SLUGS

You who skate through on the blades of your own slime,

Waving eye-horns, you who weave glistening un-patterns –

Not contrails, not the trace of shooting Perseid showers,

Because planes are not slugs and nor are meteors –

Not patterns either, because Iranian carpets

Are not made by trained slugs left to wander a picture.

You dribbling inbred villagers, who leave for the finder

Not the cast form of God’s careful mind, or the world’s,

A bird’s nest say or the nymph of a caddis fly,

Clinging to a rock, husk split by new wings unwrapping -

But just a mad motocross track of drunk giggling scribbles -

Look – one thing would make it all good: grow a spiral,

Form a translucent moon out of simple minerals,

Amber, earth brown or bright green – if snails can do it, you can.

AUGUST (medical)

Emperor August, a nurse took a look at your blood,

Just for a check-up, but what she saw swarming there

Was myriads of frost-faced horsemen advancing

Across the steppes of earlier and chillier evenings,

Crystals clustering in the warm crimson,

Each with a blade to hack through a leaf’s neck,

Stripping the entire roof off your green empire

Where we felt safe as one fish in six billion.

All this is visible, August, in your blood sample,

Epic under microscope – blonde though you are, protector,

Bronzed and blue-eyed, you will show your bones.

Us too. We lived in you, and we will go through it too,

A dark and barbarous age, till Christ comes in April.

RACE

Two brothers vanish in the Torridge raft race.

This is what happens. One slips down for some reason

Into this asphyxiation chamber –

The entrance open, the exit coded,

As difficulty takes the place of oxygen,

Making the simplest decision chess

At the height of an international tournament,

Or the last least imaginable twist of calculus

That will make the flight to Mars straightforward.

Up in the bright light, circling, the other ponders,

And the Torridge murmurs, come down and find him,

Step through the black door of ultimate chest-pressure,

Love says you must. And the oaks, in chorus,

Chant, don’t, don’t, and the entire air – but he does.

ROWAN

Rowan tree. An old woman sitting on the pavement,

In Cobourg Street, which has at one end a theatre designer

And at the other, safe-houses for ex-prisoners,

And in between, cats, hawks, cars squeezing past pedestrians.

There she was huddled in the shadow, strong slabs beneath her,

Brick at her back, where a big house propped her up.

But nothing inside her, all falling through the un-floor,

Or out into the smashed sky that could not contain anything.

She stares as if nothing’s to be done, no help outside

To match the collapse inside, the mass jail-break,

So no point in seeing, but no point in closing the eyes,

Nothing to be done either inside or outside,

All one continuous black. And my question:

Rowan tree, would that be you, if you were a woman?

KINGFISHERS.

The moon is a riot of footprints.

Mars is orange with streetlights.

Amazing flying machines
Completely cover the ground.

This is too much for the crocuses.

But here come the kingfishers,
Crossing it all out

With swift azure strokes.

KINGFISHERS. (long lines)

The moon is a riot of footprints.

 Mars is orange with streetlights.

 Amazing flying machine completely cover the ground.

This is too much for the crocuses, but here come the kingfishers,

Crossing it all out with swift azure strokes.

To have experienced the world is to be dead. No way of knowing

Its darkest alleys without dying in them,

Because the knife is the soul of the alley. And on a battlefield,

Everyone except the dead is ignorant

Of what in fact has actually happened,

The survivors stunned or ecstatic, but the body-count,

Heads, legs, arms ripped off, guts out, eyes out,

They have had the whole thing clearly demonstrated,

And burned right into them, seen and been the beast itself,

As the crow knows, hopping now happily from one to one,

Picking the brains through the eyeholes, tasting the lesson

That is etched onto the eyes of every dead thing,

Gleaning this light from the black of the black of the black:

Those who merely watch the sun sink have no part in its rising.

DRUID

This is what will remain: a flat hilltop,

Burnt and buried foundations, a broad view of a city,

A grassy irregular bank that was the ramparts,

A sign with conjectural dates and description

That the high rooks will mock, as they drift, black banners,

Following the vast sinking faceless dateless gold coin

That buries itself in the west each evening,

And slides back up behind the desperate excavators

Who have dug all night in their dreams, in the wrong place.

