‘Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis
vidi in ampulla pendere, et *** illi pueri dicerent:
Sibylla ti theleis; respondebat illa: apothanein thelo.’

                For Ezra Pound
                il miglior fabbro


I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony *******? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
            Frisch weht der Wind
            Der Heimat zu
            Mein Irisch Kind,
            Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
‘They called me the hyacinth girl.’
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed’ und leer das Meer.

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!’

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Glowed on the marble, where the glass
Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines
From which a golden Cupidon peeped out
(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)
Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra
Reflecting light upon the table as
The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,
From satin cases poured in rich profusion;
In vials of ivory and coloured glass
Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,
Unguent, powdered, or liquid—troubled, confused
And drowned the sense in odours; stirred by the air
That freshened from the window, these ascended
In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,
Flung their smoke into the laquearia,
Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.
Huge sea-wood fed with copper
Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,
In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.
Above the antique mantel was displayed
As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene
The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king
So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale
Filled all the desert with inviolable voice
And still she cried, and still the world pursues,
‘Jug Jug’ to ***** ears.
And other withered stumps of time
Were told upon the walls; staring forms
Leaned out, leaning, hushing the room enclosed.
Footsteps shuffled on the stair.
Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair
Spread out in fiery points
Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

‘My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
‘Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
‘What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
‘I never know what you are thinking. Think.’

I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.

‘What is that noise?
                          The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
                    Nothing again nothing.
                                                    ‘Do
‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
‘Nothing?’

    I remember
Those are pearls that were his eyes.
‘Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?’
                                                     But
O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag—
It’s so elegant
So intelligent
‘What shall I do now? What shall I do?’
I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street
‘With my hair down, so. What shall we do to-morrow?
‘What shall we ever do?’
                             The hot water at ten.
And if it rains, a closed car at four.
And we shall play a game of chess,
Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said—
I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,
hurry up please its time
Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.
He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you
To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.
You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,
He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.
And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert,
He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time,
And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.
Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.
Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.
hurry up please its time
If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.
Others can pick and choose if you can’t.
But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.
You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.
(And her only thirty-one.)
I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,
It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.
(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)
The chemist said it would be alright, but I’ve never been the same.
You are a proper fool, I said.
Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said,
What you get married for if you don’t want children?
hurry up please its time
Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,
And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot—
hurry up please its time
hurry up please its time
Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.
Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.
Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf
Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind
Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,
Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;
Departed, have left no addresses.
By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.
White bodies naked on the low damp ground
And bones cast in a little low dry garret,
Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.
But at my back from time to time I hear
The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.
O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter
And on her daughter
They wash their feet in soda water
Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

Twit twit twit
Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc’d.
Tereu

Unreal City
Under the brown fog of a winter noon
Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant
Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants
C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French
To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel
Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female *******, can see
At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,
The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Out of the window perilously spread
Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,
On the divan are piled (at night her bed)
Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays.
I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
I too awaited the expected guest.
He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,
A small house agent’s clerk, with one bold stare,
One of the low on whom assurance sits
As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses,
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses
Which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed;
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

‘This music crept by me upon the waters’
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.

      The river sweats
      Oil and tar
      The barges drift
      With the turning tide
      Red sails
      Wide
      To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
      The barges wash
      Drifting logs
      Down Greenwich reach
      Past the Isle of Dogs.
                  Weialala leia
                  Wallala leialala

      Elizabeth and Leicester
      Beating oars
      The stern was formed
      A gilded shell
      Red and gold
      The brisk swell
      Rippled both shores
      Southwest wind
      Carried down stream
      The peal of bells
      White towers
                  Weialala leia
                  Wallala leialala

‘Trams and dusty trees.
Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew
Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.’
‘My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart
Under my feet. After the event
He wept. He promised ‘a new start’.
I made no comment. What should I resent?’
‘On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of ***** hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.’
              la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning
O Lord Thou pluckest me out
O Lord Thou pluckest

burning

IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
                                A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
                               Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock wi

Most of the times,
I feel,
that you and I,
my darling,
redefine our love on
Saturday nights.

Saturday nights,
when the sound of our
heartbeats mixes with the wine.


When you swerve your hips,
to the tunes on the old gramophone.

When every streetlight seems like a shooting star.

Passionate,
wild,
mad,
in it's very essence.

Chaotic,
extraordinary
and beautiful,
define you,
my love.

You breathtakingly
naked and beautiful soul,
is the gateway to the Universe.

Swooning and high off
your fragrance,
all I want to do is
make love with you,
till the yearning moon
gives way to the jealous sun.

: Janet E Steele*

And what is the body? And what is a house?

The body is home to pain,
there was a mouth that held back a scream
there are wounds that show the face of blood

The body is home to the spirit of layover,
and there he felt at home, listening to the song
time, clock & heart rippled


And what is a house? And what is the body?

The house is an area where there is none
the shadow of the body, in a corner
gramophone placed & prayer sent to far.

Home is where you come back
from a small meeting, and there you are
happy, because you have time to say love.

Your Uncle Fred
on Christmas Eve
at Gran’s house

when you were a kid
did the sand dance
wearing an old fashion

man’s striped nightgown
and a red fez
(he got that in Egypt

during WW2
Gran said)
and brown

open toed sandals
and Uncle Ed
turned the handle

of the windup gramophone
where an old
78rpm record

was playing
and there were
glasses of sherry

being consumed
and cigarettes being smoked
and you sat watching

clapping your hands
and Gran would get up
afterwards

and do her Can-Can
like she used to
as she young woman

on the stage
and Granddad sat there
quiet saying nothing

looking at
the people gathered
sipping his sherry

watching his wife
lifting her legs
her white fuzzy hair

going to and fro
as she moved
and you wanted

to have some sherry
but your mother said
no you have lemonade

little boys
don’t have sherry
so you sat

with your lemonade
watching Uncle Fred
and his dance

and the music coming
from the old gramophone
and the smell of sherry

and beer and cigarette smoke
and Uncle telling the adults
one of his old army jokes.

