and as he shook it cried I seized the night!
and so it passed.
He took an ancient play and moved the pieces
here and there until he’d made a play
about a man who took an ancient play
and moved the pieces.
It was his year, it was to be the year
it all took off, he had a brilliant spring
and wrote all summer of the brilliant spring
he had that year.
A song was playing which would always now
remind him of those days, when it came on
tonight he said it used to, whack it on
it doesn’t now.
I love it though, he said when it was done.
I always will and all the stars looked down
as they’ll be doing when you set this down
and that’s that done.
Poem As Harbour
Home to this after time away
he was greeted like he never went,
no matter the sights he says he saw,
no matter the days he claims he spent.
The whiteness smiles a smile as wide
as all the seas he howls he sailed
and holds his lone indignant cry
where lone indignant cries are held.
Milestone Song
for Geraldine
Make light of this number,
reduce it to rumour,
outlast it in summer,
outgun it with humour.
You do that whatever
gets hurled in your general
direction, you ever
made shit so ephemeral,
shabby and local,
so easy to figure,
so pitiful, fragile,
framed as a picture
or family portrait
or gossip or x-ray,
you sail on beyond it,
your yay to the naysay,
lighter than numbers,
wise to your sorrow,
kind to your yesterdays,
up to tomorrow.
The Ledge
for Alfie
Woken again by nothing, with this line
already at my back, I thought of you
at twenty, as you are – which passed somehow
while I was staring – thought how yesterday
you said you wanted to be young again,
which left me with this nothing left to say
that’s woken me. You are, you are – what else
does father wail to child – though wailing it
he’s woken with six-sevenths of the night
to go – you are – look I will set to work
this very moment slowing time myself,
feet to the stone and shoulder to the dark
to gain you ground – if just one ledge of light
you flutter to, right now, rereading that.
Daylight Saving
for Jim Maxwell (1928–2016)
Sib, they’re considering doing away
with daylight saving. I wanted to tell you
in one of the fora
we wander together,
neither one literally here. Anyway
I don’t know the reason. The folks of the morning
and folks of the evening met at a table
and at the same moment
rose in agreement,
doing away with daylight saving
and nor was I there to say hold your horses
as you would have said and so would your father,
we three in a line
having doubts at the same time
wasn’t to be, no one sat in our places.
No one spoke up for the scent of the hedges,
our marathon hide-and-seek going on
when the sun should be set
and we shouldn’t be out
and the ribbon of light down the curtains for ages
infinite really in that there’s no ending
anyone’s showed me. No one spoke up
for the thrill of the way
the last shreds of a Sunday
clung at the gate like their father was coming
to ferry them home. All gone if you look
but no one is looking. No, Sib, they are thinking
of doing away
with daylight saving,
won’t miss the beetling advance of the dark
on your boys standing up in our bikes heading home,
they won’t miss the witches just missing the trees
for whatever they save
they will lose as they do, it’s not going to be Time,
who knows why they hàd daylight saving at all?
I’m just glad we had it. I’m sure you explained
you’re explaining now
and I’m listening how
I have generally listened and largely will
for the love in a sound. They are doing away
with daylight saving and where shall we meet?
now God I don’t think so
is shutting those windows
and locking the house like a yesterday . . .
We shall meet where the light and the clock are askew
and the language has scrambled to say what that’s like
and it’s thinking it might
let the space play the light
and it might let the space play the other thing too
the what-was-it-called, two hands in a ring
and one pointed to there and one pointed to there,
there-there was its point,
who knows where it went?
howls the language again and goes back to its darning
and back to St Francis we go, you and I,
where we voted that second last time you went out.
Won’t say how that went,
there’ll be time better spent
and light better shed to go wandering by.
The Light You Saw
Short, and to a point I shan’t foresee.
This poem ends, you can see if you dip your eye.
Dip it and lift it again and be here with me,
knowing it’s got to, pocketing goodbye.
Think what form it takes, the light you saw.
Will it darken with this print to an off-white?
