A small selection of poems written by Jim Potts. Some of these poems have been published in Greek, Swedish, Czech and Romanian translations, in versions by Ann-MarieVinde, Alexander Myriallis, Sakis Serefas, Panos Karageorgos, Sofia Vlavianou, Ivo Smoldas, Pavel Srut, Ladislav Verecky and Ioana Petrescu. Copyright J.Potts.
Poetry Reading, Mediterranean Museum, Stockholm, 2006
Poster for poetry reading at Karel Čapek Bookshop,
Prague, 24 October, 1989
Aloni
As hard as marble, copper, iron,
The threshing floor
Where Charon waits.
Alexander’s 28th Birthday Poem.
Sailing in Stockholm harbour:
I praise his skill.
My son’s the captain now.
June 2004.
For thirty-four years
I’ve been promoting
Other people’s art.
The time has come
To share my thoughts
Unlock the drawer
Pull out my text:
Show the world
What’s coming next.
CV
Between V-2 and Atom Bomb
I was born. Halfway between D-Day
And Hiroshima. Born British, in Bristol,
Winter, 1944.
Far away in Chicago
Big Joe Turner and boogie-woogie Pete
Were playing and singing the night away
The very day I saw the light.
"I ain't had no real good lovin'....".
As a baby, I had good loving.
A few short months before Yalta
I let out my first yell.
I kept on yelling.
Perhaps I could hear the bombs hit Dresden,
Perhaps I already knew
Half of Europe was lost.
I'm glad at least I couldn't see
The opening of the Death Camps,
The British Liberation troops
In Constitution Square,
The Americans at ease in Pilsen,
The Russian troops approaching Prague.
Two Poems After Porphyras
1.
Vanda (29.12.35
-17.8.51) and George.
Blissful swimming
In Corfu seas.
A secret love-tryst.
Just her luck
To meet a straying shark.
( Witnessed by Naki Tsepeti, from Mon Repos Jetty, 12 noon, 17 August, 1951.)
2. Vanda’s Mother
All the shutters
Of the house
Stayed closed.
She couldn’t bear
To see the sea.
Wandering around the fortifications,
Pantocrator opposite, twin peaks
Hazy in the sultry heat.
Vido island a sharp dense green;
Dark cypresses define it,
Recall all the political prisoners
(One hundred and twelve, transported to die),
Their laments and cries from Lazaretto,
The place of execution.
I see them take that long, last look-
The picturesque view (no blindfold),
The final farewell
Before facing the Wall.
July 2003
Lazaretto
The good ship Achilleas
Will take us to that isle
Some summer dawn.
Stavrula's Father
He became a Communist
In Metaxas' time.
He never changed his mind.
Then came the Nazis; more tortured friends.
Whole villages burned, murders and reprisals.
The Civil War they fought and lost.
He retreated over the border.
But Tito's path was not his own;
He went further North, to the land of Gottwald.
He was given work and welcomed there.
Unswervingly pro-Moscow,
Even after '68; he never wavered once.
He dreamed of Greece,
Even after years in jail,
A politico in Corfu....
But he missed the fruit,
Water-melons most of all.
One day the Czechs imported some -
A Bulgarian lorry brought them in,
Twenty-five he bought at once,
Kept them on his balcony,
In spite of the dust from the smoke and coal.
Every visitor was handed one:
"Pare karpouzi, sintrofe !"
He sunk his teeth into the cold, sweet flesh,
The crisp red juice of memory,
The gush of juices, the life he'd lost.
He devoured it with passion,
Swallowed the black seeds of exile,
Gulped them down greedily.
Black seeds. Red melon.
He was refuse everywhere. Unwanted rind.
Unable to leave the mines of Ostrava,
Forbidden to set foot back in Greece,
His lungs and nostrils filled with coaldust.
When he died, far from the sea,
His only daughter changed her mind.
Stavrula smiled, and learned to sing.
“Kai opoios xenos ekei to heili vrechei
sta gonika
tou plia de tha yirisei”
(Lorenzos
Mavilis: ”Kardaki”)
Who can say
When it first began ?
Did my father sow the seed ?
From West Africa and India
He brought back a taste for exotic spices,
Implanted hopes of wide horizons.
Who can say
When it first began ?
When Greece beckoned,
The Siren Island ?
I’ve notched up
Many countries since
But still we keep returning,
A ravaged island,
Raped but blessed.
Who can say
When it first began ?
The Kardaki Spring ?
That early attempt
To escape the city ?
The search to find
A natural home:
Lost Paradise,
An approximation.
”Corfu marvelous -but…fatal to any fighting soul”.
Kazantzakis, 1926.
I can see why Solomos
Turned to drink:
The view from the Mourayia.
