At the time, W.W. Robson, another Oxford hotshot, remarked, “You can say one thing
for Amis and Wain, they do have a sense of humor—except for Wain, and Amis.”
Leider I love
stuff to be true;
Poetry does
probably too.
*
Airspeed
The dark, thirty-five thousand feet of air
Two hundred and twenty-eight in terror
Whether it pitched down like a bird of prey
Whether any were conscious then to pray
If in the cold of altitude the fuselage broke up
If it dove intact for miles till the sea tore it up –
I know none of this – knew none (I was asleep
Four thousand miles distant in the double bed I keep):
Not whether or how they anticipated death
Through the steep dark – but this far I have faith
That there are other minds I know
And know nothing of them in the terror they knew
Homage in Irish Rhyme
Stars turning up all the time in poetry.
The literality is all there somewhere.
One can’t just write, smack and go on.
She is a mess this made and she
Requires rationalisation.
Write theology of her but ignore the stars
Turning up all the time in poetry.
The literality is all here somewhere.
I couldn’t take a smack just at Empson.
Hydrant
There’s no one there.
This you say and he
objects. You had
there someone, just before.
I thought I saw.
Thought I saw that someone
there; there’s no one there.
Though I see him still.
I close my eyes and see him, still
still there. It is a quest.
Speech is there yet speech is here.
Speech is where I see him still. Say,
some no one there.
What speech is ours but hers and this?
Who says
That I am this and I am this.
Gauklerpredigt
Why say, why write?
in suffering’s grip
or wake, why speak
if you are moral?
asks Hill. Because, like gravitation,
it’s there.
Because we did it.
Etwas wird wahr
is said as it’s seen.
Against, perhaps, the mouthings—
not memory’s riches—of a video
nasty’s replenished cast:
although ignored, for landscape
not portrait footage; sung stills
of a riven, empty tortoisehouse.
So he, pink as a scandal,
is gall’s parson
chaparralled on the brink of laughter.
Falterlots
In a day destroy a star;
Take the epigram’s whip
Now to tan in solitude’s fire
Out of orphaned rays. No fiercer buzzard
Has led the sorting hour
Than this we might have called a bustard.
Now to tan in solitude’s fire
A chilly lark regrets
The larch’s lame vendetta.
~
Given it’s beginners’ love
Too sad to cherish ghosts;
Logged in we gas like hosts.
In a year correct a slump.
(The year the slump, and slump
Correction.) Don’t repair a heart
So it might bear, in months, the less
Gainful, gainfully-borne, tetanus
Of love. In even art.
~
In a year erect at last
A kaftan heart –
Ventricles windsocks, valves aghast.
In a year bereft of crisps
Grow wide as Cartman –
Komodo neck, thighs that lisp.
Or in a night garrotte a Rhine.
‘It’s obvious’ the river lies
Underneath, ‘underneath’.
~
Plainjane lens as barrel squat,
The skywritingwritten plot
Of loss was not picked up.
In a while in memory
Play mythologian.
Now, with it befitting me,
In flickered truth, to curse our bond
Poetically:
Mist falling under the lights.
Till Cloture, Iambs
kinglike prosaicity and the heart mess.
ribble
famogroan; on the
heartling clamp toward the knelling
and say stop, also please
stop here is Panguitch.
hamadryad in the tire sensor, should
this have coherency
fire arrect Chávez, heartened Venezuela.
dankheart laster may, could flood a Vegas
sky with sergeantry of England’s wash;
(nor escape measures
dogging keymen since the conflagration).
blister lights and sumpheart shades
rash the desert where a scree has lain, shrubs grown.
roadside card-suppliers,
Hispanic all, group about their foisting hands, their provender,
as fountains go like bombs,
empire's toys.
the confectioneried writhe mouth, weight, through sinkalongs.
down Utah rock the set ran pinkly.
the Utah light is sandstone, hoodoopeach,
the smokeless heart is loinpink.
plus of a still monoblue
(skin
notwithstanding) the bushspread unvanish dimness of stars
as complexity bespeaks
millennia, bespeaking distance.
immaculatelooking
towngrid. through blinds
pickuplights make zebrahide of plaster.
kinkheart’s out to suss
a newish highschool, no Pleshey this,
sangloter rankling on the whiteboard
and a silent class.
soft-asserted flushout and the carnaging looks.
conjuregate? err…
sample this.
