A Red House Over Yonder
Say it's Jimi's hymn
To a Swedish house,
A wooden shack
Painted Falun red.
He never saw his baby boy,
His Swedish son,
James Daniel
Sundqvist.
James and Eva,
His "goddess from Asgård",
Just a young girl who cared;
They might have saved him.
He searched the map
But couldn’t find it –
Asgård -
Or the rainbow bridge.
I hear you, Charlie,
I dig that tune –
The one in praise of Swedish schnapps.
You had a taste for it,
Much else besides.
It just about finished you off, my friend.
Descending chords, advanced cirrhosis;
It was all downhill
From the time of your tour,
And that August session
Stoned on Swedish blues.
Carrying the torch for Billie
There's a song by Billie Holiday -
About her love for 'Jim´:
I half-pretend it's meant for me,
I half-wish I'd been him.
The Killer, Prehaps (sic)
I'd give him my vote
As the King of Rock:
Not, prehaps, for President.
The Killer
A career in cultural diplomacy.
Met a lot of concert pianists: regular recitals.
Nothing against them: decent people, played good piah-no.
But I must admit
I'm a rocker at heart.
Prefer boogie-woogie blasting out,
Jerry Lee thumping the keyboard,
Pumping the pianner with fingers, fists, elbows, feet,
Humping it, jumping on top of it too,
Kicking the piano stool
Across the quaking stage,
Standing there shaking and stabbing the keys.
I loved it then, a quarter of a century ago;
I love it now; it's the music of my age.
When nobody's around,
I still try to pick out a basic twelve-bar boogie,
Pound away like the Louisiana "Welshman" on the Steinway concert grand.
I'm good at the glissandi. Nothing else.
The Killer began at eight. For me at forty it's getting late.
Rewrite the syllabus for Young Beginners !
Let Great Balls of Fire, the Lewis way,
Become their Grade One Study piece:
Fortissimo; with feeling.
January 1984.
First Poem ? (November 1961)
Hypocritical political
Leaders. Breeders
Of contempt, exempt
From humanity;
Filled with insane
And empty vanity.
Only seeking in reality,
Power, fame and private gain.
The Czech National Poet, May 1st, 1987
(For Hugh Hamilton McGoverne, translator of 'Maj' and instigator of readings in both Czech and English at the statue of Macha in Prague, 1946-1949)
By the statue of Macha
Czech lovers were standing,
Sharing in silence soft moments of twilight,
Late in the evening, the first day of May.
Young couples, old couples,
Offering flowers and laying their love-wreaths,
Dandelion necklaces, daisy-chain rings,
Adorning their poet on Prague's Petrin Hill.
The blossoming trees wooed all the lovers,
The fragrant flowers breathed moist sweetness at dusk.
Like an altar of love, the disciples adoring,
Applauding their poet for the language he used:
"Kvetouci strom lhal lasky zel".
Ztraceny Ray (Riot Police by the Statue of Jungmann)
Let it stand -
The statue of this Joseph !
He knew what was meant
By paradise lost.
Let's be proud of our office
In Jungmannova Street,
Though British books have been long suppressed.
Just repeat after him,
Repeat after John:
"What though the field is lost ?
All is not lost......."
"Cot', ze pole ztraceno ?
po vsem veta neni......"
Josef Jungmann, defiant Czech,
By translating John Milton revived his own tongue;
In spite of the Austrian censors' office,
In spite of censors still to come:
Courage; th' unconquerable will !
The Singer Who Defected
The singer who defected
Is listened to in secret.
His records, seized and banned,
Are still played throughout the land,
Sometimes loudly through a window,
For the police are far too slow -
And they love his music too-
He only did what they dream to do:
And although he's gone abroad,
His voice can still be heard.
They can't reprint the catalogues
(That's not within the Plan)
So his name can still be found
Though the records have all been burned
(Or, more probably, recycled,
Like all the dollars he has earned).
He is quite a happy man.
He, at least, is loved.
Prague, August 1988.
PODPIS +
The Henry Moore is well located
Within the grounds of Kenwood House:
An imposing sculpture, a work of ages,
But soon we mark the dribbling doodles
Trickle down the sculpture's base
(At two corners sniffing noses,
At two corners lifted legs).
The dogs approach it more than people,
For our gaze is drawn, distracted,
By the random art and patterns
Of four renewed and subtly varied
Rivulets of canine piss.
These signatures are surely statements,
Messages for Man to read
About aspiration v. perception,
And the interface of Art and Space.
+ Podpis : an apt Czech word, meaning 'signature' (literal meaning, the writing beneath)
St Wite and the Writer: Strange Pilgrimage
If Markov had had
The luck of Havel,
I wouldn't be here
In this Dorset churchyard
In Whitchurch Canonicorum,
Sensing that I'm not alone
Searching for a stranger's gravestone,
For the writer they murdered on Waterloo Bridge,
Who died for a Europe
Reunited, freed,
In seventy-eight, not eighty-nine.
I say thanks to the Saint,
St. Wite, in her shrine.
Whitchurch Canonicorum,
May Day Bank Holiday, 1992.
In Memoriam Georgi Ivanov Markov, born Sofia, Bulgaria 1.3.1929, died London, England, 11.9.1978.
SMRT
I heard my own death rattle
A moment ago.
I tried to do battle
But I was too slow.
This time it's a cough.
Already enough.
On Leave After an Illness
(At Forty-Five Degrees)
Gale-force winds on Maiden Castle,
My lungs, restored, blow full again.