Evening. It is the close of day. You draw the curtains across the windows of the apartment. The red curtains you bought recently, the colour having attracted you in the shop. You stand and gaze at them; with the finger and thumb of your right hand, you feel the quality of the fabric. Leonard had not liked them when he came, said they were gaudy, made the place look like brothel. He should know, you muse, bringing the fabric to your face, rubbing it against your cheek. Leonard had this terrible habit of thinking his opinion mattered more than yours, more than any others did. As if God, if he existed, had granted him a deeper insight into things than you or anyone else. You imagine him now, that thin moustache, those pale white cheeks, that nose, and those peering eyes. People were surprised when you began going out with him; surprised that you would go out with his sort. Whatever would your parents say, people said. You did not intend to marry him, at least not yet. Maybe one day if no one else turned up, if no other man came along who was willing to take you on. You release the curtains, go to the drinks cabinet and pour yourself a scotch. You sip it, let the scotch flow slowly down your throat, feel the sensation as it reaches your stomach. A warm inner glow begins as you walk to the gramophone, put on a jazz record. You close your eyes for a moment, sip at your scotch, hear the saxophone begin a solo. Leonard hates jazz, says it for the uneducated. Snob, you think, opening your eyes, walking to the sofa where you sit and gaze around the room. He is a snob, you know, but he has other qualities, qualities that outweigh his defects. His ****** prowess for one thing, his ability to spend money on you while out somewhere are both good qualities you feel. You sigh. Sometimes you wish he wasn’t so good in bed, then you wouldn’t miss him on evenings like this, when you know he won’t be coming around. Friday evenings he has chess night. Chess of all things. Moving pieces across a board, when he could be moving you across the bed, you muse. You sip the scotch again. Let the rim of the glass rest on you lower lip. You drain the remaining scotch; get up to pour another. Evening. Night. Morning, they follow so predictably. But evenings are your favourite part of the day. You hate mornings, they are too sudden, too fresh, too expectant. Like selfish children. Waiting there with all their expectations. Nights tended to be dragged out. The time when you couldn’t sleep and would lay twisting and turning, thinking about everything under the proverbial sun. Unless Leonard stays the night, but he seldom does. Goes before that. Has his fill and off he goes leaving you to your night and sleeplessness. Evening is the best part, you muse, listening by the drinks cabinet, as a trumpet goes wild in solo. You feel like dancing wildly, feel like you want to spin and twirl, and throw out your arms and toss back your head as those dancers do you’ve seen. You put down the scotch on the arm of the sofa and kick off your shoes. You begin to dance to the music, let your body unwind, feel your body become alive to the pulse of the jazz, your arms out about you, the hands gesturing like some wild animal. If Leonard were here now he would shake his head and be tut-tuting. But you don’t care because he isn’t here. Just you and the boys in the jazz band on the record. You wish they were here in person. Over in the corner of the room playing their music, watching you dance like some crazy dame. Perhaps they’d expect you to perform, expect you do more than dance. You don’t care; you don’t give a fig. At least you’d have *** and not a boring evening sitting boozing and listening to jazz records. You stop dancing and look around the room. Evening. Just you and the record and scotch. What a combination. ***. You wish you could purchase *** in a bottle like scotch. A pint of *** please. Yes, the tall one with the biceps. You laugh weakly. You sit down on the sofa, sip the scotch. Drain it. Put down the glass on the arm of the sofa. You remember the evenings you became so frustrated with the lack of *** that you were tempted to go out and grab the nearest available man, but you didn’t; too dangerous, especially around where your apartment is. You sigh deeply. All this thinking about ***. You sip the scotch. The saxophone begins a slow solo. The sound makes you feel like *******, slowly, piece by piece, until you are down to the last item and then you would stand up naked and embrace yourself. The sound of the saxophone. The evening. The rising desire to be held, touched, kissed. Where are you Leonard, you louse? You mutter loudly over the saxophone. You begin to unbutton your blouse. Button by button, pretending it is someone else’s fingers doing it. You gaze at the fingers, lick them, imaging Leonard’s face as you lick. You remove the blouse; undo the bra. You stand and unzip the skirt, let it fall to the floor. You stand there in you underwear, letting your fingers take hold of the top and slowly as if other fingers than yours were removing them over your hips. You remove them and drop them on the sofa. Naked. Evening. No Leonard. The pianist begins his slow solo. You embrace yourself, kiss your arm, kiss it and kiss it. Imagine it is another you are kissing. You close your eyes. Evening. You walk to the light switch and turn off the lights. Darkness, you and jazz. You must make love to your self. Love in that way your parents would never understand. Evening. You. Jazz. Solo. Aloneness.

I

From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart,
The substance of my dreams took fire.
You built cathedrals in my heart,
And lit my pinnacled desire.
You were the ardour and the bright
Procession of my thoughts toward prayer.
You were the wrath of storm, the light
On distant citadels aflare.

II

Great names, I cannot find you now
In these loud years of youth that strives
Through doom toward peace: upon my brow
I wear a wreath of banished lives.
You have no part with lads who fought
And laughed and suffered at my side.
Your fugues and symphonies have brought
No memory of my friends who died.

III

For when my brain is on their track,
In slangy speech I call them back.
With fox-trot tunes their ghosts I charm.
‘Another little drink won’t do us any harm.’
I think of rag-time; a bit of rag-time;
And see their faces crowding round
To the sound of the syncopated beat.
They’ve got such jolly things to tell,
Home from hell with a Blighty wound so neat...

. . . .
And so the song breaks off; and I’m alone.
They’re dead ... For God’s sake stop that gramophone.

When I was a little lassie my Grandad and I
were very fond of each other indeed
(although not sexually I must add
before you suspicious buggers start complaining).

Over the hills and fields we used to wander just like, er,
...let me think of a nice metaphor here...
er, like a man and his granddaughter or
like a couple of not so lonely clouds.

Oh how joyfully we would seek out rare birds’ nests
so as to smash the eggs to bits in a frenzy of joy,
which we both enjoyed a lot as it was, er, reet good fun
and a statement of individual choice we both appreciated.

Sometimes we would noisily take a steaming **** together
(although ABSOLUTELY NO ****** contact ever took place
I really must reiterate that for all you ***-abuse-obsessives,
but he had a stupendously big ***** for an old codger).

When we got home in the evening dear old Grandad
would usually make us a nice *** of builders' tea
and some ****** great doorstop sandwiches, but
even at that tender age I would have opted for a good stiff whisky.

Or, come to think of it, a large glass of chilled Chardonnay,
and a plateful of smoked salmon or some oysters,
but the old ******* was teetotal (at least in public) -
either that or just plain ******* mean as Hell.

Darling wizened Granny would make us some toast
out of leftover stale Mother’s Pride white bread,
but, being half blind, the silly fat old cow usually managed
to burn it to a sodding inedible cinder.