Will it rise and fall, be shifted like a shore?
It is not a place I’ll be, it is not a plight.
It is neither meant nor merited nor made.
This can’t be seen from there. This makes no sound
there. There things can neither end nor fade.
This does. You can see it does if you look down.
Look up, I’d say to my child and I say to you.
See where I haven’t written but hope to.
Blank Page Speaks
May I say that when I meet you in the morning
and you infer from silence that there’s nothing
you can’t say,
one thing I’m also saying is there’s nothing
you can do.
May I say that when I meet you in my brightness,
you in a ragged gown to do your business,
it’s not I
who presses it from you – do I look restless –
only you.
Only you you drag from what you dream of
to pen your variation on the theme of
how you are
this morning. May I say I had a dream of
something too?
Obviously not and off you go now.
Left your little footprint let it snow now
let it snow
and you can dream I wonder where you go now,
can’t you.
Blank Page Gets To Work
May I say that when you’re gone
I get to work.
I got to work
just then. Back then,
the second you
were done,
were done with me,
done using me,
your page. Your page
pressed on alone and when
your back was turned
on it it turned
and look: you’re back,
having some second crack
at anything
while nothing
watches. Which is
all it’s all about.
And which is me.
Watch me
when you’re done. You’re done.
The White
When you first made a sound you made a sound
on nothing. Not on peace,
on nothing. Not on silence nor the grand
absence of what was,
on nothing. And it hadn’t got that name
nor any name, it looked like what’s to come
and has gone now, that swathe of white. And white
was just a term for it.
Not a thing to notice, that polite
attendant at the gate,
with nothing to examine but a list,
clocking and ticking all who’ve simply passed
by now without a word. What kind of fool
can’t make his mark on white?
When you first made a sound you could make all
the sounds there are, could write
the moment in the moment, at the pace
it passes you when you don’t hear it pass,
until you do – you saw that stanza break . . .
And now it dawns on you
you’re in a fight with something: what you make
is making something too,
and it’s something you don’t mean, the gaps, the blanks
are everywhere, and vague oblivion blinks
whatever room you enter. Shrug it off,
there’s nothing there, it’s white,
it doesn’t speak, is nothing to speak of,
nothing compared to what
you have to say, have come to say, have left
to say. It seems you thought your gift a gift,
but look what’s walking with it, each line-ending
turns your head – it’s nothing,
the wind perhaps, crack on with what you’re saying –
but all you hear is breathing.
You hide in other voices so the space
will come for them and leave you be, but these
it doesn’t want, your plays, your make-believe.
They edge away, immune,
to faraway and once-upon, said, safe –
they are leaving you alone
like beloved actors will. Now white is dark
and audible from here. To do your work
is to defer it, though you hurtle there
on its cold fuel. To cry
against it is to sound its orchestra
and the opposite – to cry –
will bring it in white gloves and epaulettes
to say there-there and dab your eyes to bits.
Nor can you shake it off. It’s now the cold,
the soon, the gone, the neither,
it strolls with you, your wrist is lightly held,
your breath depends, forever
streams beside you like the only river
and what they make you gingerly step over
you don’t recall. When you next make a sound
you strike a match in darkness.
See all that grows is growing all around
and all you wrote was helpless
as a witness. If the white did this to you,
all this it made of you, or made you do –
What is its name? Who was it? Who lives here? –
To which that same benign
attendant sweetly smiles at the screen door.
And if you wish to sign
her leather-bound great crimson book just do,
for no one’s asking you, or stopping you.
Blank Page’s Dream
I was waiting where I’m waiting.
You didn’t come, I peered out into
where I feel you stem from.
Then I rose in my white habit
with every word you’ve levelled at me
sliding off like filings,
each little pin-sharp point
you were moved to make and made on me
you hadn’t made at all,
I had gone from where you find me.
