375. An Overture

A pall of smoke and drifting ash
hangs above the battered ruins of Baghdad;
for four long days it has hung above
mounds of corpses and the humming
sounds of blowflies. It has cast a shadow
on the wide meandering river, but by now
the impassive horsemen, their work done,
have casually moved along.

From an oven built of bricks, which takes up
corner space in a smouldering cellar shop,
emerges, from cavernous thick cool depths,
a child, wary and uncertain. It is a boy,
tousle-haired, perhaps about nine or ten.
He gazes upon the surrounding wreckage
and sees the charred bodies of his parents,
his two sisters. He climbs up to the street.

Tied to his robe by a thin rope is a pouch
containing scraps of stale uneaten bread,
an empty flask of water, four small silver coins.
The street is grey and blurred under falling ash
but the heat and the stench, as they come on
so suddenly, cause the child to cough and gag.
He mutters a quick prayer, Allah, not that his
mind, unformed, truly believes in any God.

Nothing moves. The collapsed huddled shapes,
heaped, blackened and bloated, line the alleyways,
and show themselves to be his neighbours,
the people he has known since he was born.
How … how could this have come to happen?
It doesn’t seem right that complete strangers,
people he has never even seen or heard of before
can ride in on the wind and do such things.

Go HERE for background

374. Gentle Into That Good Night

Death is not proud nor is it peremptory.
It is no rigid Prussian officer in a spiked helmet
calling out commands in a military falsetto,
nor even a full-bosomed hospital matron
with eyes the Gorgon would have paid for.

It is false to think our lives are made for
happiness; the pursuit of ephemeral dreams
knocks the moral compass off its mark, leaves
us reeling in the dark; the aims of the American
Republic have disarranged us all since then.

It is extremely hard to convince young men
that what they are, their character, is what they get.
It is neither birth, education, nor application,
nor thrift and toil, nor midnight oil,
that define the course of a man’s existence.

Belief, the very force of bland persistence
can make us blind to the subtle markers
showing here and there upon the trail: how often
do we hear these words “succeed” and “fail”
only in terms of money, pleasure ... feelings?

When we take the measure of all our dealings
in the course of our three score and ten,
(having been statistically exempt, let us say,
from murder, disaster, car-collisions, war),
wouldn't you ask yourself what was it for?

It wasn’t for the money … well, not really,
and it wasn’t for the boss or the job
or the house; nor even for the lack of money
or house or boss or job. It wasn’t for the drugs,
wasn’t for the drink, not even for the wonderful sex
that came and went like a summer shower:
these things we hardly remember at all.

What do we remember? Ask yourself.

Karen, you're such a sweet little thing,
you remind me so much of your mother,
or was it your grandmother? No matter,
would you care to dance? -- Grandfather,
really, you shouldn't be bothering the young girls,
says fat-lipped Mario, the oily bastard
who married my cousin's daughter. I glare
at his Facebook ... no, his MySpace grin,
his sheer, impregnable, unapproachable
idiocy, his wasteland of vacant hollows. I sigh,
give up, and return to the table of Old Ladies.

Death comes down like a benediction,
the taxi pulling up to the door, throbbing,
five or ten minutes early: ready to go?
Well, no. Hang on a sec …
When in pain or misery or despair
it arrives ten years too late.

Fate … which might be too heavy a word
to put upon it, usually and very often
repeats itself, like the old photographs,
see Mam and Dad younger than you are now,
the old portraits, diaries, sketches, samplers,
the books we read as children, the books
we still read now, how we keep the past alive.

Ten years ago I would have punched him.
Now he might punch me back. Couldn't handle
that: where's me fuckin revolver? I was
in the War, you streak of shit, and where the fuck
were you? Not born. Not even here. And now,
dear God, I'm not even here no more.

The dead only become really dead
and pass like wraiths into the shades
when the memory of the living fades.

What of it? A dance, a drink? Fuck this
sitting with the sly old ladies, don't they
know me too well? But the anger
wells up in me. I was a far better man than he was
or ever will be, back in my prime, and I am still
the same man ... but I know I'm not.

The anger. Calm down. Take a pill ... take three.
O, Jesus, take the whole fuckin bottle!

What of it? So come in, you cheery young men,
and carry me out upon your shoulders.
I don’t believe in a Disneyland in the sky, nor any
perennial Auschwitz in the bowels of the earth,
(nor any half-way house inbetween!) despite
the Fathers of the Church, Evangelists, Bible-thumpers,
and the whole collection of bloody fear-mongers.

She was a fish-monger, and sure twas no wonder,
For so was her father and mother before ….
That’ll do, thanks: ahh, sweet (dead) Molly Malone.

You come in and you leave this world alone,
but you never really do. You are surrounded
by people all your life, a smiling enormous crew
who say they love you: who'll show at the end?

Taxi? I never called no taxi.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

No, it's not as bad as all that. But I do have a couple of rare old friends of my father dating back to the really old days of the Spanish War and the Battle of Britain who are more or less on their last legs (90s) and I can see how old age infuriates them since they were such furious (young!!) hyper Alpha Males when they were machine-gunning Fascists and Nazis of the Luftwaffe. They saved the country from invasion ... that's what Churchill himself said. Now they have to deal with filthy streets, insolent oblivious kids and the National Health -- hard to say which is worse. Outliving the people of your own generation seems to be a curse better done without.

373. Molokai

The pilot in his shorts and Aloha shirt
skims low, very low, over Maui island,
at ease in his little 12-seater;
now he dives to show us a herd of goats
who scatter, and all the passengers
grin widely but hold on awful tight.

On the ground. Alive. Molokai.
The aiport’s about the size of a caravan
with a smell of rain, bougainvillea, plumeria;
shrug on the backpack, head off for the road
where the first car slows down, stops,
“Eh, brah’ – wanna ride” – “Sure!”

“You wanna stay my house, eh?” – “What?”
“Eh, brah’, you like take or geev?” –
understanding takes a few minutes or so;
it seems like boys like boys on this island
and they’re so removed from the tourist track
that nobody even knows or cares.

I politely, regretfully, refuse: what a prick
I am, well, maybe in this case a non-prick,
but the young driver just shrugs and smiles;
he takes me to the eastern tip of the island,
to a hidden valley, a track to a waterfall,
one of the loveliest places I’ve ever seen.

I camp for two days, see nobody,
smoke dope, walk naked, talk to God,
the sort of things we did in those days;
when supplies run out I head for the road,
and sure enough, the first car stops again,
and (polite refusals later) drops me in town.

With some food and good-priced pakalolo,
I hitch a ride north, walk through pineapple fields,
and in a grove of trees set up my evening camp;
in the soft pastels of the morning, in boots and denims
I stumble down the crazy drops of the dangerous trail
to Kalaupapa, the forbidden peninsula.


So little, in those days, had really changed
since the time of Damien, the Belgian priest
who had come here to care for the castoffs;
this spit of land had been set aside for lepers,
an affliction the islanders could not deal with,
and it was in exile here they lived … and died.

The setting was far from grim, rather beautiful,
made into a village now of whiteboard houses,
the mountain behind, the sun-speckled sea around;
an old man, a leper, was pleased to guide me,
so very cheerful and gay with his stumps of fingers,
and it was a day of humility, sunshine and hope.

