versatile then,
now immobile –
an
endless technique
and a small
coda
VI
structured and
economical
angled slopes,
discontinuity
there is no entity,
only change
a thicker base beneath
folds and breaks
the valley
undrowned
a new form
has been found
it must begin anywhere
and continue
“the descriptions which suggest themselves
are all misleading”
what is proved
is withdrawn from doubt
axiom:
self-evident principle
as it
falls apart
there’s a temptation
to say more
when everything
has been described
(not the result,
but that we reach it)
why bother
about an end?
‘so far there is no such thing
as an answer to your question’
i.m. Steve Lacy
on the white
grass not the Object
but the light
where my feet
would have notched
its blades
not the dew but
a pool
of moon
Theory
the cracks
in an old wall,
the shape
of a cloud,
the path of
a falling leaf
or the froth
on a pint of beer
lines for David Bellingham (and in memory M. E. S.)
once repetition is empty
it is empty, repetition
say, is empty repetition
repetition once empty is
empty, is it repetition
is it, say, repetition
once repetition is empty
repetition is empty it
is empty, say, repetition
Descant on a Theme by Brian Coffey
chien: a fabulous bird with one eye and one wing, a pair
must unite in order to fly. [doubled] a pair – man and wife
Mathews’ Chinese-English Dictionary
“In parable chinese fictive one-winged birds
that fly together as one each lifting other”
Brian Coffey, Advent I I
one-eyed &
one-winged
they fly
as one together
leg joined with leg in
pure winged linking,
each wing with wing
of an other, reflecting
in the air
suspendat
hirundo
with
“unwearied affection”
each
by other taught
each
lifting the other
light and easy
they tumble in the air
they float
on the spring wind
they bring
the spring
elthe, elthe
chelidon
swirling glide
over scrub-oak & juniper
‘sunny gulleys
in the mountains’
skimming low
over water,
dipping, sipping
its surface
twin beaks
scooping
ephemer
-optera
dipping
over
river
glitter
chittering song
of two as one
tsink, tsink
tswit, tswit,
tsi-kuk
thin singing
in
empty colonnades
gliding
in
failing wind
looped, linked
with a cord
of light, they
swoop, sink;
in accord,
they alight
settling
in the osiers
of an eyot
on the river
over white sand
under black pines
in slant light
under cold moon,
willow-cotton
snow on snow
at the lake’s edge
ringed by winter
all fly together
“and after
a most sweet
singing
submerge themselves
and rise again
in spring
from far away
a 100-stanza renga
(odd-numbered stanzas: Harry Gilonis; even-numbered stanzas, Tony Baker)
1
Fern sits in the shade
where we wallow green
and thoughtless
2
in the shadows fired
with thirst midst
slack willows what-
stand-well &
truly rooted
3
behind the trees water falls
TO THE HILLS peaty ghylls
run in tiers on black fell moss
Ure feet from Eden
4
…his ship towards –
“sailed uphill –”
annihilating each fixed star
5
the Leonids sputter & hiss, Rigel
bobs at the masthead: le navire
est dans la lumière, lovely
on the water –
6
leaf-choked –
dank grass beneath our bruised feet
7
a blue moon. nightblue apple trees.
star-naked boys in the meadow.
a frog. a leaf. a fire-fly. leaves.
8
asking myself: how come these things pile up at my door?
answering: & do not the weeds too have right of access to the sun?