Up and down the ancient ramparts
Running, falling, with my son; then
Leaning back against the wind -
Invaders of the hill-fort earthworks,
The grass swept wave-wild like our hair.
Dorchester spread out below us.
Thank God it's Hardy here, not Kafka.
On leave from Prague and airless office -
Breathing deeply, inhaling Dorset,
The old tribal force and fortress-free.
Gutenberg's First Forty
(after a visit to the National Museum, Prague)
Forty printed parchment Bibles:
A giant step for Man.
For forty Bibles
Ten thousand sheep.
Does God count them in His sleep ?
Wandjina
Mamadai and Wanalirri
Where wandjina shelter.
The god-like face on rock and cave,
Mouthless image of creator.
Round eyes on bark, on canvas, slate:-
Make the rains come soon, come late.
To Harry Wedge, On a Bark by Mithinarri
"You don't know nothing about us."
That's true, Harry, I admit it.
I'm trying. It's the title of your work I bought.
Have you ever been to Arnhem Land ?
I can't tell an ancestral file snake
From a Rainbow Serpent or sacred olive python.
Is that bäpi or the wititj totem ?
I've never been to Garrimala
In Galpu Country, to which this bark
Alludes, according to my catalogue.
But I can praise, appreciate.
I'll learn to say - when I'm no longer in the dark-
"Him bin do alright that bark".
Red Hands Cave
Just past
The last
Suburban bungalow,
Where the bush
Begins.
Ochre hand-prints.
Rock incisions.
The only hints
Of ancient visions.
Evidence of
Genocisions.
Reflecting, Unreflecting
When I first arrived in Australia
I liked the Ripolin enamels,
The slick metallic sheen,
The shiny lacquer housepaints
Of Nolan's naive Kellys.
I wrote to him
Before he died.
Of course, he couldn't answer.
Now that I'm about to leave
I like the mute matt ochres
Of Queenie and of Rover.
Which is the real Australia ?
The Avant-Gardes from Britain
Dampier,
Parkinson,
The Port Jackson painter.
Lycett, Martens, Earle and Glover.
Dorchester's Tom Roberts.
Fairweather from Scotland.
Why go any further ?
They depicted and painted Australia.
Images forever new and true.
The Pommy cutting-edge, mate,
All part of the great tradition.
New Year's Eve, 1996
O, brave white horses !
Monday morning
Got a message -
"Gone to Bondi,
Back on Sunday.
If you see me
From the beach,
Be on my surf-board,
Out of reach.
Gone to Bondi,
Out of reach."
Bondi, Bondi,
Bondi beach.
O, fierce white horses,
Bondi Beach.
5.6.1994
Dampier's Landfalls in New Holland
1688
They beat the drum
To scare the Bardi
Who ran away
Crying "Gurry,Gurry."
1699
They fired a gun
To scare the Djawi
Who, unimpressed,
Cried "Pooh, pooh. pooh."
A native shot,
A sailor wounded.
Three hundred years !
Still no-one knows
How to heal the wounds.
How to translate
"Gurry, Gurry ?"
To repulse the Brits
"Pooh, pooh" won't do.
"Miserable brutes!"
The Bardi shouted.
Port Arthur: Island of the Dead
The first two stones we're shown
When we've been transported
To the Island of the Dead-
They stand alone on the lower ground-
Commemorate two convicts
Who had creative flair.
From Poole in Dorset,
Edward Spicer,
Who penned his moving epitaph,
Soon to disappear,
By erosion of the sandstone face;
Henry Savery,
A Somerset man,
Inveterate forger -
Remembered by a modern stone,
A forgery itself,
As befits the maker
Of Australia's first novel;
He cut his own throat,
And died of a "stroke".
They are part of a long tradition,
Death in custody, dishonourable graves;
From Rottnest Island
To Tasman Peninsula
The story's much the same.
The stones of soldiers, officers, guards
(Those on higher ground, along with wives and children),
Face North, not East:
Face not the rising sun, but Home.
The convicts' headstones do not mark their graves.
But somewhere hereabouts, a few paces more or less,
Two sons of Somerset and Dorset share
A common plot
Of broadly
British
Earth.
Freedom
("You want a kind of benevolent tyranny, then ?" D.H.Lawrence, Kangaroo, Chapter 6)
Simple really,
As the lady said
In Adelaide,
"In spite of the cruelty to convicts,
The brutality of the military men;
In spite of all that: -
Once they were free
They were free.
From the mean streets of England,
They found freedom -
Freedom to swim in the surf,
To gallop in the bush,
To breathe the fresh air,
To feel the warm sun
And to flourish."
There is still a problem
For deconstruction.
One man's freedom
Is another man's fetters,
And even out here
In the classless society
They have tugged their forelocks
To their "betters" or worse.
Newer Australians
Can blame the first British.
They feel free
Not to share the guilt
In the Museum of Migration,
In the Tasmanian Museum
Of Aboriginal Life.
History can be very (in)convenient.
The captions tell us what to think.
Heave away,
Haul away.
At Salamanca Market, Hobart
A nineties hippy selling badges
"Independence for Australia" -
A yellow cross adorned with stars.
No trace of red or blue.
"And haven't you been independent,
All these many years and more ?"
Asked a puzzled Pommy tourist.
"We're still part of the British Empire, mate,
The Queen of England's still Head of State! "
"I'm sorry you feel you're still enslaved.".
We turned our back on Chip-On-The-Shoulder,
With his Southern Cross T-Shirt, his Eureka Flag badge.
We looked at all the antique stalls,
Loaded with British bric-a-brac
Wondering what should be junked
And what should be saved.....
