poemsonpoets

2011-01-16T14:14:00.000-08:00

Leicester Square Puddle Image

I see myself in Leicester Square

which is a kind of overcoat

loose and comfortable to wear,

with bars and diamonds

and tree motifs,

and the weave itself

made up of tiny laughter

and griefs.

Walking through mile-high drizzle

the people here

are dressed to dazzle:

there goes a giant eye,

here comes the Planet Mars.

Some are dressed

as teen-age gangs,

a few as cinemas.

A woman smiles at me,

her gown a shimmering clock

that strikes on the second.

The carousel has run amok;

you can’t see the old grey-beard

who thinks it’s Derby Day;

the clouds fly past him,

Hitchcock’s Birds are coming.

Now that

is weird:

I know that girl

In the mini-dress –

I remember her corduroyness.

A ghost steps out

of a Silver Ghost,

a crowd of masked lone rangers gathers

gasps. Someone whispers, “Diamond!” or

“diamonds…” Is it Legs

Or Neil or that man Bond?

I tighten my belt

as erically as I can

and amble on: it’s my coat that wanders

out of the lime-light

into the night, no cares

but The Care of Time.*

The Care of Time was Eric Ambler’s last novel.

2009-06-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

Alan Ginsberg Dream

29/07/07

Alan: I decided to write down those memories I recall from the non-ego memory e.g,

When I was so little
I was barely a weight
in my mother’s hand…..

Then, I see in my dream, the reader has a choice between hyperlinks to reach the end of the poem. The hyperlinks become feely bags you can reach into and pull out the poems. Some of the bags are shaped like Teddies. Joyce knows some of the poems – she comes in as I am pulling out the one above. I wake up.

1946

When I was so little
I was barely a weight
in my mother’s hand

knitted shoes
the size
of her thumb

the beating
of her heart
was my Paris

the conversation
of strangers
London’s mighty roar.

1956

Being on the river
with my mother when
she was still young
enough to fall
on the pavement, pick
herself up & carry on –
luckily her glasses
not broken.

Tall just up to her
shoulder, sitting together
on the wood-slat,
cracked varnish seats
and reading the names
on the sides of barges
yachts & launches and she
knowing I am short-sighted,
saying: “You may
need glasses some day.”

196-

From the Summer
of being fucked up what did I learn?
That people we don’t know
are just as important as people we do,
and other people’s mothers and fathers and best friends.

That night I travelled up the Northern Line
thinking to sleep at my Auntie’s house:
all locked up and silent, forgot she’s
away the weekend – stalled me - I travelled way down
the Northern line to Oval, Cleaver Square
to tell Martin about my girlfriend
and having nowhere to sleep –
and chanting Martin, Martin to no effect, no
window slung open in reply –

Up the Northern line, back up again –
in Pond square I found a
parked car – the replica of Martin’s
black 1950’s Morris his parents ‘d bought him
second hand – knowing it’s not Martin’s car
I get in and find there’s a neatly
folded blanket on the front
seat – curl up that summer night
in door-mouse comfort, feeling
like a Camembert in a picnic basket
sleeping until 6.0 am, when I

stealthily slip the handle up & roll out
onto well-worn tarmac under green Highgate Trees,
remembering to refold the blanket

thankful for this unlocked car
in the morning when Ginsberg was
king of Czechoslovakia
and the May – headed back past Highgate Cemetary to
Achway, and Mum and Dad in Brighton
for the weekend, saying I
spent the night with a friend.

+++

Mallarme

2009-05-08T14:06:00.000-07:00

To a Woman Dreaming

O woman in the act of dreaming,
with your sweet misnomers, understand
how I can plunge into roadless bliss.
Keep my wing safe in your hand.

The freshness of evening light
fans you with the passing of each beat,
with a force so delicate
it pushes the horizon back,

quivering vertiginous. See
how space is like a vast embrace
which, sick of being born for no-one,
can’t pour itself out or calm down.

Couldn’t you feel the paradise
begin like a concealed laugh,
and flow from the corner of your mouth
to the depth of your one white throat!

Aegis of red sand beaches,
stuck in golden evenings – this is it!
This whiteness of closed flight you place
against the fire of a bracelet.

From the French of Stephane Mallarme

From-here-to-there Portal

2009-04-10T14:16:00.001-07:00

From-here-to-there Portal

Not without its own history, this Park
where no one just now goes walking;
once the travellers had their site
underneath its railway arch,

their caravans and washing lines
squeezed into the little space.
No place to run or play, Summer
or Winter when the windows steamed up:

the dogs barked; the fences got trampled;
the Council moved them on - only
July sun bore down on bare gravel.
Beneath the arches, events to be started:

a Mind Body fair was staged -
organic food stalls, herbal remedies
and rain sticks with their tinkling shells.
With idle curiosity I wandered there

amongst the mentors and magicians,
each with a secret to impart:
the ginseng-free tonic, the Healing Ray.
I was a good listener then, as now.

There's grass now, shrubs and daffodils,
and a path swept quite recently,
a straight line to the old brick arch
that's built as sternly as a portal.

A new wrought iron gate half open,
inviting someone to venture in,
with March or April's wanderlust,
in cool sunlight or tingling rain:

There's no one there to meet or talk to,
no one there to impose
their presence on my reverie.
The lingering moment draws me on,

and by the path that's still vacant,
why is it that the Spring flowers seem
like bits of the world refocusing
when the brain wakes from an anaesthetic?

Peppermint Aero Chutney

2009-02-15T07:14:00.000-08:00

Peppermint Aero Chutney

It was a fortunate misreading
the kind that over-rides the first
dull meaning in a magazine:

four tigers in a frame.
I see them painted by Rousseau.
One gate at least hangs open:

There's a barrier, ten foot tall,
of dull wood painted green,
where the flowers and pathways were.

The overwriting hand is poised.
I think of William Blake,
his birthplace up the concrete steps.

There's an old VW convertible
that often parks round there,
yellow as a plastic bee.

No shop front that I pass
and pass again is ever the same:
blue as surreal ceramic.

Why does latte come out black?
With spikes up close, they look
bigger than church steeples.

A lemon nestles among the apples.
Being very sorry, or just being...
Acting up or just acting...

Soho Side

2009-02-01T08:01:00.001-08:00

Soho Side

Walking the Soho side of Soho Square
I stop and stare: “Who locked the gate on us
in broad January day light?” I enquire
silently, where two girls chat and share. I suss
that they don’t care, don’t notice me; the gate
was never open for these sleek women,
whose English sounds quite confident and bright.
Staring on past them through the gate, it’s plain
to me: Summer has been padlocked away
by the cool giant who wants to ban our pleasure
of lying on worn grass in idle array
until there isn’t any grass – a measure
of potential, in one part of the melee,
for talking up a rapid urban culture.