Cauldron brimming, bright eye of the sky and the mind,

With each and every brooch, eye, sword, tongue, torque, ring

And spade that has ever flashed back its glance between clouds,

Or returned its frank blaze, past-and-future facing coin,

And us the uneven rim, rough to the rub of the thumb.

THE SYBIL

A Sybil came to Rome with books to sell –

the entire future coded in a sigh

to her starved dancing at the edge of hell

by an old thorn. She set her price too high

and was refused, so took three books, of nine,

and burned them in the brazier by the throne,

waited a breathing moment for a sign,

then burned three more. But still the King was stone,

staring into the flames. Far-off, the mountains

said nothing, and the sparrows in the lane

chirped loudly, and the gushing of the fountains

continued, and the sun was strong and plain.

Then the King broke, like an old storm-cracked pine,

and bought three volumes for the price of nine.

The forthright hawk, discussing with the dove,

Swiftly convinces. His hooked finger prods,

Proving his point, a sharp one from above,

From way above her soft head that now nods

In deep agreement. But he won’t relent,

Tearing the carcase of her argument

Down to the melting marrow, not content

Till he has crammed her entire testament

Into his gullet. So she keeps conceding,

Feather by feather, string by strip of red,

Till her thin bones all shine, leeched of their pleading,

And all her thoughts have entered through his head

Into his blood, except for one fine-shaded

Question that drifts downwind, not quite persuaded…

PARADISO 33

Marine Interrogator

Virgin Mary

Saint Bernard

Dante

A TORTURE CHAMBER. DANTE IS CHAINED TO A CHAIR, BLINDFOLDED. BERNARD IS STANDING, IN PRISONER’S UNIFORM, CUFFED.

MARINE: Speak! Make him speak!

BERNARD: It is not right!

MARINE: Don’talk to me about right, Saint fucking Bernard! Preacher! Did you ever visit Jerusalem to see how it looked? Knee-deep in blood, alleyways blocked by stiffs, mums and dads and kids all tangled up. They couldn’t move in the streets, your Warriors of the Cross, till they’d forced the survivors to drag them a passage. That was heaven that did that, that was God! Jews and Muslims and  Christians, anyone, they just killed whoever they met, your men of iron, your men of Christ – they straightened out Jerusalem! No you never went, you just preached the sacred rampage, with the Pope’s stamp, you raised hell with your hymns and prayers, sanctified Satan and set him on Jerusalem! Nobody loves you, Bernard, nobody thanks you now! So do what I say because we can do what we like with you –

BERNARD: Believe me, I want you and the world to see what he has seen – so does he! It’s just that – to speak of it is utterly impossible –

MARINE: Ok. Good. You’re dead then. And him.

BERNARD: No! I will try! I will try!

MARINE: Try!

BERNARD: God, help me.

Oh Virgin Mother, daughter of thy son,

Lower  and higher than all other creatures,

Unending end of the eternal teaching,

Thou art the one in whom the human form

Was made so perfect that the one who made it

Was happy to be made by it! Thy womb

Was the hothouse in which the flower bloomed

That is our peace forever. You are here

For us the cloudless noon of love. Down there

You are a spring of hope for mortals. Lady,

To seek for grace without your help is like

Trying to fly without wings. You are mercy,

Pity and plenty – all the good is gathered

In you, that can be found in any creature.

This man, who from the bottom of the pit

To this high point, has travelled viewing all

The spirits one by one, now turns to thee

For strength to follow his own eyes towards

Salvation’s final height. Wipe clean the sky

Of his mortality, with your strong prayers

Clear all the clouds, so that the total joy

Can be revealed to him. I also pray,

Queen, that you bring him from wide-opened sight

Back to his right mind – let him still be human!
See Beatrice, and many of the blessed,

Praying with me for this!

MARY LOOKS AT BERNARD AND DANTE AND LOOKS UP TOWARDS THE LIGHT. THE MARINE REMOVES  DANTE’S BLINDFOLD AND SHINES A LIGHT INTO HIS FACE.