The turned room was staring like
this cannot be the case,
you really don’t belong here,
the books indignant all the chairs
confirming this one’s taken,
the table droned reserved,
the pictures we’re not here for you
the door no love we’re closed
as I nonetheless step through,
I nonetheless step through the door
that said so. I say Love
you are wide open, I
go into light I recognize,
serenity I know now
as time I lost restored.
In a cluttered corner there you seem
absorbed in your own hands,
sunbeams at your fingers
are all the words you wish on me,
the patterns of your dust
with nowhere now to land,
no page or port or platform, no
whiteness to be seen by
nor silence to be heard by,
no form on earth to catch them
as they fall, still they fall
till my long dream is over,
and you find me where you find me,
staring at you blankly
while you’re staring at me blankly,
your hand still reaching out as if
nothing’s changed between us.
Pasolini’s Satan
After The Gospel According To St Matthew
Silence brought me here.
That and meeting somebody for whom
silence isn’t there.
But it brought me here – white silence, the black view.
I am the antibody
striding to the wound christ not again
I murmur to myself
as I slip my dead-banana black shoes on
at this hideous fahrenheit
and make my dusty beeline down the slopes
to see who thinks there’s no such
thing as silence. Earth smokes at my steps
because Earth thinks it’s cool
to smoke. It’ll smoke a pack on its last day.
Look how small I look.
I’m the mote in my own eye, I am blameless, me,
cast in this gospel, cast
in the Only Truth – one of four Only Truths –
by a maker whose only truth
is this is the one he will make his movie with.
The man in white down there
on his knees? Hasn’t a clue he’s in a picture.
He’ll make me forget it too,
make me think we’re here and share a future.
For now it’s one man kneeling,
no, standing – He’s got up to look like Jesus.
I look like who I am.
Someone who thinks there’s such a thing as silence.
I’m no one still, like every
face you’ve seen. They cast us from round here.
We looked real, we’re gone now,
we are nobodies, we happened to be there
when the maker came. If you look
you can find our insignificant peasant names
in the credits – all except
mine, who was I? Nobody two times.
Three times when He looks.
He looks through me as if He saw me coming
and going, saw me small,
now faraway, a spot, a speck then nothing,
as if He watched me turn
in time, then set off home for long ago;
as if He watched me do
what in a while I, yes, am likely to:
turn on my dead black rind
of a heel and walk away from this. My eyes
can’t do with being seen,
so I look at the world and look it’s got my eyes.
Silence brought me here
but I am here. And those of us who are,
who know there’s such a thing
as silence know it’s something we can’t bear –
we have to say, and I say
because I’m starving Turn these stones to bread
if there’s no such thing as silence.
Make no one starving now there’s no one dead.
I and the silence wait
for His next trick and He vanquishes the silence
(in His dreams which are your dreams)
with some scripture about scripture till the silence
backs away for now.
Shall we walk? I finally say, and suddenly
(in my dreams which are your dreams)
we have spiralled down to the valley, spiralled high
to some holy pinnacle.
Life or death or small talk. I say Look:
if there’s no such thing as silence,
jump why don’t you, show me who the fuck
you make the children pray to.
And silence doesn’t come, the wind comes, breezes
come and go as if some
word is blooming (please) but what He says is
this Jesus, what He says is,
No one is ever allowed to ask me Show Me.
You can see me thinking: squire,
is that truly the best you can do, is that it, really?
Is that really all you’ll say
when they come for you? For they will come for you.
Is that your secret weapon
when they strike? I edged away, checked out the view.
For to be straight with you
I was dumbfounded, puzzled into wonder.
Who would ever ask Him
anything but Show Me in the future?
Or – everyone who did,
would their heads be spun, some dim parading army
droning for all time:
No one is ever allowed to ask him Show Me.
Then somehow we’re back here
in the dust, like we were never gone, His face
v mine, the right v wrong,
the only tools He left us in His tool-case,
but I’ve learned the rule of three,
so I know I’ve one shot left, and I blurt out
Be like me, like us,
won’t you join us in the silence? Just admit
there’s silence! And in that
infinite split-second He will take