Rangoon

2009-01-19T12:25:00.000-08:00

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=69863052

Rangoon

The Dignity: 11.0, Sunday night,
Rangoon in full tilt, speakers
on high stands. The amp is tube.

They play in front of the pub’s
oil painting, a woman’s face
in red, the height of a man.

A light is trained towards them,
and the drinkers are tuning in:
some begin to dance. There’s

nothing out there, some shops,
a road that needs maintaining,
electric rails the trains follow

out in the open this far North –
only this Rocking rhythm and words
that link us to the rights and wrongs
of men and women, Burmese monks
with cotton sails, riding against tanks.
Another pint: stand further back.

Curved planes continue through the amp and mike
across the road and into space.
Watch them playing: their eyes lock -

the music follows distant streets,
licks into shadows like a liquorice tongue,
goes blind down midnights steps.

The bassist has a 6.0 start;
A leaf curls round; a waist sways.
In the narrow space between the bar

and the stage, couples are making
each moment count. The bar’s
a rose open for last orders. Soon

last tubes will trundle back, and
in silence engulfed by black light
Rangoon’ll dissolve like sherbet dust.

+++

PoetryPivotal 3

2009-01-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

Midnight Steps

Something is moving through a tunnel
a tunnel of silence and of brick,
and as it moves further and further away
the sense of the sound does not diminish.

It is born of a mechanism with many parts,
moves on the edge of what can't be heard;
perhaps it's below me or a few streets South
where the railway goes under the road.

The night is not entirely dark or silent:
the sudden creak of a footstep
in an upstairs flat. Three a.m: a cat sits
and looks out, as if seeing the shape

of something that's there, I can't see.
There's a bridge near Jeffreys Street,
where the nuclear waste in steel wagons
rattles on by, at least three a week

and a side alley leading West, down
seventy feet underneath the line. I sleep
with three storeys above me and three beneath;
the walls are thick, and the River, almost black,

flows under us through hidden arches
from Parliament Hill to Anglers Lane,
a sealed light that can't be seen
clusters on the surface, unexplained.

Some more of Eugene Atget's famous images

2009-01-01T14:29:00.000-08:00

Some of Eugene Atget's famous images

2009-01-01T14:27:00.000-08:00

Eugene

2008-12-12T11:19:00.001-08:00

http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/atget/index.html

EUGENE
(i)
My streets are empty
because I go out early
and take photographs.

My plates are too late,
mere things; what has happened
has left its mark.

Some mornings alone
I set up my camera
and just keep waiting

for the mist to rise,
for the vacancy to be
a few metres clear:

a cobbled concourse
leading to the Moulin Rouge
where dampness glistens.

Someone said I do
crime scenes, bleached and swept;
if so, the cops aren’t interested.

For artists - who else? -
these silver nitride traces,
instalment stories

where no shots ring out,
and there is no embrace, since
the world has ended.

These are documents
and nothing else. I know Man
Ray – he talks of a journal,

new existences.

EUGENE
(ii)

Sometimes, mornings I’m alone,
passing the Metro, and stop,
set up my camera in vain
for the faces emerging
and disappearing to greet
the soul that inhabits life:

the soul which was there
in the Luxembourg Gardens,
in the mist across water.

I record stone thoroughfares,
entrances machines will block,
the shops they’ll demolish.

My horizon is noisy,
limited by offices.

What can’t be repaired:
the stairs between walls,
full of entry points,

entrances for artists.

+++

Eugene (iii)

I took you still in your trades,
as you presented yourselves to me,
a set of prints from the streets
that you cross every day and re-cross,
imprinting yourselves at the heart
of the streets that you yourselves
create: baker, porter and tart,
peddler and hurdy gurdy man.
I made these pictures of you, and
with you, for you, as you were
each standing on your bit of street,
I with my tripod, as I presented
myself to you, fellow Parisian, graduate
of the School of Hard Knocks; we
were daybreakers on the gymnasium floor.

New Second-Hand

2008-11-28T11:47:00.001-08:00

Poetry Pivotal 2 - New Second-Hand

Walking through Soho in dry light,
top stories splashed in yellow sun,
difficult for digital these Winter days
in life-on-earth shadow of streets,

grave stone of Hazlitt in the church
garden, backs of Old Compton Street,
their bricks and windows; one, piled high
with books, is glinting high up.

The tomb, in splendid isolation
lies flat on the grass, a clean cut
oblong, could be a book on its side,
a tome, Libor Amoris at rest.

While I photograph I’m watched
by a gardener who’s almost invisible
amongst leaves, brooms and wheel barrows.
Once in the Summer, with a new second-hand,

I was trying to get the spire
in, crouching and pointing the lens
up through foliage at the sky,
and fell over backwards, rolled

laughing in the grass, while
sitters on the church-yard benches,
my public, kept their pose.
Now, it’s the man working and me.

+++++

Documents for Poets

2008-11-16T03:11:00.001-08:00

Eugene

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Atget

I call my current series: “Documents for Poets”: after consideration I decided for this, because it obliquely touches on the achievements of a famous photographer, who has been an inspiration to many.
The title is borrowed from the celebrated turn of the century Parisian photographer Eugene Atget whose images included Parisian precincts and suburbs where he sought and found relics and preserved masterpieces of a world that was disappearing rapidly. Much of what he depicted focused on the ordinary and everyday, which through his lens was mysteriously transformed to become dreamlike & iconic.
He referred to his photographs as “documents for artists.”
I therefore retrospectively dedicate my “Poetry Pivotal: documents for poets” to Eugene – a title I think he would have understood and tolerated.

Poetry Pivotal 1

(i)

In the window a canal,
bars spill out on the street;
no longer Summer, green September.

There are caravans of ants
on the pavement, trees, rooftops
and the bridge whose angles
pick up the sheen of grass;
pink dark glasses in the day
and glasses to drink from
at night. The motorway’s

curved boomerang shape;
a perfectly formed film star,
in an evening gown, steps
from a cracked walnut;

looking into the canal
her window glimmers.

(ii)

Overarching the concrete and glass
of the station’s restaurants and shops,
Paddington’s still girders –
like elongated yellow bees
the trains reach for clover
and the barley fields.
Once this station was an actor
young and handsome in the Age of Steam.

The past is still doing
its double act with now:
up and down the escalators,
customers who were once passengers
alight at different levels,

and, ranged in a semicircle,
the Station Orchestra is amply playing
the music of the brass, as if
breasting a river somewhere deep,
where, each with its candle glowing,
ride tiny boats across the stream.

A Poem by Phil Crick

2008-10-31T15:44:00.001-07:00

This poem is quoted from Treble Poets 3 Chatto & Windus 1977.

Quiberon by Phil Crick

"A ten-ton man
in a suit of stone
dozes face down
on the edge of France.