Cracked Coronation Mug ? Cracked cricket bat ?
Some souvenirs of Royal Tours,
A Georgian commode, a Pre-Raphaelite print ?
We bought some really useless stuff:
Three Edison cylinders, a pianola roll.
"Oh Sydney I love you",
"Australia will be there",
"For Auld Lang Syne",
Some patriotic Great War tunes.
It's the sentiment that counts.
It's a round spinning world
It's a round spinning world we live in
And the legs of the tables
Are not of an equal length;
As we reach out for the cup
It crashes to the floor.
It's a round spinning world we live in
And the eyes of the madmen
Who shall inherit the earth
Look down in despair
Through doors in the sky.
Karel Capek and Mr Esquire, Music Reporter of The Times, 1938
Mr Esquire was sent to Strz
To see Karel Capek, in great haste.
"Come to England ! Why not emigrate ?"
"There's nothing that I want or need,
What I wanted, no longer exists.
It's all been taken from me.
Can you give me back, what's been taken ?
Can you give me back my country ?
Why are you concerned about me now,
When you aren't concerned about my country ?
Greet your Editor, Mr Esquire.
Thank you for coming so far.
It will be hard for you, as it will be for us.
I don't want to hear or see it.
Tell my London friends that I'm sick to death;
And now let's talk of something else...
Goodnight....Dobry vecer...Happy Christmas.
Tak teda sbohem....Mr Esquire."
Translated and adapted from the memoirs of Frantisek Kubka, "Na vlastni oci", Prague 1959.
Karel Capek's Dying Words
On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of his Death on 25 December 1938
"I've been stabbed in the heart
By Chamberlain's umbrella."
Could it be apocryphal,
What Karel Capek is supposed to have said
That Christmas Day, the day he died ?
Let's hope they weren't his dying words.
Did a devilish journalist imagine it all,
Or his brother ,
In Bergen-Belsen ?
(for the Masaryk Sisters, Anna and Herberta, after we watched a film on Munich)
Black Sea: Decomposition -
Searching for loved ones at Kerch, Spring 1942.
Those Russian war photographers
Witnessed the full horror:
Utter devastation, unbearable grief.
Dmitri Baltermants was one
Who photographed the effects of evil
And captured the stench of the squalid truth.
"War, above all, is Grief."
Loved ones lie rotting, splayed out in the mud,
Melting flesh in the melting snow,
While mothers and widows
Wail in their anguish. Unspeakable misery.
The recognised corpse. The putrid child.
Like a scene from the Greek Civil War.
A mass grave is opened, the victims exhumed,
Displayed for identification.
Ancient agony in recent times.
The dark clouds complete the composition.
On the occasion of the opening of the Exhibition,
"150 Years of Photography", Manes Hall, Prague, 1.8.1989.
OATH
I promise that I shall always work in the interests of the
working class and implement the policies of the Communist Party of
Czechoslovakia. I shall be loyal to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and I
shall defend and reinforce its socialist order.
I promise that I shall maintain the constitution of the
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and other laws, rules and regulations.
I shall conscientiously fulfill my duties and orders from my superiors ,
and keep silent about work- affairs.
In line with the principles of Communistic education I
shall instill in pupils love of their socialist homeland. I shall engender
respect for the working class and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. I shall
educate them in the spirit and world-view of Marxism-Leninism. I accept the
obligation to develop internationalist feelings in our youth, and to deepen the
sense of friendship with socialist countries, specifically with the Soviet
Union.
As a Socialist teacher, I am aware that my private life,
attitudes and behaviour and my standing and role in public life have a
significant influence on the behaviour of pupils and in the surrounding
neighbourhood.
In every aspect of my behaviour I shall keep under
consideration the benefit of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and its people.
I am aware of the consequences which will result if I do
not fulfill this oath.
In Prague ………………
(date)
Signature………………….
Name:
Function:
Workplace :
November Cloud
For Peter Butter, On the Occasion of the Edwin Muir Centenary Lecture, Prague
On the way to the Writers' House -
Bohemia in mid-November -
Professor Butter, Muir's biographer,
Sat beside me in the car.
We talked of the poem called The Cloud,
Of what Muir meant, of what he'd seen.
The Dobris Mansion had hardly altered
Since its use had changed in '45
From residence of Reich's Protector
To haven for the harrassed writer,
Reserved these days for the Party-favoured -
Those writers blessed by the Union-Reich,
The loyal-elect, the Committee-chosen,
With three books to their names at least,
Sound author's of the State's persuasion,
Rewarded by a stay at Dobris
With stipend and a stately room;
The privilege of elegance
For the price of a cribbed, diminished soul.
Today the seminar's behind closed doors;
Young eager writers have been assembled,
They're being shown the prizes and rewards
To be won for staying in line and silent.
For the mansion of Comfort is not twenty miles
From the cancerous mines of uranium towns,
Where dissenting scribblers were sent for correction,
Pribram, seat of the Dissidents' Mines.
But we were given the royal treatment,
In Dobris' fine reception halls.
We were glad to see the guest-book there,
The first they'd had, from forty-five.
Aragon and Eluard, their signatures were all too clear: -
Near theirs we found it, Edwin Muir's !
In '46 and '47, Edwin Muir and Willa too.
Who'd come later ? Dylan Thomas, and then the usual crew,
Ritsos and Hikmet, Neruda et al
(Kundera's cursed archangels all,
Whose lyres psalmed death, praised freedom's end).
Who here remembers Edwin Muir ?
Perhaps a man in a cloud of dust ?
