— “ And up steps Felix Leiter

And bankrolls James Bond from the vaults at Fort Knox.

Bond seizes the moment—Fortune has spoken:

His cards are delivered from baccarat heaven

And in just ninety minutes Le Chiffre is broken:

“You wanted a wanted a number? How’s this—007?”

Death smiles with relief—there’s a plot at last shaping

That’ll give him the space to perform his stern duty.

But the flash of a gun in the dark leaves him gaping—

A glimpse of a scream, a terrible beauty!

Vesper Lynd has been kidnapped, Bond goes to save her,

He’s captured and tortured by Le Chiffre, who’d kill him, 

But an agent from SMERSH comes and murders Le Chiffre:

Before killing the agent, Bond takes time to grill him.

Vesper comes to visit, Bond slowly recovers—

Healing takes time and she takes the trouble;

Bond takes the bait and soon they are lovers;

And when Death comes to visit, he encounters his double.

                     *            *            *

The road out of Samarra has only one lay-by,

Le Chiffre awaits you with his whip and his bell.

It was Death who created the rules that you play by;

The road from Samarra will take you to hell.

Vesper Lynd is a dish that’s best eaten cold.

In the morning she’s lying quite cold in her bed,

And Death’s having breakfast, a pleasure untold,

And Bond’s on the blower to London: “The bitch is dead.”