On Sundays they would get the gramophone out
and put on some tango 78 records
as they loved Latin American dancing and a good old *****
of each other's flaccid, age-withered buttocks.

How happily I remember the old couple tangoing away
just like a couple of wrinkled whirling ****** dervishes
to 'La Cumparsita' recorded by Mantovani & His Tipica Orchestra
on 20th June 1940 and issued on the Decca label.

They also taught me how to do the rumba
(oompah, oompah, stick it up your jumpah)
and I became quite an expert at the Cuban samba
(which my beloved Grandad wittily called the *****).

How joy-filled were those faraway times of my golden childhood.
but one day I went round only to find an ambulance outside
and the paramedics told me the old pair had been found dead in bed,
their boudoir resembling an abattoir at closing time.

Grandad had bashed the old *****’s brains out
with a red-hot poker during some depraved *** session
and then shoved it eighteen inches up his own *******
which must surely have stung his piles quite a bit.

But what a creative way to go - I bet he danced a bit
as the steaming poker seared his poor back passage.
And thus my grandparents ascended up into the sky -
may they stay forever young in the company of the angels.

Let me again emphasis our friendship was purely platonic
because this was in the rare old times of yesteryear
when widespread paedophilia was not yet a gleam in the eye
of some trash newspaper editor eager to engage with the plebs.

1.
any colour may be applied to the
night-dress

this city actually has no cart
driven by horses

before a pretty long time the shepherds
had also told adieu

by secret signalling the red-hat addiction
called the pigeons  sitting on the broken sticks
of the antenna to come nearer

on those dead-news the travel-story
keeps awake by whole night

and pours down on eye-lids
clouds
wrapped with cellophane

one day that wave sent
rolling-down-on-the-back hair
to the yellow balcony

those are all ancient drama

in the glow of the back-light you can see
civic humps have grown up on the back
of the birds every day and night

yet
under the dead-stop ceiling fan the dance
of the ****** reel wet with sweat does not fall short

the paper-buckles with the flowers painted on it
gets more and more tight on the air of the throat

velpuris of the evening
offer full enjoyment

2.
the night that comes all walking on the sands of the desert
how much concern does she has about the navigability of the river

when the husk of the water-chestnut is got open
flowing down the waves bursting into a blaze

to that flow is open the motor-car
the wan procession
and all the fishes that want to go upward the wave

so many varieties of floating

if the matter of clouds be let off
the multi-coloured fingers
also have so many infotainments  

if the question of  moveable property is  raised
it is only a suicide-note from my father

and a knot
in the robe of the blue trouser

3.
the trees and creepers of the night
and the plants and herbs of the day
do all of them have the same blood-group

there is much flora
inside the jail-custody also
and in this ruins of the old palace

how much is it justified
to express eagerness about the geography
of one’s character

specially of the trees
of the fishes
or of the humans

it is said
all rivers
flowing through the bodies of the great men
are totally ******

there is also the blank desert
on the silent snow-valley
in the corner of your
lips

4.
on this spine
having a mouth of crocodile
always jump down
the climate    

everyday
the sunglass changes

look at the soil and the sky
no one of them has any body-guard

the open mouth of the light
swallows the grey coin

here the wall becomes more tamed
the wild jasmine comes nearer to the heart
and hums

then ripping open my veins
should i also ***** the blue elocution
accumulated on the ****-pit

after recovery of the flower-mill from fever
the harmonium is being played on  

even introduction with the gas-balloon
has not been done yet

5.
arrangements are being made

the green shirt will gradually
turn reddish

the culverts that have become exhausted
within the travel-format
will get recharged again to sit up straight

and the hawker will get passed the silent-home
shouting with undressed coconuts in hands

from the lap of the stand-still rocking-cradles
of the children-park
the amaltas will say
i’m ready

then to escape the sun-shine
the boy who comes to attend the private tuition
will embrace… oh margosa … its your pierced-heart

you may tell him that the name of the girl
who is eating guava and swinging her legs
sitting on its branch is munni

6.
the horse is running
just above 3 feet of the yellow cornice

his back is full of dreams
or a girl named miss dorothy  

around it is the mid-night
around it is the wind that wants to be printed

and in every corner of its flying
are hundreds of skirts
  
all are of free-size

what may be their market-price
there is no shop-keeper there

in that valley
a shadow is proceeding on

do you know whose shadow it is
he is philip the teacher who gets irritated easily

this time there is no thin cane
in his hand

in the pieces of papers dumped in the waste-box
under his window there is a manuscript eaten up by the worms

there is ‘darling’ there
and ‘yours beloved greta’

in which skirt
a touch of that greta does remain  

is it being searched even today

is it greta or margaret or eliza  
there is no bar if it is dorothy

in whose smell there is no greta
who has no such horse flying just above three feet
of the yellow cornice  

each mid-night fills the fountain pen
with the flow of blue ink

7.
the leaf of jack-fruit is luxuriant
i can’t remember whether i ever notice
the portrait of your face on it  

there are so many words
that are slippery

how much rustic is the dust of the legs
of the young person is known to the road of the city

daubing green on both palms
i call for rain …oh rain ..oh rain

and into that rain i let my wrist-watch float

thus the great rainbow unfolds its wise mirror
on the scaffold of bottle-gourd  

from the bright cloth-end falling down
the odour of detergent

thus the applied mathematics of the diesel
is learnt to a greater extent

8.
behind the change of colour of the swelled wind
the samovar plays no role

though you know it you tear off tears
from your eyes

and the merry biscuits that are kept in the jar
raise a joint demand to serve them
after wrapping with new banana-leaves  

and the funny thing is that no accounts is found out
of the expenditure on the lip-stick that was used
by the fishes in the aquarium  at the time of illness
of the antenna

by the hands of the clock stretching their shanks apart
is it possible to know the actual age of a comb
either it’s costly or cheap  

9.
like the light
like the dark

yet it is full of the sound of steps
again it wakes up on the forest-road  

taking leave from the yellow construction
all the sound of the bamboo-flute
sinks today into the green minerals

it is not moonlight
on the road it is some north-east sadness

he who comes admits his body
with the divine sin

if you are sorry be water for three days now

through out the day and night
there is the paraffin of fire-flies

the blue cough is not from the sky

it may be some tusu-gaan fly off
from the chest of the straight-line
that has been wiped out

