In internecine changes,
A trail
Of rage that churns and rearranges,
Careless of what old promises it tossed
Entail,
When elsewhere, seven continents, they eye
These shores not for advice
But how
To tweak democracy’s device
So progress-hungry engines may not die,
The prow
Of some celestial future breaks time’s mists,
Revealing, holy glitch,
Our urge
To thrive and understand, on which
Both tea-leaf readers and economists
Converge;
And silently out of the loins of lions,
As when moon-lander’s gold
First glimmered,
Fall knowledges that will not fold,
A froth of truth the tireless seas of ions
Have simmered.
Mirrors and Windows
It must have seemed sheer miracle to some,
This surreptitious surface, plane of pure return,
Enough to drive a number-cruncher numb
When wall-to-wall, no less
Than infinite regress
Till pellmell light reluctantly
Rips though the cloth of stern
Reality.
A window, though,
Shows more than any mirror.
Pervasive happening opens space
And lets free landscape flow
Through challenge, change, fresh seasons
Into a stadium built to withstand error.
It is a plastic garrison, a hallowed place,
A realm for clarifying rules and reasons.
Beside the heaped Pacific, San Francisco,
I looked to where saltwater vanished in clear sky
As some survivor from the age of disco
Danced with a shaggy hound
On bolstered seawall, sound
Of high-hat quavers everywhere.
Outmoded, but this guy
Just didn’t care.
There are these views
We get of other lives,
Insights, illusions, sidelong glances:
Passers-by, morning news,
Moments of shy confession
From desperate strangers met in deadbeat dives,
As though the universe were improvising chances
For decoherence, possible concession.
A mirror won’t relent but windows will,
Hence Perseus faced Medusa with a polished shield.
Reflection’s failsafe fallback is the still
Expanse of certainty
That taught its cult to be
Detached from unreflective things,
Which yet will never yield
Till pigs grow wings.
Meanwhile the wide
Enduring window stares,
Nothing to shatter but a pane.
Utopia drifts outside,
And unexpected dreams:
Spiralling helicopters, New Age fairs,
Beliefs that feel like disbelief. Then pelting rain,
Tall towers, drenched wells, life splitting at the seams.
The Chair
I wasn’t quite persuaded by the chair
But there
It was. I sat and thought,
Lost in a trance,
About its stance:
Its foursquare force, its mode of holding court.
I pictured other chairs in distant rooms,
Where brooms
Could never do enough
To sweep the dust
That made a crust
Of skin-flakes grafted over sticky fluff.
Then, leaning forward, I imagined cells
With bells
Muffled by mossy floor.
A space where bees
Flew at their ease
Between lush vines entwining every door.
This vision shifted to a wide salon.
There, on
A woven carpet, stood
One silent monk
Who smiled and sunk
Into the pattern, and was gone for good.
Last, tilting back, I glimpsed a molten cave.
Sense save
Us all: it packed a smell
Of rotten flesh,
Some old, some fresh.
I realised, with a jolt, I sat in hell.
Breathless, I stood, and found myself at home,
A chrome
Laptop flashing on.
The windows wide.
Sunlight outside.
A cup. A plant. A toy automaton.
The Green, The Grey, The Gold
Unicorn frappuccini, Angry Birds,
And virtual reality –
The Green are lost, but not for words.
Such is the compass of commodity.
Content providers
Torrent their facepalms to the cloud,
While old-time law-abiders
Miss loopholes no netsploiter ever disavowed.
But slow, before they see, the Green become the Grey.
Vast databanks are superseded,
And summers waltz away.
For them, no consolation
But seeing, plainly, they conceded
To ash damnation
Before their hand
Was even dealt, before their fire was fanned.
Elsewhere, the Gold, clear-eyed, resilient to the last,
Insist on living
Inevitably well, forgiving
In every way but what you might expect:
They cannot bear to talk or think about the past,
Nor ever hear it said
That they’d respect
Those dupes they tore their mantle from, the silver dead.
The Green dissent. Their static podcasts blare.
Noise-cancelling headphones close their ears
To any fact that sounds unfair.
They fictionalise their most revealing fears
And play the game
Of Avatars, replacing skin
With some outlandish name,
‘Oedipa30’, say, or ‘ManicJokersGrin’.
