Collected Poems (10 page)

My day is at hand, and the effect of every vision.

Say to me where my sanctuary is,

Scatter me back up the galactic chimney of the Fall.

Lucifer walked between crimson cliffs

Found garnets in the soil that matched

The stone embedded in his forehead

Scooped them to the foldings of his cloak

And walked another forty days.

Granite islands glistened in vast seas of sand.

The mountains of Arabia were blue:

The effect of every vision was at hand.

The Sinaitic wind beyond Ophir

Cleaned shattered tanks and guns.

Lucifer pressed the metal that his fire had holed and melted,

A camel rooted thorns between the wheels.

When dark drew on to Egypt

The effect of every vision was at hand.

LUCIFER IN SINAI – 4

Lucifer was the mirror of God's pride

Until his vanity

Created

Infamous

Fractures

Ending his reign yet marking his

Return to God.

Infamy

Stems

From believing pride to be

One's possession, which sets you to

Retaliate against the weals of fate.

God has no pride. Lucifer's mistake

In thinking so was responsible for the

Vanquishing of

Entire

Nations.

THE LAST

When God said

Let there be Man

He also said

Let there be Lucifer.

Lucifer became

And in becoming

Was the only threat to God.

Lucifer is part of God

And part of Man:

Unity is limitless

Small and indivisible.

Lucifer thought

God ruled through Lucifer

But God rules alone.

Man rules, if and when,

Through Lucifer.

Lucifer walks in circles,

With God forever present

And forever silent.

GOODBYE LUCIFER

Goodbye, Lucifer, goodbye:

I say goodbye to everything;

When the end arrives and knocks its time

My body won't dictate the tune

Nor my soul sing dead.

Goodbye, Utopia

Whose minute never came.

Goodbye –

In case I cannot say it then

Or death's too slow for me to care.

Goodbye, Lucifer, goodbye

People music language maps

Goodbye to love

And rivers alluvially curving.

Goodbye the sky.

Goodbye, Lucifer and all reflections,

Farewell to bodies and machinery

Goodbye the spirit of the universe

Goodbye.

from
Sun Before Departure, 1974–1982

HORSE ON WENLOCK EDGE

A tired horse treads

The moonpocked face

Of a ploughed field

Cuts furrows blindly

Through drifting rain

On chestnut trees, soaked hedges

Energy sucked out with evening;

Seven nails in each steel shoe

Are empty scars of twenty-eight nights

When the white horse dreams

Of galloping through star-clouds,

A moon of nails flying from its path.

NOTTINGHAM CASTLE

Clouds play with their water

Distort shekels between grass

Enriched by the city that flattens

Surrounding land with rubbish;

Binoculars ring the distance like a gun:

From a sea of shining slate

Churches lift and chimneys lurch,

Modern blocks block visions,

The Robin Hood Rifles drilled in fours

Practised azimuths on far-off points,

Eyes watering at southern hills

A half-day's march away:

‘They'll have to swim the Trent, thou knows,

God-damn their goldfish eyes!'

Musket balls rush, break glass,

Make rammel. The Nottingham Lambs

Smashed more than a foreign army,

Came through twitchells to spark the rafters

Paint pillars with the soot of anarchy.

The Trent flowed in its scarlet coat

Too far off to deal with fire:

The council got our Castle in the end

Protected by Captain Albert Ball VC

Who thrust into a cloud-heap above Loos

Hoping for his forty-second kill.

In school they said: ‘You're born

For Captain Albert Ball

To be remembered. Otherwise he'd die!'

A private soldier, he became Icarus:

‘Dearest Folks, I'm back again

In my old hut. My garden's fine.

This morning I went up, attacked five Huns

Above the Line. Got one, and forced two down

But had to run, my ammunition gone.

Came back OK. Two hits on my machine.'

Fate mixed him to a concrete man

An angel overlooking

On the lawn of Nottingham's squat fort.

My memory on the terrace

Remembers barges on the Leen

Each sail a slice of paper, writing

Packed in script of tunic-red.

For eighteen years I blocked the view

No push to send me flying.

Another brain shot down in sleep:

Rich Master Robin Hood outside the walls

Where he belongs robs me of time

And does not give it to the poor.

The whimsical statue stood

With hat and Sherwood weapons

Till a Nottingham Lamb removed the arrow

Someone later nicked the bow

Then they stole the man himself

And rolled his statue down the hill

One football Saturday

And splashed it in the Trent:

If you see it moving, take it:

If it doesn't move, steal it bit by bit

But do not let it rest till Death's sonic boom

Blows the sun through every Castle room.

OXNEY

Smoke all evening, too thin to move

Stubble aflame

Up a hillside when I drove

Across the flat half-mile between

Iden and the Isle of Oxney. A line

Of white, lipped in red set a corner

Of the battlefield on fire,

And cloud like a grey cloak was pulled along

By some heart-broken mourner going home.

NORTH STAR ROCKET

At the North Pole everywhere is south.

Turn where you will

Polaris in eternal zenith

Studs the world's roof.

Under that ceiling

A grey rocket crosses

A continent of ice,

Evading Earth by flirting with it.

Who will know what planet he escaped from?

A cone of cosmic ash pursued its course

On automatic pilot set to earth

Bringing Death – or a new direction

To be fed into my brain

Before collision.

FIFTH AVENUE

A man plays bagpipes on Fifth Avenue.

Gaelic-wail stabbing at passersby

Who wish its pliant beckoning

Would draw them through their fence of discontent

To a field of freedom they can die in.