His green jaws nudge
the immaculate beach
and the low waves lance
a rift in his bone.

All ropes unreel
in his waterlogged heart.
He sways on his bed.
His vertebrae moan.

And he floats a long cry
down through the sand
that even the stars
and the quasars own.

Its echo shatters
the sky off Belle-Ile.
At sunset, too,
sea-owls murmur."

Night Exercise

2008-10-12T09:38:00.001-07:00

"About Phil Crick
Philip Crick (1918-1992) was born in the Isle of Wight and grew up in Ramsgate and Broadstairs, Kent. He served in the army in World War Two, first as a Second Lieutenant, and later as a Captain in the Intelligence Corps with the British Rhine Army. After demobilisation, he trained as a teacher and worked in various primary schools and colleges of higher education. He ended his teaching career as a Senior Lecturer at the Garnett College of Education in London.
From the early 1950s until the early 1990s, his poems appeared regularly in a large number of British and American magazines, along with critical essays and reviews of films and books, and articles on aesthetics. His essay on the work of Gustaf Sobin, later published by Shearsman as a slim chapbook, was the first extended assessment of Sobin's poetry." - quoted from the Shearsman website http://www.shearsman.com/pages/magazine/home.html

Night Exercise

Desk of strange juxtapositions, a typewriter
next to a set of teeth cast in plaster
a wind harp, a Larkin; his face was fine-lined
with the ravages of emotional time,
miscreant against the linear spectrum,
poet rated for searching mind,
the ear and its nuances.
In Kingston-Upon-Thames
once in the night, above the cosmic hum,
he heard a distant faint voice crying –
or was it Jill who heard it first?
Help, help…. again, Help. Genuine or games,
madman or victim of a crime? Trying
to work out where, they went out bent on tracing
walking towards it, stopping…. listening….pacing.

Pacing through streets, they heard the voice get louder
while all around suburban households slept –
he told this story as a true reflector
of life’s strangeness and atmospheres, adept
at leaving out – not shouting,
where others might have, of good actions or
deeds. It was what they discovered, came to
there at the gates of Richmond Park –
that the story captured eerily:
in the Moon’s shadow, tied by the feet, suspended,
a frightened human plumb line they cut free,
these rescuers in the dark;
their foray ended
with folded penknife, human decency.

+++

Heine Translations

2008-09-06T14:36:00.001-07:00

The following quotation from an old Peter Porter essay seems peculiarly relevant to my recent endeavour.

“Too many translators (and I include myself) are ill-acquainted with the tongues they translate from and know very little about the prosody and traditions of other languages. You can achieve useful results from this ignorance but that is not what translation is supposed to be about.” (quoted by Jon Silkin in the Introduction to his Poetry of the Committed Individual – A Stand Anthology of Poetry – Penguin 1973)

Poems Read in the Dual Language “Songs of Love and Grief“ selected and translated by Walter W.Arndt, North Western University Press Illinois 1995.
Walter.W.Arndt is a renowned scholar, poet and translator.
My versions are my own versions – translated from the ground up by me with the help of my Collins dictionary, yet guided and no doubt influenced by Arndt’s excellent and enjoyable translations. I have also been helped by the biographical essay in “Heinrich Heine: Poems and Ballads” translated by Emma Lazarus – Hartsdale House New York 1947. Without Arndt, I would not of course have had access to a selection of poems drawn from all the periods of Heine’s poetry. This selection highlights the many levels and complexities of Heine’s work. He comes over as very modern, not so much the achingly romantic lyricist the Liede composers latched onto. The poems in Arndt’s selection amount to a volume that has affinities with Baudelaire and the Symbolists.
Why on Earth with my rusty O level German have I taken the step of re-translating these poems? My only motive for producing translations of my own is the enjoyment it produces, the struggle and search for getting it right feels worth while – I imagine as an aspiring piano player struggles to get to grips with a Schubert sonata and gets a buzz when a few bars come out. I hope my “playing” of Heine does not upset the neighbours!
I also hope the results may be useful to someone else as well as me.

***

Wir fuhren allein im dunkeln (Sorry, can’t manage the umlauts in Word)

In the dimly lit coach
We travelled alone through the night;
We pillowed our heads and laughed
On each other’s hearts.

Then, as the morning light appeared,
My sweet, how silent we were:
Between us a new passenger,
The blind one, Love.

Wir haben viel fur einander gefuhlt

We felt a lot for each other
and got on perfectly well;
we often played husbands and wives,
only we didn’t bite each other’s heads off.

We hugged and cuddled a lot –
we kissed each other as well,
and then, on a childlike whim,
we started to play hide and seek,

and we hid from each other
so well and elaborately, we hid
that never on this sorrowful Earth
have we found each other again.

Sie haben mich gequalet

They egged me on
And cut me up:
One with love’s hot brew,
the other with hate’s cold cup.

They put poison in my drink
And brought me poisoned bread;
The one with warmest love, the other
With hate left me for dead;

Yet she who hurt me the most
And strafed my flesh with grit –
She never hated me at all
And loved me not one bit.

Gaben mir Rat and gute Leben

They lectured me and gave me good advice;
They showered me with faint praise,
And said that if I would only wait
They’d put in a good word for me.

Well – for all their good words
I could have wasted away from hunger,
If there had not appeared a more decent man
Who took it upon himself to fight my corner.

A much more decent man, he stopped me from going hungry;
Him, I will never, ever forget!
What a shame I can’t kiss the guy,
For I myself am this decent man.

***

Wie Schandlich du gehandelt

I’ve never told anyone
How shabbily you behaved;
I went far out to sea
And told the fish instead.

So, I have preserved your reputation,
At least on dry land,
While all over the ocean
I’ve branded you with shame.

Es ragt ins Meer der Runenstein

On a rock covered with runic signs,
I sit dreaming above the sea;
The wind whistles and the sea gull cries,
The wandering waves and the foam.

I used to love the travelling men
And all those beautiful girls:
I wonder what happened to them.

The wind whistles,
The foam and the wandering waves.

Meinen schonsten Liebesantrag

You earnestly claim
To know nothing about
My beautiful love note
That bore your name.
Tell me then, sweet dame,
Are you turning me down?
Ah! Oh dear - She’s crying…

Me, I hardly ever
Resort to prayer;
Then, please listen
To this request:
Dear Lord come to this
Girl-for-hire’s breast,
Shedder of sweet tears.
Make her better!

Wenn Ich an deinen Hause

When I happened to be passing
Your house this morning,
I was so glad to see you
At the window with your

Almost black eyes, sweet little girl,
And you looked so searchingly at me
As if to question, “Well, who are you?
And what’s your problem, strange, ill man?”