A barrel of berdea wine.
A flask of whisky
For the volta.
It helps him forget the court case;
How the British
Had become his friends.
He composes verses in his head.
He seldom
Commits them to paper.
He looks distracted
On the Spianada.
He’s back on the Hill of Strani.
Parking Place
We were looking for a parking space
In the street where you once lived.
We found a spot, a builder’s yard
Beneath a new apartment block.
You recognized two walls that stood
From the house that they’d demolished:
We’d parked inside your living-room.
The pattern on the paper, which was hanging on the walls,
Was the pattern that you gazed at
Almost fifty years before.
Nothing else remains
Of what was once your childhood home.
Iannis
Xenakis:
29.5.1922-
2.2.2001
Xenakis preferred to be photographed
With half his face in shadow.
A British shell
Exploded,
Took one eye
And half his face.
I can feel the wound within his music,
Sense the loss, the long nights of pain,
The sentence to death and the exile,
While he relives them all again.
STRINDBERG’S
ISLAND
1.
Leaving Stockholm on the Vyberö
For Kymmendö (his Hemsö),
Searching for a summery Strindberg,
For the fishermen and farmers -
We found derelict barns and mosquitoes.
The paper peeling in the writer’s hut,
A garden shed without a view,
The trees have grown to block it.
The rocks , from which he’d swim, the same:
It’s there we found his traces.
2.
Engström liked the open sea,
Strindberg loved the islands round -
Somewhere for his thoughts to settle.
A wooden studio on the rocks:
Atelier, folly or writer’s hut?
Perfect for Paxos, for our Ostrias plot.
Below, a little inlet cove.
A dry-stone wall, an olive grove-
My outlook. And my chosen spot.
3.
That necklace of islands,
She only wore it for a day.
I would have given a ring of skerries;
Nothing of my Northern brood
Could change her mood
Or make her stay.
4.
Aspenström’s island ?
Like Werner’s sad widow
We walk the wide meadow
In the shadow of Strindberg .
Kymmendö/Stockholm
May 30/31 2003
(for Jack, who lives on 15th and R)
“To me, the people of London are the most civilized in
the world. Their civilization is based on the recognition that all people are
imperfect, and that allowances should be made and are made for their
imperfections. I have never experienced quite such a sense of balance
elsewhere.” Duke Ellington, Music is My Mistress, New York, 1973.
I can almost hear the clink and tinkle
Of Duke’s jazz piano
Taking shape on Ninth and R
At Louis Thomas’ cabaret.
I reconstruct the place and spot,
The siren songs, the playful rags,
Sonny’s drums, the banjorine.
I can hear Duke and his sidemen swing
Invited to the White House now,
Performing for the President.
Not far on foot from that cabaret-site,
A long, long way from where he used to play
“What You Gonna Do When the Bed Breaks Down”.
A suitable song for the White House.
All hail Mrs Clinkscales !
Well done T Street 1212 !
Duke’s childhood home, but
Where’s the plaque ?
Well done 9th and R !
20th and R ! (and those between);
Sherman Avenue 2728 !
I saw him in Bournemouth,
Where I went backstage.
(How do you find the English weather ?
-“Ah feel no pain”).
Again in Addis Ababa
Playing for Haile Selassie.
The Duke and the Emperor:
Two conquering lions
About to be tamed.
All hail His Imperial Majesty !
A Command Performance for Ras Tafari:
- We thank you, Duke.
I can almost hear their siren swan-song;
Now and then wilder growls from the jungle.
Recurrent Childhood Memory
That mulberry tree.
The lazy stream.
Midges.
Fish surfacing for food.
On the Ferry from Finnhamn
I want to be surprised.
It seems there are no more surprises.
Surprise me.
After Roy Acuff
"It's nothing !
-The Parthenon in Athens.
It's falling apart !
The new one in Nashville
Is better.
Behold !"
Tidden Bad ( I be free)
Tidden bad
This life abroad.
Better than I ever had
In sad Satanic London.
Gotland
What did I get from Gotland ?
Fine walls, wild flowers
And towers of stone.
Helsinki,
Friday 13 June 2003.
Overbooked flight-
“Seat allocations at gate”.
No seats. I’m first in the queue,
But I’ve been bumped off.
“Volunteers for later flight ?”
Got to get home,
Get home tonight.
An unholy row.
Will they squeeze me in ?
The radar’s down
In Southern Finland.
Flight delayed.
The ground staff plan
To go on strike.
Flight delayed.
Computer problems:
Air traffic
Uncontrollable.
Got to get home,
Get home tonight.
They will not look me in the eye-
First they let the Finns on board.
Friday the Thirteenth.
Yes, I’m stressed.