10.
i’ve deposited my metallic heart
to the archaeological-store of the wind

and i send rolling this bare eyes towards the fog
frequently

i make the crystal of her hair soft

i can see those crows
whose jaws are not closed

the colour is also
as if it were burst into cotton

can the anchal of danekhali sari swallow the kernel
and water of the blue tooth-brash after opening its husk

i say to the head with earnest request
oh my father keep cool
and look at the rain-pipe inside which
there is all the dances of the peacocks

11.
in the dim light
the predecessors of the dead stars
tell stories

this dhaba
is beside the long bus-root

yet it is still not satisfied
with the shrimps

the tail of the black drongo
hanging from the farakka bridge
is divided

towards the ganga
towards the padma

the gramophone of the mid-noon
continues to sound at the midnight

those who are doing pilgrimage
on the back of tigers

within the lighting zone of their torch
all the nearest of men who get lost
cover their faces

you know very well that the memory-gland of the wind
becomes how much river-minded when it walks through the fire

There was this time before the going home. The supers bowled off with cheery parents or elder brothers a good fortnight before the big day. There were lessons, but despite the best efforts of the staff who remained nobody could take this between time seriously. Mr Gayford for maths was hardly a substitute for Alfie's lively lessons. But Alfie we knew was climbing in the Alps this Christmas and would return with photos and tales that kept us enthralled despite the sums he invented - calculate the air pressure at 4107 metres on the Jungfrau. We all loved him with his self-raising Citroen Safari that smelt enticingly of Gitanes and that scent Claudia his girlfriend favoured. Oh Claudia, so wonderfully and exotically dressed, who seemed a world away from any boy's mother or sister.
 
Mornings were quite different. A later breakfast and then a two-hour practice with Dr. B . Hard work, with new music to learn. But the carols! Oh those sounds, and so different from what we sang all year. Boris Ord's Adam lay y bonden, Praetorius A Great and Mighty Wonder, Torches, In Dulce Jubilo. and as Advent progressed that magical verse anthem by Orlando Gibbons This is  the Record of John.
 
I was just eleven when Dr. B said, as we opened the music folder for the morning rehearsal, 'St Clair, Can you do this for us please?' Not so much a question as a command; you didn't say no to Dr. B. The introduction was well underway before I grasped it was to be me. How I stumbled through it that first time I don't know. I could never hear this piece without tears welling or indeed falling. ' Look Mog is getting tearful' said Richards the head chorister, and the little boys would snigger. And I would blush:  through my freckles to the roots of my auburn gold hair. Did nobody understand what this music did to me, what it said and expressed? At eleven I think I had began to know, and later when I heard it in Kings Chapel, and then conducted it variously to those bemused American students, listened to my gramophone recording, its affect always, always the same. I was experiencing truly what Vikram Seth has called an equal music, something so entirely right, a true conjunction of words and music, a coming together beyond anything as a composer I could ever imagine, a yardstick life-long; it became an acid test of sensitivity to my love of music and has been passed only four times by serious friends and lovers. To know me you must know and feel this music . . .
 
And so on the second Sunday of Advent at Evensong I sang this jewel, this precious flower of music's art. The candles flickered in Her Majesty's chapel and we stood for the anthem. The chamber ***** began its short introduction already weaving together the four-part texture - and then the first solo statement. This is the record of John when the Jews sent priest and Levites from Jerusalem . . . and then the tears fell and the music swam in front of me as though glazed in the candlelight.
 
Who art thou then? And he confessed and denied not, and said plainly, 'I am not the Christ'.
 
Oh that melisma on the 'I', that written out ornament, so emphatic, and expressing this truth with innocent authority. I sang it then as I hear it now. Nobody had to demonstrate and say 'Don't let it flow, let each note be separate, exact, purposeful'. So it was and ever shall be, Amen.
 
And they asked him, What art thou then? (Art thou Elias? x 2). And he said I am not. ( Art thou the prophet? x 2) And he said I am not.
 
The verse anthem is such a peculiar phenomenon of the English Reformation. Devised it is said to allow the hard-pressed choirmaster to train the main body of his singers in a short response, the soloist singing the hardest and most expressive music on his own: the verse. It is also so well suited to the English choral tradition with its Cantores and Decani ordering of voices. I was always a ‘Can’, even later when I joined the back row as a tenor.
 
Then they said unto him, What art thou? That we may give an answer unto them that sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? And he said I am the voice of him that cryeth in the wilderness. Make straight the way if the Lord.
 
And so I wonder still about the place of this text in the liturgy of Advent and why, cloaked in Gibbons’ music, it has remained affecting and necessary. And who is John? a prophet of the desert, the son of Elizabeth to whom Mary went to share the news of her pregnancy and whose own son quickened in her womb as she heard of her cousin Elizabeth's own miracle - a childless woman beyond childbearing age unexpectedly blessed and whose partner struck dumb for the duration of her confinement. Is it just another piece in the jigsaw of the Christmas story in which prophecy takes its part?
 
When I was eleven I thought to 'cry in the wilderness' meant exactly that - tears in a desert place. I learnt later that this was a man who stood apart, was different, a hippie dressed in the untreated skins of wild beasts, who lived amongst those who sought the wild places to mourn, to place themselves in a kind of quarantine after illness or bereavement, who then became wise, and who cried.
 
Such meditations seem appropriate to the season when there is so often the necessity of travel, much waiting about, the bearing down of the bleakness of winter time, though strung about with moments of delicious warmth when coming in from the cold as with the chair by the library fire I craved as a chorister to escape blissfully into fictioned lives and exotic places.
 
How these things touch us vividly throughout our lives; as we watch and wait and listen.

i treat you like an old favorite record

i turned on the radio
and heard a poppy song
it was easy for it to interest me
and easier for me to end up switching the station

my friend brought me to an opera
i could still hear the perfection flowing
and shivers growing inside me
like mushrooms on humid lands

but you are an old loved record
that never leaves the turntable
with scratches carved into you
after spins for the lonely soul

Sunday morning, pit-pit patter on my window panes
hot beverage, blurred vision
old gramophone playing in the next room.
Oh, how she loves music!

40 years of marriage, her hair still smell like fresh jasmine
broken glasses, shallow pockets.
Her radiant smile, wet hair
I sniff the jasmine in the air around.

Love marriage, college affair
Love letters, and library meetings.
old days, fresh memories.
She peers out from behind the door.

Her wrinkled skin, mine too.
Her lips part as she hums along to
old gramophone playing in the next room.
Oh, how she loves music!