“I am a German poet,” I answer
“Well known throughout the German lands;
Where people drop the best names
There also my name appears,

And my problem, little girl,
Is shared by many in Germany;
Where the worst sufferings are listed
There also my name appears.

(It would be well worth {any one’s} while checking out Tony Harrison’s excellent film poem about what happened to Heine’s statue, after Heine died in the 1850s, to get another perspective on this theme! I have read the script and would love to see the film.)

Philister in Sonntagsrocklein

Worthy townsfolk in Sunday dress
Go walking through woods and meadows;
They shout and leap about
Like bucks to greet the Spring.

They see with misty eyes
How Romantic everything is;
The flowers, the sparrow’s song,
They suck it all in.

I, however, pull down the blinds
Of my room and make it black;
My ghostly personal friends
Pay me a daytime visit.

Stepping out from death’s kingdom
My old girlfriend appears;
She sits beside me and cries
And melts my heart to wax.

Ich hatte einst ein schones Vaterland

I had a fatherland:
There, the beautiful oak tree thrusts so high,
The bluebells nod peacefully.
It was a dream.

I was kissed in German,
German I spoke –
You can scarcely believe
How good that sounded:
The words, “Ich liebe dich.”
It was a dream.

Die Lorelei: Ich weiss nicht, was sol es bedeuten

There’s a story that is timeless;
I don’t know what it means;
I can’t get it out of my mind
It fills me with such sadness.

As dusk falls the air is cool
And peaceful over the Rhein,
Flowing between far mountains
Whose peaks still catch the sun.

A beautiful young woman
Mysteriously appears;
Her jewellery reflects the light;
She’s combing her golden hair.

Even her comb is golden,
And she sings enchantingly,
Such a sweet melodious chant
It’s wonderful to hear.

The sailor in his little vessel
Is overcome with grief;
He’s not looking at the jagged reef,
Instead he looks up to the heavens.

I think the waves will get involved
With this sailor and his boat:
A finale that, with her singing,
The Lorelei has brought about.

Diese Damen, sie verstehan

These women know just how to
Applaud my poetic genius;
They put on a special lunch
For me – and it of course.

Ah! The soup was delectable
And the wine livened me up;
The chicken was fit for the gods,
And the hare was definitely jugged.

I think there was some talk of po-
etry – at last, quite satiated,
I thanked them for having treated
And bestowed such honours on me.

Anno 1829

So that I can bleed
Conveniently to death
Give me a wide, white field.
Let me not suffocate
In commerce’s closed-in Colloseum.

They wine and dine so well here;
They cram their mouths on prosperity,
And their generosity is as wide
As the alms-box flap!

They deal in spices
From around the world,
Yet behind all the fragrant essences,
You can’t help noticing their souls
Smell of rotten shrimps.

Oh! That I were witnessing a great
Profanity: full of ritzy wickedness –
Not this insipid virtue
And morality of the counting house.

They walk with cigars
Stuck out of their mouths,
And hands thrust deep
In their trouser pockets.
Their digestion is so good -
Who? Oh, who can digest them?

You clouds up there, take me with you.
It doesn’t matter into which far distance –
To Lapland or to Africa
Or it could be Pomorania,
As long as it’s away, away.

Oh, take me with you… They didn’t hear;
The clouds up there are far too wise;
They climb higher when they cross this city,
And anxiously speed up their flight.

Es kommt zu spat was du mir lachelst

Whatever smiles
you were smiling
they came too late;
whatever sighs
you sighed too late –
long-since deceased
the tender feelings
in cruelty rejected!

The love you returned
returned too late –
it fell onto my old heart
like rays of sunshine
on a sarcophagus.

Only, I would
like to know
what happens to
our souls when we are dead.
Where does
the extinguished fire go?
And the air
that fanned it –
where to that?

Die Flaschen sind leer, das Fruhstuck war gut

The bottles are empty, the bacon sizzling,
The girls’ cheeks hot with rosy pinkness;
Hems going up, chemises falling,
They’ve started, it seems, to get undressed.

How white the bare shoulders; the breasts how pretty!
My heart stops, arrested in mid-beat;
Now they’re flinging themselves onto the bed
And parcelling themselves up with the sheets.

They’ve even managed to draw the curtain
And begin snoring in unison.
Like a lonely tower th’embarrassed poet,
In his room, surveys his slept-in bed!

Neuer Fruhling

Through the window
of this morning’s first
awakening, floats
the lovely carillon

sweet song
sweet little song
of spring –
ring out, little song

go far out
into the distance
ring far away -
you’ll come across

the house
where flowers are
just beginning
to appear

and when
you have found
a rose
tell it “Hello” from me.

Translated April 2008

Sea Air

2008-08-11T04:21:00.001-07:00

One moon, many shapes
nightly changing through August
many moons, one self.

The holiday air
is cool, like flasked juice - I walk
the sea-wall again:

gulls on warm air-drafts
glide still in stretch-winged ballet,
banner trailing plane.

Headlines in black and white, news -
a rasped flute happening -

the thermal cameras needed
for hidden earthquake victims.

***

This writing, a phase,
waxing lyrical, waning,
breathing in and out -

a tin-whistle player flauts
for copper and silver coins;
his breath makes music.

The miniature railway
is a great way to travel.

Camera Trouble

2008-08-06T14:02:00.001-07:00

Camera Trouble

It was a piece of plastic heaven,
My Kodak Brownie 127,
A ten-year-old’s quite grown-up toy
To bring delight and to annoy.
I loved to hold it, point and shoot
At everything from head to boot.
It was my I-pod and my air-guitar,
Without a film, I could click thin air.

And then one day I pointed it
Towards a stranger’s open door,
As we climbed the little seaside street.
Exploding like a keg of powder,
Out came the outraged occupant
With every right to rage and rant.
My father joined in to tell me off:
The opposite of Muzzeltov!

I’d stumbled at a tender age
On danger. Though all the rage,
The tempting trinkets of technology,
Seeming the perfect boredom remedy –
Those natty things will do you harm
Unless you stay completely calm:
No quicker way to burst your bubble
Than get yourself in camera trouble!

***

Pussy-Paws

2008-07-07T13:48:00.001-07:00

Pussy-Paws
Dreamt 02 - 3/07/08

In this flat that I do not own
yet feel at home in nonetheless
with a garden whose sound and scents
the old sash cords unveil,

She dives in from the night,
Skids on the window-seat;
fur: colour of the black
window thrust up to night.

She pirouettes and jive-arches,
turns, all tale and neck:
I stroke her from the neck back
in the way I know she likes.

All quick, sudden and pulsating,
with the energy of night life,
in a living room that’s better
than the one from the life I know,

taller and swishier, creamier,
with this one fine-tuned cat.
What can this mean?
What can it, save –

Pussy-Paws loves you.

