And Such Other Cudgelled and Heterodox People
Climbing the liquid stairs of drink
we go are you there Alan?
in the English good night
where Byron glides unwritten.
*
Across empty England tilting under cloud
towards a new order and petrol thirst,
trees lift like visions at the margins of fields;
an innocent history passing with ease
as if the rural poor lined the road, waving.
Blasted through a slot together landscape,
with no essential link between these lives
—easy as speed, didn't feel a thing—
dead winding gear, wooded fields, barracks towns,
figures moving together in a film.
To answer the young lord's questions:
we can commit a whole country to its prisons,
depopulate and lay waste all around us and
restore Sherwood forest as an asylum for outlaws;
in the English good night, where Byron glides unwritten
*
In the cold eye of the lake
light dissolves around the trees,
a boy, free as a fish, dives
dreaming of the sea.
*
Lyres on earth cast like nets
to catch the living god
but to stand beneath these walls
and fall into those hands is terror.
The beginning is music, a strange thing;
in the shade of power we found fun and delight,
crossing Paynim shores, Earth's central line,
through an invisible door.
Over the dark sliding wave
into half the world unknown,
with liquid nerves in charged air
we sought the god of birds.
Saw the blue cape afar
said his heart, tamed to its cage
all summer long;
milord is dreaming an island of light.
*
"I ran to the end of the wooden pier...the dear fellow pulled off his cap and wav'd it... God bless him for a gallant spirit and a kind one."
*
After an interval of years, this composition to one far and firm;
events left me for imaginary objects, an imaginary England.
Do you remember when we were out with the Luddites,
from airy hall about the county, about the forest and villages?
But buzz buzz eager nations, not with human thought,
no new land nor fair republic, no deep sea music sounding.
Events left me in the umbrage of green shade,
my dear Hobhouse, return to that country.
In that completed state words are things,
the electric chain we darkly bind about ourselves.
From this tower of days I see the pathless woods
and the waters washing empires away.
*
excuse the scrawl, fresh morning at daybreak
boat starting for Kalamo...blue upon blue these mountains,
the Turkish fleet gone, the blockade removed
the air fresh but not sharp, we sailed together,
the song we sang was—a nation to be made,
when the waves divided us we made signals
firing pistols and carbines, tomorrow we meet at Missolonghi
if at the head of some one hundred boys
of the belt and of the blade, that I may
(calculate the cost of keeping one man in the field for one month
the sale of the Rochdale manor?)
we bore up again for the same port
excuse the scrawl..
frosty morning that means to be of promise,
that I may get the Greeks to keep the field
the final port or [word torn out with seal]
who will stick with the Greeks now?
the Lempriere dictionary quotation Gentlemen
or those who do not dissemble faults or virtues?
(when I was in the habit)
I reserved such things for verse
*
Aboard the Florida in an oblong packing case lined with tin,
organs and intestines in earthenware jars
—this heart should be unmoved—
The case stamped with seals of the provisional government,
painted black and submerged in a barrel of spirits
—worm, canker, grief—
Hobhouse went aboard at London Dock Buoy,
the undertakers were draining the barrel
—life blood strike home—
Though assured "it had all the freshness and firmness of life",
he declined this last view of his friend
but later identified him by his foot.
And John Clare, wandering down Oxford Street,
saw the funeral train and a girl sighed—poor LB—.
*
To answer the young lord's questions
Saturday night at the trough
they talk about technology,
new magic make you work harder,
their veins corrupted to mud.
I can hardly make the words out,
I never saw such things in the provinces of Turkey;
men sacrificed for cheap exports,
for Spider-work to bloat others.
The magistrates assembled,
troops ransacked homes around Newstead;
men, guilty of poverty, willing to dig
but another owns the spade.
The mob enabled you to defy the world;
the pitched against the poor
must learn flexible work and slut-time,
must learn global economy.
Capital tips off the edge of the world
to strike the old deal still in place,
a life above ground or boundless waste;
here we go, here we go, here we go.
Breakers of frames, iconoclasts incandescent,
let me be among you about the county;
snap their heads awake
with the politics of paradise.
Page(s) 73-77
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The