I am compelled

I do not even obliged to
In my mind I would keep the name as mıh
Eyes grow is growing
I do not know mecburum
You know me the heat.

Preparing trees to fall
Does this city is the old Istanbul
In the dark clouds are parts
One side of the street lamp is
The smell of rain on pavement
I am obliged not you.

Sometimes love is fearful dismally
People are tired all of a sudden one evening later
Prisoners to live in the razor's edge
Sometimes it will break your hands passion
How many lives are removed from a living
What if you knock the door sometimes
Humming in the back of the misery of loneliness

Fatih in a poor playing gramophone
From ancient times to play a Friday
I stop and listen to sound at the beginning of the corner
Should I bring unused gök
Week disaggregated data is available
How do I go What if I keep
I am obliged not you.

Maybe June or mottled blue boy
Ah, you do not know who does not know
Eyes hijack freighter is a desert
Maybe you get on the plane in Yesilkoy
Horripilation is all wet
Maybe you're blind, are in rural precipitancy
Wind will bring bad hair

What a time to live if you think
These wolves have perhaps mess
But without dirtying our hands Ayıpsız
What a time to live if you think
Susan would also start with the name
Order to move inside of the secret sea
No other kind will not be
I am obliged to you never know.




Attila İlhan

Rehashing the rare
Out with the new,
In with the old.
She's always had a thing
For the things that exude
A quirkiness and a bucolic charm
The smell of old books
The black and the white
Good ol' Chaplin, James Dean
And the Sound of Music
The Beatles, a tape recorder
High-waisted pants
And the gramophone
And a rustic old bar
With a gruff bartender
Who's off his rocker
But he'll double up as your therapist
And for the boy with the dark brown eyes
Who looks across the bar at her.
And smiles.
It's all black and white again
Except this time,
It isn't her favourite Casablanca scene
But a white screen
And a thousand particles
Microcosmic
A milieu of
Unfathomable numbers float
Through the atmosphere
Connecting her to him.
And she doesn't want that.
She's always had a thing for the old,
But he makes her doubt that.

Tea stains on the table and
a wafer on the floor,
the balcony door is open,
what do I live here for?

No one cleans except for me,
to put it succinctly,
and.
In the sink a lonely cup
looks up accusingly.

I couldn't sleep tonight,
I had a song stuck in my mouth. I licked
my lips and let it out slow and low, slurring
the words that only you'd know, a dizzy
resonance in Morse for you,
for whomever,
for nothing.

I must be speaking from the dark.
From the static-muffled space in my mind
where the late-night humming is restless, where
the blurry parts of you throb against
my sinews, 'till  I succumb, let lax
my lips and let you out;

I couldn't sleep tonight,
or any stifled night like this,
You: mulled, heady, sonorant at my tongue.

Me: flushed, spinning,
amplified.

you see, i came to england when i was eight years old, and i still retain the primitive early structuring of being born in poland, e.g. i identify my father from the ages of 4 to 8 as a voice on a telephone and the odd package of gifts, my mother between the age of 6 to 8 as a mad doberman a parting gift... and the fact that i can't read philosophy books in english but in polish, whereby i translate what i read into english... the english language is terrible at expressing itself philosophically, too much shrapnel (i.e. too many little words in between graffiti like usage of the bigger words: conjunctions, prepositions, articles over-burden such catchphrases like zeitgeist, global capitalism etc.), i read poetry and fiction in english, but philosophy i read in polish; and i do speak four languages in that i can speak posh anti-essex-accent english, speak a polish accentuation of english, speak plain polish and speak pleb village-idiot polish; polish immigrants are overweight to soar like canadian geese introduced into england because of the trill of the r (mind you, introducing grey squirrels mirrored the seemingly perpetual overcast of the english weather) - indeed, the english use of the letter r is tongue-numbing-curl - instead of trilling the r the english curl it like an apprehensive turtle / hedgehog - and too the oddity of the h, hatch hay-puck-itch hey-a-haystack? two of the many more linguistic anomalies in the english tongue included.*

that's the problem i have integrating
into a post-colonial multicultural
society, i know i should celebrate
the english defence of poland should
a war with germany take place,
the short lived re-emergence of poland
quickly gulped up by the joint
expedition of **** german and soviet russia,
the exported government of poland
to london, the plight of polish and english
pilots over the skies of england in
the battle of britain, i should technically
be experiencing a great assimilation sensation,
but multiculturalism has really complicated
things, esp. when you turn on the radio
a first hear things about the emergence of
recorded sound, the gramophone,
the iconic jack terrier before the machine
and a very old acronym of music outlets:
h.m.v. (his master's voice),
or that in poland - knowing of the mass emigration
of poles to england the tabloid newspaper
the sun is cited with the highest credibility
(never mind the toned down **** on page 3
of that newspaper, which prompted *******
to do likewise) - currently i'm sifting through
the power broker pages of the newspaper
the times, i.e. the editorial pages, just
after the opinion pages... you see, the editorial
pages are almost anonymous, they're filled
with a major investment, high profile
people (usually professors and sirs and what not)
seeking attention of the editor, beginning with
something like: sir, at a time when european
challenges of security... and then indeed about
three articles of unchallenged dialectics by
the editor himself, e.g. (monday march 7 2016)
headlines: an autocrat in ankara; plan obsolescence;
cripes! (https://goo.gl/EzCbDO),
as i said, i find it overbearing to integrate into
english society, it's paradoxical actually,
so i have to integrate (tick), speak the tongue (tick),
become eloquent and gentlemanly (tick)...
but i can't acquire the history (a prime social
relation coordinate), and i certainly can't feel
pride... unlike those from the colonies integrating
and feeding this strange strange national pride
of identifying england as if by them originally
possessed; maybe three years in scotland fed
my alienation, i really did love mingling with
the scots, the only place on these islands where
the presence of the irish is limited by that
funny existential curiosity of a sikh speaking
a wee trill here, a wee trill there...
maybe that's it... because, you see, the oddity
comes after hearing the story of rash behari bose,
the one who was the shadow of peaceful gandhi...
who spoke like adolf ****** who actually
collaborated with ****** to no avail, who
then collaborated with the japanese -
how am i to assimilate into english society if english
society is a barren wasteland where newton
and michael faraday used to roam?
i'm just too bewildered in this sense of integrating
like a prerequisite of becoming a chameleon -
it's nauseating just to think of it - all this
psychological complexity to simply use a tongue
that's favoured for commerce and political
stagnation into the iron stage of a status quo
of russian and chinese oligarchs creating
a mortgage inflation from their power-source
that's london? this immediate sense of what used
to be mass propaganda has turned into
mass political correctness, same ****, different cover,
i really don't know how to integrate fully,
esp. with faked results that disallow falsification
because they're already false in that would-be
"science" of psychology which is just a crippled
humanism... how can you be a serious psychologist
when you focus on the interchange of the invading
barbarian word self and then become pompous
with so many theorisations of a single sound, ego?
after all we're, in the majority using the sound self
as an affirmative of 'i'm here, yes, check the utility
manual of my spine moving my fingers typing,
no descartes wasn't trying to prove he existed,
don't be stupid, what, because such a proof is
not compatible with you after his death proves
he was trying to prove himself a recipient? i too
buckle on the nonsense of some people, even my own
is worth a rusty door hinge and doorknob.'
and poetry will always remain the safeguard medium
of abstracting, poetry isn't a happy science as one
man suggested dying at the dawn of the 20th century...
poetry's eager spontaneity makes it an abstracting science,
there's no point arguing truth, in that abstraction is
required to cite a momentary pigmentation of
the everyday grey realism with a poem.

