414

’Twas like a Maelstrom, with a notch,
That nearer, every Day,
Kept narrowing its boiling Wheel
Until the Agony

Toyed coolly with the final inch
Of your delirious Hem—
And you dropt, lost,
When something broke—
And let you from a Dream—

As if a Goblin with a Gauge—
Kept measuring the Hours—
Until you felt your Second
Weigh, helpless, in his Paws—

And not a Sinew—stirred—could help,
And sense was setting numb—
When God—remembered—and the Fiend
Let go, then, Overcome—

As if your Sentence stood—pronounced—
And you were frozen led
From Dungeon’s luxury of Doubt
To Gibbets, and the Dead—

And when the Film had stitched your eyes
A Creature gasped “Reprieve”!
Which Anguish was the utterest—then—
To perish, or to live?

Carrickfergus (1937) - poem by Louis Macneice.


I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries
To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams;
Thence to Smoky Carrick in County Antrim
Where the bottle-neck harbour collects the mud which jams

The little boats beneath the Norman castle,
The pier shining with lumps of crystal salt;
The Scotch quarter was a line of residential houses
But the Irish quarter was a slum for the blind and halt.

The brook ran yellow from the factory stinking of chlorine,
The yarn mill called it's funeral cry at noon;
Our lights looked over the lough to the lights of Bangor
Under the peacock aura of a drowning moon.

The Norman walled this town against the country
To stop his ears to the yelping of his slave
And built a church in the form of a cross but denoting
The list of Christ on the cross in the angle of the nave.

I was the rectors son, born to the Anglican order,
Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor;
The Chichesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept
With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure.

The war came and a huge camp of soldiers
Grew from the ground in sight of our house with long
Dummies hanging from gibbets for bayonet practice
And the sentry's challenge echoing all day long;

A Yorkshire terrier ran in and out by the gate-lodge
Barred to civilians, yapping as if taking affront;
Marching at ease and singing 'Who Killed **** Robin?'
The troops went out by the lodge and off to the Front.

The steamer was camouflaged that took me to England-
Sweat and khaki in the Carlisle train;
I thought that the war would last for ever and sugar
be always rationed and that never again

Would the weekly papers not have photos of sandbags
And my governess not make bandages from moss
And people not have maps above the fireplace
With flags on pins moving across and across-

Across the hawthorn hedge the noise of bugles,
Flares across the night,
Somewhere on the lough was a prison ship for Germans,
A cage across their sight.

I went to school in Dorset, the world of parents
Contracted into a puppet world of sons
Far from the mill girls, the smell of porter, the salt-mines
And the soldiers with their guns.




Louis Macneice

1

Suddenly, out of its stale and drowsy lair, the lair of slaves,
Like lightning it le’pt forth, half startled at itself,
Its feet upon the ashes and the rags—its hands tight to the throats of kings.

O hope and faith!
O aching close of exiled patriots’ lives!
O many a sicken’d heart!
Turn back unto this day, and make yourselves afresh.

And you, paid to defile the People! you liars, mark!
Not for numberless agonies, murders, lusts,
For court thieving in its manifold mean forms, worming from his simplicity the poor man’s wages,
For many a promise sworn by royal lips, and broken, and laugh’d at in the breaking,
Then in their power, not for all these, did the blows strike revenge, or the heads of the nobles fall;
The People scorn’d the ferocity of kings.

2

But the sweetness of mercy brew’d bitter destruction, and the frighten’d monarchs come back;
Each comes in state, with his train—hangman, priest, tax-gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant.

Yet behind all, lowering, stealing—lo, a Shape,
Vague as the night, draped interminably, head, front and form, in scarlet folds,
Whose face and eyes none may see,
Out of its robes only this—the red robes, lifted by the arm,
One finger, crook’d, pointed high over the top, like the head of a snake appears.

3

Meanwhile, corpses lie in new-made graves—****** corpses of young men;
The rope of the gibbet hangs heavily, the bullets of princes are flying, the creatures of power laugh aloud,
And all these things bear fruits—and they are good.