MARINE: Speak! What can you see? Speak!

DANTE: I – I – I – I –

HE REACHES OUT HIS HANDS.

MARINE: What do you want?

DANTE: Nothing – nothing –

BERNARD: He is beyond desire.

DANTE: So the tracks vanish from the snow

When the sun rises –

So the wood’s library of leaves

With all the Sibyl’s prophecies,

When the wind blows –

Leave me a gleam of speech – light –

Infinite goodness – o abounding grace –

I looked so long that all my sight was spent –

I saw that it contained, all folded tight,

All that is scattered through the universe –

All substance, chance, connection, accident,

Intensified into a point of light.

I think I saw the form of it, the face

Of everything –because to speak of it

Makes me so vast! And in a single blink

It sinks into the swirling past as deep

As Jason and the Argo, ship that shocked

Neptune, when it swept over him, the first

Keel he had ever felt! But then, I kept

Staring and staring! What could drag my sight

Away from that? It is the origin

Of wishing.

No – no – nonsense! Babytalk! Increasingly fraudulent and insufficient!

Not that it changed, it never changed, the light!

But it changed me, it magnified my sight,

So that it seemed to change, but it was me

Changing, my way of seeing it, not it

Changing at all! In the clear depth of it

I saw three different coloured circles shining

In one another as a rainbow does

In a rainbow – the third was fire breathed out

Equally by the others.

No! Nonsense! Nonsense! Drunken gibberish! Nothing like that!

Words are nothing, nothing!

O everlasting light, you know yourself,

Dwell in yourself alone, and love yourself,

Smiling into the mirror of yourself!

That which was circling, like reflected light,

Light born from light, when my eyes understood,

Inside itself assembled from its colour

A human figure – then my widened sight

Poured into it – like the geometrician
Who stares and stares to try to square the circle,

But cannot twist his mind into a theorem,

So did I stare at first, and try to judge

The way the figure fitted – and I lacked

The soaring thoughts to do it, but a flash

Suddenly struck me and I had my wish.

Then my imagination simply snapped.

But now I wanted only what there was.

I was a smoothly turning wheel, revolved

By the same love that moves the sun and stars.

SILENCE.

MARINE: Is that it? Is that all the information he’s giving us?

BERNARD: I’m afraid so, sir.

MARINE: You better change your mind, man, we want more than that! And we can get it! Because you’re in the losing team, you backed the wrong God, that’s why you’re here in this chair, and he ain’t gonna help you because he ain’t real! He let you down!

DANTE: He will come in his own time.

BERNARD: There is no escaping him.

AFTER DANTE

It is so clear, it is so bright a day,

When my sweet lady greets you with a smile,

You have to hide in silence for awhile,

You have to turn your thieving eyes away.

She knows that she is praised but still she goes

Everywhere dressed in the transparency

Of simple grace - a gentle embassy

From the real world. Hers is the face it shows,

A demonstration given by the sky

To the dark heart so brightly through the eyes,

It cannot be imagined, only known.

An angel made of love is sweetly blown

Out of her mouth - invisibly it flies

Into the soul, advising it to sigh.

AFTER DANTE

To every heart locked up in love, who sees

This message I have put into a sonnet,

Which I would like them to reply to please,

With any thoughts that might shed light upon it,

I greet you in the name of Love, your King.

Night was already half way through the hours

The stars are given for their glittering,

When - and remembering that power of powers,

My mouth falls open - Love appeared to me

Suddenly. He was smiling. In his hand

He held my heart, a fire, and my lady

Slept in his arms, wrapped in a mantle, and

He woke her and, priest-like, despite her fears,

Fed her my flames, then ran away in tears.  

CROW

Where are your roots, black rose?

Your song is thorns

That snag the ear.

Your bed is air.

You flower suddenly there and there.

Suddenly a field is all black roses,

With thorn cries, suddenly a tree,

Suddenly the air.

Stillness that shifts

In jumps and flutters

Instantly rooted

Forever and ever,

Though you just left,

Having just got there.