We presented two books to the lady custodian,
They were gladly accepted by the Keeper of Keys:-
Muir's poems, and prose of life in Prague.
I wonder what they'll make of them,
The comrades in their graceful suites,
Looking for honest inspiration,
Unguilded themes which suit the times,
But which won't offend the Party chiefs ?
Let them read The Good Town and The Cloud.
As they stroll French Garden or English Park,
Casting backward looks and sideways glances,
As they search for the wire in the antique vase,
In rococo mirror, baroque writing-desk.
Let them remember, as they shred each draft:
The labyrinth begins right here.
Listopad, 1987.
Skeletons of the Past, or A Drunken Man on Burns Night, 1959
(Variations on a Theme by Hugh MacDiarmid)
I wid ha' read ye gin I'd gane tae Scotland,
It was part o' my plan o' research
(Questions o' national identity and art).
I read ye in Prague frae time to time,
Since findin' signed volumes in a Brno library-
Ye had a Scottish friend who aince taught English there.
They say ye visited this lovely country too,
An Ambassador like Sidney, but o' sicna different hue...
Your books can be bocht in Budapest, och aye,
But no' in Prague, nae no' in bonnie Czecho.
Is it tue, ye got drunk on Burns Night, Hugh,
Blin' fou' on his Bicentenary ?
An honoured guest like you !
A comrade in this country.
But it's a God-damn'd lie, Christopher, Chris or Hughie MacHugh -
The system and maist of what's published and written.
How do ye account for that ? Wi' yet another hymn ?
Did they quote ye in factories, in fields and in streets ?
It's nae use preachin' tae the forcibly converted.
There are some elements o' truth, i' spite of the lies,
But the crude propaganda never dies, ne'er dies.
Jamey Macpherson had mair influence here than you; that's true -
D'ye ken that, bhoyo ?
I canna see eternal lightning, Hugh,
Just bones in graves, just bones, wee bones.
Note: Hugh MacDiarmid visited Prague in 1955 as a guest of the Spartakiad, and again in 1959, to give the Bicentennial Lecture celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. He was as much interested in the beer-houses as he was in the political and cultural life of Prague, according to a recently-published History of English Literature.
The Beginning of the Revolution
Haile Selassie Avenue, Addis Ababa, 29 February 1974
Thousands of students marched through the centre of Addis Ababa today, carrying placards and chanting demands for land reform and freedom of expression. Their demands were specific: that the killer of Telahun (the ex-President of the Students' Union) should be brought to court and that the ex-Prime Minister should be hanged, as well as the other Ministers. They did not approve of the new Prime Minister: "Hang the lot of them!" was the theme of their chant. Later military jeeps packed with soldiers of the regular army tried to pacify them. A loud-hailer was used to convey the message that all the armed forces were co-operating with the new Prime Minister and that they approved of the choice. This was the first time that such a demonstration and protest march had taken place in Addis Ababa. Would the army mow them down ? The situation was unpredictable. I filmed the march for Viznews, and noted down some of the slogans and chants::
"Let there be a public voting system !"
"The Ethiopian public will win !"
"The political prisoners must be set free!"
"Bring Endalkachew down from office !"
"Hang Aklilu!"
"The spark of freedom has just been seen!"
"The Army is for the people!"
"Bring back all the money that is in foreign banks!"
"Until the public can vote, let the military take over!"
"Let us have freedom of speech!"
Masenko
In the mud
of the open market
squats a beggar
with a gangrenous leg.
He fingers and bows
his masenko,
playing the tizita tune.
What music he makes
in his squalor;
what tortuous notes he weaves
on his loom of sad laments.
But for all his afflictions and pleading
not all the refrains he invents
will raise him up out of the mud
or pay for a hospital bed.
So throw him a few cents, my friends,
half of him's already dead,
let him buy himself a bandage
or a final piece of bread;
we'll have him sing a few last songs
before the gangrene spreads.
Admiring his masenko,
we can forget what makes him sing.
Unable to pity a man so ill,
we praise instead his musical skill:
Could Beethoven have done any better
with a single horse-hair string
stretched over a skin violin ?
Addis Ababa,
July 1974.
SKISTA
(for Burekt, Delilah, Tigist, Rahel and Rosa)
Mangoes, papaya, peppers.
Ethiopian girls:
That shoulder-dance!
Right On, Brother, Yes Indeed
(Little Ethiopia, Washington DC)
To Life
Shout "Ishi!" ("Yes!" , Amharic style),
In funky Adams Morgan.
Efcharisto
Wherever I am in the whole wide world
I welcome Greeks
Bearing gifts.
Tbilisi Toast-Master
We felt good in Georgia:
The tamada talked long,
Toasted us well.
Land Reform
Survey our green and pleasant land -
A patchwork of private estates !
Who owns the towns and counties ?
Whose children inherit the Kingdom ?
Dragons guard the secret vaults
Where landlords count their acres;
The faceless few who own the farms
Pore over one-inch Ordnance maps,
Revise old boundaries,
Enclose common fields,
Set their seals on title deeds -
Once the bribes of feudal barons.
Evicted tenants claw outside
At the bars and iron spikes -
The clamour of the dispossessed !
The landless sons of serfs and peasants
Rise up to seize their birthright.
They leap over moats, over centuries,
They scale the walls and battlements,
Ignoring the fences,
The hedges and ditches,
Barbed-wire,
Broken glass
And the dragon's breath -
Now is the time for the battering-ram !
No power on earth can contain them :
"Release us from rent and mortgage !
Redistribute the acres !
Land to the tiller !
To each an individual plot!