Those corpses of young men,
Those martyrs that hang from the gibbets—those hearts pierc’d by the gray lead,
Cold and motionless as they seem, live elsewhere with unslaughter’d vitality.

They live in other young men, O kings!
They live in brothers, again ready to defy you!
They were purified by death—they were taught and exalted.

Not a grave of the ******’d for freedom, but grows seed for freedom, in its turn to bear seed,
Which the winds carry afar and re-sow, and the rains and the snows nourish.

Not a disembodied spirit can the weapons of tyrants let loose,
But it stalks invisibly over the earth, whispering, counseling, cautioning.

4

Liberty! let others despair of you! I never despair of you.

Is the house shut? Is the master away?
Nevertheless, be ready—be not weary of watching;
He will soon return—his messengers come anon.

remember when i was a female jew in tudor england ?
i spoke to rabbi julia neuerberger recently and she said
i dress so much more flamboyantly now than i did then
we wondered if it wasn t because gibbets don t line the streets now like they did then
they re in government and civil service departments
but they do a PR job that could confuse you if you weren t already mad
with so many spilled lakes of blood ,angry faces ,painful intrusions ,violent assaults and verbal conflicts
and you just anticipate the rippling of a cold stream
and the contact of a cats' tongue on the nape of your neck
i wonder if we could diffuse like iodine in vituperative vapour
and perfect the hiding technique we acquired in tudor times but forgot to adopt last century
HIDE DON T SEEK
THERE ARE NO ANSWERS
c marie forte

There is something coming
out of the summer fog.

It abrades the full bellies
of ill clouds which burst

into sloughing rain slices
that slush and slide in soft slips

& slurs as it slouches
through the soak and sinks

sodden and silent and spent
to the wet-stunned cement stub.

Then, a pause - and it is already gone:
a visitation from an unwanted memory.

Shadows rise and suddenly fall
from slick brick gibbets:

cars throw stray starry bars
of slim dim shine from their teeth.

A palace of broken fog
escapes into the east,

leaving a black tabletop stain
fading slowly on the brain.

Of thee virtual netherland...
courtesy one spellbound wordsmith
within apartment b44
nestled within a manor
(and manner of writing)
atop nondescript Schwenksville highland.

All gibbets zing aside
I got noose for you,
yours truly enjoys harmless chide
ding even kibitizing about,
when cessation of consciousness occurs
leaving terrestrial plane
frequently incorporates divine spirit as guide
absolute zero escape
regarding death to override.

Oft times ('specially
these latter unsainted days and nights)
death doth haunt me atheistic zeitgeist
which thoughts of my demise
crowds out purposeful thinking
in the twitching mind kempf
paradigm of this atheist
hence, he betook himself
to this MacBook Pro,

while swiss side dull ideations
for professional intercession,
deadline could not wait
asper affecting s cathartic,
emetic, harmonic tete a tete
and providing a meaningful surrogate
to expunge morbid mental state
accessed Open Office
and let fingers (of left hand)
do talking heads

to an imaginary therapist
across this qwerty keyboard
allowing, enabling, and
at the quickest typing rate
striving to cap cha dismal, gloomy,
and ill lust tree us deplorable
mood aye equate
with pitching into
a bottomless abyss where pate
fed ceaseless diet of NON GMO –

a last repast
the grim reaper did orchestrate
gluten free, an extra heavy dose
of monosodium glutamate
which ingredient doth
BuzzFeed thine appetite
for total mortal exterminate
'thou no need fermi to rush,
where angels fear to tread,
cuz tis better late

than never, the apothegm,
credo, ethos...foreign ha Kate
the caterer maintains
an open exit from life,
and cares only
that each soul doth feel elan,
joie de vivre, and psalm times
a leaper chants, ecstatically finally
gustatory humming don't jubilate
for your final homecoming, or else
the mailer daemon lived
a devilish life will instigate

a de coup age d'etat,
but such extreme
measure for measure heed doth hate,
yet exceptions always made for a date
particularly when henchmen to die for
golden opportunity
to ****** a generic guy a create
an underground soiree will cease,
when ashes master
of hell raising circumstances
twill use as bait
let underground missionary be advocate.