Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001, Page 3

  and caught Eve alone.

  Woe to those who are alone!

  And when you had separated her, you seduced her,

  then promised them both they should become

  as Gods with God, judging and knowing.

  With treason and treachery you deceived them both

  and brought them to break obedience through false promises.

  So you got them out of Eden, and brought them here at last.

  It was deception, not fair getting.

  God will not be mocked,’ said the Evil One.

  ‘Watch out if you try to make a fool of him.

  Our title deeds to their souls are false.

  My terror is that truth will come for them.

  As you mocked God’s image in becoming snake

  so God has deceived us in becoming man.

  For God has gone about for thirty winters

  in human flesh, travelling, preaching.

  I sent sin to court him, and I asked him

  if he were God, or God’s son. He gave me a short answer.

  So he’s been out and about these thirty-two years.

  When I saw what was happening, I plotted and planned

  to stop those who hated him from martyring him.

  I would have lengthened his life, for I believed

  if he died, if his soul penetrated Hell

  it would make an end of us all.

  While his bones lived, he never rested

  from his love lessons. ‘Love one another’ –

  but the end of that love, and the aim of that law

  is the end of us devils, and our downfall.

  And now I see his soul come sailing towards us

  in light and glory – I know this is God.

  We must retreat, throw down our arms.

  It would be better for us never to have been,

  better to vanish from existence

  than to endure the sight of this Christ.

  Through your lies, Lucifer, we first lost heaven

  and plunged to hell. You dragged us down.

  We swallowed your lies and lost all happiness,

  and now, because you had to lie again

  and betray Eve, we have lost hell and earth

  where we were lords and ruled everything.

  Now shall the prince of this world be cast out.’

  Again, that light bid the gates open. Lucifer answered

  ‘What Lord are you?’ A voice said aloud

  ‘The lord of power and might, that made all things.

  Duke of this damned place, now undo these gates

  that Christ may come in, heaven’s son.’

  As he breathed these words, hell broke, and all Belial’s bars.

  No guard could keep those gates. They opened wide.

  Patriarchs and prophets, the people that dwelled in darkness

  sung with Saint John, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’.

  Lucifer blazed into blindness, and saw nothing

  while those that our Lord loved flowed forth with that light.

  ‘Here I am,’ said our Lord, ‘body and soul,

  to claim for all the rights of body and soul.

  They were made by me, they were always mine.

  My law and my justice promised them

  that if they ate the apple they should die,

  but I never condemned them to hell for ever.

  Their deadly sin came by your deception,

  you got them with trickery, trickery took them.

  You crept into my Eden in the shape of an adder

  to steal away what I loved and looked after,

  you teased and tricked them and destroyed my Eden.

  The Old Law teaches that tricks will catch tricksters,

  and truss them up in a web of deception.

  Those that take life must lose their own lives,

  the Old Law teaches. A murderer’s life is exacted.

  One soul must pay for another, the sin of my Crucifixion

  wipes out Original Sin. For I am human,

  and capable of making amends for human sin.

  Through my own death, I undo death,

  and I ransom all those crushed through sin,

  and I trick the tricksters of hell through my grace.

  So do not fool yourself, Lucifer, that I come against the law

  to fetch any sinful soul by force,

  but by justice and truth I ransom what is mine.

  What was got with guile, is regained by grace.

  As the human race died through a tree

  so by a tree they shall come to life,

  And your deception begins to turn

  inwards, and stab your own flesh,

  while my grace flourishes.

  You have brewed bitterness, now swallow it.

  Doctor of death, drink your own medicine.

  I that am lord of life, love is my drink,

  and for that drink I died today, as it seemed.

  I do not drink from gold cups, or refined teaching,

  only the common cup of all Christian souls.

  But your drink shall be death, and deep hell your bowl.

  After the great fight thirst grips me still,

  my thirst for every human soul.

  My thirst is so great that nothing can touch it –

  all your spirits and rare vintages

  will never slake it, till the grapes are ripe

  and the dead wake. Ripe, and purple, and heavy-hanging

  in the valley of the resurrection,

  and then I shall come into my kingdom

  and bring out of hell all human souls.

  By right I will lead them out of this place,

  all those I loved, all who believed in my coming,

  but because you lied to Eve, Lucifer, you shall pay for it.’