Later, back in Waikiki, more-or-less grinding out
the dirty dollars that would later set me free,
amid braying mid-Westerners, the military, the local touts,
my mind would revert to that lovely little island,
a place so physically close yet so far far away,
with its elderly lepers, its diffident homosexuals.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This was Molokai in the early 1970s. Since then the hotel chains have moved in and the place has been totally made over. Here's some further info on the leper peninsula of Kalaupapa.

372. 物の哀れ (mono no aware)

sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt
Aeneid I.462 (Virgil)

when the tears arrive
tensely flowing from your eyes
they embrace the void

here there is nothing
once there were so many things
nothing now remains

a feeling of fear
your eyes seek here, they dart there
still there is nothing

fresh green tatami
the absence of all objects
emptiness, nothing

from the great window
stripped, denuded of curtains
the outside looks in

in a flower vase
under the tokonoma
three sprigs of blossom

you have never been
this lonely in your life ...
nor quite so happy.


--------------------------------------------------
Lacrimae rerum (from that dear old imperial sycophant, Virgil): Aeneas, while crying, says, "sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" as he gazes at one of the murals found in a Carthaginian temple, which depicts battles of the Trojan War and deaths of his friends and countrymen: ... "tears for mortal things (sufferings) touch the soul." ... The burden man has to bear, ever present frailty and suffering, defines the essence of human experience.

Mono no aware (物の哀れ, mono no aware, lit. "the pathos of things"), also translated as "an empathy toward things," or "a sensitivity of ephemera," is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of mujo or the transience of things and a bittersweet sadness at their passing (which explains why the whole country is so big into cherry blossoms, which are undeniably beautiful but only last about a week). This poem goes off on a slightly different tangent, to "wabi" and "sabi" which is the old, but very closely related (and quite definitely NOT modern) fixation on absence and silence and ... (not brought out in the poem) the studied non-perfection of carefully-made beloved things: so if you like your old teacup or teddy bear from when you were a kid, or insist on wearing that smelly old pullover you had in college then you are closer to the wabi-sabi ideal than the following Wikipedia definition: Wabi-sabi (侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the Three marks of existence (三法印, sanbōin), specifically impermanence (無常, mujō).

tatami - Japanese mat flooring, green and pungently aromatic when new, then gradually yellowing with age. All traditional Japanese houses (or rooms within houses) have this flooring, as do temples.

tokonoma - an alcove let into a wall in a traditional Japanese room to allow for a hanging scroll or other decoration, usually fronted with a vase of seasonal blossoms or flowers.

371. A Hospital Visit

Darling, honey, we need to speak of your funeral;
I've just been on the phone to Monsignor McNeill
And they seem to want such ... well, so much money.
Mercenary was the thought that crossed my mind
Since their church is really quite empty on weekdays:
I think we can dispense with the RC service.

I seethe in my coma, this twittering bitch,
Serena, my second ill-chosen wife, mother
Of none of my children, Thank the Lord for that,
Sits here, smiling, perched beside my hospital bed,
In a happy flush of exaltation: I twitch,
But she knows I cannot speak.

I shall keep the house in town, she says,
But I plan to sell off your stamp collection;
The books you’ve collected for the last forty years
Can be sold off, I’m sure, in a job lot.
I’ll wipe clean the computer, of course,
And shred all the files of your silly poems.

A ping and sudden peak in the monitor
Is the only reaction that shows; comatose,
My defeated body lies flat on the bed;
I pray to God for a surge of strength,
to allow me to rise from this bed like a Titan,
and smash to pieces her evil head.

Oh, my dear, you seem to be quite upset,
that unbecoming bulge in your bloodshot eyes;
I suppose it can hardly come as a surprise
Since the doctor says the cock winds down
Even on the most robust constitution; my resolution
Suggests Spain with my hairdresser Germain.

The monitor pings.

Your children from your previous marriage
Have expressed some wish to see you;
I said there was really no cause for alarm
(Ill-founded concern can cause such harm)
So they won’t be coming, darling, so sorry. PU?
PU, an incoming text on my mobile phone.

Ping, ping, PING!

PU? Please Understand? Unveil … Undress?
Germain’s such a tease, he can often fail
To understand the nuances of language;
But he’s a Demon Little Big Boy in Bed!!!
The influence of anguish, the soft caress:
Oh, another message! … it reads,

God, in the end, came through,
And I rose up from the bed with a leonine roar,
Lifted her bodily from the floor, and ….

The patient had fallen from bed to a chair
When he died; his wife, in an access of despair
Seems to have thrown herself from the window.

370. Nineteen Thirty-Six

Ava Waverley
married Peter Ponsonby
for the mordauncy of his tongue
for the excellence of his tennis;

The alternative view
drifting into disenchantment
said the little bitch just did it
to arouse every hackle in sight.

Von Brickendrop, ex-champagne
salesman, now German ambassador,
appeared, and so did Lady Astor
with the well-heeled Cliveden Set;

There were two telegrams
from Wales and Wallis at Fort Belvedere,
one from Mussolini, not a peep from WSC
on the Cote d’Azur with Maxine Eliot.

Betty Cranbourne, later Lady Salisbury,
when writing a letter to someone
remarked that plays had left the stage,
the spotlight now shone down on Us;

Colin, who was in Cambridge at the time,
a friend of Burgess and MacLean,
took me aside, he said quite sensibly
it’s all drama, nothing to worry about.

369. Ariel

Being dead doesn't bother me, it's the dying part,
she said of a sudden straight from her heart
and I replied all free and easy,
light, ironic, breezy,
Darling, should I help you along?

'S'alright, love, I can manage myself,
I can perch, resigned, at the back of the shelf
and care for the children, let you go your way,
let you fuck all your squirming little tarts.
I frowned. There was little I could say.

On a bone-cold freezing winter day
she placed milk and biscuits on a tray,
brought them to the kids in the room above;
and without a word of reproach, nor even of love,
she placed a cloth in the oven and her head upon it

and died.

I have tried, tried so many many times
to discover some sense of meaning
in this careful act of cold finality:

Did she hate me? or was she a lone fatality
of a self-scourging sense of futility,
seeking recompense, hovering, leaning
over the blank utility of the grave?

I have lived since then, huddled down in the nave
of a shattered cathedral, her own and mine,
and nothing I have written, however fine,
can recover any lightness in my soul.

Even my innocent children survive on a dole
of pained and measured kindness. Her poems,
published and praised, still carry a sting
that assails me now, waking and sleeping.

Even as I ignore amazonic american hordes
who excavate this incident, this ... this thing,
women who hold me strenuously to account:
at the fount of non-knowledge, there is only weeping.

368. Timor Mortis Non Conturbat Me

... tears by bards or heroes shed
Alike immortalize the dead.

When I travel in dreams to 1916,
to the barricades of Dublin, to the angry cannonades
by the streams of the Ancre above the Somme,
I can see their tired individual faces
squinting east into the sun.

Curiosity rather than fear now traces
the look in their eyes, hands clasped loosely on rifle or gun,
their look of wonder married to mild surprise,
the morning roll-ups drooping on young dry lips.

This thing we have been waiting for all our lives,
this event from boyhood only half-imagined,
is about to begin. What will it be like?