I don't know the rules. If I go looking
for grace and find it, what will grace

be but penance for my past, a silver
sinew-thread wrapping 'round old
            wrongs, gray hair for the
                        fickle.

I've naught but want for sweet release
from this history. The bombs ignored,
            repeating in gramophone static
                        dripping stiff

as wet bamboo. I remember someone
once sang here, once strung together

chords so sweet they rang like peace-
bells beneath cloudless sky. They've
            rang the bell upon my jaw and
                        done no wrong.

It's not so much unlike one's curiously
cold reception at a funeral. The cold
            and rain ****** at the skin
                        during graveside hymnal.

As long as the earth continues
its stony breathing I will breathe.

That which I cannot help but do.
Stuck between boulders, I sing.

When it stops, I will shatter back
into gravity. Into quartz.

Let me humbly introduce to you Lee,
A Mortal servant with much to see,
Yes that's right, Mr.Hegsten knew it all:
The risk of rising before the fall;
How the Light's mask brought a yawn,
One to applaud for prior to dawn.

The six o'clock spring P.M, jolly celebration for a true king
But who of course? None other than Lee's most desired, Lapwing.
Seph waves his wand, the desk beneath him trembles a victory
The shadow of his picture, believes it is contradictory,
To the one lost love, to the frozen life of long ago...
But the mid hour does not recall his callous beau.
Because she now remains, as his traitor, his foe.

The feathers flitter and the sound escapes,
And in the distance, you could see the shapes
Of the Wind turning and the leaves changing,
Leist' face and the lines nearly aging,
From deep-rooted stubborness, no one could persuay
Gehen to attend his dreams, and leave the light of day.

"Y. Step away from that baton and come give me your hand.
We can spend the day inside, sure it's small and crammed,
but we have each other, look, we can turn on the gramophone
and dance alone in my living room, all without a chaperone!"
The words still whisper in the birds narrow wind,
but each time reaching Kejodin's ear, very much thinned.

"But I have gotten off track", says the mighty Redshank,
as she encircles the swelling of the pure white cloudbanks.
Lee lets down his pen, and closes his well-rehearsed book,
The notes firmly pressed in Hegston's shiny round hook.
"Do not answer to the call of a yawn,
Each downward head is a moment gone!
Without the Moon's curse, our lives-doubled
and our immortality, is left almost untroubled!"
With three taps on his music stand,
Commencement for the falling sand.

Thunder in the air-- no wait, it's a brass bark
Opening lines performed by most esteemed: Skylark.
The audience, is one in total behind Lieg Stehen's back
She stands behind him, silent in the harmonious black.
The last Soprano sounds a dark whistle through a rusty pipe,
Stehen motions the break of silence from gusty Madame Snipe.
With an inviting warm brown eye, Lieg beckons the timpani
With one echoing stroke, he concludes time-defying Sephany.

"It was you, you the conductor,
You stood between two crowds,
And you chose one to impress the other.
But now you've seen the clouds,
Is there anything left to discover?
Except the cloth of your shrouds?
These notes cannot warmly cover."  

"I've lived far longer than you,
Many an itcus I've come to cue,
My heart and mind remains stronger
No one can say that they have lived longer,
I'm sorry Tes, but I've prospered over you
the happy one loved was not worth the Coo
Over the words that to you were Adieu.
I've lived with half a soul and it was right,
Because unlike you, life has taught me to fight."

Madame Lenhige Stood over Y.'s spirit,
and she grew aware to openly fear it,
because Mr.Kejodin left behind his key,
the only item he swears set him free,
She knew he had not left her forever,
because you see, it did not matter, where ever
though the night did not solve, his child's mother
she and him belonged solely to one another.

Cloudy skies
Heavy downpour
Cold breeze
Swaying trees
Misty window panes
Traffic lights
Hooting cars
Gushing gutters
Drenched trench coats
Soggy feet
Colourful umbrellas
Crowded shelters
Empty side walks

The city skips a few hearbeats
And comes to a stand still
Soon as the pounding rain stops
Everything returns to normalcy

But rainy days call for
Steaming cups
Slouchy sweaters
Fluffy blankets
Snuggles
Cuddles
Novels
Notebooks
Gramophone tunes in the background
Enjoying a little piece of heaven
While the day is washed off
Setting stage for a clean fresh start
©Sonia Ettyang

The many voices of the evening

                   gramophone the sky voice the cell phone
                   the tablet  the notebook, that monotone
                   observer of mutations purveyor of maladies
                   the persistence of memories, pale pink light sink

burning in the fires lighting up the skies

                   an old pang, smitten clang, the pain balm
                   mug-life, pen-knife, kettle-strife, all the sheaves
                   them echo-songs that haunt the drill-wells
                   that are cut wounded and wear fetching

chants, to an yearning oblation

                  bay leaf, curry leaf, yes, them colander coriander
                  there's a rhyme of charlies, looping from
                  our holy wars to now our holy hours with
                  the ombudsman, the omniman, the only God

who used to thunder for the ****

                 old Zeus, the Lord of Betelgeuse, him who we
                 called dead, exhumation, exculpation, exaltation
                 an ancient loneliness that calls from the nether
                 depths, now science, now freedom, now pagan.