Standing stones

That flock and scatter,

You were always there

Wherever you are.

BLUETIT

Thin song like scissors in the morning,

Cut my anger into ribbons.

LARK

News from heaven.

Same again today.

Victory.

SOUTH WEST WETLANDS FIELD BIRDS SURVEY

It was the morning of a day.

In a green field the wind was crawling

Backwards, old lady with her dogs

And bags, with many snags and struggles,

Through the spiked hedgerow gaps. The sky,

Absent-mindedly mouthing silently,

Unravelled its white suit, blue fingers

Teasing out strands the earth was spinning

Into a bright new piece of nothing.

Stiff stood the hollow squares of hedges,
Blind, after such a long bombardment

Of airy light and all that tumbles

Heavily through the weather’s fingers,
Hail, that can travel horizontal,

Struck by the wind’s straight bat. They pointed

Crookedly bayonetted muskets

In all directions, only certain

That these were not the fields of Eton.

Over the green a bird came whirring,

Like a flat stone that slaps the water

And makes a single leap grey-blurring

To the far bank. It sank between

Its lifted wings into the stirring

Of spears. The shining sky turned over

In its grey sleeping bag that foundered

Like a great sodden corpse of timber

Sucked by a circle of swift water.

And now another bird. It fluttered

With its legs dangling, swiftly closer

And low, a smear of rust-red feathers,

And quickly sank. It clearly reckoned

It could be wriggled any second

Out of its own skin, seemed to crave

Invisibility like whiskey.

And now a motley Lord, knock-kneed,
Came flopping down along the sky,

Like a born clown auditioning

Against the odds to play the King;

Black-crested helmet, wobbly wings -

Shrugged once and suddenly was standing

With its sad face above the green.

Now came a tumbled scrap of bunting,

Like a blown frag of dust, an outfling

Of a disintegrating mountain,

High as a schoolboy’s hopes its piping,

Almost unheard, almost unseen,
Almost but not quite not existing;

Swung hard into the hedge and clung

To a tall aerial of ash, slow-bending.

Then suddenly another bunting,

Greyer, beside it. Now a vision

With blackrimmed amber eyes came racing

Triangular, from wind to wind,

Cornering sharply, wings of sand

Black-streaked, and calling like a mother

To her son lost in foreign waters.

It seemed about to hit the ground

Like a kite, sideways, but was standing,

Suddenly, folded, by the other

Tall bird among the six now gathered

In the thick grass and in the upgrowth

Of the spare hedge. The sky leaned over

And cried a little on the clover.

Crex, crex, the Corncrake began.

Now silence descended again,

As if the birds reckoned their thoughts better put

By the rips in sky and hedge,

Absence of words so apt that their silence

Might have sailed on like the Marie Celeste,

Unstoppably,

Till it fixed in the ice
At the end of all speech.

But the wrongness of their flock, a Grey Partridge,
A Lapwing, a Cirl Bunting, a Corn Bunting,
A Stone Curlew and a Corncrake,

Flicked a sandgrain into the cogs of their silence.

 I do not know why I am here, said the Grey Partridge.

There are not many of us left, said the Lapwing.

Crex, crex, said the Corncrake.

Where there was arable and grazing, 
Now there is only arable.

Where there was grazing and arable,
There is only grazing, said the Lapwing,

The hedges are thin,

Ripped by the trimmer too often,

Poor Hawthorn;

Scant shelter there for the buntings,
Few perches for their display singing.

This Disney field

Of one colour will be cut soon,

All skylark eggs broken,

And they will lay again soon, but too soon

Comes another cutting;

Four times in one season!

Nitrogen, favouring what thrives on nitrogen

Persecutes the insects our chicks eat,

Sawflies and moth larvae!

Weevils, aphids, ground beetles!

It is the lateness of the sowing

And the earliness of the cutting,

Right in the middle of the breeding season,

And the scarceness of barley;

It is the miserliness of the field margins

Where the small birds feed

That will not stray far from cover,
Even if starving.