--------------------------------------------------------

Timor mortis conturbat me is a Latin phrase commonly found in late medieval English poetry, translating to "fear of death disturbs me". The phrase comes from a responsory of the Catholic Office of the Dead, in the third Nocturn of Matins: Peccantem me quotidie, et non poenitentem, timor mortis conturbat me. Quia in inferno nulla est redemptio, miserere mei, Deus, et salva me.
"Sinning daily, and not repenting, the fear of death disturbs me. Because there is no redemption in hell, have mercy on me, O God, and save me."

The addition of 'Non' in the title renders the phrase into a negative: fear of Death does NOT disturb me. Why ever not? Here's some background:

Lord Kitchener's New Army consisted of 1914 civilian volunteers who had been trained throughout 1915 and shipped to France, for the most part, in the spring of 1916. These were idealistic patriotic young men, many of them serving with their friends or workmates in locally organised "Pal's Battalions" -- the very flower of English manhood. Their first and for many last battle began at 7.30 am on July 1st, 1916, the opening day of the great British attack just north of the River Somme. The battlefield extended for about 30 km (18 miles) in the Artois/Picardy region of northern France, from the villages of Gommecourt in the north to Montauban in the south, an area just east of Amiens and south of Arras and bisected by the River Ancre, a tributary of the Somme. Before evening fell more than 57,000 of these young soldiers had been killed or wounded, the worst single day for casualties in the whole history of the British Army, more than its battle casualties in the Crimean War, Boer War and Korean War combined. Reinforcing the catastrophic failure of the opening day, their commanding generals (primarily Sir Douglas Haig aided by his subordinates Rawlinson, Gough, Allenby and Snow) threw them into further attacks for another four months until winter brought the offensive to an end -- by which time they had suffered another 350,000 casualties and advanced exactly six miles. That was the end of the Volunteer Army, and the experiment of the Pal's Battalions was never to be repeated -- whole towns and villages throughout Britain had been plunged into mourning. Conscription came in and the War went on.

About two months previously in that same fateful year of 1916, other young men of similar age and patriotic disposition, members of the Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army who had refused to fight overseas for the British Empire, occupied strategic buildings in Dublin and declared an Irish Republic. The rebellion was ruthlessly crushed after the centre of the city had been destroyed by artillery. Martial law was declared and executions followed.

In spite of the vast differences in scale I have conjoined these two events in my poem, not to score any political points but to show that for young patriots facing their first armed conflict in a cause they passionately believed in, feelings on the eve of battle -- excitement, trepidation, curiosity, a desire to perform bravely, the nobility of the cause -- would not have entirely overcome their fear of death or maiming but would have done much to mitigate it, and would probably have been quite similar among both sets of young men.

----------------------------------------

Update ... Jan. 28

This poem made an appearance on several poetry lists and was nominated for an IBPC award, whatever that is, 'B' being Board (probably) and 'P' pretty definitely Poetry. I turned down the nomination, not peevishly, but for the reasons given:

Upon reflection, I have decided not to accept the nomination to IBPC for this poem. This may seem to be a rather strange and arbitrary decision, but it isn't really. It doesn't mean I plan to close the door irrevocably -- that's the kind of flat decision you make in your teens and twenties; as you begin to decay thereafter you tend to become more thoughtful and switch to the long game, adopting more of a wait-and-see attitude to just about everything -- and it's not beyond the bounds of imagination (as apart from harsh cold practicality) that I may come up with something, possibly on my 100th birthday, that is so-o-o-o fuckin good that nobody on earth can ignore it, never mind IBPC!! Dream on! I have a string of decades to go, barring war zones, drunken nights, earthquakes, explosions, traffic accidents, angry boyfriends (not mine, hers), sudden illnesses and sundry other catastrophes, so that I believe there may yet be time to chuckle in the darkness and hone my craft. Having been through most of the above before I am rather hoping there won't be re-runs.

I want to apologise to Steve and Bri for not going forward. I appreciate the nomination and the encouragement, but this is not the time, nor is this the poem I want to throw out there.

Sparks of interest in this poem only began to ignite when there was a better understanding of the events, both taking place nearly a century ago in 1916, that formed its background. Once the background was absorbed the poem made better sense for readers who came to it for the first time. This brings up two connected thoughts: 1) To what extent should a writer depend on the assimilated knowledge of his/her readers; and 2) Should a poem be able to stand alone without any supplementary explanations?

There are off-the-cuff opinions, without doubt, but what has been decided? The "classic" modernist turning point might be characterised by T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland" which appeared in 1922 with footnotes. Footnotes! Well, the traditionalists were absolutely scandalised. Of course they were. But, how many of the following works/authors could you read today without referential aids of one kind or another?

1. Beowulf
2. Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur"
3. The Canterbury Tales
4. The plays of Shakespeare
5. Milton

This is the Short List. The list extends to the Romantic Poets of the early 19th century who make free use of classical allusions that are no longer familiar to modern students. Poetry as a form of emotional shorthand depends heavily in its more complex forms upon some shared knowledge of historical or literary events/allusions among its readers or else loses all hope of concision. We need Primers to understand the mental world of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. Shortly (even now) we shall need Primers to understand the mental world of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.

The First World War ( 1914-18 ) falls under the same rubric. It has slipped from the file cabinets of daily life and people can grow impatient or even resentful when demands are made upon their historical memory: "How the hell should I be expected to remember all that crap?" A reader on a sister list praised this poem mildly and remarked that it was difficult to find 'a new slant' when it had all been done so well already by the Owens and the Sassoons, etc.

Well, ... yesss, with the enormous difference that from poor doomed Rupert Brooke at the beginning, all the other poets that followed: Sassoon, Graves -- (they were in the same regiment, the Royal Welch) -- Wilfred Owen ... (who met Sassoon at Craiglockhart Hospital, aka the Loony Bin) ... Herbert Read, Blunden, Edgell Rickword, Ivor Gurney, John McCrae, et al, actually lived through the experiences they wrote about. There is a tendency to lump them together as the War Poets -- now the FIRST War Poets -- as though the whole thing has been boxed and shelved and generally tidied up. The whole point is that even as the Great War fades chronologically in our memory -- the last of the boy-combatants has now succumbed, I believe -- the enormity of what happened remains.

Philip Larkin was one who returned to the theme in "MCMXIV":

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;

And the countryside not caring
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

There is a great danger of domesticating or even patronising the Past as Larkin seems to do so in his first three stanzas above, to relegate it from modern consciousness as an area of quaintness now long outgrown or superceded, something to be given the gloss of Disneyfication or else herded into various Theme Parks with admission prices and opening and closing times. This, I think, is a mistake. Looking at the jerky old newsreels or posed photographs we can smile at the fashions, the early motorcars, the peculiar telephones, and smugly believe we have left all that behind. We can even look at the bulky video cameras and somewhat-mobile phones of the 1980s and delight in the same feeling. This may make us feel superior (among the young the 1960s felt INFINITELY superior to the 1950s and everything that went before ... now the 60s are a half-century ago) but it overlooks the non-superficial, the things that never seem to change: the Seven Deadly Sins, for example, a form of behavioral shorthand which need no religious connection to be recognised. Emotional reactions, failures of judgement, moral lapses, are human phenomena that are still very much with us, and so is the potential for repeating the horrors of the past on an even grander scale.

A bit of a rant, sorry, but that's one of the things poems (and comments on poems) are for!