Lock up the landlords !
Confiscate their real estate !
Blow up the palaces, replace them with homes !
Burn the mansions and the manor-houses !
Demolish hotels and high-rise blocks !
Occupy offices, squat in the shops !
Level the highlands of the ruling-class -
Colonialists in their own country !
Shoot the men who shoot the grouse !
Take an acre of moor-land, build your own house !
Liberate all the occupied land !
Peasants of the city slums,
Now is the time for revolt !
- The reason I'm writing this agitprop ?
My great-grandfather owned an estate.
He had sixteen thousand acres
And a stately home to match.
Now that I need it, I don't even own
So much as a square inch of England.
All revolution is envy, revenge.
Don't talk to me of social justice.
Bellou's Birthday Burial
29 August 1997 (died 27/8/1997)
"A Communist"
"A gambler"
"A jail-bird"
"A Lesbian".
Irrelevant remarks -
A vitriolic reputation.
In recent years,
Abandoned,
Penniless;
Peddling her own cassettes
In Kolonaki Square,
Like she once hussled
Rizospastis.
Wounded by a British shell
In December '44.
Wounded by indifferent friends
In the years before she died.
She accused them all, and cursed,
How she cursed her koinonia ,
Complained of colleagues
Who'd deserted her,
Blamed all of those who didn't care.
Embittered and in pain,
The black fish swarmed around her:
She died of cancer of the throat.
The salty voice long silenced -
The greatest voice in Greece, for me.
The burial's today -
But not beside Tsitsanis -
No space for her last wish.
"Everything's a lie", she sang -
Then left; through one of life's two doors.
Bohemian Bells, 1987
Computerised church-bells
Are better than none,
As long as they ring
And reverberate.
In Bohemia half of the bells
Have been cracked or gelded:
Castrated belfries, clapperless campaniles.
The ropes were all used
To string up the ringers.
They've silenced the few
Who might have felt summoned.
In the mountains of Epiros,
Within yards of the border,
Lies the church of Molivthoskepastos.
It's lit up at night,
Like a beacon of light,
To give hope to Albanian Christians.
I see it from afar, that fairy-tale church,
And pray for loud and cacophonous bells.
Let strident alarums and warning peals sound !
From random, urgent ringing, Order and Justice will one day emerge.
1989
I was in East Berlin
The day the Wall came down,
When the deprived poor people
Of the GDR
Were given West Marks
To go across
To see the shops.
They came back bemused
(for forty years had they lived a lie ?),
Proudly bearing
Plastic bags:
I saw LPs, LPs, LPs, LPs.
They’d exchanged their cash
For Johnny Cash.
Back in Prague
Czechs rattled keys
To usher in
Free World CDs.
Bosnia, November 1991.
My birthday. Sarajevo.
The war is getting closer.
This year Yugoslavia:
Next year , and thereafter ?
I walk down the Mall,
Ready for another mission.
Carlton House Terrace.
The gardener glares behind spiked railings.
He's sick of raking up dead leaves,
Looks ready to pounce at a passer-by,
To engage in random conversation.
No-one has time to talk of flowers.
We're all ready to pounce, with pistols blazing,
Fences, railings, count for nothing-
We recognise no borders now,
No sovereign or civil rights
Where minarets and mortars meet.
Anathema !
(Science for Humanity)
Carcinogens, terratogens,
Mutagens and neorotoxins !
"We Mean Well", says the motto.
Four Poems on Religion, in Greece
1. Iconodule in an Orthodox Church
Though I don't like kissing icons
I like to look at them.
I like a priest to fit the part;
Long white beard, Byzantine eyes.
Though I don't care to cross myself,
I like to contemplate the Cross.
To light a candle on Easter Day,
By offering fire, to receive the Word:
Christos Anesti ! Pantocrator!
The sounds of Greek or Ge'ez being chanted
(Recall the sistrum and the drum !)
Reverberate inside my skull,
I close my eyes, I start to hum.
Sway to the rhythm of the Lord !
But above all else the smell of incense,
And the tinkling of thurible bells !
Kyrie Eleison.
2. Confession of an Unconfirmed Man
(The Dogma of Transubstantiation, 1215, Fourth Lateran Council, reconfirmed by the Council of Trent,1551: "If anyone shall ...deny that wonderful and singular conversion...Transubstantiation, let him be anathema" (Session 13, Canon 2).
I have a problem with Temptation,
As well as Transubstantiation.
I marvel at the Maker,
The Dimiourgos,
The Poet, The Plastis.
I praise all the glories of Creation.
But I have a problem
With Temptation.
3. Easter Prayers on Mt. Pelion
The chestnut trees,
The primrose plants
Of Pelion. Spring's reward.
The muddy lane,
The simple wooden chapel
At the end:
the presence of the Lord.
As a family, as one, in silence, we prayed;
A new beginning ? A grateful word.
In our way, our awkward way,
It could be said that we adored.
Tsangarada, Pelion,
Easter, 1981.
4. Early Morning in Athens
(After a flight from Australia)
Disturbing the silence in the leafy square-
The eery flutter and flapper of pigeons,
How come no traffic in central Athens ?
I can even hear a cantor sing.
It dawns: it's early Sunday morning !
Two churches draw me surely to them.
Though I'm straight off the airport bus,
I sample the liturgy and pray for a while
In Panagia Chrysospiliotisa-
But in little Kapnikarea
The male-voice choir, a group of three,
Relaxes all my jet-cramped nerves,
The perfect antidote to worldly tension,
A massage of sound, a spiritual welcome.