Xenitia
Flying back to Sydney-
No Olympic strike today
(The flight attendants' work-to-rule).
The hostess gave me
Her one banana,
Fruit for the crew; a special favour.
And my light at last lit up as well.
It's good to be able to read.
Two days ago it was all go-slow.
Eight hours of hell at Athens airport.
I got off lightly;
Only two hours' confusion at Corfu
(no trauma about a connecting flight).
You never know which way it will go.
Have hope !
Be optimistic !
(Maria's heartfelt plea to me).
But for now,
More bittersweet songs of exile..
The Little Nobel
Thirteen chandeliers
Illuminate the grandly gilded hall.
Academicians' speeches
In polished diplomatic Swedish
Introduce a Danish poet,
The winner of the Nordic Prize.
I understand a word or two,
My wife, it seems, a little more.
She turns to me
To criticize
A rhythmic composition,
Audible to those nearby:
My unselfconscious and uncourtly,
Most un-Eddic, inner snore.
Communication
"Låt dem känna utan ängslan
de kamouflerade vingarna
och Guds energi
hoprullad i mörkret."
From "Svenska hus ensligt belägna" by Tomas Tranströmer
We met Monica and Tomas
At a party for our poets,
Who all read their work,
With modulated voices, and subtle musical inflections:
The clearest diction.
Monica interprets well
When I talk to Tomas,
And says "Knock on our door
In Runmarö- you'd be most welcome."
At home, I put on a recording
Of his reading voice, his poems -
Restore the sounds and intonations
So cruelly silenced
By a stroke.
I hear him speak.
Good Friday Dawns ( March 29, 2002)
Come on Spring, come on, come on !
We're numb from the cold winter nights.
I'm up and listening to the pigeons coo.
I heard a seagull overhead.
This is the reason why gods must die:
Nature's resurrection.
Paranoia ("Risk för istappar !")
When icicles hang
From the Strandvägen rooftops,
From all the frozen gutters,
Pedestrians on pavements
Are warned to beware
In case sharp spears fall
Like programmed missiles
Dropped by terrorist trolls,
Who might have been
Taliban-trained.
S:t Göran och draken
(Sitting beneath the Bernt Notke Statue during the performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, New Year's Concert, Stockholm Cathedral)
Put yourself, please, in the place of the dragon,
With Saint George on his stallion
Rearing up above you, hooves about to trample you,
Their armour all aglitter,
Sword brandished high above his head,
Slicing down towards you,
To split your skull
Or sever neck.
Picture yourself in the place
Of the benighted ,
Bedraggled,
Type-cast dragon
(Poor PR),
When all he wanted
Was to be George's pet.
He should have tried wagging his tail.
Disorientation (Black Christmas, 2001)
The bush-fires rage round Sydney.
In Stockholm, the snow-flakes fly.
Where on earth am I ?
"Solsångaren" in Snow
(Milles' Statue In Memory of Tegner, in front of Parliament House, Stockholm, Boxing Day, 2001)
Sun-singer, soul-singer,
Arms outstretched,
As if you would dance, like Zorba.
Blockhusudden (sculpture by Eric Grate)
Halloween.
It's crisp and sunny.
At Blockhus Point
On guard the axeman.
Foxy Lady (Neo-Nazi)
She liked bald-headed men
With Teutonic tattoos
Or Samurai swords
Etched down their arms.
Three Paxos Poems for Nina (July, 2001)
1. From Ostrias Escarpment (looking at the new road to Avlaki Creek)
They've opened a road
Below my secret perch:
A gash across my heart.
2. Paxos Haiku
With sixty-four churches to choose from
There's no need
To feel all is lost.
3.Saint Haralambos
Windmills,
Shrines,
Bell-towers,
Cisterns.
Saint Haralambos
Saved them all.
He repelled the plague,
He relieved the siege.
He couldn't stop
The desecration.
Before the Paxos Beach Hotel
We camped there thirty years ago -
Down on that olive terrace.
We swam down in that pebbly-bay
Avoiding sharp sea urchins.
I'm living in Australia,
You're in Canada, they say.
I still see our tent in the olive grove,
A faint impression, where we lay.
1997.
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 Kapnikaria
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 !
Zagori
Nicholas Ninos, the folk clarinettist
Played the Zagorissian dances
Like nobody else before or since,
With Manousis, Mitsos and Bekaris
On tambourine, violin and lute.
People came from miles around,
Crossed rivers, gorges, bridges, mountains
By mule, by donkey; climbed kalderimia.
The villages with panigyria
Opened their doors and opened their hearts.
In the days before the electric lamp,
The amplifier, the microphone,
Before the road, the bus, the car,
In the villages of high Zagori,
From Monodendri, from Dilofo,
From Asprangelos, Tsepelovo,
They danced till late to the taximia,
Long before they were recorded.