Slán anois,

367. The Last Sultan

There are noises without, yet I fear them not
they are as nothing to the voices within.
I have grown old and ill, all in a single season
facing the disposition of the Empire.

My sons are fools, my wives little better
engaging in shoddy political manoeuvres
as if I were deaf and blind. I expected
as much, could have pretended not to mind

had they not been so greedy and thoughtless
so shallow and unkind. I find I resent the way
they considered me deaf and almost blind
as I fear they will soon discover, when they pay

with their lives. X and Y and Z must die
their extended families to be sent into exile;
four of the more strident concubines
will be silently, expertly, painlessly strangled

dispatched, after time for prayer, with silken cords
in the traditional manner, as befits their station.
God, I think, will not be listening : solemnly
we shall uphold the standards of the nation.

Many of the servants must be executed
by simpler means, and the rest thrown into prison:
let a frisson of fear run through the land.

This is all to the good. We do so little for the people
as it is, they enjoy a bloodletting of their betters;
it seems to loosen the clamp of the iron fetters
that bind them in taxation, sends their sons to war.

I learned this from Grandfather, whose great-Grandfather
conquered this kingdom from the back of a horse.
Kingdoms are not ruled from the back of a horse
he said, you need to bring in Christians and Jews,

educated people: doctors, scholars and artisans.
You need to keep a stern rein on your own people,
the bluff warriors and dangerous partisans. As a child
I listened: power is what the old man taught me.

Bluff warriors and dangerous partisans: I chuckle
mirthlessly. Grandfather, you have only to see
your gaggle of descendants, those coming after me

to agree, readily, to my stringent course.
They must die or else be sent away: I shall only spare
young boys who can ride a horse.

366. brief encounter

The silkily enchanting Rosie Pollito sidled, no she
sashayed into my life at 7.28 pm on a rainy Wednesday
when she slid into the seat beside me at Ben's Diner
with a brave little smile and a shake of her blonde curls.
I gagged on my Salisbury steak, fries on the side,
and tried not to look too Italian. Buona sera.
I mean, of course, such a wonderful evening.
She eyed the rain pounding against the windows
but said nothing, extracting a cigarette from her purse.
Sir, could you give me a light, she said.
Sir! Madonna! This vision of loveliness shows me respect!
I fumble desperately for a lighter then call out for matches
smiling graciously all the while, yet remembering
Dio Mio! to hide the snaggled tooth on the left side,
a hideous thing, I know, something must be done.
Do you mind terribly if I smoke? I don't mind if you burn
I thought wildly, as long as you can burn for me.
I am lonely, I am lonely. Women don't usually talk to me.
You're kinda cute, she said, words I will always treasure.
Say, would you offer a girl a cup of coffee? Offer, offer?
I would go out and grow the beans under a scorching sun,
harvest them lovingly, grind them between my fingers,
choose the purest spring waters and bring matters to a boil!
There is sadness in her eyes, a sadness I can cause to pass,
a sidelong glance: rounded and springy her quite ample ass.
Say, what's the matter with your mouth? Is nothing, is nothing!
Thanks for the coffee, Sir, 'fraid I gotta go. Working girl!
Working girl? What is working girl? I rise and kiss her hand.
She is tall, taller than me, she smiles, she kisses me on the cheek.
Me! She kisses! On the cheek, my cheek, she, this woman kisses me!
With a wave she disappears into the Chicago night. It was 7.49.
It was the seventh of September, 1963. I am an old man now
but never will I forget those moments. They warm my frozen heart.

365. yours, seriously (correspondence)

I respect Steve a great deal and I think he's done wonders for this list. He's put up with a lot of criticism (not to say outrage) for his occasionally sharp and unwelcome comments on some of the poems that come before us ... including many of mine, I'd have to say ... largely because he doesn't want to see this forum stagnate into a group of "luvvies" who gush and salivate over one another's crap poems, which is pretty much what happens on many other lists: take a tour, starting with a Google on "poetry forums". On top of that he writes his own poems and leaves himself open to our criticism in return.

For that last reason alone I have tended to hesitate.

Steve is no blushing violet, no careful droning Sergeant Plod. He takes chances, sometimes outrageous risks: sometimes his poems take off against all the odds, and sometimes, sorry to say, they crash and burn. That's our boy, wouldn't have him any other way.

This last poem is a case in point. What we have here is smoke and mirrors, illusion parading as meaning: when you try to take this poem apart into its separate segments and overall meaning there is nothing nothing really there ... it's a circus trick, a sleight of hand, an entertainment, an exercise in pushing the sexual envelope.

Before you get indignant and reconsider your "lit-crit" comments (I could do the same, mind you, having contributed above, but it was the trapeze artist skills I really admired) you might want to think about how you got banged over the head from the beginning, the idea of some guy crawling into the slit of his own prick ... and once you get over the knee-squeezing, mind-boggling toe-cringing image of this possibility ... well, he's got you where he wants you, hasn't he? It's like Gregor Samsa waking up one morning to discover he's become a giant cockroach (Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis", for all you poorly educated Oxbridge people) ... but once you accept that opening premise you're a sucker for all that follows.

This is where Steve bamboozled us all. Girls (women, ladies, amazons) were shunted up to a symbolic level in their prompt and eager responses ... and boy, did they ever respond! Since it was so distasteful in the extreme, perhaps almost impossible, to address the sheer sexual vulgarity of the premise they were literally forced to demonstrate their broad-mindedness (I love these little puns) and how so much above all that gender-bender stuff they were by putting up a brave debate-club silly show ... ostensibly highly serious. It's not always easy to keep a straight face as you read your way through the comments.

And all it took was a single person (male/female - who cares?) to stand up and say this is total nonsense, a scabrous and repellent scam, borderline filth, not at all the stuff I want to read. Not at all the stuff I want to read, mind you, never quite the same thing as burning books and banning ideas and stringing up luckless authors ... Steve was never in any danger there. Exit the 'courage' factor.

So he got away with it. And now people keep writing in about what a marvellous wonderful poem it is. I'm sitting here, an occasional poet, bemused, looking at all these comments and I'm thinking ... the King has no clothes.

I like Steve, but that's not the point. This is not Steve himself, it's a poem he happened to write. It might be called clever and challenging, it could be called stylised and anguished ... it could also be called manipulative crap.

.................................

Brendan, stop being so bloody apologetic and just get to the criticisms! I love you too, but this ain't a group hug here. If you want to tear my poem to shreds then just go for it! I'm touched that you want to add all these disclaimers, but you just don't need to. I'll quite happily accept your worst condemnations with no acrimony whatsoever. Is this smoke and mirrors? It started off with me thinking up this image (god knows why really) of someone tunnelling into himself and it ending in some ludicrous thing where he was impossibly stuck in his dick with his legs up in the air. Then it developed as I thought about what the hell that was supposed to be about. This all happened on the M6 motorway. I figured it was a reasonable image of poetry. But then I remembered it doesn't have to be about anything anyway, and I hate the idea that poetry has to be about stuff, that it has to be some sort of codified sermon. So this became just a display to which things could be attached. Like with any other poem the primary meaning comes from the reader. Personally, I think most of poetry is egotistical nonsense, so I like to take the piss out of it to some extent. But I can't help myself being sincere too, just because I am actually a sincere sort of idiot.