SYPHON

2008-06-06T09:59:00.001-07:00

SYPHON

Long-ago, through
night and day
linked to now,
film-frame by frame:

a car door slams,
an engine runs,
sometimes there are voices,
sometimes none,

the long rumbling
of a train,
the almost-no-noise
of a drawer opening.

Silence like water-drops
suspended through walls
or ceilings, a click,
a throat cleared.

Summer is staying awake,
nightly responding;
Summer is opening
the lens of your eyes.

Second by second,
where rail-yards meet
the estates and part-buys,
the city’s pulse fades fast:

light is beginning
all over again
in a kiss, an embrace
that never stops.

Ballad of Lost Objects 2

2008-05-24T14:01:00.001-07:00

Ballads of lost objects
(ii)

With a roll of Kodak Tri-X in my Praktika,
camera concealed and disguised in canvas rucksack,
I came to the Café Nero on that Autumn day
When the sun drenched the plate glass window in light and heat.
We talked of illnesses and work and what retirement
could mean with low spending, Arts, London and Freedom Pass.
We stopped with the coffee drinkers and newspaper readers
for less than an hour, walked up towards the Tube,
the young fashion-wearers in their old high heels looking good,
and parted on the corner of Flask Walk, to walk
further into the fine day, I to shoot my roll of film.

Gingerly at first, framing the shops and then the Flask,
my shoot got bolder, quicker, aiming for contrast and shape.
Go for the cool word “Ginsberg” on the name of a close,
get down close to the cobbles for texture, low f-number.
Walk up, turn left, circle back to the Tube and fire off
the rest of the film at the branches of dusty trees
by the bus shelter; “ride” the 46 back home.

Rewinding on the couch with curtains drawn, there’s a snag:
Tri-X is ASA 400 – I’d forgotten
about the ISO settings, so used to automatic!
Back in the’70s you had to set the beast.
I’m 4 stops out and, disgusted, bin the film:
those bleached out prints would be money down the
drain.
Later, the nagging thought appears and won’t go away –
Those 4 stops out could well have been the key, a door opening..

+++

N.B. Kodak Tri-X is a black and white film still favoured by some photographers over digital. Some great B&W photos have succeeded precisely because of their high contrast “burned in” through aberrant exposures.

German Poem

2008-04-26T04:32:00.001-07:00

German Poem

Recently I came across this German poem. It was printed on an end-of-term exam paper from 40 years ago, in that type-written Roneo system, that made 25-30 copies before the copies became so faint they were of no further use.

There is no title and it seems to be identified by its first line which is underlined. The exam question asked us to read the poem and offer a prose translation of it. I vaguely remember that someone in our class foolishly and facetiously translated “grungolden”(umlaut on “u”) as Golders Green. The German teacher was not amused.

I can’t imagine why I kept this old paper. Perhaps the poem moved me in a way I did not grasp fully at the time. Or perhaps it is just my archaeological filing system which preserves and conceals at the same time. Now, re-reading it after the long interval, I hope the translation I offer - with the help of my Collins German Dictionary - is better than the one I did for the exam.

The name at the bottom of the poem is H.Heinze, which I assume is a typo for Heine. I’m not sure. There is a Helmut Heinze, who wrote novels and plays – perhaps it is him.

Grungolden und goldfarben leuchten die Blitzen auf…

Green-yellow, yellow-green
The lightening flashes
Suddenly across the sky:

I can’t be sure
Whether that’s you across the street,
As out of a charged cloud,
Heavy rain splashes down.

The heavy rain
Makes people run for cover –
Anywhere to find
An awning or a doorway.

While, I stand stock still
Alone on the pavement,
My Summer shirt stuck close,
The rivulets washing my back.

I saw you there,
From two Summers ago:
The love I lost.

I saw you
With your dark blue eyes
And pale smooth skin,
As the lightening flashed
Yellow-green, green-yellow,

And the rain,
In rivulets, anoints me
With your blessings
From two Summers ago.

German Poem

2008-04-26T04:32:00.000-07:00

Picnic

2008-04-19T14:08:00.001-07:00

History Society Picnic with Arthur Cubit

The celery dipped in salt,
no pepper, and the wine
chilled in the river, not
from the fridge. Sticking
to documented foibles we
laid the patchwork cloth
on the short grass, sloping
with the sun undulating in
and out across the Downs.

These moments feeling right,
we praised the books we knew
he loved, and his own re-
examination of Auden, in the Star;
and it seemed the atmosphere
pleased our distinguished guest.
Someone derisively
cracked a joke about his old
adversaries, the second Phalanx –
the first splinter of
the Socialist Collective.
Laughter spread through
the occasion from those
who could not see his face,
his eyes darkening; then

he spoke: “Is that meant to be funny?
What gives you the right
to mock the heroic, my
companions in struggle –
insult to the Working Class.”
Silence arrested our flow;
from behind me came
the scrunching of a plastic cup;
clouds undulated
across the Downs, like sheep
entering a pen.

I was glad I’d asked
Cubit to sign his poems
in the pub before the picnic,
in the safely atmospheric
wood and glass interior
where we have our
Saturday morning meetings
every other week.

Picnic

2008-04-19T14:08:00.000-07:00

Ballad of Lost Objects

2008-03-21T12:40:00.001-07:00

Ballad of Lost Objects

The homing signals they once sent out
have stopped transmitting;
and though Earth’s orbit swirls gently,
and the road banks steeply to the right,
and we encounter the disc of the sun
dropping into a sea of mist,
there’re not for finding now; they’re gone.

Most years ago, some just the other day
lost without trace or track;
each one opening another crack
in my painted shell of property –
none washed up, none brought back
to the beach of life expectancy.

Lost like props or stage tableaux,
once at my side or in my hand,
these shadows: chiaroscuros
assembled in another land,
a cloud bank where I cannot go;
a glass that chance filled up with sand.

The road banks steeply to the left;
its tar picks up a cool dampness,
and we encounter the disc of the sun
rising out of a sea of mist
as if by chemical legerdemain.
The lost objects spinning in their orbits,
no less, phantasmagorically exist.

++++++

Ballad of Lost Objects

2008-03-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

Film Still in Camden

2008-02-29T14:47:00.001-08:00

Film Still in Camden Town

Went to Camden in sunlight
to check out the ready mades, cool
by the fish and flans, couldn’t find the water.
Outside on the street, thought about
the fire, the wreck burnt out,
rage burnt out, stalls, boxer reeling,
security guard with coffee and skinny ribs.

I walked up to the cross roads, a week later,
and took this photo, staring at the people-rushes,
one week after the fire before the railway bridge.
Camden Lock: business picking up, the car makes;
Photographed the Odeon letters
Making deep shadows, young actors
In the world, aggressive gait, ambling at me.

The fire again, the wreck:
think of starting a poem to a boxer
still sent packing, sickening reeling,
still packing punches, sickening blow.
He got it in the ribs; got stuck.