9.9.1997. With thanks to Alexios Vaisdekis (retired cheese-producer, aged 79, from Vitsa and pre-Nasser Egypt).
Dry-stone Hideaway, Vitsa
Before I came I'd had the dream,
A cobbled path, a kalderim,
Leading down the mountainside
To a high-arched bridge, an ice-cold stream.
The village houses, split mountain rock;
Flagstone slabs to slate the roofs,
The cistern in the high-walled yard;
Water pure, of melted snow; the shaft, well-made, made long ago -
Eggshell-coated, calcium-sealed.
Arches and a cosy hearth. Wooden platforms for a bed.
A hideaway in Epiros; landscape such as Byron loved.
An Englishman's dream of home in Greece.
Children's voices, the cattle-bells.
Rectangles and curves.
Grey stone and white flokati.
We're roughly dressed, at one with stone,
The log-fire roars, it spits and burns,
It dies, leaps back to life in turns.
We pass our time in tending it,
Cracking walnuts, toasting bread.
The water in the cauldron boils;
Bright copperware reflects the flames.
Though the snow-wind whistles over beams,
Through holes in roof and walls and floor,
The glowing cinders keep us warm:
They'd glow all night in glad mangkali,
We'd sleep by it, if not for fumes.
We huddle round hearth and aproned fire
And bake potatoes in their skins.
Before all embers turn to ash,
It's time for twentieth-century sins:
Switch on the electric blankets !
We pray no mouse will gnaw the wire;
We shall not dream of wolves, of bears.
As modern peasants we retire.
A family at peace, content.
Unique , the quality of quiet: monastic isichea.
We hear the basil breathe and grow;
Wake with cattle-bells; cockerel's crow.
Canyon or gorge ?
With its forests and flora
Vikos invites us to return in the Spring,
When wild flowers flourish on the threshing floors !
We resolve to learn their names next year.
Vitsa, Zagori, 1983.
Costa's Curse
The old man's wife walked out the other day,
though he claims he never beat her;
he's still got a laugh like a crazy mule,
though his mare has quit the stable.
He's grubby round the collar,
and his fishing nets are torn -
he told me confidentially
with proud demotic scorn:
"I wish the old bitch
had never been born!"
Corfu, 1968.
The Artist
I should not have let down
the little old lady
who said she was a painter from Paris; but I was ashamed
to be seen with her again,
lest people might think her
my mother or lover,
for her breasts were drooping
from a hard winter
of whooping cough,
from sleeping on benches,
and eating old scraps
from a bin that she found.
She wouldn't visit the doctor,
she spent her old age
begging for money,
not for herself,
but for a young writer
who said he was hungry.
I never saw what she painted,
she had her work stolen,
or give it away; so she said,
but I have no reason to doubt
that she was an artist.....
Corfu, 1967.
Not Yet Midsummer
I´d forgotten the Forget-Me-Nots.
The fields are full of them
This early Swedish summer,
The copses, the clearings,
The churchyards. How
Beautiful they look, that life-enhancing blue,
All around the headstones.
(May 2001)
Sweden (May 2002)
Dandelions, daisies, daffodils,
Violets and Forget-Me-Nots.
All the trees in blossom,
Birds in full song:
Sweden is Eden
This amazing May.
Mother and Son: Beaminster
The Beaminster church bells
Called us to listen:
Compelled by the bells
We parked there and hearkened.
So much ringing of changes,
Such chiming in tune .
Harbour House, Bridport
West Cliffs
Hang draped
Like pleated curtains.
January moon
Above St John's.
Storkyrkan, Stockholm, 13 December 2001
1.
Eight months you've been gone.
Santa Lucia, bright hope in darkness -
Let the lights shine !
2.
You didn't want
A big estate:
Just a crofter's cottage
And an open gate.
Sharp Poem
This is innovative,
Cutting-edge,
Interactive poetry.
Grasp the sheet of paper
Firmly in one hand
And run it roughly at an angle
Where your fancy takes you.
You may find you're lucky:
Slice flesh, draw blood.
Try it, in despair.
Some days
It's razor-sharp.
Corfu Haiku
Twenty-one dolphins danced in the harbour
The teacher
Kept on talking.
Delphic
Oracle (1968)
Go tell the King
The water that spoke has been silenced
Go tell the King
The wine that once spoke has turned bitter
Go tell the King
The birds that once sang have migrated
That all of them now flock together
That eagles and doves are now brothers
Go tell the King
That jackdaws preside in the palace
Under the eyes of invisible vultures
Go tell the King
That far-off the birdsong is building
That talons and beaks are being sharpened
Go tell the King
That the palace will crumble in ruins
That no one will ever rebuild it:
Go tell the King these things.