We're antique and aware of it,
old fashioned and they stare a bit, but that's a part of the charm, a penny farthing to ride on with gaiters to tie on, keeping the spats nice and clean.

Home for some tiffin and the lady's been shopping down at Macy's for doilies, thank god it wasn't Tiffanys for diamonds, the wireless set goes off and the gramophone's switched on, a 78 Bakelite revolves in the room where the mood's right for romance.

We dance modernistic, the Cha cha's futuristic, they'll never do better than this
then we kiss and say goodnight, in separate beds we sleep so tight and a strip of carpet between them, keeping things nice and clean, men,
you know what I mean.

thus do learn how to tolerate
the blow of wings
of the most inflammable flesh

after the successful sacrifice of the student-hostel
jumping into the peacock-foams
how dangerously is changing the total travel-route of the nail-polish

in the high tide of the coconut-kernel
that conquers the world
today the water-pigeon gets pain

only by the flute made of palm-leaf
can’t be written the pleasure-trip in boat
of the injured-knee night-queen that is deposited heavily
on the collar of the village-moonlight

even-then the gramophone would be playing on
even-then the courageous pheasant would proceed further
to throw towards the squirrel a dinner-sleep

then all the daughters in disguise of birds certainly
may come out from within the salted mosquito-net
burning open-ground in their  eyes

even after  
the small boats of the fig leaves                      
would slip from the chorus song
of the roses

then they are to be pulled forward to the river-bed
of the late afternoon

to make them understand again

that such Xerox-centre which can ignore its metallic-birth
does not grow even now  on either side of this muddy road

so look at to see how the  epenthesis
of the screwpine-leaf withdraws her beak from the old dome

and pours
all new mathematics

into the compact-disc stitched with the back of the sea-tortoise

if that’s not real
how in the left and right
such evil-company of the oxygen would creep

if the next part of this commentary
resumes from the umbilicus cavity of the x-mass
would the blood-sugar of the water-plankton be rising continuously

look there again
the feather of colour that is in her adolescence  
touches the cold magnet of her gamut
to disperse the cherry orchards

now if the doors of this brown triangle be got open

you can see on the screen one by one
the projection of the apex-points of the red-palash

and in the night-texture of the kathakali-kathak
they are supplying continuously  
small sun-shines in poly-packs

High on a hill our grandparent’s home stood,

Its majesty in stone cast a haunted look,

Light glimmered from a paraffin lamp,

Whilst outside it snowed on the geese,

As they ran to their shelter,

And the cows mooed on the fields above,

And the goats cried in the barn.

Mother pumped water from the well,

We ran around collecting eggs,

Granddad showed me how to milk a goat.

In the evenings we gathered in the kitchen,

The fire roared in the range,

Granddad sat in his big chair,

He burned anything just to keep warm,

We thought it very strange.

Mother worked at the big white sink,

Knitted squares hung from a line,

We made tiny plasticine dolls,

They slept in plasticine beds,

We drank Dandelion and Burdock,

Ginger pop and Sarsaparilla,

It came in enormous stone bottles,

Dad got it every week from a man at the door.

Most of the rooms were huge, bleak and bare,

A room we called the playroom,

Was carpeted with goat skins,

There were jars of melted metal,

Who knows why?

We were told it was grandma’s jewelry,

Melted to stop the Germans getting it in the war,

In the long hall there was a dressing up chest,

We loved to look inside.

The bathroom was a scary place,

There was a lion head toilet and a bath with lions feet,

At night we went upstairs with a candle for light,

We cuddled together to keep warm,

One night we saw fairies at the window.

Our aunty had a gramophone,

Records all scattered around,

We had to be careful where we trod,

She loved Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby,

We didn’t understand.

Our uncle slept on the top floor,

In a huge brass bed,

One day I took him a cup of tea,

We were not normally allowed up there,

He fixed broken cars they were all everywhere.

He played late in the barn with his girlfriend.

My grandmother slept downstairs,

She always was very ill,

Wrapped in bed in a pink bed shawl,

We got her water from the spring,

To cure her, but she died.

Host maybe youre listening
Tapping at a bridge bone, teleport fonhom
I probably know it but...
Like children asking a question about a complicated thing
Simplified complicated things
Till they didnt mean nothing like they had,
When the gramophone, gammaray guts were still cramed in it

stuck in a loop
of i love you
a repeat song
playing for an empty room

is it you
or is it just the gramophone

you place me on your shelf
right next to all the rest,
a commodity priced according
to which and whom are best.
you shove me to the back
so others may not see
the person who would sit
and reclaim you piece by piece.
I am a bitterness unwavered by the winds
I am an ice storm unstoppable in its onslaught
I am a tornado festering on the countryside
You are a man made up of
turned shoulders and lowered eyes,
a man who would much rather store things
than to see them in use.
Your fingers may peruse
the cylinders of my being,
it may be graced by
the loveliness of your cold touch.
However it is fleeting,
and I grow cold from disuse.
I am the item on your shelf
I am the mirror casually ignored
I am the gramophone screaming its discordant hymn
I am the void rearing its sickening maw,
waiting and watching for my prey
to wander helplessly into my gaping esophagus
I am the bat wing, leathery and clinging
to the cartilage of the world.
I am the item on the shelf,
high above the world,
looking down onto the ants
who scurry and shimmy to try to ascend.
They will not ascend
because God didn't make ants in order to fly.

CARELESS LOVE SEQUENCE

* * * 1

HE CAN DO HIS OWN ****** IRONING

She sits feet up
(at last)

with a strong cup of tea
(the way she likes it)

he and his weak tea
( pisswater she’d call it )

she’s ignoring him
because he’s ignoring her

(he can’t say she didn’t
call him)

she’ll be annoyed if
he’s forgotten to bring

her washing in
now it’s raining

(he can do his own ****** ironing)

always tinkering with something
in that old shed of his

(just like his father)

probably never even saw
the sunset she wanted him to see

how many times
did she have to call him

always a puncture to be repaired
or a neighbour’s radio

that needed to be
mended

“Give it to Jim...”
people’d say
“...he’ll fix it! ”

as if he were an old adage
or proverb or whatchmacallit

too vain to wear
his glasses

his eyes almost closed
her laughing at him…watching him struggle

half way
through the ads

she falls asleep
mouth open snoring.