I photo-shopped the first car too much,
looks like a ghost car, only the central group
stand out: young actors against the station –
something about to happen; the beginning
of a film. I turned and walked past the flow
er stall: dozens watching this time real.
Ash falling, heat enough to twist metal,
red night sky reflecting on his smooth sweat:
the boxer, muscles rippling, keeps on coming.

Film Still in Camden

2008-02-29T14:47:00.000-08:00

Deep Roots

2008-02-10T12:59:00.001-08:00

Poetry Pivotal 2

These hesitations, advances,
doublings back & crossings out,
snakes-and-ladders, scrapings
at opaque prisms of light

a Tolkien ordeal of
winding precipices and milky depths
that takes me to the realisation
I am clinging to a secret

that leads and holds me back –
it’s the reason the horizon’s tilting
all ways, and why the poem
is suspended in a tunnel of jet

until its scraps and stages
gather into one shape and make
a faint beam for the next few steps,
a yellow circle for the white page,

the beginning of a re-enacting
in the arc of a new shedder of light
more positive than torch or match,
a strong light mirrored, sun

in a distant morning, reaching here.
My fighting black characters straddle
the bridge; lying back on a ledge
I drink the safe shadow and go on.

+++

Deep Roots

2008-02-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

The Shop in Soho

2008-01-02T13:22:00.001-08:00

The Shop in Soho

Madmoiselle Maigret and her detective
father outside the Algerian
coffee store on Old Compton Street:
in a culture of parkas
and hoods, his trilby stands out –
he a smoker of pipes, she
in tights and blue shoes.
Together they look
at the coffee makers, closely, considering…

a gift for Madame Maigret.
While she goes in to pay, he regards
this Soho, as if a Kasbah.
Alone on the pavement, he stands for Bonjour;
he stands for au revoir;
he stands guard
for Parisien Savoir,
for self respect
and the daily grind,
for love and the love
of the smell of ground coffee.

For tobacco
for Mystery,
pour La Vie.

+++

The Shop in Soho

2008-01-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

Kitchenware

2007-12-21T11:38:00.001-08:00

Kitchenware

All day they stand by –
the salt, the pepper –
to dispense their seasoning
on egg or broth or pasta:

passed from hand to hand,
pushed over, stood up;
and for tardiness
tapped smartly on the table.

Now it is night in the kitchen.
A faint gleam
from a street lamp
illuminates their glaze:

once more they are objects,
whose reticence breaks down.
In silence that clicks like ice
once more they are china.

+++++++

Kitchenware

2007-12-21T11:38:00.000-08:00

Romanian River Candid

2007-12-15T15:37:00.001-08:00

Romanian River Candid

Having no more film to fall back on
I revelled in the light’s temperature –
wasn’t sure if that blue look was cooler or
warmer than the Mediterranean –
twiddled for an F-number
to hold the great structure
of the water grove; and shutter speed
to catch the movement of the water;
and as the boat progressed through heat
into the arcs and haloes of the Danube,
I clicked away absurdly, sure that
each ingress of light would find,
in shape’s curvature and flight
of colour through angled lens,
a pause inside my Practika
to make a bright transfer

like the arched pavilion of the branches
in the wide pools our launch passed through –
a vision on the blank void
that, with no film to fall back on,
I would see, if not again,
then just this once.

Romanian River Candid

2007-12-15T15:37:00.000-08:00

Walking With Steve

2007-11-03T09:23:00.001-07:00

Walking between Tea and Supper

The last year in the Sixth
was like the first year or the last man:

together they walked
through the Highgate Autumn
alienated, sick
of poems in school magazines
about treading down
falling leaves.

Crossed Waterlow Park
on slanting paths
towards the myna birds, rolling
a weed, studiously observing them
through rusty, spangled wire -
yellow eyes’ alertness
in a night of coal-black feathers,

and as the chill wind blew,
scrupulously
trying to teach them:
“Fuck off, fuck off……”
The wise birds
watched them, non-compliant
indifferent auguries,
and with the aloofness
the caged often have.

+++

Walking With Steve

2007-11-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

Tour Guide '85

2007-10-26T14:53:00.001-07:00

TOUR GUIDE ‘85

More than guide, our guide -
a leader who advises and, in
his young and handsome way, cajoles:
“Stay with the group and follow me –

Don’t linger, even for an instant,
I can’t guarantee your safety if you do.”
English spoken correctly with an accent
and with Romanian emphasis, panache.

With funny tummy, feeling groggy, must
Decide: should I get on the coach or not?
No looking back, we’re on, and being counted.
When we board the airy motor launch

with wooden slat seats on its deck,
“You can have a soft drink,”
he announces over the sound system.
“I recommend the beer.”

From the first sip I see why;
tasting that cool Moldavian draft
a new landscape opens up. After that
the stomach’s fine; the launch chugs on,

onto Danube’s wide waters
the sun turns to fiery ice;
and the rising notes of a young
accordion player accompany us

released with subtle and peculiar-to
-his region rhythms and flaring riffs;
as heat beats down on wood-hard seats,
the launch goes on and into Noon and lunch:

an old village on an island
where they farm all Summer for the frozen flood
of Winter; a pale place where chickens run.
The guide – now serious – explains, disturbs

the account of hardship is so grim –
and what he doesn’t tell us,
couldn’t tell us, though later on he knew,
the deprivation was both giant and wicked.

At last we reach the port,
the evening soft as feathers floating,
and we follow and do not linger,
reaching the upstairs restaurant by the water:

the harbour of Constantia where
we’ve stepped into a sea of good ions
and our guide has gone quiet, becomes
invisible, as here he knows we’re safe

being feted at the long wooden tables,
cared for by sisters of the revolution –
a meal that is simple, yet
amounts to a delicious nourishment;

the music entertaining, not too strident,
adds to the sense of the evening passing
full of light, and the wine, not exactly
flowing, is glowing with Arcadian life!

+++

Tour Guide '85

2007-10-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

Meeting House

2007-09-23T03:56:00.001-07:00

HOP GARDENS

Here where the convent
planted hops to rival Kent’s
and brewed their own dark beer,
a company of trees keeps watch
at high windows.
Their garden shadows
mingling, intimate
a saraband of centuries
or an old tango
from the slow Atlantic –

Now the Meeting House has
bells for several skills
and Saturday morning crafts:
electric urns for sacheed tea,
coffee or chocolate from a jar.
The bell the poets ring,
next to Buddhist Meditation,
is labelled, Tango Club: a wait
for poet - or meditator? – to let us in.

From the ceiling a hanging arc
lights up the central table
and, not quite falling on
our latest typed pages,
necessitates a leaning forward,
creates a closer gathering.
Sequins that cannot be sewn
colder than quartz & quicker
than the song of birds,
each different mind coheres
in a temporary fabric: glass leaves
collected to reflect and listen
as the one voice steps forward
to trounce the half light
with a flare.