Viking Haiku
Food for the eagle,
The raven, the wolf :
Better all these, than the worm.
Copenhagen Haiku
The children clamber on "The Little Mermaid".
Someone sawed her head off.
Strine Haiku
What a bonzer day in Broome,
Riding our horses down Cable Beach:
Beaut !
Australian Multiculturalism
"Wog tucker at its best!"
Roadside sign,
Souvlaki Bar, Tasmania.
Native Title
Seven shillings for a beach,
With fishing rights included.
For Canberra ? A can of beer.
The Pom's Complaint to the The Ethnic Affairs Council
An immigrant
A "pomegranate" ?
The rhyming slang
Don't rhyme, mate.
The Last Word (to Ned Kelly, In Reply to his Jerilderie Letter)
Evil-minded
Thick-headed
Iron-hearted
Gab-gifted
Emu-legged
Wild-mouthed
Horse-stealing
Plough-smashing
Pommy-bashing
Copper-killing
Rope-dangling
Son of a
Pig-stealing
Convict.
Zagori
Nicholas Ninos, the folk clarinettist
Played the Zagorissian dances
Like nobody else before or since,
With Manousis, Mitsos and Bekaris
On tambourine, violin and lute.
People came from miles around,
Crossed rivers, gorges, bridges, mountains
By mule, by donkey; climbed kalderimia.
The villages with panigyria
Opened their doors and opened their hearts.
In the days before the electric lamp,
The amplifier, the microphone,
Before the road, the bus, the car,
In the villages of high Zagori,
From Monodendri, from Dilofo,
From Asprangelos, Tsepelovo,
They danced till late to the taximia,
Long before they were recorded.
9.9.1997. With thanks to Alexios Vaisdekis (retired cheese-producer, aged 79, from Vitsa and pre-Nasser Egypt).
Dry-stone Hideaway, Vitsa
Before I came I'd had the dream,
A cobbled path, a kalderim,
Leading down the mountainside
To a high-arched bridge, an ice-cold stream.
The village houses, split mountain rock;
Flagstone slabs to slate the roofs,
The cistern in the high-walled yard;
Water pure, of melted snow; the shaft, well-made, made long ago -
Eggshell-coated, calcium-sealed.
Arches and a cosy hearth. Wooden platforms for a bed.
A hideaway in Epiros; landscape such as Byron loved.
An Englishman's dream of home in Greece.
Children's voices, the cattle-bells.
Rectangles and curves.
Grey stone and white flokati.
We're roughly dressed, at one with stone,
The log-fire roars, it spits and burns,
It dies, leaps back to life in turns.
We pass our time in tending it,
Cracking walnuts, toasting bread.
The water in the cauldron boils;
Bright copperware reflects the flames.
Though the snow-wind whistles over beams,
Through holes in roof and walls and floor,
The glowing cinders keep us warm:
They'd glow all night in glad mangkali,
We'd sleep by it, if not for fumes.
We huddle round hearth and aproned fire
And bake potatoes in their skins.
Before all embers turn to ash,
It's time for twentieth-century sins:
Switch on the electric blankets !
We pray no mouse will gnaw the wire;
We shall not dream of wolves, of bears.
As modern peasants we retire.
A family at peace, content.
Unique , the quality of quiet: monastic isichea.
We hear the basil breathe and grow;
Wake with cattle-bells; cockerel's crow.
Canyon or gorge ?
With its forests and flora
Vikos invites us to return in the Spring,
When wild flowers flourish on the threshing floors !
We resolve to learn their names next year.
Vitsa, Zagori, 1983.
Costa's Curse
The old man's wife walked out the other day,
though he claims he never beat her;
he's still got a laugh like a crazy mule,
though his mare has quit the stable.
He's grubby round the collar,
and his fishing nets are torn -
he told me confidentially
with proud demotic scorn:
"I wish the old bitch
had never been born!"
Corfu, 1968.
Canberra Haiku
Public servants' city;
Laid out nicely.
Dead as a flattened dingo.
Kosovars on the Brink (24.3.1999)
Kosova or Kosovo ?
Death and destruction
Between the "a" and the "o".
EU '92
How far from Mary to Maria !
Far as the road
To One Europe.
Balkan Haiku
Macedonian woman
Be mine !
Stop making salad out of me.
Scandinavian Haiku
For Swedish women, praise the Lord.
Much more tempting
Than the smörgåsbord.
Stockholm Haiku
Deserted deer park.
Poets jogging at dawn.
Now for the Nobel Prize !
Dvorak
Being above a butcher's shop
Makes Prague seem built of ham:
Smoked Gothic,
Pork baroque;
Dvorak in a bloody apron.
