flutters at the end of its long emigration
from being news. This is the present,
but when? Coconut cake, a stained napkin,
a tea-glass bisected by long spoon.
Any minute now it’s going to rain.
What kind of animal is the past?
A wooden screen makes two rooms of one.
On the other side, where I saw her last,
my baby girl. I’ll wipe her nose with the napkin,
take her to the Ladies and change her,
blow the bubble of words towards her
that says, This is the present, there is no other.
We are men, not beasts
We are men, not beasts
though we fall in the dark
on the rattlesnake’s path
and flinch with fire of fear
running over our flesh
and beat it to death,
we are men, not beasts
and we walk upright
with the moss-feathered dark
like a shawl on our shoulders
and we carry fire
steeply, inside a cage of fingers,
we are men, not beasts,
and what we cannot help wanting
we banish – the barn yawn, the cow breath,
the stickiness we come from.
FROM
Recovering a Body
(1994)
To Virgil
Lead me with your cold, sure hand,
make me press the correct buttons
on the automatic ticket machine,
make me not present my ticket upside down
to the slit mouth at the barriers,
then make the lift not jam
in the hot dark of the deepest lines.
May I hear the voice on the loudspeaker
and understand each syllable
of the doggerel of stations.
If it is rush-hour, let me be close to the doors,
I do not ask for space,
let no one crush me into a corner
or accidentally squeeze hard on my breasts
or hit me with bags or chew gum in my face.
If there are incidents, let them be over,
let there be no red-and-white tape
marking the place, make it not happen
when the tunnel has wrapped its arms around my train
and the lights have failed.
Float me up the narrow escalator
not looking backward, losing my balance
or letting go of your cold, sure hand.
Let there not be a fire
in the gaps, hold me secure.
Let me come home to the air.
Three Ways of Recovering a Body
By chance I was alone in my bed the morning
I woke to find my body had gone.
It had been coming. I’d cut off my hair in sections
so each of you would have something to remember,
then my nails worked loose from their beds
of oystery flesh. Who was it got them?
One night I slipped out of my skin. It lolloped
hooked to my heels, hurting. I had to spray on
more scent so you could find me in the dark,
I was going so fast. One of you begged for my ears
because you could hear the sea in them.
First I planned to steal myself back. I was a mist
on thighs, belly and hips. I’d slept with so many men.
I was with you in the ash-haunted stations of Poland,
I was with you on that grey plaza in Berlin
while you wolfed three doughnuts without stopping,
thinking yourself alone. Soon I recovered my lips
by waiting behind the mirror while you shaved.
You pouted. I peeled away kisses like wax
no longer warm to the touch. Then I flew off.
Next I decided to become a virgin. Without a body
it was easy to make up a new story. In seven years
every invisible cell would be renewed
and none of them would have touched any of you.
I went to a cold lake, to a grey-lichened island,
I was gold in the wallet of the water.
I was known to the inhabitants, who were in love
with the coveted whisper of my virginity:
all too soon they were bringing me coffee and perfume,
cash under stones. I could really do something for them.
Thirdly I tried marriage to a good husband
who knew my past but forgave it. I believed in the power
of his penis to smoke out all those men
so that bit by bit my body service would resume,
although for a while I’d be the one woman in the world
who was only present in the smile of her vagina.
He stroked the air where I might have been.
I turned to the mirror and saw mist gather
as if someone lived in the glass. Recovering
I breathed to myself, ‘Hold on! I’m coming.’
Holiday to Lonely
He’s going on holiday to lonely
but no one knows. He has got the sunblock
the cash and the baseball cap
shorts that looked nice in the shop
then two days’ indoor bicycling
to get his legs ready.
He plans to learn something in lonely.
Bits of the language, new dishes.
He would like to try out a sport –
jet-ski maybe, or fishing.
You are meant to be alone, fishing.
There are books about it at the airport.
In the departure lounge, he has three hours
to learn to harpoon a marlin
and to overhear the history
of that couple quarrelling
about Bourbon and Jamesons –
which is the best way to have fun.
He is starting to like the look of lonely
with its steady climate, its goals
anyone can touch. He settles
for drinking lots of Aqua Libra
and being glad about Airmiles
as the Australian across the aisle
plugs into Who’s That Girl?
Poem in a Hotel
Waiting. I’m here waiting
like a cable-car caught in a thunderstorm.
At six someone will feed me, at seven
I’ll stroll and sit by the band.
I have never seen so many trombones
taking the air, or so many mountains.
Under them there are tunnels
to a troll’s salt-garden.
The lake is a dirty thumb-mark.
If nowhere has a middle
this lake is its navel,
pregnant with sickeningly large carp.
Bent as if travelling backwards, the birches
wipe the cheeks of 29 parasols.
A little girl scythes at her shuttlecock:
4, 6, 7 strokes –
there are 29 bright parasols
outfacing the sun
and the little girl wears a red cap
to blunt her vision.
I lie through half a morning
with my eyelids gummed down,
neither rising nor falling
until the next meal comes round.
I keep a straw in my mouth
so I can breathe,
I am drinking Sprite in a hotel,
I am a carp in the reeds.
The Bike Lane
Of course they’re dead, or this is a film.
Along the promenade the sun
moves down council-painted white lanes –
these are for cycling. On the other hand
the sea is going quietly out to France,
taking its time. If the cliffs are white,
iron stanchions are planted in them
so a bleed of rust can
be seen
by the army rafting its way in
on lilos and pedalos. Professional cyclists
walk with one hand on the saddle,
waiting to be told to put on
red vests which show up in the race.