They stand, and then walk on.

A man with thick grey beard

Goes wild between traffic,

Arms wagging semaphore;

Raves warnings clear and loud

To those ignoring him.

A blind man rattles a money-can,

Dog flat between his legs

Listens to the demanding

Tin that has so little in

Both ears register

Each bit that falls.

An ambulance on a corner:

They put a man on a stretcher

Who wants air. A woman says:

‘Is it a heart-attack?

Is the poor guy dead?'

She worries for him:

Dying is important when it comes.

‘I suppose it is,' I guess,

‘I hope it's not too late' –

She had one last year:

‘Fell in the street, just like that.'

Her lips move with fear.

The man is slid into the van.

Just like that.

Hard to come and harder go

For the bagpipe player in the snow

The wild man with his traffic sport

The old man with his dog

And the young who hurry:

Dying, a lot of it goes on.

THE LADY OF BAPAUME

There was a lady of Bapaume

Whose eyes were colourless and dead –

Until the falling sun turned red;

Her lovers from across the foam

Walked at dawn towards her bed:

Fell in fields and sunken lanes

Died in chalk-dust far from home.

A rash of scattered poppy-stains:

Nowadays they pass her wide –

That mistress of
chevaux-de-frise

Is still alive and can't conceal

Her mournful and erotic zeal:

The lady of Bapaume had charms –

Bosom large, but minus arms.

No soldiers rise these days and go

Towards the bloodshot indigo.

Motorways veer by the place

On which, with neither love nor grace,

They drive to holidays in Spain.

There was a lady of Bapaume

Whose lovers ate the wind and rain.

STONES IN PICARDY

Names fade,

Suave air of Picardy erodes

The regimental badge

Or cross

Or David's Star

Of gunner this and private that.

The chosen captains and their bombardiers

And those known but as nothing unto God

Who brought them out of slime and clay

Are taken back again.

God knew each before they knew themselves

If ever they did

Before mothers lips sang

Brothers showed

Sisters taught

Fathers put them out to school or work.

But only God may know them when the stones are gone

If any can –

If God remembers what God once had done.

AUGUST

Birth, the first attack, begins at dawn.

It's also the last, whistle at sky-fall,

Illogical, unsynchronized, inept.

Children, pushed over the top

And kettledrummed across churned furrows

Kitted out with dreams and instinct,

Hope to learn before reaching the horizon.

Those in front call back advice:

‘Going to advance, send reinforcements.'

But who trust the old, when they as young

Spurned cautionary wisdom

That never harmonized with youth?

‘Going to a dance, send three-and-fourpence.'

Some fall quietly under each rabid burst of shell

Love of life unnoticed

In willingness to give it

Or the feckless letting-go.

Leaves drop in the zero-hour of spring

Young heat mangled by car or motorbike.

Broken sight looks in, no view beyond

Though terror rocks the heart to sleep

The signal-sky gives bad advice:

Get up, look outside, day again.

Insight warped by energy, blinded by ignorance.

The battlefield too wide,

Bullets rage at friends and parents

Strangers stunned in the lime-pits of oblivion.

Who blame for this sublime attack?

Did Brigadier-General God in his safe bunker plan?

He horsebacks by, devoted cheers.

Choleric face knows too much to tell –

It's dangerous for any smile to show.

Whoever is cursed must be believed in

For Baal is dead. Get up. Push on.

Want to live forever?

Go through. No psychic wound can split

Or leg be lost at that onrushing slope.

Halfway, more craven, sometimes too clever,

Old campaigners want a hole to flatten in

Before rot of the brain encircles

Or Death's concealed artillery

Plucks fingers from the final parapet.

Silence kills as quickly, you can bet.

Live on. Death pulls others in

Not you, or me, or us (not yet).

Earth underfoot is kind but waiting,

Green sea flows on the right flank,

Black rain foils the leftward sun,

Poppy clouds and mustard fields

Tricked out with dead ground, full woods,

Lateral valleys flecked with cornflowers.

Roses flake their fleshy petals down.

Time falls away. Battle deceptively recedes,

Peace lulls to the final killing ground,

Familiar voices coming up behind.

TERRORIST

The protest against Death

Is a raised fist, the face

Of corruption bewails its declining

Gift of life. I go when chosen for taking.

The sky bruises the aching fist. Air mellows

The corroded face. You did not choose me.

I parted myself long ago when I sat

On a branch overlooking boathouse

And bulrushes, and the lake water

On which nothing moved

Except the breath of words

Saying no seven times all told.

I didn't stay to hear the answer

Turned blind in Death's donkey-circle

Till the rag around my fist

Was bloodsoaked from hitting the trees.

RABBIT

A busy rabbit young and small

Cornered our vegetable plot,

Chewing green treasure,

Tail upright from line to line

In rabbit-fashion,

An all-providing God set out

Row on row of grub,

Scarpered back to thistles

Till heavy-treading vengeance went away.

The fur-lined malefactor fed a fortnight

On lettuce carrots peas,

Slyly keeping news from friends below.

Laden gun half-aimed, I stalked:

That gorging salad-engine's tender paws

Which sensed the weight of lead shot in my pocket,

And soft-footed off before I reached the hedge.

My shadow half-close,

Approaching blackout had low odds

On lead-slug hitting his well-padded neck.

It never did

Though if that produce had been all

Between us and hunger

The senses would have sharpened

And my gun been God Almighty.