Great crit. I confess to having larfed my socks off.

Steve.

..........................................................

I was trying to be like ... you know, even-handed? Separating the bloke, the individual, from the shite he happens to drop behind him. Strange how few folk understand that nice distinction. You may call that a disclaimer, we call it care and precision, a means of avoiding clashes and feuds that may carry on for three centuries. They don't go on much longer than that, generally speaking. Families and clans, all that stuff. Anyway, you're only a Brit, and here's me treating you like a real human being ...

Bren

............................................................

Oi, not just a Brit, pal, a Scouser whose family comes from County Clare. I'm sure you real Irish gits look down on us sad emigrant descendants. Be a bit of a larf, though, from Japan! Liverpool is slightly closer. Anyway, away with all these abominations of race and culture! I don't give a toss if you're from the highlands of Papua New Guinea. I'll still give you equal status.

Steve.

.............................................................

The sting is in, eh? 94% of us couldn't give a flying fuck ... it's only the other 6% you'd want to avoid. Percentages higher in dear old Blighty, I surmise, especially if you're one of our dark-skinned brothers. The Old Family thing hangs on in Ireland just as it does in the UK but it runs on different rails. Show me any European country without a fierce and exclusive aristocracy, even now. The middle class, as we all know, walks on water. We were brought up to hate the English as kids (fairly reasonable arguments for doing so, mind you) but most of us failed our final exams. In a post-colonial country ancient quarrels take on morbid importance; in a free country they do not. The whole purpose of being post-colonial is to be free and the old (post-colly) fuckers are rapidly dropping off the perch leaving behind a young generation who have known nothing else but being Irish in Ireland and in some cases don't even know where England is and want to know if you speak the same language. Laughable? Nes and Yo. Living in Japan has made me more ferociously Irish than I would have been normally, a simple fact, brought home when I meet my nest of Dublin cousins as I did this summer (attending the funeral of one of them: but never mind, I still have 15 more) since I have to spend half my time in Japan explaining where I'm from and denying any connection with America. Which is not altogether true, I admit (other cousins: the bloody FAMINE!!!) but then there's hardly any point in denying ties with the UK if the locals don't even care where that is. Well, they do know now: the UK is next to Ireland.

Liverpool is Irish and Welsh with little areas set aside for the English, and it's because of the fuckin London parliament that the city is so poor. We all know that.

County Clare me republican arse ... sure, ye've never been there in yer life, sonny! Sorry, mate, and you were ... all of four years old at the time? Nemmind, I know Clare like the back of me hand, wasn't my father and his father and his grandfather before him from the Banner County? Haven't I cousins coming out the yin yang from Ennistymon to Lisdoonvarna, from Ennis Town to Killaloe, from Quin Abbey to the Burren, from Lahinch to Miltown Malbay, from the Queen's Hotel to Dirty Brigid's? And wasn't I baptised at the Cliffs of Moher? (Throw the lad in and see if he'll swim -- Sure, it's 300 yards fuckin down! -- Ah, that'll be the breaststroke) and wasn't I circumcised at Spanish Point? (Do 'oo speak Spanish, Sean? -- Faith, and I do not! -- Ah, sure they're all feckin dead, anyway). You'd like Clare. I was there this summer, even wrote a pome about it ....

This rigamarole about the Irish/English could go on for years, decades and centuries. At some stage you have to say, to hell with it, I've had enough of this niggly shite! I'll always see things from an Irish point-of-view and why not? I may be living and working in Japan as you thoughtfully reminded me but my family has been hanging about in Ireland for the last two and a half thousand years, give or take, so who do you think I identify with? I could live in Japan for a hundred years and never be accepted as Japanese. That's OK with me. It never crossed my mind to "become" Japanese the way some people become Australians, Canadians or Americans because a.) what for? who'd want to change from being Irish? and b) the option ain't open. So I'm an Embassy of One. The frightening thing is that there are hundreds and perhaps thousands of others like me. As the Jolly Old British Empire collapses and folds in upon itself and everyone grumbles and mutters about waves of dusky immigrants (well, what did you expect?) and the expanding empire of the USA thrusts itself into nearly every known corner of the world like moles in a garden, or in a military sense like armed cockroaches, the cultural empire of the Celts (with Ireland at the vanguard, pushing things along) has been slowly inching around the globe in an atmosphere of peace and harmony and cracking good music. Laugh at this nonsensical exaggeration, as I would have done, too, maybe 10 years ago, but never mind the Irish pubs in all the well-known cities of Europe, they are now sprouting up like mushrooms after the rain in nearly every known city of the USA and throughout Asia and Africa, and in nearly every city around the world; and wherever there is an Irish pub (it's the real thing I'm talking about, not the pallid decorative copies thought up by the market analysts of fading English breweries) there is a kernel of Celtic culture, spreading out among the laughing crowds hoisting dark frothy pints of Guinness ... and Kilkenny ... and McCafferty's. The Celts have arisen again after 2000 years. We never went away.

Yes, well I hope that makes you sick as a parrot. It ought to. This is what you lot should be doing, getting out and about as in your imperial days of yore, not groaning and moaning and feeling sorry for yourselves, falling asleep at Glyndbourne and at the cricket, paying pallid lip service to an aging queen, washing your cars on Sundays, sippping half pints of suspect beer, and getting into heated arguments about property prices and the quickest route from A to B on your peculiar tangle of roads. En-ger-land!

Am I being too harsh? More than likely. The blows between us (as nations) have been taken and given now for centuries. It was very bad and sad from the 17th century onward ... worse than most English know today ... but that was then. We have to move ahead now like a divorced but reconciled couple, where the husband no longer beats his wife. We are a separate nation now like Holland or Denmark but we still share many memories. In some ways it is probably better to forget the bitter past.

That said, I take sheer delight in being Irish! I could never imagine being anything else.
But if I had to ... hmmmm?

Scotland
New Zealand
Australia
Canada
Bavaria (Germany, but not quite!)
Denmark
France
USA
Turkey
Lebanon
Greece
Japan
Thailand

About it. Could never live in the UK. Ancestors would jump out of their graves and beat me to death with their shrouds.

Slan anois,

.........................................................


Girls (women, ladies, amazons) were shunted up to a symbolic level in their prompt and eager responses ... and boy, did they ever respond! Since it was so distasteful in the extreme, perhaps almost impossible, to address the sheer sexual vulgarity of the premise they were literally forced to demonstrate their broad-mindedness (I love these little puns) and how so much above all that gender-bender stuff they were by putting up a brave debate-club silly show ... ostensibly highly serious. It's not always easy to keep a straight face as you read your way through the comments.


What a silly bunch of 'girls' we are - glad to have amused you though. Back to the willy-waving eh

Adela


.........................................................

What a silly bunch of 'girls' we are - glad to have amused you though. Back to the willy-waving eh


Doesn't seem to stop trains or send away boats: need some kind of a light, a large red bulb?

Knew this was going to happen ...
Tell me, how's the knitting going??


.........................................................

Girls (women, ladies, amazons) were shunted up to a symbolic level in their prompt and eager responses ... and boy, did they ever respond! Since it was so distasteful in the extreme, perhaps almost impossible, to address the sheer sexual vulgarity of the premise they were literally forced to demonstrate their broad-mindedness (I love these little puns) and how so much above all that gender-bender stuff they were by putting up a brave debate-club silly show ... ostensibly highly serious. It's not always easy to keep a straight face as you read your way through the comments.