And you can’t argue with a tractor,

Taking every inch, ploughing right up to the hedge,

Maybe carrying away a part of the hedge, why not?

It is the cutting from edge to centre,

Leaving no corridor

From the desperate diminishing island,

It is the speed of the tractors,

It is the tiredness of the drivers!

It is the tallness of the sward,

Too high for our nesting,
Under the whip of the ubiquitous nitrogen;

It is the ever increasing

Density of stock, trampling

Our nests in the almost insectless improved pasture;

It is the tidiness, the vanishing

Of odd field corners, rich in weeds and therefore in insects;

Where are the brambles?

Where are the nettlebeds, 

Perfect for partridges, 

Where are the wetlands?

The stubborn scrub, the wandering magnificent gorse,

The mix, the patch, the rough grass

Round telegraph poles, unstrimmed,

Round ponds, the this and the that, the tangle and the maze and the mess,

The ragged track, the tatty thatch.

Fat hen, redshank, chickweed, 
All the unwanted weeds, these are what we want!

Knotgrass, bindweed, hemp-nettle,

The spilt grain, the undersowing

Of clover or turnips or mustard for fodder in winter,

Tussocky Cock’s Foot and Yorkshire Fog,

Large standard trees

For summering turtle doves!

And the dead wood left where it lies

For the tree sparrows,
And in the wetlands,

Alders and Willows.

The farming year that turns with the stars

Has turned against us,

All our needs are denied.

It is the fault of the farmers! Cried the Stone Curlew.

Do not blame the farmers! Said the Corn Bunting;

It is us, it is us, with our late breeding,

Right in the middle of his cutting!

Let him change his ways if he likes,

Let him change his mind!

Farmers love birds! Sang the Cirl Bunting.
If you only talk to them,

Once they have done one good thing, and seen the change,

They will come back and ask you what more they can do.

And they talk to other farmers, if to no one else!

And they get jealous -

Oh have you heard, Reddaway has lapwings?
How did he get them?

Consider the farmer, cried the Stone Curlew.

Who is this man or woman?
What has he done?

By what heavenly election
Has he grasped this position,

Where he holds us all in his hands, old or young?

The air we breathe, the ground we tread on,

The colour of our rivers,
It is all down to him!

Do we love trees? 

We must ask the farmer for them!

Delight in the foxcry?
Pray to the farmer’s shotgun!

The barn owl’s face? 

Pray to the farmer for provision!

Who is this fellow with powers wider

Than any archbishop or pope ever? 

Do you wish to dance with God in the springtime?
Ask the farmer!

That is precisely right, said the Grey Partridge,

Who is this man, how has he been chosen

To bend beneath the pressure of mountains

Of sugar and grain,

Wade through milk lakes,
Climb butter dunes?

Consider the farmer, sang the Cirl Bunting.

The Green Man’s shadow, the secret dancer

With the moonmad hare when his vertebrae juddered

By ruts are a heap of snores by the fire.

Once a man, now he is a coin

In international hands,
His fear is no longer the weather, his terror

Is the man in a blue suit reaching over the water!

I have heard that his heart has wings like ours,

Though his song is somewhat harsher and deeper.

My friends, will you not believe what I tell you?

Crex, crex, said the Corncrake.

No, said the Stone Curlew.

Then, said the Lapwing, who was their leader,

If it is not to be the farmer,

Who will restore these fields?

The courts? The Crown?

Poets? Actors?

Soldiers? Airmen? Sailors? The Circus?

Schoolchildren? Nurses? Firemen? Film Cameras?

The Church of Rome? The Church of England?

Who will give back life to this land?

A consortium of museums? 

No, it must be us, we must do it, said the Corn Bunting.

We must shake off the weather,
We must drop to the ground,

Leave our stretching nests,

Leave off singing

Our invisible javelins,

Leave the life of the trees,
The life of the air,

The brief life,

With speeded-up heartbeat,

The rush of the flock,

The picking through dust,

The quick step

From path to branch,

Cursing at cats;

Shed crests,

Take on weight,

Reek of smoke,
Moult flight,
Walk, speak,

Sleep through the dawn, and on,

Changed into trudging men, and telling them
What is lost,

What can be done.