9
there’s no light under the orchard,
under the hill; above, just the glimmer
of Minuartia verna
10
a waste and howling wilderness
this window open in
to the infernal world
11
How long shall I heare the sighs and groanes
O Tythes, Excize, Taxes, Pollings &c
This government is firmly committed to
12
brute strength hauled up
“dark matter”, undetectable, nameless
names burnt against the wall the
13
petals blowing row on row,
roots that clutch a-
midst the stubble of Flanders fields
14
frost-wrecked
stalks dug in
every part the bright hectic
tubby cotyledons
15
“in an inferior world”
in a laich wind
bog-cotton’s tiny cumuli
snipe tumble drumming
16
drumming in an inferior
world thunders at the tunnel-mouth the approaching
magnates, lutenist, apoplectic, fish-man
all gone beneath the mountain
17
a crevasse in the sky blue light under the black hill
by the frozen water eyelids locked in frost
cold sickle-moons in the boot-tops
18
…migrants
at the light-ship…
19
between the poles at the lagoon’s edge
“we two together…” under Orion
swimming in black water
20
– breaks over
our bed of scruffy heather
21
the shadow of young girls and flowers
asleep on the broom-filled hill
22
doped air thick with cinders,
the scorching desire for
We
have become the market
& the market’s need all-consuming
23
Who will sell
this wonderful morning
and the air that we breathe
EVERYTHING REDUCED
a strong force, a single theory
24
for the infinitely
small or large
& another for
fireflies brief oceans the unaccounted for the
25
unvisible –
“seen the hills and they were just –”
“seen one tree and you’ve seen –”
the fern’s signature
in the coal, the new bracken’s crozier –
26
the warbler in the osier –
o nothing could be finer
wotchercock, sang the mynah
27
‘Dinah’ sung in the Public, chalk dust by the darts mat, flat
beer & talk ebb & flow, going down on the cards, in the yard
by the cludgie falling drunkenly upwards into a pool of stars
28
our drenched words
still cling to as spores …
If one could listen at the sound of their falling
would make a music uneclipsable, before & after ours
29
the houses wheel over the earth
stars sporadic No music
from these spheres
30
where silence is, the other night
a gay stream tripped –
I seasonally adjust myself:
put on more clothes
31
“ottim time – an’ the livs is fallin’ –”
with such easy loss of innocence
the trees shed their leaf aprons
32
without strings, mountains, junk, floating free
up the river that we are
free agents
in the want of, wanting rid of it
33
the island used up, “the sea
which is death”, a river
aflame orange
what forests perish from sick effluviums
34
what tree burgeons over sterile earth –
not a mushroom gathered
this rainless summer
35
hot like a stove in the desert night
moon’s not silver but yellow
splashes on our skin
parched as earth, hungrier
36
for love,
for one full hull charged
with the weight of us,
of each our stowing
37
at rest, buoyant
entangled
in lilies
38
on the water-pools
we delve in
ridiculously familiar
39
below the water-line
kelp used for glass & soap:
& rent charged
for the land under the water
40
the ten authorities
permanently poised
in comfort your own home
41
in time
this fainful bsiness
will will soonfeul soon
will soon be onert
42
[leave
this
space
blank]
43
moving across the water
black and grey meet at the horizon
in a kind of dancing light
44
to salute a botched job
sluiced silence for fifty years
convincement in the magnitudes of stars
45
in quiet sitting, in the bronze
of the bracken the star
arises Altair in your hair
46
after all these years
six new moons, blue & crazy
paved frost on a rubble-filled heap ‘dop’
for a brambly
47
rainheavy and pissed on by the púca – splats –
rips web – De lineis insectabilibus only house
unless it rains – tatters – Brier Spider
unhoused – ditto Oonops in my teapot
48
cupped hillocks tripped up a rip-off
off Stoops gnatty in a downpour where
lights collapse to loop the nightslope
49
stoked Aga smoke slopes up back
ice is crisp on the steps up to the Miners’
seems there are faults, reserves exhausted
and a flower frozen on the window, morning
50
dark as night
covered in this
black stuff
men drift away: the hills don’t
stay either – shiftless, insufficient
51
they drift in the current
coated in black gurry
beyond prejudice or reason
will we talk about the black birds?
52
will we suffer exoneration?
will we scrape a living from the pipelines?
& who is there of the herring-smacks will play pibroch?
53
no-one hears the small music; the wind
in the whin, the flights of warblers,
the sedge’s humming drone; nor, tiny thunder,
the birl, the dirl, the skirl of the urlar of the heather
54
nor kittling of dwarfish house-mice
(nest best in the hessian of cold meat stores,
little mountains of fur & feather)
55
t follow the harrow a hell-fr-leather perr-yu-weet plummet
56
slapdash to let loop the old
leaves drip groundward
57
each one treeless
but each fungus home
to generations of worms
“fruit not void of utilitie”
58
for the wine thrives by patience
& the wise man asks not
wherein his soul shall be clothed…
(coloured bulbs dance at the entrance to the pier…
59
and there is light crowning the thorns of the wire
and the crossbeams and the shined metal
aligned & twisted skyward
for a day of howling
60
stark carcass bottomless
stripped to the pitstone. Spit
pith & decorous.
“for the fire fox must cross the great water”
61
lit by fox-fire and Artemisia
round three peaks
“derived from Definitive Maps”
bring lavender home from the moor
its roots & ours intertwined
62
upon the skirts
of Ingleborough Hill snowed tofts
dug, thence scarred, now unheard of
63
a little north of Folly
pine under a duvet of
snow humped snouts aside of
smouts walling moving up a
beacon moon
64
above the frith, contemplating
Solomon in all his tory
lands &
the distempered economics of unlabouring hands
65
that sweat be converted into ease
that the sun shine at night-time
66
that the topters fall not on my allotment
that the glow-worms, espec
ially those of Lathkill, be not extinguished
67
the sodium night-light does not dispirit
golden it glows into a new day
68
brings groundsel & pappus-dust:
that we are as they are, our
outer lungs
suck carbon from milked air