Who rattled your cage? I suggest perhaps you concentrate on your own critiques Bren, that way, maybe just maybe, we will be 'privileged' with your'highly serious wisdom' - I promise it will be easy to keep a straight face reading through yours!

Get a grip mate - You're no daisy! You're no daisy at all. Poor soul, you were just too high strung. ...

Peace out, lerv 'n hugs

Zee


.........................................................

Well my knitting is coming on quite well although all the willy-warmers I make come out far too big -- Adela/Randy

.........................................................

P.S.

Can I put in my tassle order with you? I've twirled mine to death and they are missing several fringes. I like to dance for the boys.

.........................................................


All you need is a bit of blather to get things going. Happy, as always, to supply. I was pushing my luck all along (no!) and went over the top with the knitting. Might as well, why not? Guys are not exactly dinosaurs. We're just blissfully indifferent to social sensitivity. Try it. It's so relaxing. Without the corrective influence of the ladies, of course, society as we know it would totally fall apart and we'd all be living in caves and gnawing on bones and rather enjoying ourselves in a grunting farting sort of way, a bit like the Army.

.........................................................

Well if you send me your measurements I'll give it a whirl

.........................................................

Ah ladies, our aim is to amuse and entertain ... as I was saying to the chap in the next urinal when he got to laughing so hard he ... what's this I hear about willy warmers? Winter's coming on.

.........................................................

And so on and so on ... oh, the original poem?

f*cking a ship in a bottle of world peace (content etc)

so he is just washing his dick
and gets to concentrating on that little hole
through which it looks out
and sprays the world
and he digs into it just to see
like what's down there
he keeps going
are there animals maybe
a shrieking jungle thing of genital interior
caverns of bloody white crystal
in he goes digging they find him later
head down stuck airtight in his own hole
feet quivering up in the air
asphyxiated
nothing

364. overseas

O Lucienne ...
if I had a pen
to thee, dear, I would render
intimations of a heart's surrender
in such a burning letter of love
that it would tear asunder
not only gods of thunder
but bring down cascading
a shower of honey sweets
from all the stars above.

O Lucienne ...
you remind me much of home
distressed am I that I must roam
so very sad I cannot spare
a moment here, a moment there
with you, sweet Lucienne!
Dear Lucienne, do you
think you might search out a pen
s'il tu plait; do you think
you might not think so much
of reason, even less of rhyme, reserve
for thinking less of our time?

Voila! N’est ce pas
la plume de ma tante
est sur la table.

Well, well, well ...
ma chere belle
hold up the discovered pen
in your pretty hand. Now
if you please. As if to tease
you respond, but I smile tightly
and send away the gawping maid.
Sprightly, now, you smile at me
sensing something
pensive, as if slightly afraid.
The clock ticks in the parlour
noisily: a bird, two birds,
outside in the sun-dappled garden
sing in the sick apple tree.

Alas, Lucienne
we now approach the end
of this our mutual fancy:
your high breasts and your sparkling eyes
could no more win me over
than my fierce bearing could for thee:
buried in hatred, a glancing intimacy
as noisily now comes Sergeant Clancy
his boots resounding by the door:
what chance there was exists no more.
Pick up that pen, Lucienne,
Vite, vite, vite, mam'selle, compris?
Sign over the deeds to the family farm
and by losing all, escape from harm.

363. How to Be a Poet

For no good reason, tell people you are a poet,
look jaded and French, no need to speak the language,
wear pebble sunglasses, a wraparound scarf,
feign wordly pain, cultivate your facial twitches:

by God, that will attract the bitches … of both sexes!
Then learn to speak from your solar plexus
as you stab the air with a cigarette, swirling a glass of wine,
modulating your accents: RP, Essex, Cockney, Strine.

First things first, get the image right.
People are too dumb or indifferent to doubt you,
they'll become your claque; they'll tout you
long long before you begin to write.

But you'll have to write something.
Pick up a newspaper. Read it.

Oh, War, oh War …
I don't know what we're fighting for!
We sink into a bog!
I used to have an Afghan friend,
he was my neighbour's dog.

Good start, everyone likes a pet …
but you haven't really got going yet.
People is where it's at.
People want to hear about people,
famous people, and not
just any old homeless twat.
Also, they have this fascination,
this adoration of motor cars.

Even on faraway Mars
there arose a solemn klaxon
at the death of Michael Jackson!
Tears did fall, they fell,
Oh My God, it was such a terrible knell!
And they did drive around in their GUTs,
7-stroke, 11-cylinder, 6100 ccs,
not quite the same as our SUVs,
but who can say, Yea! Oh, who can tell,
what serious vexing thoughts did trouble them
about the Bee Em Dubyam
that bashed into the pillar, and did spill her
rich royal blood. None of us think it ever should
have hit that column and so we think it was solemn.
Anyway, I'm afraid she died. I cried. So did you.
We felt it awfully through and through,
and I hear that even the population of Guiana
wept bitter tears at the death of Princess Diana.

Well, that was the poem that made you famous,
a rival to that navvy Seamus!
It was so tender, so beautiful,
so … Candle in the Wind!
Elton went into Rehab after that one.

Keep coming up with these darts
that quiver in the people's hearts,
and just like that, that slithery rat,
Dylan, I hear he was a Milwaukee Jew,
(hardly one of us despite the fuss)
will turn his face, sink without trace,
God knows, he's nothing on you!

You shall have no archival rival
from Shakespeare to Lovelace or Milton,
and I will bet you a wheel of Stilton
followed up by a case of champagne,
that nothing, nothing will appear again
in this green and ever-pleasant land
quite so soothing, quite so bland.

There is nothing, nothing in the least to fear,
nada nada ... not as far as I can see.
But, tell me, who's this Morrissey?

------------------------------------------------------
Just to sidetrack obvious questions:

1. There are several factual mistakes in the text and I give you joy in finding them! The narrator, that twit, is responsible. Not me.
2. RP is "received pronunciation" the standard British 'class' accent enforced by Public (i.e private) Schools and once the only acceptable speech of BBC announcers.
3. Essex (or "Estuary") English is the fashionable slurry mix of RP with downmarket, primarily London, accents. It's supposedly very chic and endemic among models, hip journalists, rock musicians and tabloid celebrities.
4. Strine is Oss-Strine: kangaroo English.
5. Morrissey is Morrissey (formerly of The Smiths), who currently lives in LA.

362. Leaving Flanders Fields

Trains seem to hum over rails these days
where in the past they used go clackety-clack;
you could compose a song to their rhythmic points
but they don't do that any more:
a lot of things don't happen any more.

At my back lie the fields of Flanders,
with their bone-white graves, row upon row,
and among them blood-red poppies blow,
reminding us of what? Of puffed-up old men,
of young lives thrown away?

Easy to say, so easy to contend,
yet truly hard to understand:
in the beginning there were thoughts of an end,
but in the end no memories of a beginning;
the fields, like then, soak up the falling rain

as I gaze upon them from this moving train.
My English newspaper, rather rare and expensive,
has slipped unread against my knee,
I gaze out through the rain-lashed windows
at Artois, at the sodden fields of Picardy:

Old Europe. They say we have now awoken,
but do we awake to the same old song? I hear
the same old siren voices, the notes of greed and fear,
that sent out the trusting provincial Pals, the lads,
to get knackered and shot and blown to shit.