The Grey, aware of water rising round their homes,
Of sand that slithers through the hourglass,
Hide in protective domes,
Adjust their expectations,
And come to terms with being powerless.
No explorations
Of alien seas
Haunt their retirement. They aren’t Ulysses.
Meanwhile, the stubborn Gold, who never seem to age,
Or trip, or blink,
Perch stonily on thrones and think
Of limit, language, courage, sot, and sod.
They are, to tell the truth, now petrified and rage
Against the sketchy deals
They did with God,
Who saddled them with all those high abstruse ideals.
The Shoal
As filament desires electric flair,
Rapids gargle for tussling shoals of fish
And forests churn for wind.
Meanwhile, contemplative, a goat will glare
Up at a hawk, but not with any wish.
And what would scallops, tinned
Within their shells, request?
A freedom built on land,
Which they can’t understand?
That must be wrong. That surely isn’t best.
All living earthlings long to do is move
Within their element, a freedom forged
By calliper and scale.
Impelled by winds that scintillate and soothe,
They tack by ancient programmings which gorged
The channels where they sail.
The dragon and the saint
Are children of a star
And will be what they are,
With jigsaw sureness and without complaint.
It is not lac
k of freedom not to swim
Like whales or swoop like eagles. Humankind
Evolved to soar in thought:
A knowledge that we loom within and limn
With machinating smoke-and-mirror mind.
A net we catch, are caught,
And re-invented by
Goes trawling through our cells,
Is pushed in and impels
The airy laws our acts solidify.
As weavers, weather-guessers, number-gods,
Could anything be more evasive than
A freedom misapplied,
A restless lust to lean against the odds
And spin our borders out beyond their span?
Too many, thus, have died.
Epitomised, that is
Wall-walking Helen’s son,
Divine Euphorion
Who chased a groundless and egregious bliss.
Sure, there’s a known condition, worse by far:
To underleap is to mislive the most.
Since effort is our task,
We aim the rocket and observe the star.
Since we are matter’s guest, and not its host,
What more could nature ask?
Look sharp: in every spree
And effervescent swish,
The muddled salmon wish
To be conscripted in eternity.
The Fisherman
‘Come follow me,’ he said, ‘and I’ll show you how to fish for people.’
Common English Bible, Matthew 4.19
Slow morning. Fish were taking their sweet time.
Sunrise surprised me, as it often can,
With impish motey streaks.
Bethsaida blurred, receding, home of tomb
And temple. Air was energetic, clean.
With choppy strokes
Past heron, swallows,
Softly we skiffed across
Each undulating crease.
A greener depth replaced the glistening shallows.
Peter was leaning out to cast his net
While I, daydreaming, watched saltwater’s ruptured
Mirror. Remembrances
Spiralled. Mosaic of fractals. Passion’s knot
Revolving. Tell me, have you been enraptured
By moments, mess,
The weathervane
Of who and why we are?
It is a source of awe
I’ve always felt. It ripens on the vine.
When in Achaea, I saw triumphal arches,
Rough gateways that the Romans built to mark
Dominion here and there.
Their aqueducts loom in the farthest reaches,
Such is their industry, their lust to make –
In distant Tyre,
Phoenician Acre,
And down the restless coast
Where hundreds like us cast
Quick lines and chant. The usual. Beaches echo.
But when I turned and saw him, all things changed.
The rumoured mercy of this riddled world
Shone clear. A sudden lift,
Sun crinkled through the branches. Birdsong chimed
With water’s slosh. Dispersing, clouds ran wild.
Unruly light,
Having no heed
Of death’s deranging bite,
Enveloped sea and boat.
No halo framed that love-extolling head
Yet tender fury tumbled from its nod,
As if amphorae and sarcophagus
Were nothing in his scheme.
That gesture said the maker had no need
For power, how living’s caustic struggle goes.
Sea quaked. Did some
Vast bird rush over?
Then all was crystal still
And sunlight filled our sail.
I had the feeling this could last forever.
So many things we see but do not notice:
Crisp bracken, insect wings, the minuscule
Courageous sapling shoots.