  And the lord bound Lucifer in chains.

  Ashtaroth and the others hid in hell’s crannies:

  They did not dare even look on the lord

  but let him lead forth whomever he chose

  and leave behind him in hell whomever he chose.

  The angels sang and swept their harps,

  hundreds of angels poured out their music:

  The flesh sins, the flesh atones for sin,

  the flesh of God reigns as God.

  Then Peace played these verses on her pipes:

  ‘Glittering sun after rain,’ sang Peace

  The warmth of sun after rain-loaded clouds,

  no love is sweeter, no friends dearer

  than when peace comes after war.

  Peace, armed with patience, puts an end to danger,

  stills violence, destroys terror.’

  ‘Truly,’ said Truth, ‘Here is the heart of truth.

  Let us offer one another the kiss of peace.’

  ‘And let no one say that we argue among ourselves,

  for nothing is impossible to God,’ said Peace.

  ‘You speak the truth,’ said Righteousness,

  and she took Peace in her arms tenderly.

  Mercy and Truth have met together

  Justice and Peace have kissed one another.

  They sang together in my dream until the day dawned

  when the church-bells rang for the Resurrection,

  and with that sound I awoke

  and called Kit my wife and Colette my daughter,

  ‘Get up, and honour God’s resurrection,

  creep to the cross, venerate it, kiss it

  like the most precious jewel there is,

  most worthy relic, richest on earth.

  It bore our Lord’s body to do us good,

  and in the shadow of the cross

  no ghosts can gather, no evil can live.’

  Smoke

  Old warriors and women

  cough their glots of winter-thick phlegm

  while a dog hackles for the bone

  that the boy on the floor has stolen.

  Whining, mithering child
ren

  in swaddles of urine-damp wool, prickling

  with lice, impetigo and scabies, again

  the toothache, the earache, the scabies, the glands

  battling. Hush by the fire again

  sing him a song, rock him again,

  again, till he sleeps, still whining and wizening.

  On the earth floor rocks his squat cradle

  on the squat earth he has come to,

  while one of the obsolete warriors

  wheezes away at an instrument

  made of sheep’s innards.

  He is a man of skills

  learned painfully, not much of a singer

  wheezing for the second time that evening

  of the boar he killed with a dagger

  of the bear with razor claws

  that scooped out the face of his brother

  then fell to his spear.

  In song he remakes his brother

  and their small play on the earth floor.

  The baby cries. Smoke fills the hall,

  the eyes of warriors and old women,

  and nobody listens.

  There’s the skin of the bear on the floor

  and a hearth gaping with flame

  red-mouthed, then smoke hides it again.

  By thirty everyone’s teeth are broken –

  look at that kid worrying his bone.

  Bristol Docks

  Ships on brown water

  wings unruffling

  masts steep and clean,

  There goes the dredger,

  there the steam crane

  downcast, never used.

  Tide goes wherever

  tide goes,

  forty foot rise

  forty foot fall,

  ship waiting

  to clear Hotwells.

  Time rises

  time falls.

  Two hundred years

  shrink to nothing,

  huge tides

  shrunk to a drop

  caught in a cup

  where the men sip

  tea, coffee

  laced with rum,

  talk venturing

  westward, moneyward.

  This is the slaver

  money funded,

  good money

  from tradesmen’s pockets,

  guinea by guinea

  fed into it.

  Double it, treble it,

  build on it.

  Don’t stare –

  you’ll cross them:

  William Miller,

  Isaac Elton,

  Merchant Trader,

  Merchant Venturer,

  powerful men.

  Edward Colston’s

  almshouses

  (slaver panelled)

  still standing.

  Sugar houses

  (easy burning)

  all gone,

  brown water

  brown rum.

  Custom House

  African House

  bonded warehouse

  almshouse

  sugar house.

  Mud slack

  licking its chops,

  bright water

  fighting to rise.

  Look in their eyes.

  They’ll stare you down

  for it takes guts

  to get returns.

  Investor,

  speculator,

  accumulator,

  benefactor.

  See their white wings

  fledge on the Avon.

  They speak of cargo,

  profit-margins,

  schools they’ve founded,

  almshouses.

  If you stare

  at the brown water

  you will see nothing,

  every reflection

  sucked and gone.