I can’t agree with self-immolation,
Hara-Kiri, suicide.
.................................................
Will a human torch flare up again
By Wenceslas astride his horse ?
2. Vaclav Havel's Trial (21.2.1989)
The Czechs don’t want a new Mandela
Within the heart of Europe.
Let's respect the brave one thousand, more,
Who've signed their names for Havel.
The police are having sleepless nights.
The politicians ? No remorse.
You Are My Cathedral
In the greystone glacial stillness
perpendiculars bend and pray-
Gothic fingers forged with grace
clasp together and coldly grasp
the pride from all but me.
Though the organ invades the inner void,
rolls loud with its cold acoustics,
not God, not Bach can make me buckle;
and yet I nearly kneel :
In the music you echo on,
overpowering all.
You are my cathedral.
(Written in Cologne Cathedral)
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.
Blue Ridge Mountains
Blue Ridge mountain horseback ride;
Down the forest track in Fall.
The owl is watching. The coyote prowls.
The deer are grazing; quilts are stitched
In the Shenandoah valley.
Country singers entertain us:
Bluegrass or Nashville, they glorify war.
Thasos
Like Archilochos
I came to Thasos,
But saw no savage woods;
Just trees,
Blue seas,
Rows of hives
And honey bees.
Oxford Students Overheard in the Quad
"My uncle died a rather ironical death."
"Oh really. What happened ?"
"He invented a fast-breeding nuclear reactor,
And he died of nuclear poisoning."
Helsinki, November 2000
These Northern harbours
In the freezing fog !
Cranes and derricks
Greet pallid lamp-posts
Through wintry mist
Which will not lift.
I too smile wanly,
Like the street-lamps.
I think of ports down South, down under,
Forget I'm almost fifty-six.
On the Origins of My Travel-Bug
Sunday. Dawn.
Sitting here
At Gothenburg Harbour
Opposite the cranes
And cargo ships
(Wallenius Lines).
To my left
Two ferries of the Stena Line.
I think of Southampton.
Summer holidays.
Maybe it was
The matchbox labels
The exotic boxes
Washed up on the shore
From all over the world
With the flotsam and jetsam
From trawlers and transatlantic liners.
We walked the beach
To Warsash
Combing the tide-line,
Restless, curious.
Maybe it was those matchbox labels,
Or the boats forever leaving,
Those ships all setting out to sea
On voyages, mind-voyages.
Sitting here at Gothenburg,
The cranes are waiting
Impatient, idle,
Eager to load,
Unload more cargo.
The ships, lit up
Along their decks,
Waiting for their freedom.
Such an air of expectation !
I always want to live
Beside a busy harbour
Full of liners bound abroad,
Full of huge ships
That really mean business.
Göteborg, October 2001.
The Outer Hebrides
(translation of the Swedish poem by Eva Ström)
If it's the case that you long for the Outer Hebrides
Or somewhere else, where you have the sea in front of you
And Europe behind you
And where the islands are only a thin film of rain
If it's the case, that you're yearning for these islands
Or other islands, of comparable unimportance
If it's the case that you're worn out with writing
Encyclopaedias
And reading them form A to Z
If you've absorbed all the knowledge that there is to be
acquired
About the Jarrah forests and the Druids,
About Tantalus on to the Tatras
And if it's the case that the azaleas are fading
That their swollen pink petals have already dried
and dropped to the ground
And nothing is left of their hardiness,
their relationship to Ericacea, the heather on the moor;
hot-house flower, green-house flower -
if it's the case that you sense inside you the end is coming,
like a crack, or an idea emerging
if it's the case that you long to be changed
while you travel,
just as unripe fruit is changed as it travels
in the cargo-hold, beneath the Southern Cross,
a hull's-width away from the water
if that's the case and there's no other option -
if that's how it is-
you've already turned off the lights in the house:
you're on your way.
"A Doll's House" for Germany
When Ibsen changed the ending
Of A Doll's House
To please a German public,
For applause,
When Nora never leaves
Her husband Helmer
And cannot bear to leave her children, after all -
He may have been upset
About this outrage -
He protested, but rewrote it, that's for sure.
He has her sinking to the floor,
We hear no more the slamming door
And their "marriage" will go on just like before.
Diamantina Roma and the Postings of Governor Bowen
That selfish brute Bowen
Got Corfu, then Brisbane,
New Zealand and Melbourne !
Missed out on New South Wales !
Twenty years down under,
Sir Gorgeous Figginson Blowing+,
Too long for Diamantina,
A lady of delicate health.
Ill on the day of the Ball.
Men of the toga, from Oxford
(Consolidate ! Assimilate!)
Cared little, if at all.