No. Not again. That can't be it.

Click HERE for Slideshow (Upper left corner when the Album opens; set for 5-6 seconds)

361. West Clare

Warmth travelled as much from the looks
as it did from the glow of the low-banked fire
that a good country house requires in August
when you chance to live in the West of Ireland.

My cousins were as pleased with me as I with them
as we smiled and sipped strong amber whiskey,
but then the stories and jokes of the day gave way
to more sombre thoughts, the bringing back of the dead,

To the memory of not-forgotten figures who lay
no more than a mile away along the outer lane
under rustling grasses, an immemorial counterpane
to the cold unmoving clay, heavy, dark and final.

That’s what happens to you in Ireland, even without
the whiskey; even, I think, without companionable cousins.
The dead forever come back, yet they won’t say anything.
I arose, smiling, said that I needed a breath of air,

That I’d take the two dogs for a gallop, be back in no time.
Polite protests and smiles, but no real sense of care
as I went down to the hallway, found a pair of heavy boots
and reached for the stick that stood by the door.

Yerrup! says I to the dogs, tails frantic with excitement,
getting a shot of freedom at this time of the night!
G’wan the pair of you! And they shot off down the road.
I stepped out the door and the cold hit me like bullets,

Sudden as the real things, like those that hit great-uncle Jim
over there beyond in Poor Little Belgium, the useless mud
they were fighting and dying for; when they reckoned they might,
in the end, have been fighting for Poor Little Ireland instead.

No matter, there they were, their lives drained out and dead,
including the ones who came home to cold suspicious welcomes
ninety years ago. Can we ever make it up to them? I don’t think so.
Jim’s part of a foreign field that is forever fucking England.

Sheen of rain on the road; night black as the hairs on a witches arse,
I can hear the wind howling, keening through the bushes on either side,
and black indeed are their blackberries for I confess I cannot see them,
even in the ferocious fiery glory of the cold far distant stars.

Before me the beckoning graveyard … the dead that gave me life.
Behind me a warm and well-lit house and my laughing, living cousins.
I whistle and call to the disappointed dogs: Wheeesh!! C’mon, c’mon!
C’mere to me, lads! Heel to me! Come on, we’re heading home.

360. Travels

I’ve just returned to Japan after a month-long visit to Ireland and various spots I like in Europe. It was something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and it came off reasonably well. I enjoyed it. I didn’t lose my passport or travellers checks, I didn’t get ripped off, at least not too outrageously, and I came back intact and all in one piece … physically.

Now I’m waiting to discover and assess the inner meaning of this trip as the images and memories begin to settle. The quotidian details of travel are of scant interest to the casual reader unless he or she plans to follow in one’s footsteps, a thing I would hardly ever recommend: what time the train left and what time it arrived; what one had for lunch and how much it cost; the cleanliness or shabbiness of hotel rooms and the attitudes of the staff; the friendliness, indifference (most common), or hostility of the locals. All of these things take on enormous importance in the course of a journey for the person who directly experiences them and because of the emotional wear and tear (inevitable, really) there is a tremendous urge to write about them. I’ve been down that road and I think this kind of stuff is basically boring. If you travel you should expect hassles. Even if you don’t expect them they will come along anyway.

I like to travel alone for a very simple reason: I don’t have to listen to anyone else’s opinions. There is no need for accommodation of any kind, nor for compromise, you just do what you like and can change your mind at the drop of a hat. In my experience this is the only way to go. If you travel with a friend or lover you are carrying a whole universe of shared assumptions on your back and this shared experience and even language acts as a filter on every new thing you see. Some people like the idea of support and companionship but on the whole I’d rather go without. We’re told ad infinitum that it’s so really really important to express our feelings, to discuss and explain things. Why? Just go off and do what you like.

The locals often don’t co-operate in these fine fantasies. They happen to reside in the places you are merely passing through and they couldn’t give a toss about you, living or dead, although I’d have to say that young people in their twenties with a bit of English do try to be helpful in a student-solidarity sort of way, possibly since they are still blissfully unaware of how awful their lives will shortly become. The older ones tend to look at you like so many tortoises.

This is where I have to tell you the story of Brigitte. The banks in France just don’t want to cash travellers checks for some reason. I tried, how I tried, in Amiens for about an hour before I had to scurry off to the station to catch the local train to Albert … which turned out to be a bus, but that’s another story. They’d all told me go to the Post Office. The Post Office? So when I got to Albert (pop: 10,000 on a good day) I skipped along to the post office where I met Brigitte. Brigitte was … um … a large sort of person, obviously local (everyone said Bonjour, Brigitte) and she tended to squint and scowl at you from behind her pebble glasses. She never once smiled. I told her I wanted to change two travellers checks (200 Euro) and she glared at me before heaving herself off her chair for consultations in a back room. She came back to tell me Non, non, pas possible! until I summoned up my fifty words of French (rearranged carefully by occasion) to explain how the banks were so fucking cold, nasty and heartless … pas de coeuer, Madame, j’en suis pas un client, vous connais, il n’avons pas plus de coeuer, zut, fini! … and so she heaved herself back in her seat and glared at me some more, then consulted various books and manuals as people began to queue up behind me, not impatient as they might have been in England, just mildly curious. It took about twenty minutes and then she gave me the cash! I felt like kissing her but realised this might be shockingly misunderstood. I had to volunteer to countersign the checks since Brigitte obviously had no inkling of this standard financial formality but I was suitably subtle and discreet so no shame might come down on her from the interested onlookers. I smiled my widest smile and she glared at me like an insect on her shoe.

Heaven Bless you, Brigitte, may God shine His light upon you, now and forever, amen!!

As I was saying, (Merci millefois, Brigitte!) petty annoyances, mistakes and miscalculations form a fairly constant (in fact, daily) theme for the budget traveller in settings where he or sometimes she is alone, a stranger, and quite frequently incompetent with the local language. The idea that people in small towns in France or Germany or anywhere else could or should speak English is frankly laughable. Could you even begin to imagine a French tourist showing up at a motel in, say, Flagstaff, Arizona and saying in a loud voice Parlez-vous francais? Outside of Paris you kind of hopefully say Parlez-vous anglais? And they say Non and you take it from there.

more to come ... this article is taking longer than I expected to complete for various reasons, so click HERE for the link to the photos (when the album opens go to the upper left corner and click on the Slideshow button).

359. The Wreathed Horn

Summon the bells of the morning!
Let them break out, clanging,
across the wetlands and the sullen fields
so that every sentient soul can hear them,
every undeaf spark of life;
and let our people decide, unruly in their beds,
whether they shall answer the call
or read the Sun and Daily Telegraph.

The rain doesn't help,
spitting down on missing absent hedgerows
where useful insects used to live,
doing their little bit for England:
now only the cold rain falls
on a patchwork of green denuded fields,
with a faint rising whiff of chemicals.

Cars whizz by on the M4, the M25,
carrying computer salesmen, fat children,
Social Services ladies in tweed skirts,
and occasionally Prince Charles on his busy way
to prevent some form of architecture.
Slow myopic moles, hasty but unlucky hares,
leave their shattered trusting carcases
on the rainslick roads: hardly any squashed cats,
since these one finds mainly in towns. Now and then,
with a bit more fuss, there are human children.