Jim only looks like
he’s sleeping

a neighbour’s dog
finding him

in the early hours of
the morning

his hackles
rising.

* * 2

YOUR NAME UPON MY LIPS…YOUR NAME UPON MY LIPS.

The heart attack
a moon

pierced
by the silhouette of the hill

pain a wolf
howling your name

as each heartbeat
a naked fleeting footstep

running through wet grass
frantic to reach

the lovely lady who laughs

at the stupidness of
your question:

“My name is Death
...why do you ask? ”

Your own name
in a slightly foreign accent
lingers about her lips

vanishes
in a kiss.

* * 3

HE GOT THE OLD GRAMOPHONE TO WORK AFTER ALL

The heart attack
carelessly yawns

unimpressed with
the beautiful sunset

an automatic sprinkler
watering the lawn

the grass wet against his face
as he clutches the earth

trying to hang on

as if the Laws of Gravity
have been reversed

the tic-tic-tic
of the automatic system

lost every now & then
in a dog’s bark

water droplets
staining his skin

like washing on a line
that somebody’s forgotten

to bring in
out of the rain

blue and yellow pegs
lie scattered on the ground

a favourite blouse
that horrid lurid Mexican shirt

run around
together

before deciding to elope
with the breeze

an old fashioned
gramophone

playing: “Careless love
...oh careless love! ”

the glisten of the shellac

the music stuck
in a groove

repeats itself
repeats itself

until it
winds down

his wife’s voice
searching for him

room by room

“Oh, where’s that man
when you want him? ”

“Jim...Jim! ”

her voice echoing
at the end of Summer

a skein of birds
moving as one

wheel across the sky
first one way and then the other

taking her breath away

Jim’s favourite programme
is about to come on

the night listens
to her calling him.

This Boyhood’s End
was mine too, but
through its music’s dance,
not just Hudson’s farewell to a natural world
of exotic flowers and flocks of birds
on the great plains of the pampas.

In Tippett’s suite of songs I first found
that ecstasy of word-rhythm wedded
to melodic contour held in place
by a singer’s voice, and a pianist’s touch
of harmony grafted from a play of parts.

Sitting on my bedroom floor
ear close to the gramophone,
thirteen and already enamored,
I listened over and again to this cantata
that has for so long held the key
to the very door of music . . .

Music may be a notion like ‘God’ or ‘love’.
Everyone identifies with it,
but it is composers who live to fathom
its depths and sound out its mystery.

I dreamt once that I danced with you.

Fox trot,
White dress,
Dim lit room.

I looked more like my grandmother than myself
But you just looked a better version of you.

No needle marks in sight.

You told me you liked us this way,
No fighting,
Everything clear, reality perfectly defined.

No confusion, nothing bad,

Just us, a gramophone, love,

And just when I don't need it most,

An alarm clock to wake me up.

And the sound is no dancing tune. It is

As harsh and loud
And crass
As the you who stirs beside me,

As unromantic as a broken record.

We in the attic blanketed with dust
Waiting stiffly until The Beaumont's leave,
Us portraits and mannequins stuck like rust
Wearing fluffy clothes the butler would weave.

They leave, we awaken and run downstairs
To see the table full of wine and mess
We gather around, the gramophone blares
The butler screams, that old Anderson Wes

He looked as though he never saw a feast
Ran stupidly shaking like a drunk man
'Til the portrait of Paul said to the beast,
"You're waking the neighbors, here have some flan!"

Eyes bulging, eyes fuming old Wes breaks down
His allergy got the very best of him
Rolling on the floor covered in a frown
We watched and listened his life on a limb.

"He ruined the party!" cried Ms. LeBoot,
We were in uproar, covered in white noise
But then stood Mr. Crowser in his suit
Headless, but strong with a booming tight voice.

He said, "We shall not let his death be vain,
As butler Wes would see this to the end
Now let us dine and let us feast through pain
And unveil this dust, with drink it will mend!"

The sky is a giant gramophone of the valley flowers.
from a brooding repertoire of pin-disks
singing to me in the hymns rumbling out song

This late dusk, I am the last sheep that
got lost from the herd, now heading across the pass
in the hope of finding my home.

All my life is on trial now. You are all the people
here and I am in the dock. All that I have been
brings me here. I see amused eyes, and eyes
of suspicion. I know them eyes, these are your eyes
these are your people, and I know you.
To learn our language? I see dispersal, dismissal.
trying, to learn your language. twirling in the men.
I see disinterest. Girl from the high country
I see your moustache don't learn languages no more.
I see laughter, Yes that is what I have been

Oh my holy heavens, that I see home in those eyes.
And I said, hallelujah. at the edges painted red.
have come misty-eyed And they said, come with us.

There is a hope for home. A hearth here, not on flat.
On a *****, I have to found what I could a fire there.
Now I be over and laughter, all my hopes Moist corners
ancient tongues speaking to my soul. from this far land
come alive in tending to the home, embers break
a Cossack girl where you and the children live.
The rainbow carries, moments of reflections unlocking  
to those distant shores  and tears like mist and rain.

Yochana
sits beside
Angela
her best friend

Miss G plays
Beethoven
on the old
gramophone
piano piece
sonata

Yochana
likes this one
the music
stirs her up
conjures up
images
desires

Angela
looks behind
at the back
of the class

she sees them
the two boys
sitting bored
eyeing her

Rowland pokes
out his tongue
but Benny
has that smile
that hair quiff

how is she
he lip talks
Yochana?

she turns back
to the front

he's looking
she informs
Yochana
that Benny

I don't care
about him
Yochana
says softly
(not wanting
to disturb
Beethoven)

but she does
she senses
his hazel
eyes touching
her body

bringing out
hot flushes
distracts her
emotions
from music

Beethoven
(poor Ludwig)
pushed aside

and she feels
Benny’s eyes
hazel warm
look inside.

My apartment once was beautiful; hard woods and fine antiques.
Then civil war came to Aleppo and the fight was in our streets.
A improvised explosive shattered every pane of glass.
Hot metal and the fog of war obliterate my past.
I stand in the ruins of what was once our home.
My family has been scattered; I am frightened and alone.
I search about for some semblance of shattered civility.
A Deutsche gramophone recording has survived along with me.
My television has been shattered; I have no working phone.
Just a working turntable and I listen, all alone,
To the sweet strains of a chamber piece
That was written by Chopin.
I enjoy this scrap of harmony
in a  City of the dammed.