Diamantina of the isles of Greece,
Hosting endless boring dinners
And receptions great and small,
You always yearned for perfect peace
Amongst the Corfu olive groves.
I know when it began to pall.
+Note. Bowen was hated by Edward Lear, who referred to him in letters as "brute", "beast" and as "Sir Gorgeous Figginson Blowing" (see Susan Hyman, "Edward Lear in the Levant", note p.20)
Strange Fauna: Ayers Rock
Bipeds with tripods: strange fauna seen climbing.
It's thirty-nine degrees today.
Desert oaks and spinifex;
Red sand and purple parakeelya
(Flora more fitting).
A helicopter on Uluru.
The flying doctor must be at hand.
Rangers with ropes,
Paramedics to the rescue.
A tourist fell from the sacred rock.
He broke his fall on a lower ledge.
Fifty metres from the top.
He'd been warned by Anangu
Not to try the climb.
We have all been warned.
Some show respect, look up and wonder.
Strange fauna
Lying injured,
Trapped in a gully.
Frail fauna at the Olgas:
Dehydrated tourists fall
With heat-stress, heat-stroke.
Again the flying doctor comes.
Slowly, slowly, the sun goes down.
Uluru is left alone.
Pale misty lilac.
Rich rusty brown.
Pacific Rim
Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles.
I swim with Alex towards the opposite rim.
Sunrise, sunset, time and place.
Back to the Future was a mind-blowing ride.
We fly to Australia.
Then Bondi Beach, in New South Wales.
I swim with Nina. Perhaps this wave
Came from LA. The same surf we swam in over there.
It's a universal studio
And a simulated ocean.
August 31, 1998
Musical Education
"I put my ear to the wall and listened".
(D. Shostakovich, 1927)
The unborn baby absorbs the soundwaves,
The deepest notes of Shostakovitch,
Along with heartbeat, the body's sounds.
The pregnant cellist counts the time,
1,2,3,4. Four months more.
Wall of the womb, wall of the belly.
The cello rests tight against the stomach.
They practise each night, the String Quartet.
They practise each day, they pluck and bow.
How they resonate, reverberate,
The deepest notes of Shostakovitch.
The baby listens, with ear to wall.
A, ai ge (Sad Song at Simitai)
Below Dead Horse Pass, at Simitai,
The blind musician
Sings Chinese blues.
The sliding notes
(A three-stringed lute,
A snake-skin soundbox)
Recall Blind Willie's
Hoarse gospel wail.
Call him "Blind-Willie
At-the-Wall".
A, ai ge !
Calligrapher
By the lake in Beihai Park
A woman draws Chinese characters
In water on the paving-stones,
Using a brush like a pointed mop.
A whole poem, perhaps, is written there.
We watch it fade as the water dries.
On the need to study longer with Yu Qi Long
Call that calligraphy ?
Chicken-scratchings !
No flow, no balance,
No interplay of yin and yang.
You must have more lessons.
You'll need a lifetime
To achieve the Ch'i.
Mooring at Night by Maple Bridge
(A version of the poem by Zhang Ji, translated from a Chinese calligraphy roll bought in Beijing)
The moon is setting; the cawing of crows.
Cold air; frost's coming.
A fisherman's lamp hangs on the boat.
Frosted late Autumn leaves above him,
A stranger fell asleep: sad thoughts.
From Hanshan Temple outside Gusun City
Comes the continuous sound of a bell at midnight,
Reaching the stranger's boat; pitch blackness.
Code of Practice
In Korea's oldest books
Few misprints are ever found:
No errors were permitted.
Punishment was most severe,
According to the Code -
Thirty strokes of the cane
For a single mistake -
For everyone concerned,
From senior supervisor to the lowest apprentice.
Thirty strokes. Imprinted pain.
For five mistakes, dismissal.
In Oslo
Munch's melancholic
Nordic blues
Infuse his pictures
With colourful gloom.
I am that man
With his face turned away
From the sunlit beach, in shadow.
But alienation has its own limits.
I'll never become
The man in "The Scream".
Moderation in all things.
I'm English, after all.
Our Ethnic Neighbours
"Our ethnic neighbours!"
Snarl the Volvo-owning English couple
Who live opposite the Cypriot Turks
In London N11.
There's a wedding party in the garden;
The discordant oriental scales
Of amplified 'ud and tabla (loud),
Climb all the way to Muswell Hill
This hot Sunday in July.
Poll-tax payers clap and dance-
Windows wide open, I lie on my bed
And listen, restless,
Wishing I could join in too.
Multicultural Semiotics: Marrickville
The old men from Mytilini
Gather in Marrickville
On Saturday mornings
Though most of them have moved away
To live in smarter suburbs.