  Slaver’s gone

  on savage wings,

  beak preying.

  Tradesmen’s guineas

  got their return:

  coffee, cotton,

  cocoa, indigo,

  sugar, rum,

  church windows,

  fine houses,

  fine tombstone

  for Edward Colston,

  the cry of gulls

  goes after them

  always lamenting,

  always fresh

  beaks stabbing

  at their soul-flesh.

  The spill

  Those words like oil, loose in the world,

  spilling from fingertip to fingertip

  besmirching lip after lip,

  the burn; the spillage of harm.

  Those words like ash, mouth-warm.

  Without remission

  Because she told a lie, he says,

  because she lied

  about the hands not washed before shopping,

  she had to learn,

  because he wanted her to learn

  the law that what he said, went,

  and that was the end,

  and because she was slow

  she had to learn

  over and over.

  He was an old-fashioned teacher,

  he taught her hair to lie straight,

  he taught her back to bend,

  he taught silence

  but for the chink of coathangers

  stirring in the wardrobe.

  He kicked the voice out of her.

  There were no words left to go

  with the seven-year-old girl

  soiled and bleeding,

  marched along the corridor

  by this man, rampant

  with all he had learned.

  Later, locked up once more

  she called through the door to her mother

  ‘It’s all right, Mum, I’m fine.’

  But she was lying.

  The rain’s coming in

  Say we’re in a compartment at night

  with a yellow label on the window

  and a wine bottle between your knees,

  jolting as fast as the sparks

  torn from night by the wheels.

  Inside, the sleeping-berth is a hammock

  and there I swing like a gymnast

  in a cradle of jute diamonds.

  Outside, the malicious hills,

  where to stop is to be borne away

  in the arms of a different destiny,

  unprotesting. Too sleepy to do anything

  but let it be. So, that oak, lightning-cracked,

  shakes where the flame slashes

  and kills its heart. Swooshing up air

  in armfuls its branches unload

  toppling beyond the rails’

  hard-working parallels. Say you join me,

  say your eyes are drowsy,

  say you murmur, The rain’s coming in,

  pull up the strap on the window,

  the rain’s coming in.

  As good as it gets

  She comes close to perfection,

  taking the man on her thigh,

  sweeping him home

  in a caress of glitter, that way and this,

  that, this, each muscle stripped

  to bulge and give. See how her hair

  streams in the firmament,

  see how the tent

  jutting with spotlights

  puts one over her, then another,

  another, a spurt of white

  that slicks to her thighs

  while the crowd claps time,

  faster and faster, wishing she’ll fall

  wishing she’ll plunge for ever

  licked all over with glitter

  love-juices, spittle.

  Back she comes on herself,

  her bird costume flaring.

  As she lets him down

  you see the detail: the rosin,

  the sweat that follows her spine,

  the sly, deliberate spin

  with which he steps onto land.

  But the crowd won’t stop clapping.

  They want her again,
/>
  they’ve been translated, they’re Greek,

  shouting Die now! This is as good as it gets!

  If only

  If only I’d stayed up till four in the morning

  and run through the dawn to watch the balloons

  at the Festival ground,

  and seen you as your balloon rose high

  on a huff of flame, and you’d waved,

  and a paper aeroplane had swooped to the ground

  with your mobile number scrawled on the wings.

  If only I’d known that you were crying

  when you stood with your back to me

  saying that it didn’t matter

  you’d be fine on your own.

  If only I’d trusted your voice

  instead of believing your words.

  If only I hadn’t been too late, too early,

  too quick, too slow, too jealous and angry,

  too eager to win

  when it wasn’t a game.

  If only we could go back to then

  and I could pick up your paper aeroplane

  and call you for the very first time.

  Mr Lear’s Ring

  Mr Lear has left a ring in his room.

  Is it of value, is it an heirloom?

  Should we pack it with brown paper and string

  And post it after him?

  He hasn’t the air of a marrying man

  He hasn’t a husbandly air.

  No, his gait is startled and sudden,

  And is he quite all there?

  Poor Mr Lear has left a ring in his room

  And it’s not of value, it’s never an heirloom,

  But we’ll pack it with brown paper and string

  And we’ll send it wherever he’s gone.

  Fortune-teller on Church Road

  Two of us on the tired pavement