Black silence.They had all been talking
At once, but suddenly midwinter

Fell on the present like a tiger,

Out of its ambush in the future,

Ripped out spring’s throat, and left it there

Bleeding to ice. The mad full moon

Of the truth rose in all their minds:
That they would have to take this on.

Each bird must change into a man.

Then they began to tremble, crying

Like cattle at a railway station,

And as they shook, their feathers fountained

Like an exploding coast. Their breasts

Balooned, their stick legs stretched and thickened,
Their sharp heads drifted upwards, bloating,

And their pink wingbones flexed and lengthened,

Gripping binoculars and folders

As they walked down to the big town, talking.

THE AIR

Now I will go up into the air,

And twist my mind into the wind’s weave.

Much more is rising than falling -

Steeples reaching a certain height

Break open releasing

Seeds that gyrate in the vane-spinning

North to south stepping,

Bright blue eyed twelve league booted

Invisible hurrying

That will turn, at the absolute limit of all things,

And stream back to the beginning.

Listen to them, hatching on the wing,

Bubbles of music bursting,

High up above the leads and the flagstones,

Instantaneous rainbows of sound.

As the congregation

Drop like sacks to their knees,

Blue flames are flickering

From their nostrils and mouths.

Much more is rising than falling,

Even my own wings,

Shedding what is wrongly called down -

It curls away up very quickly.

The surface of the earth now

Is sweating rivers of steam.

Someone flicks a match into a rick

And the whole thing is leaping

Up like a demon,

Shuddering and rolling, pulling

Itself up by its own skin,

Shaking out in all directions,

Raping the pale clouds,

Rushing off into nothing.

Much more is rising than falling.

Here come the thoughts of old men,

Wrapped in brown tissue paper,

Unwrapping, revealing - nothing.

Hearts like hot air baloons

Clutter the airlanes,

Flare-off of opinions,

Confused updrift from colleges

And hospitals, turbulent fog over prisons,

Repetitive hours sloughed off

As gossamer skins,

Shop window reflections,

Abstractions, girl magazines,

Blueprints, cancelled plans, missed meetings

Of eyes, all insubstantial things,

Limp in the updraught

Of the inverse autumn,

Swift in the slipstreams,

Extinctions, abortions,

Earth’s onion skins,

In endless perpendicular procession,

Kites without strings

And rice paper paintings.

And the pre-speech of infants,

Blown about husk-winged

And jewel-eyed,

With legs dangling.

Not one word falls to the ground.

All rise, a good haul

For the wind’s fishing,

Letters decoupling, tangling,

Paragraphs pulled apart by the crosswinds,

Where the swallows dive like dolphins

In the sardine run,

And schools of starlings flash turning

Through the radio waves,

Chat chopped by the chinook.

I flinch through crowds of sighs,

The daily trade of small deaths,

Lives lighter than air

Floating out of the flesh,

Shrews, fleas, field mice, lacewings,

Plummeting upwards

Through the transparent webwork

Of shifting hexagons,

A beehive construction,

Turned inside out and

Inside in 

At the speed of breathing;

Seven mile high shafts of

Invisible steel

Bending and twisting,

Plates of air

Like oceans on end,

Tilting, colliding, smashing, with no debris,

Except the strings of gulls, dangling.

Emerald and topaz crystals

Crash straight through me.

Now the earth breathes in her sleep,

Odour of seeds, odour of cities.

Entire seas rise

With a yawn, half asleep,

Climbing the stairs of the sky

In the furnace of dawn,

To the bathroom.

Cobras of smoke uncoil

From the baskets of cities.

Much more is rising than falling,

All things desire to be cloud,

And will have their turn

In the centrifugal machine,

Joy riding,

All the heavy mourners by the grave,

Will shoot up like rockets one day!

Now the whole earth is rising,

Lifting her head from the pillow

To me bending,

The far lines drawn together

As if by a string’s tugging,

The grand reach and scale of fences and woodlands

Collapsing and vastly expanding

To this one damp green field

In which I am standing.