They stand in the Square,
Gesticulate, laugh loud, debate,
And argue as of old,
Oblivious to the Vietnamese
Who've moved in
And taken over.
The Marrickville Public Library
Provides a multicultural welcome
And there's always the Corinth Grill
Worth a trip for the lamb on the spit.
The grocers have stayed,
The delicatessens
Still offer olives, Greek bread and feta,
Pickled octopus, "Hellenic Delights",
Opposite "Austurk Kebabs".
To some the population shift seems strange,
A Viet-Oz invasion, a post-modern Smyrna,
A cultural change, an exchange of people,
Of alphabets and other signs;
Of shrines in the backs of butchers' shops.
”Na ta
poume ?” Christmas
Eve, 1983
Popular Market, Thessaloniki, Greece.
Christmas Eve, a Saturday;
Children with triangles,
The traditional carol.
“Na ta poume?”
Na ta poume ?”
Under the weight of a barrel-organ
From Constantinople
The refugee’s nephew stoops and wobbles,
The relic strapped like a cross to his back;
He staggers along from shop to shop:
“Na ta poume
? Na ta poume ?”
Not for him to turn the handle,
To sing the tune his uncle grinds:
He thumps and taps the tambourine,
Palms the membrane so it squeals and moans,
Does oriental dances by the butchers’ stalls,
In the coffee-shops and ouzeris;
The old refugee, long since retired,
Like the listening butcher, the backgammon players,
Still inhabits The City, still walks its streets,
Only stops staring into the middle distance,
Lets hand stop winding laterna handle,
When groups of young Thracian gypsies,
Magpie musicians, faster on their feet,
Always eager to steal a trick,
Sneak round in front, beat him to the best-filled shops,
Playing shrill shawms and beating drums, laughing
As they overtake him
To an audience with coins to throw, -
But they warm no hearts, nor steal the show.
Though the cumbersome barrel-organ must stand outside,
Greeks are glad to see it still alive,
Still decorated in the same old way:
The laterna with its Constantinople label.
It may be cumbersome, but it’s melodic;
The folk-songs have been harmonized:
Byzantine pins on a Roman cylinder.
The shawm-players may make much more noise,
Pied-pipers with their wooden oboes piercing through the din
Of the market-dealers’ Christmas cries:
But they can’t negotiate all the notes
Of “Kalyn imeran archontes”.
They have not walked his Calvary,
The Calvary of the Great Idea.
December 24, 1983.
Memories of Asia Minor: Improvisation in a Minor Key
Don’t put down that old bouzouki,
Tsitsani virtuoso !
Explore all the roads,
Extend that taqsim,
Scatter the clouds
That darken each dream.
Take me back to the East
As I move further West.
Make the rhythm more heavy
To lighten my soul:
“We’re refugees all”
Your silver strings scream.
1983
(Note: Vassilis Tsitsanis died 18 January 1984, in a London hospital).
Gaida-Man
21 April 2000,
Corner of Tsimiski/Aristotelos, Thessaloniki
The wizened old gaida-man,
Crumple-legged on the pavement,
Tobacco-leaf skin scarred with patches of red,
Playing his bagpipe. Made by hand, played by heart.
A frail seventy-five, a Thracian from Evros;
He spoke broken Greek; his tongue may have tripped
But his fingers were nimble,
The music ecstatic from his squeezed sack of breath.
We gave him four thousand drachmas
For sharing his art,
For giving a glimpse-
The last life-breath of “folk”.
Greek Music
The salty tang of sea-ports;
The belle-laide voice of Bellou:
Rebetic.
Culture Shock in Rome (stop-over from Albania)
Parma ham served with melon and figs !
(After a week in Tirana).
No wonder they swarmed to jump ship at Durres,
Ignored the barbed-wire surrounding the dock-yards,
Clung to old tyres and put out to sea.
We found lop-sided rafts, capsized by a breeze.
They're breaking down their bunker-thinking
But all they get is food for thought.
Tirana/Rome, June 1992.
The revolution's not over
(Bucharest, National Gallery, 12.6.1990)
The revolution's not over,
Not in the gallery, at least.
The paintings, stacked in storerooms,
Gather dust in sticky heat.
Armed guards stand watch amidst the rubble,
Indifferent to Art's untreated wounds,
To bullets through breast, through brain and heart;
To vandalised canvases, peppered with holes;
To shattered frames, to splintered icons.
I'm shown a Brueghel, and then El Greco.
Both safe, but needing expert care.
Which priceless works went up in smoke ?
And the restoration studio ? Lost.
I'll never invest in works of art.
Slashed and defaced; such shredded flesh.
Did trigger-happy snipers
Do their target-practice here ?
They couldn't have done much worse,
If they'd ushered in a gang of thugs
To poke out/pluck out each painted eye.