The incense wafts right past my nose,
My heart is lifted, I'm richly blessed.
Kyrie Eleison; let all sins be forgiven.
Crowds climb up the Acropolis.
Down in Plaka, the scent of jasmine.
Home !
Mandoukiotissa
She cheerfully put
Some hairs on my chest,
Then gave me
Countless grey ones.
Whatever Seferis Says
Kalvos in Sutherland Avenue:
He preferred the smell
Of fried eggs and bacon
To the drains
And dire plumbing on Corfu.
QUEST-MASTER, MOUNT ATHOS
Serbian monk, share your secret !
A B-flat blues-harp...
That's the answer !
BLUES LIMERICK
There was a young monk from Salonica
Who played funky and soulful harmonica;
When the time came to chant,
He said, "I'm sorry, I can't":
Lonesome blues in a cell in Salonica.
Big Sur to Bodega Bay
(August 30, 1998. Greek Wedding Anniversary
Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller haunt the Big Sur cabins.
For Jimmy, waiting in Sebastopol.)
The road is blocked beyond Big Sur
We can't get through to Monterey.
A crane's collapsed
Across the bridge.
Have to head back
Down Highway One,
And then rejoin the 101.
Not tonight
The Santa Lucia Climb,
That Naciamento-Ferguson road !
Got to keep moving,
Got to keep moving.
So we're back in Big Sur
With Henry and Jack.
We queue for a cabin
And , boy, we're in luck,
We get the very last one.
We won't sleep in the car.
In the morning it's fresh,
I walk in the woods.
Think of Jack by the creek.
The road is still blocked.
So it's back to Nepenthe,
Then over the mountains,
Towards Soledad, Frisco,
Then finally on up to the Sebastopol woods,
To see our old friend,
The Monster and Saint,
The guitarist, the guru,
The talker, the writer.
We have a great walk along Bodega Bay.
Koumbare, Best Man,
Did we really meet in 68 ?
Thirty years; still on the road.
Got to keep moving.
Got to keep moving.
BLUES PILGRIMAGE
“Imagine yourself sitting on the porch
where Sleepy John last strummed his guitar” (Tourist
Leaflet).
I search for Muddy
In Rolling Fork –
Just a plaque by the gazebo,
A T-Shirt from the Library Ladies.
The highway sign’s
Been stolen.
Stovall’s Plantation:
We look for the spot
Where Muddy played.
His cabin’s on tour.
We’re given a jar
Of plantation dirt.
Mr Stovall’s very kind.
I search for Bukka
At Parchman Farm.
The guards won’t let me
Near the place.
I take some photos
From across the road:
The visitors´ cars
Are searched for inmates.
Rat Hill welcomes us in Clarksdale;
The Riverside,
Where Bessie died.
Rat shows us round.
Her picture lies there on her bed,
A winding-sheet.
I search for Son House and John Lee:
They’ve all moved on
Up 49 or 61.
Sleepy John’s shack
In all its glory:
In a parking lot:
That tells the story.
Tutwiler too,
Where Handy heard
A haunting blues.
Sonny Boy’s grave,
Not far from the railroad track,
By a cotton field, a ruined church.
Thirty-five years since I shook his hand.
I’ve come too late to join his band.
I pay my respects
To Memphis Minnie-
Beside her grave, in Walls.
This woman
Could out-sing a man,
Play a cleaner,
Meaner blues guitar.
Much too late
To be her chauffeur.
Once I drove John Lee
Round town .That was forty years ago.
At Hopson’s Commissariat one night
I sing their blues,
Muddy’s, John’s,
To pay my debt,
To set the record straight.
I feel the spirit.
They changed my life,
A long way from the Delta.
The Late Howlin' Wolf and the World Information Order
"This is where the soul of man never dies" Sam Phillips (on Howlin' Wolf).
"If I ever get to the place where I can feel all ol' Àrthur felt, I'll be a music man like nobody ever was". Elvis Presley on Arthur Crudup.
Being abroad, I didn't know they'd died -
Bukka White and Howlin' Wolf,
T.Bone Walker and Big Boy Crudup.
Jimmy Reed I read about....
There was an obituary in The Times.
Hard to believe. They must have been
Very short of copy. Insufficient famous men
Had died the previous day.
Of course Elvis' death was the talk of the town.
I heard about it on the radio,
Whilst having a bath in Nairobi.
Frankly I didn't believe
The Voice of Kenya.
But then I tuned to the BBC -
The World Service (Voice of Objective Truth) -
And the man also said "Elvis is dead".
I was shocked. His voice carried no note of regret.
But if the BBC said he was dead
He was well and truly dead
And wouldn't be rocking again...
Though this wasn't entirely the truth,
Because he suddenly burst into song.
Later they cried, when Lennon died;
The Media went mad.
But what I really want to know
Is why they never told us
When the Wolf was going down slow.
Rising Sun, 1987
I've lived longer than Elvis did,
Elvis who died ten years ago.
They've brought out some albums in Bulgaria now.
He really must be safe and tame,
Can't lead the counter-revolution.
Perhaps they'll make him An Artist of Merit.
I've lived longer than Elvis did,
Who was already in a sad decline.
I've not made my first hit record yet,
Though I'm still ready and raring to go
(Have you heard my version of "That's Alright" ?)
Why don't they set up a Sun Record Studio
On the corner of every downtown street ?
I need a Sam Phillips; Colonel Parker I'd prefer not to meet.
How Long Blues (for Gaby).
(1)
I understand.
First you want to fly.
But how long have I to hover ?
Castle Cary, 1961.