Balance is nestled by the stalks of nettles,
A dock-leaf’s balm. The rearing mountain’s call
To chase new heights
Can soothe old feuds
And, though we honour towers,
Flatlands are glories too,
Tousled or tussocky, bud-crowded fields.
Once, rambling by the beach, he seized my arm,
A look like nothing earthly in his eyes,
And whispered, ‘We are one,
Dear brother, with the same unswerving aim.
The plan is real and Satan’s cruellest ice
Can’t hurt. Life’s throne
Persists, and all
Is as it’s meant to be.
The boat, the sky, the bay –
Love is our lamp and every soul the oil.’
What was his purpose, truly? You have seen.
The stone is rolled away, and here we stand.
Don’t fear the wilderness:
Dry wind, moon chill, heat shivers – each a sign
Voracious heaven sent to leave us stunned.
Voluminous
Reality
Advances in our cause
And here are all the clues:
Love makes a bond no discord can untie.
God is a name for saying what we guess
Deep laws that underwrite our world are doing.
Believe me when I say
I thought that truth would always be disguised
Until I saw sure proof of this undying
Mystery: the sea
Buoyed up his feet
And, unexpected marvel,
The liquid held like marble.
It is not finished, no, and it may never.
Some stories have beginnings but no end.
I cannot now forget
How fierce he was, unwearying renewer.
That certainty, that moving stillness, and
The gentle gait
Which, when I look
At any rocking keel,
Is conjured. I recall
The day that Yeshua walked across a lake.
The Slow Steal
No wonder there’d be scuffle, tussle, risk,
Snares in the longer grass,
Restlessness, wistfulness, time’s whisk –
But hidden from my theories
Lurked the slow steal, the leaching, every lurch that wearies.
This also came to pass.
Later a coffin (woah there, do not trip)
And lesser repercussions
Of curveball bleared mortality
Would stir discussions
Far down in me
About hope’s fissures, furrows, slide and slip.
So the slow steal, the trudging waste, persisted,
The gradual drift from grace.
It made me marvel: what had twisted?
What’s down and where true up?
If all will seep like coffee from a punctured cup,
Have we no holding place?
Then love’s abandonment, a loss supreme
And stark because
Believed, while in it, like a dream
Which only doubt can break.
And who would wish (sure, even if it was)
Heaven a fake?
As failings, falterings, withered saplings piled
Like bottles at my door,
I shivered with thick autumn mist.
I was not more
Or less, but missed
Lost flow, flown frenzy, freedom of the child.
Yet when rose petals fell, they blazed like portals,
Compelled belief
In better realms. The real immortals
Are sculptors of delight
Who, by removing, move. Our journey’s brief
But, trust, it’s bright.
The Painter’s Honeymoon
on seeing the painting by Frederic Leighton
Released at last from boyhood’s ritual trials,
The painter is alone –
Not solo but aligned
With one
Whose nearness makes the travelling pencil’s trails
More mobile
And accurate
Than any would have thought
Achievable
In this brief life
Which doubt’s redoubling muddle
And danger’s threat
Dog with their blue
Immensity. But now all’s right
And, twin, they blend, co-orbital in love.
Meshed flecks of highlight on the dress’s folds
Reach to her sunlit mind,
Which tilts to countermand
A mood
Of shy retreat that roves his face’s fields.
If sadness
Ever unselved
Those features, no one now
Could ascertain
Its nature – and
Besides, to see the sun-dance
That hails their new
Conjoinment (twine
Of fingers, souls) is to have solved
Life’s crux: its launch-pad, calm, and happy end.
Convenience and Inconvenience
In one world, sure, they’ll solve the crisis but
That’s not our path here, is it? Look
About you: kicking back, we shut
That door long past. And since our kind forsook
Forest, the red
Flower incandescent at our fingers,
All trees have wished us dead,
Incapable of rest till nothing human lingers.
Tough call, I guess, if you’ve invested well in oil.
It hardly matters
To some when others’ lifeblood spatters
Carfronts – ‘That’s what a windscreen-wiper’s for.’
‘To care for nature sounds too much like beastly toil.’
These days now, blue or red,
High or low, more
Humans don’t give a fig what happens when they’re dead.
To catechise our failings: we’ve been cold,