Such desirable little houses, here and there,
bordered by acacias, gnomes, and mortgages,
as Mr. Next-Door polishes his Bentley in the drive
with a satisfied smirk at your 4-year-old Ford.
Meals have become varied and adventurous
thanks to Sainsburys, Tesco, and the microwave,
but no pigeons come home to roost in the roofs
as the fathers and grandfathers slowly fade away
in their old terraced houses: they are sent off
with economical pomp and ceremony, dead-ending
at cream-white crematoria. Many of these oldies
have a surprising collection of wartime medals.

A different world. A moment to shake your head
before the bloody mobile rings again. Shit.
Here we go back to the real world, a society
we have created and made our own. I can peel
from a roll of fifties, no problem, keep the change,
but you know none of this really means a thing,
you just know you're not really in the game
until you get that call for Breakfast TV.

358. Inter faeces et urinem nascimur*

How long has it been
dear honey sweetheart
since you had a lovely relaxing
movement, with no straining effort?
O bless you, my dear, was it
healthy, satisfactory?

O my darling ... aha ... ahem!

Celia, said cranky old Jonathan,
Celia shits, by God!! Cringing,
he withdrew: it was still the 18th century.

I am, she is, so we all must have
some thoughtful visits to the loo, perhaps
not a thing to share with friends and lovers,
but a necessary thing to do.

It's nothing. Pooh!
Non, non, paff! de rien!

Just a corollary, a match-me,
to the pleasures of the bed:
entre des Anges et des animaux.

Piss off, pal, or baise mon cul.
She loved you but she never liked you,
saw right through you
and left you, s'il vous plait,
along with the money.

Intimate arrangements
play havoc with the rules
and always have done.

Cleopatra
Suzie Q

View Harroooo!!
Gentlemen on horseback. Sly foxes
take mordant pleasure in the hunt
from the ditches of Connemara
to the Allegheny woodlands.

Shaved and eau-de-cologned
I totter past the public toilets
rippling reggae riffs on my drumlike tummy
straining a paisley waistcoat.

If I had a cane I'd flaunt it. Must get one.
This umbrella's no good.

It's nice to have clinking cash in your pockets,
to have folding fivers next to your breast;
it's nice to be out on a bright May morning
watching sweet young girls walking through the park.

---------------------------------------------------------

* Saint Augustine, party boy turned party pooper: "we are born between faeces and urine". Maybe he should work harder at being dead, settling down, being quiet.

357. Briggsy (rewrite)

Hold hard on the plain, Dan Tremayne,
and don’t you worry. We’ll bring
the roaring guns up here in an instant,
the Royal galloping Horse Artillery.
Stay with me, old man, don’t drift away,
these bloody Boers can’t kill you!

Well, they did, and he died,
and that was no smile upon his lips
but a rictus of sheer agony, a gut shot.
So I went and married his widow
when they sent me back to London Town
and we lived in Ealing Broadway.

She was a blonde and sweet young pullet
quite fond of her port and lemon,
and we’d sit in the back of the Star and Garter
when they'd made me up to Sergeant.
I’d stayed on in the Army, it was a steady billet,
there was no real fear of being sent to India.

We rattled along easily enough
without any trouble from little kiddies,
I’d only need to put her over my knee
once or twice with the end of my belt
and dish out a few whacks, not vicious, like,
just to remind her what was what.

War seemed to be coming on in Ireland
but that was a local thing; the regiment,
in London barracks, would hardly be needed,
so we thought nothing of it. That summer
we went down to Kew and to Richmond
and had a few drinks along the river.

I was coming on to 40, getting old,
but the bouncy-bouncy was as good as ever
when the bloody Germans invaded Belgium.
Within days I found myself in France.
The marching was healthy till we got to Mons,
and there, quite suddenly, the killing started.

Smith-Dorrien, one of our few good generals,
bloodied the Jerries at Le Cateau
while Sir John (a cavalry bastard) fell into a funk
and marched us down the roads to Paris.
He had thoughts of evacuation back to England:
we were so tired and angry, I remember it still.

That frog general, Joffre, he shamed Sir John,
and although never mentioned, you can take that as true.
The orders came down, we reversed our retreat,
and then came the Marne and all that followed.
I can neither think nor talk about all that followed,
some few survived, best pretend it never happened.

356. Kyrie

Softly the sunlight
filters through
the stained-glass
sturdily lead-lined
medieval windows:
the scarlets, ochres, and azures.
A single lambent ray
now falls, no it points
to the altar and the crucifix.

What is this Judean
criminal doing in France?

The Minister says
we need larger newer windows
displaying gallows and guillotines,
gas chambers, electric chairs,
more progressive engines
of State disapproval.
Tear down these old cathedrals!
They are old, he says: put up slabs
of modern democratic concrete,
and let the falling rain and filth
of the coming years
drip and stain like tears
running through mascara.

Jesus bar Joseph
lived before concrete and barbed wire,
son of his father, a carpenter,
yet we never hear if he was any good
(Sothebys: a chair made by Jesus!!!)
But if he was a useless Mama’s boy
why would Simon and Barnabas, fishermen,
hard-bitten seasoned seagoing men,
why would they listen to him?
Maybe J was the proto-union guy
with a sideline in miracles.

Or it could be the job was boring
for this young Palestinian Elvis,
could be that Mom and Dad were a drag.
People happy or resigned to their work,
people like you, for example, or me,
we rarely start up new religions.
Not that he did, no, that came
centuries later. J was just a local Jew,
born into it, went with the territory.

But this boy had a way with words,
spun a number of catchy parables,
improved the quality of wine at weddings,
showed himself to be a catering genius,
and then rose Lazarus from the dead!
Woo! That was something:
there's a story behind that one.

But he’d ticked off the Pharisees,
and annoyed the local authorities.
A downward slope, the end of hope:
always the same old, same old Middle East.
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose!

Rome, like imperial America today
didn’t know WTF was going on
and dispensed with Jesus, politically,
just as Ambassador Lodge was to do,
the Pontius Pilate of Vietnam.

Carpe (Mister) Diem.

Wash, wash, wash your hands,
wash your hands, wash your hands.
Wash, wash, wash your hands,
ear-lie in the morning!

Why do the natives bleed so much,
and make such awful noise?

Geopolitics
then as now, means
local myopia.

What did Rome think she was doing?
What does America think he or she or it is doing?

I think it doesn’t know what it’s doing.

We’ll get to that. First we need
to work our way through the Middle Ages.
Why? Because it’s there, it gets in the way.

Stunted people, right little shortarses,
Popes and Kings and peasants,
a thousand years of lamentable hygiene,
protracted physical and mental torture:

Well, that should do it.

The world that we know and live in
is formed of myths and the nonsense of the past.
We have learned so little, and we seem intent
on creating even more lurid stark scenarios
to make our transience seem important.

We have become a widescreen stereo movie.

I wouldn’t mind so much if it was a good one
with a little understatement, wit and intelligence,
instead of all the bombast and the bomb blasts,
the adolescent violence, the lust disguised as romance,
but it isn’t. Now smoothtalking TV politicians
indolently, inexpertly, steer the speeding ship
into patiently waiting icebergs.