The aisle of the falling tide
squints to infinity, the bike-lane
is much in need of repainting
like the smile of the sea-front towards France.
In the less-than-shelter of the beach huts
two people I love are waiting
with as much infinity in their laps
as you can catch with a red vest on.
The cyclists flash past them –
one turns his keyed-up white face
but they are dead and this is a film.
Drink and the Devil
On his skin the stink
of last night turned
to acetaldehyde.
What comes through the curtains must be light.
It combs the shadows of his brain
and frightens him.
Things not to think of crowd in.
The things she said
as if sick of saying them.
The jumpy blanks in what happened.
The way he skidded and there
was the kid looking,
staring through the bars of the landing
so I shouted Monkey, Monkey
and danced but he wouldn’t laugh.
Or was that in the club?
I would never harm a hair
on the head of him.
If she doesn’t know that she knows nothing.
Ahvenanmaa
Breast to breast against the azaleas
they pitch, father and daughter,
the sun throws itself down
golden, glittering,
pale orange petals clutter their hair
as he catches her shoulders,
braced, they grapple and bruise
among the perfumed azaleas.
The flowers loll out their tongues,
tigers on dark stems
while breast to breast against the azaleas
they pitch, father and daughter.
The ferry slides between islands.
Pale and immediate, the sun rises.
The hull noses white marker-posts
glittering in summer water –
here, now, the channel deepens,
the sky darkens. Too cold in her dress
the girl scutters. Engine vents veil
steam while rain hides Ahvenanmaa.
Rubbing Down the Horse
The thing about a saddle is that second
you see it so closely, sweat-grains
pointing the leather,
pulled stitching and all, and the pommel gone black
and reins wrapped over themselves.
You see it so closely
because you have one foot in the stirrup
and someone else has your heel in his hand.
Your heel in someone else’s hand
that second before they lift you, your face
turned to the saddle, the sweat marks
and smell of the horse, those stitches pulling
the way they tug and tear in your flesh
when you lie there in pain,
the hooves of it cutting,
trying to pin down the place, the time.
The nurse has your heel in her hand
yellow and still, already tender
though on Friday you were walking.
She is taking a pinprick
or else slowly, bit by bit, washing
your wrapped body from the heels upward
and talking, always talking.
She might want to ask someone
what way you would move when sunlight
filled the cobbles like straw,
or how without looking at it
you’d kick in place a zinc bucket
then bend and rub down the horse.
You came back to life in its sweetness
You came back to life in its sweetness,
to keen articulations of the knee joint,
to slow replays of balls kicking home
and the gape of the goalkeeper.
You came back to life in its sweetness,
to the smell of sweat, the night-blue
unwrinkling of the iris,
and going from table to table at parties.
Perhaps you’ll waltz
on some far-off anniversary
with an elderly woman
who doesn’t exist yet,
and you, you’ll forget,
for now we’re counting in years,
where we were counting in hours.
Heimat
Deep in busy lizzies and black iron
he sleeps for the Heimat,
and his photograph slips in and out of sight
as if breathing.
There are petals against his cheeks
but he is not handsome.
and the flesh of his cheeks clouds
the bones of heroism.
No one can stop him being young
and he is so tired of being young.
He would like to feel pain in his joints
as he wanders down to Hübers,
but he’s here as always,
always on his way back from the photographer’s
in his army collar
with a welt on his neck rubbed raw.
The mountains are white and sly as they always were.
Old women feed the graveyard with flowers,
clear the glass on his photograph
with chamois leathers,
bend and whisper the inscription.
They are his terrible suitors.
In the Desert Knowing Nothing
Here I am in the desert knowing nothing,
here I am knowing nothing
in the desert of knowing nothing,
here I am in this wide
desert long after midnight
here I am knowing nothing
hearing the noise of the rain
and the melt of fat in the pan
here is our man on the phone knowing something
and here’s our man fresh from the briefing
in combat jeans and a clip microphone
testing for sound,
catching the desert rain, knowing something,
here’s the general who’s good with his men
storming the camera, knowing something
in the pit of his Americanness
here’s the general taut in his battledress
and knowing something
here’s the boy washing his kit in a tarpaulin
on a front-line he knows from his GCSE
coursework on Wilfred Owen
and knowing something
here is the plane banking,
the go go go of adrenalin
the child melting
and here’s the grass that grows overnight
from the desert rain, feeling for him
and knowing everything
and here I am knowing nothing
in the desert of knowing nothing
dry from not speaking.
Poem on the Obliteration of 100,000 Iraqi Soldiers
They are hiding away in the desert,
hiding in sand which is growing warm
with the hot season,
they are hiding from bone-wagons
and troops in protective clothing
who will not look at them,
the crowds were appalled on seeing him,
so disfigured did he look
that he seemed no longer human.
That killed head straining through the windscreen
with its frill of bubbles in the eye-sockets
is not trying to tell you something –
it is telling you something.
Do not look away,
permit them, permit them –
they are telling their names to the Marines
in one hundred thousand variations,
but no one is counting,
do not turn away,
for God is counting
all of us who are silent
holding our newspapers up, hiding.
The Yellow Sky
That morning when the potato tops rusted,
the mangle rested and the well ran dry
and the turf house leaned like a pumpkin
against the yellow sky
there was a fire lit in the turf house
and a thin noise of crying,
and under the skinny sheets a woman
wadded with cloth against bleeding.
That morning her man went to the fields
after a shy pause at the end of her bed,
trying not to pick out the smell of her blood,
but she turned and was quiet.
All day the yellow sky walked on the turves
and she thought of things heavy to handle,
her dreams sweated with burdens,
the bump and grind of her mangle.
All day the child creaked in her cradle