(2)
Now that you have flown alone
You wing away in proud pursuit
Of some other undiscovered route.
Wild wood-doves
Will not
Live in lofts.
Castle Cary 1962.
Destination
My sun at last has risen
And cloud-cleared the skeptic sky
Which forboded that my love
Would be just lust, quick-quenched
Like a lick at a stick of drug
To which once addicted you
Crack if you lack it.
The elements loomed like tribes
Of savage ravagers around
My lone and hated habitation -
The absurd immortal motel
In which Mankind spends a night of life
Before pretending to depart
For some holiday resort..
Fool ! I feared that I was too well taught,
And that I knew too much; I thought
That I could read Love's map
Like some capable cartographer,
And that my way would everyway
Be unromantic, and marked out
As if with cats'-eyes down a major road.
But instead I stumbled
Into a dense and unmapped jungle,
Full of the sweet fruits of delight,
But also of bitter stings and bites.
The green-eyed monster glared
At me, and unknown obstacles ensnared
My groping, hoping hands.
The very stars led me astray:
They, the guiding lights of the universe,
Seemed set to divert me from my way.
But some magnetic pole-force pulled
Me in the true directions and I
Reached my destination, which was You,
Whose map-reference was Love.
Castle Cary, 1962.
Our Elastic Love
Our elastic love
wraps round
the waist
of the world.
It stretches
in any direction,
and always remains
secure and fast.
This love of ours
will last;
for it is tied
to the future,
as well as
to the past.
Casablanca, 1964.
Have Guitar....Will Travel
Though I loved her a lot
I didn't love her enough
To give her my twanging Duane Eddy LP.
I found her a scratched old second-hand copy
(In much worse condition than mine, I admit).
At the Albert Hall tonight he played it,
Three-30 Blues
From that deleted LP.
Incredibly good after 33 years,
Duane hit it note for note.
In those bent blue sevenths and saxophone groans
I heard her name again and again,
Reproaching me, saying
"You didn't love me enough to give me your album;
I gave you Ringelnatz and Rilke..."
I guess I was mean and possessive,
A rebel roused,
But I really loved those raucous sounds,
I would have begrudged it.
She found someone else,
-Lost love, will travel -.
But I still play the album.
Take it with me wherever I go.
It's great.
Even the slow ballad moves me still,
The last track. Loving You.
An all-time classic. And untrue.
23 May, 1991.
First Love Unravels
(Darf ich bitte....ich möchte gärne...mit ihre tochter...)
All those passionate
Love-poems I wrote
(And I meant every word, believe me) -
Then, when she said
We had to part,
I feined,
Pretended an unbroken heart,
By telling her -
As something I should fairly mention -
That none of my letters or poems
Had been more than ways to exercise
Pure literary convention.
"I thought you were different
From the other boys".
At least I didn't kill myself,
Gnädige Frau,
Sehr gnädige Fräulein.
Stacheldraht
Hell's Ladder Lane.
Setting sun. That barbed-wire fence !
Silent, our ode to joy.
Day-bright
Day-bright
diamond
Day-bright diamond of the hour-glass sands.
Venice, 1965.
That'll Be the Day
Do you remember, Mark,
When we 'cycled to Shepton in Summer '57
To buy Buddy Holly's first 78 ?
On the way back
You dropped it. It cracked but didn't shatter.
The Crickets couldn't chirp for clicks,
Even when we'd glued it.
So the Hazlegrove Hep Cats
Wrote their own hit:
"Bright blue socks, yellow tie,
Drainpipe trousers ankle high..."
The poetry of rock !
It wasn't such a smash.
Elvis Lenin
The cultural high-spot of my life
Was not King Lear, or Rilke's Love Song,
It was when I heard, after all the bans and approbation,
My first blue-labeled record by the King of Rock
In a listening booth in Bristol.
Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis Presley.
I used to dream, one day he'd play the Colston Hall !
Raw rhythmic energy and pure rebellion !
The curled-up lip, the street-wise leer,
The Memphis trucker a new Messiah
Come to save us from our bourgeois schools,
Shocking Authority, provoking the guardians of taste and morals.
Tutti Frutti - another anthem; we rallied round,
Disobeying parents, smuggled it home.
Life would never be the same again.
He could have really change the world.
He failed to see his historic role.
The poor boy had no brains.
Elvis Our Likeness
I've lived longer than Elvis did,
Elvis who died ten years ago.
They've brought out some albums in Bulgaria now.
He really must be safe and tame,
Can't lead the counter-revolution.
Perhaps they'll make him an Artist of Merit.
I've lived longer than Elvis did,
Who was already in a sad decline.
I've not made my first hit record yet,
Though I'm still ready and raring to go
(Have you heard my version of That's Alright ?
Why don't they set up a Sun Record Studio
On the corner of every downtown street ?
I need a Sam Phillips; Colonel Parker I'd prefer not to meet.
Prague, 1987.
The Snake-Charmer
In the Kasbah
a voice is heard to drone
and the strings of a gunibri
sing -
the young men grow mute
as they hear what is spoken:
"The charmer of snakes
has broken her flute;
her charm, too, is broken -
the snakes have awoken-
and one by one they stiffen,
and sting."
Tangier, 1964.
The Original Dixieland Jazz band
(Billy Jones, Piano)
Billy Jones,
The red-haired
Pianist:
British ragtime,
Dixie jazz,
Swinging London,
1920,
Made some records,
Played the Palais
"White top hats
With D-I-X-I-E on them ".
Showman jazzman -
Shakes the shimmy !
We don't forget
That he was English -
Billy Jones,
The London lad.