Meeting House

2007-09-23T03:56:00.000-07:00

Sat Chit Ananda

2007-09-07T13:58:00.001-07:00

chocolate cup cakes

in delicate white
corrugated casing
right up to the icing

on a plate on a
table cloth in the
house of a friend

shoes left outside
so not to ruin
the clean beige carpet

or the strip
of parquet in the hall
so when we ran

and shouted or
dropped dead
shot by a colt 45

it was only our
clean socks sliding
on the polished ice-rink –

at the signal
hands washed for neat
paste sandwiches

no cake until
these savouries were gone
washed down with tea

and then of course
the giggles as the amber
tea cascaded

into china cups
as if from somewhere safe
where it had always been

until at last -
the cup cakes
first bite through smoothness

into crumb-
ling cakeness
and more to taste

as icing melted
on the tongue
munching sweetness

which led in time
to more giggling more
amber from the pot

Sat Chit Ananda

2007-09-07T13:58:00.000-07:00

tonight

2007-09-07T13:36:00.001-07:00

Tonight

After a wintry August
to think I’m drinking this wine -

Let’s go to Oxford
set off early in the morn –
well, maybe, perhaps…

7/9/07

tonight

2007-09-07T13:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight

After a wintry August
to think I’m drinking this wine -

Let’s go to Oxford
set off early in the morn –
well, maybe, perhaps…

7/9/07

River Mole

2007-08-24T07:00:00.001-07:00

Crossing the Mole towards Box Hill

We parked beyond the rattling bridge, and took
The river path intent on walking far,
At our side farmed fields, slopes looming
To the left, eager as we’d seen
The clocks go forward, and the young leaves –
And, being older, my brother had a plan.

Before the stout new ones were safely laid
There used to be old stepping stones –
Moss-covered, weed-slippery, yet still there
Where swollen waters slid, their speedless curves
Leaving brown bubbles and a wake of silver;
And with our rubber soles we went from one to one,
That Spring day, climbed the steep incline
Of the wood-covered hill they led us to,
Hanging on to roots and trunks, until
We came to the strange tombstone
Near the summit, hidden amongst twigs and stems.

This man – the inscription clearly said –
Was buried upside down; the reason,
All the world is topsy turvy,
Walks the wrong way up, and so in Heaven
He would be the only one to enjoy
The trick of standing on his feet.

George Lavellier – just proud
Of the encroach of Nature – like
The stepping stones – his tomb
A statement for unwary ramblers,
Capsule of subversive logic; though the currents
Of fashion go noiselessly by,
He’s always hip and wittily eccentric.
I took him as a hero then, and benefactor
Bequeathing the best tonic he knew:
Subsequent decades confirm
From high up there, the illustrious view.

+++

River Mole

2007-08-24T07:00:00.000-07:00

Birdsong Memories

2007-08-08T04:41:00.001-07:00

Birdsong Memories

Twenty years ago, there were birds which used to sing volubly together – blackbirds and thrushes included – so loudly sometimes they used to wake us up. It was beautiful though not always popular. Most movingly, a thrush sometimes sang in Winter.

In the late 'eighties, Kentish Town’s dawn chorus faltered and stopped. In the 'nineties we used to have stentorian crows who would tell the whole neighbourhood off. Then we had a few pigeons, until by the late 'nineties even they disappeared. From then on it has been silent and – quite literally – “No birds sing.”

Until just the other day….See previous post.

Birdsong Memories

2007-08-08T04:41:00.000-07:00

Early Morning Code

2007-08-07T13:59:00.001-07:00

Early Morning Code

Sometimes the Cosmos tells you what to do;
sometimes it doesn’t; no answer comes
from books of rules or deep inside of you.
There’s something wrong; it’s not clear where it stems.

4-in-the-morning cars pass, occasionally;
a bird is singing almost too far away
to hear it sing and all too quickly
stops – yet sweet enough for the inner ear

to hold onto. Who knows, who can say?
Is it still singing somewhere there
on the edge of hearing, down the road
in someone’s garden – to them a roundelay,
to us a fading cipher? This trickling code
stutters and sinks completely, goes off air.

Early Morning Code

2007-08-07T13:59:00.000-07:00

Le Grand Meaulnes

2007-06-29T03:03:00.001-07:00

Le Grand Meaulnes

One day in a library a book chose me
and, looking back, it made the right decision;
opening and closing like an accordion
its world was something I could hear and see.

It was deep summer when I read Le Grand Meaulnes,
so often accompanying its shy narrator
through wide evenings; June leaves got fuller –
one evening something prompted me to go

down long-familiar lanes, walking until
with vaguer bearings: dark trees, a field,
hung lights and bunting for a fete or prize-giving;

the winner is a girl whose looks appeal;
she seems a star of the local gathering;
with uninvited eyes I drink my fill

waiting in this moment a little longer,
in this strange field where Alain Fournier
is somehow present, the novelist…

and his unknown narratives appear
and Meaulnes, the adolescent player,
about to summon, tap me on the shoulder,

when daylight has drained out of the West.
Night comes; and I am tens of summers older
and rain has washed away prizes and guests.

+++++

Le Grand Meaulnes

2007-06-29T03:03:00.000-07:00

Another Tale

2007-06-04T02:06:00.001-07:00

Another tale

A load of your sorrows pulled by a worry,
Just as you painted them, joined up the dots;
From these pre-numbered lines you start to see
A working donkey, sore-shouldered, trots

Through a wood, dust in its eyes, exploited.
What have you done with the blank page? Take heart -
Ink’s all that’s there – a touch of green & red.
They’re the cortex trudges on, not donkey and cart.

The donkey’s safe in a paddock with fresh grass;
Gladly she takes soft saddle-bags to market
Packed with the sage her owner has to sell…

And then erase the lot. Pack up your kit -
The pens, the brushes, paper that will pass
For real, next day another tale to tell.

Another Tale

2007-06-04T02:06:00.000-07:00

Seventh Sense

2007-05-25T11:38:00.001-07:00

Seventh Sense

He walks through the forest, through light and shade,
Collecting lichens, herbs for his cell, thinking
That behind each tree is a hidden trunk,
A darker shadow hung before the glade –
The hardest part of living as a monk,
The space between each nodding asphodel,
A long time to call things. Self-sinking,
Self-doubting he walks on, ignores the bell

That calls him to a simple contemplation.
He goes into the profounder silence
That the roots themselves inhabit in their search;
Dark-sensitive like them, a seventh sense
Develops in him, like an intuition.
He stops to hug the birch and then the beech.