Huntington they plash along,
seasalt stars the flag, the Sangreal
leaks to tide
shoreline after perfect shore.
this country and its taxipachyderm waltz, some glamheart
using cunt like small change.
in the race of ganky foam, nothing’s lost,
it goes.
(there’s Getty’s sinking cloak!
trawled and trawled over.)
square in Camp Rubric
reality may be Foleyed, the sunset cambric,
reason’s prospect
damning like a chestpain –
perhaps this salad comes with garnicht,
the cost of any grail.
or to conclude with a verseclap
so cavernous as to swell the bishopric through
perhaps it is the culture's talent for scale, so the tough
as a bullet, starstripy cross –
America’s harness – morbidly weighs.
if that is the future linkheart
would I could part with it.
‘I have heard a genius disavow genius’
Draft
I have heard a genius disavow genius;
Heard love scorn love.
I have felt an emperor’s disavowed empire
Colonise fog.
I have known a genius misapply genius
[...incomplete]
Care
Tinsel coal revokes the fire,
Settling. Ornaments forsake
The mantelpiece’s cluttered gum,
As cats remake
The shagpile’s level shire.
Without her voice the house retains a rhythm.
Yet in the crooked chair
He’d made from totalled roof – such slate –
She decays, and vermin come.
With scrabbling rats her legs gyrate,
Look alive again. While prokaryotes respire
In carcasses of cats, others relax in waves and sun.
Columbia, SC
Words of resolution, and hesitant
Words, and wary, air a wordless portent.
Tripling off design and walls, noise’s
Content discontent, his strength is voices –
Our attention. So complain complainers:
There’s a lovely silence to his answers.
‘Hope’ is policy; yet impolitely
Ductile, like a mirror’s copy
Of light’s talk, saying, in print-buttered glass
What stalls speech. Which confuses us.
Theme
THE FLATNESS of neon fills a place
Bubuling. A condom
film of Heinz, old spills, adhering.
My hand. Radio
avers the gamut—shooting; carbomb
to captive bears. So: why am I here?
Flyers rob the window of its point (which is not. What hearty beef!
to say a sad thing)
I am here to eat. The tillgirl’s
make-up only greys her acne out. I still would.
THE LOSS of things is central;
what one discards is to change integral.
No strategies fox choice.
I am here to feed, to rethink my values,
and at your step to sell moroseness, very pushy.
The happy simple residue
of life back golden when is lean
and succulent mince, floury discs of bun, chill relish.
My hand can grasp the beef of hope.
Never this, this, I think, I swallow.
[The Holiday August]
excerpt
What lilting follower
observes us?
He walks our pace
miles behind,
telling the gestures of our love
by snapped twigs.
'O the light crawls'
O the light crawls
in solid pall
slug-slow back to its hutch.
The skin shines
bristling brine
yet the cold swim didn’t wash much.
(You are lost you are lost
you are lost to me)
O the breathless field
in wind that healed
croaked, Was it worth what I paid?
Subsiding wires
in gales in choirs
sang, Was it worth what I paid what I paid?
(You are lost you are lost
you are lost)
The misfiring soldier
in rain and in river
tripped on the corpse of his friend;
coughing on water,
groggy, he thought the
river-swell could comprehend
(You are lost you are lost
you are lost)
So the man warns
(and lamplight yawns),
says in love he is wishful and useless.
Lapwing in storms,
his message informs
none as in love it is heartless.
The one now frayed
(worth what I paid?)
in going made sure he knew this:
You are lost you are lost
you are lost to me
You are lost you are lost
you are lost.
©ZA 2005–11