(Played at Rector's Club, 31 Tottenham Court Road, and Palais de Danse, Brook Green, Hammersmith).
The cries of animals excluded,
Drowning in the rising flood.
Prisoners’ wails,
Freight trains heading North.
Frost-bitten feet,
Nose frozen to mouth-harp.
Maze of Straw
We built a maze of straw-bales
In a Cornish farmer's field;
We crawled through on our bellies
But we found the exit sealed.
The way was dark and prickly,
We were lost, enclosed and scared;
With our backs we raised a roof-bale,
To face the farm-boy's sickle, bared.
1984.
Thought on Skansen
She's like a slim, young elk-calf
Lying, stretching,
In the Autumn sunshine.
Reindeer
A reindeer drive
On the river-ice:
To see hundreds with their herders!
Skåne
I saw no beggars in Helsingborg;
Just good burghers -
Such bourgeoisie !
The Good Life
This is as good as it gets.
Perhaps. For some
It's a grim asylum.
The City
A thousand hands
wiped
upon a single towel.
A thousand smiles
wiped
into a single scowl.
A thousand voices
silenced
by one explosive vowel.
A thousand bodies
collide.
Unheard the beggar's howl.
London, 1967.
Pyrotechnics
Economists frown on firework displays,
Especially when they're free,
Or in countries that can't afford them
"Fireworks are not cost-effective.
The social benefits are few.
They can't be measured, quantified."
But who'd miss the rockets, the Roman candles,
The whirligigs and Catherine wheels,
The exploding showers of silvery rain,
The shooting stars of green and red,
The balls of fire, the twinkling diamonds
Dropping to earth, dissolving to darkness ?
In a flash our flight is over.
The darkness waits.
We'll be gone up in smoke.
So light the blue touch paper
And stand well clear !
Let's light up the sky !
To hell with the cost .
We'll share pure pleasure-
Unite tonight !
Alexandra Palace/Woodfield Way, London, 5 November, 1978.
There is hope....
Fellows' Garden, Wadham College, Oxford, December 1996.
The Old Copper Beach
Has been felled and burnt.
Now they find that it could have been saved.
When the Tree-Surgeon said
"Cut it down",
The Gardener
Gathered the seed.
Harbour House, Bridport
West Cliffs
Hang draped
Like pleated curtains.
January moon
Above St John's.
Stacheldraht
Hell's Ladder Lane.
Setting sun. That barbed-wire fence !
Silent, our ode to joy.
On the need for a new Mission
Come back Cyril and Methodius,
The captive nations need you now !
Open greatly the doors of their reason:
They have been misled and are much confused.
Prague 1987.
To the Czechs
Cyril and Methodius,
Wycliffe and Payne,
Gave you so much,
But all in vain.
Vltava
The Vltava is a river
For sad painters,
Doomed lovers,
Unprotesting protest-singers,
Melancholic poets,
Regretful revolutionaries,
Compromised composers.
It succumbs to the planners
And jumpers from bridges.
We get the rivers we deserve.
1987.
ZERT
The mosquitoes of Straznice
Are thicker than smoke -
No wonder the singers
Keep slapping their thighs,
As dancers and fiddlers
Make sharp squeaks and cries.
The mosquitoes of Straznice
Swarm thicker than smoke:
Socialist folk-song is seldom a joke.
The costumes are bright, the beer freely flows
But the blood that's been lost Old Jo only knows.
So listen and take note, look deep in their eyes:
Such art bears its sting - squeals of pain and surprise.
HACK
The Totalitarian Party Poet and the 1952 Show Trials
"A dog's death to a dog !"
Wrote Ivan, a National Artist now,
When they hanged an innocent man back then
(Hanged him with another ten).
"I'm a bitter friend", said scowling Ivan,
(Especially to those of another race).
He ties weights to the feet of those they've framed.
A National Disgrace.
Prague, 1987.
Right of Way
("All in Bohemia's Well")
Tell them, you are sure
All in Bohemia's well...
That everyone is equal here
That education is enjoyed by all
Regardless of race, of class or creed -
Except the class of '68, and of course their children,
Or of course their children's children,
Or Christians, Chartists, Gypsies , Jazzmen....
Justice too, enjoyed by all !
You're free to walk through the public woods
But not across the border.
August 21, 1988.
Ammonite (Ashaka, Bauchi State, Northern Nigeria)
I have a mind to meditate tonight:
So talk, triassic ammonite !
I discovered you just as you lay
Where the first dinosaurs used to play
Two hundred million years ago ?
You lived long before the plants had flowers
Or so my book informs me.
Coil-like creature, you've survived so long
How could anyone cut you in half ?
You were not meant to be an ornament.
You watch me with mild amusement
As I approach my middle age.
Me ? No, I'm not mesozoic-
But sometimes I feel like a fossil.
Palma Euphoria
Above the moon at midnight
No man so tall so soon.
I stretch out my arms-
What wingspan !
There's an albatross within me -
Somewhere down there is the man.
Majorca, 1964
The Only Problem/Le Seul Probleme
Almost beaten by the effort
of forging the causeway without cause
I stop in the middle of my automatic gestures
and question the sun.
Shall I dam the flow ?
Shall I let the muscles knot,
and leave the boulder lodged
in the parched wrinkles of the valley ?
Or shall I pick it up
and hurl it at the sky,
then, watching its decent,
stand directly in a line beneath
and hold my breath and die ?
1967.
Paranoid at Fifty-Nine:
Roger Short and David Kelly
They get you
One way or the other
In the year before retirement.
December 2003.