+++

Kenneth Hyam 25/05/07

Seventh Sense

2007-05-25T11:38:00.000-07:00

The Sensual Crayon

2007-05-07T04:51:00.001-07:00

After last Sunday’s German-English dual lingo reading in the Meeting House, some of us were in the mood for more – translating, that is. Maria Esdovin and several other poets came back to the flat and sank a few Guiness Exports – a good place to start. Maria agreed to give an interview and reading of her own and I switched on my reel-to-reel.

Lucas: Am I right, Maria, in saying that you have been translating your own Perovian these days?
Maria: You are really right.
Lucas: Er.. do you mean that I’m 100 per cent right?
Maria: I mean I have my reservations.
Lucas: You mean I am not really right or I am only rarely right?
Maria: Yes, Yes. You are. (uncontrollable laughter from around the room).
Perovian is very…. Is very hard language to translate, especially as there are so few speakers in this country, apart from the small Perovian community in Kentish Town. Perovian poetry works by resonance and association –
Helen: Yeah,so does all poetry!
Lucas: Look – this is Maria’s interview. O.K.
Maria: No, Helen is quite right. It is just that the resonances and associations are very hard to grasp outside of original Perovian, especially in the dialect of the province I am from.
Helen: O.K. cool .(Sighs all round).
Lucas: So what are you going to read, Maria?
Maria: I’m going to read from my long poem The Road – only short extract.!
Lucas: Is it O.K. if I get this on tape? You know I’m recording this.
Maria: It is really alright.
Lucas: Um… yeh.

N.B. Anyone interested in reading a transcript of Maria’s poem and other extracts please go to:
http://sensualcrayon.blogspot.com

or click on my profile and click on the link for The Sensual Crayon

The Sensual Crayon

2007-05-07T04:51:00.000-07:00

Bricks and Mortal

2007-05-07T01:38:00.001-07:00

Robert is now back from his adventures in Italy. We have come to an arangement.
He has a very unusual - even for Robert - story and instead of telling it on my blog he has agreed to have one of his own.
He says he thinks the internet has de-poeticised poetry and refuses to type anything except onto his ancient i-book which he then prints out as if it was just a typewriter. Yet, in spite of this high moral stance he asks me to blog his poems when he feels like it. O.K. Rob, I'll do it gladly 'cos I believe in yr talent.
For those who want to follow Rob's meanderings, then, click on my profile and click on the blog called "bricks and mortal."

Bricks and Mortal

2007-05-07T01:38:00.000-07:00

Postcard from Perovia

2007-04-07T14:13:00.001-07:00

It seems one of the last things Robert did before he departed Pero Airport for Rome was to send me a postcard. Sent almost a month ago, it has just arrived. It is a large format card with a typical Esdovian landscape, masses of ripening wheat - undulating not flat - disappearing to hilly grey horizon.
On the card Rob boasts of his visit to the controversial poet Noise Astute who is living again in Esdovia, his native province. The remarkable landmark house which he designed for himself has been "borrowed" by the authorities who say that its pear-shaped dome is ideal for the hush hush work that is going on there. Rob's journalist contacts say it is the government-backed Centre for Psychic Research. Noise's pear-shaped dome - entirely aesthetically concerved - is thought to possess remarkable properties for sending and receiving in paranormal experimentation - telepathy to you and me!
Noise is currently apparently housed in a local farmhouse where he enjoys views of his beloved pigs and geese from his two room apartment on the top floor.
According to Rob, Noise is planning to break his nine-year silence this spring. This has been partly triggered by reading the Mezzanine Esportu that Plautus posted to this blog a little while back. As pointed out this is a highly complex form, which takes years of practice to master. Noise was very moved to see it flourish from England and has replied with an Esportu of his own:
Yestremi testremi manu
clostroti whorly epran
Giggs Manchester United!
Acumentec tootie chestrud.

Robert has not bothered to translate and my schoolboy Perovian really isn't subtle enough. Nonetheless I have decided to blog it, as no doubt it is worth archiving.

Postcard from Perovia

2007-04-07T14:13:00.000-07:00

More From Latin Rob

2007-03-26T06:11:00.001-07:00

At least this time he's had the sense to email me, so I can paste it straight into the blog.
I've edited out the first bit where he berates me for accuately transcribing his spelling mistakes on that napkin (some folks are never satisfied). Suffice to say that he's recalled some more of his day in ancient Rome (from now on, AR).
He was walking through the market in AR, when a messenger ran up to him - suspiciously not out of breath, no dust on his sandles - and thrust this into his hand proclaiming, "Ab amico tuo: ecce haec epistulae" or some such doggerel.
Sounds to me as if the waiter has slipped some grappa into his tamarindo!

Bright Sun In The Square

I wish I could remember more - the whole letter:
some fragments come, no photographic memory.
I recall hanging on each Latin word and phrase
with goatskin vino, hunk of bread and cheese
seated at ease in oleander shade,
it seemed penned by th'exiled Roman bard,
no need translate - my brain was latin-wired.

Can still see my Chaucer notes 'bout Ars Amoris,
which crops up in the Canterbuty tales:
"A lovers handbook by the poet Ovidius,
literary giant of the ancient world."
And I, reading this key letter just yesterday
can now mostly see shadows on a page
of freshly folded parchment, bright sun in the square -
I shoulda done that Dale Carnegie course...
Two things are even odder: as I write these notes
now in Amato with a rum and coke
that messenger just rode by on a Ducati;
second is doubt - the doubt within my mind -
not that I was there reading that mint papyrus
my doubt was whether Ovid was the author
......sorry protocol at the Amato says my time is up with this computer - to be continued.

More From Latin Rob

2007-03-26T06:11:00.000-07:00

Double Take on a Library

2005-10-17T00:30:00.001-07:00

Double Take on a Library

A large White-fronted house,
gravel drive and crocuses
on the lawn – no wonder
I was nervous when you said,
“Let’s go inside and have a look,”
in answer to my question
as we passed -
without a moment’s pause
you walked up to the great door,
pushed it open, led me in
through a hall where no-one
stopped us,as we traspassed -

past the readers
at the shiny tables and the high
white shelves of books, the undisturbed
uncluttered world of library books
returned and borrowed. So, deception over,

you took out a book, and still the Library
seemed a private residence – I followed
and returned again through
season’s pendulum; in Winter, in
the crisp blue air when snow
through floor-to-ceiling windows
covered the sloping garden to the Mole,
to Poetry, winter-warm in orange
grey and green, with ghosts
of the danger-driven, of war
and paranormal loves.

It was there one day alone
I borrowed Laurence Whistler’s “Yestermorrow,”
took it home to read and wonder
at this grown-up’s super-sorrow,
who found new words for love
and for that dark expectancy:
the time that was not yesterday
nor yet the unbrought
day that we must live.

++++

Double Take on a Library

2005-10-17T00:30:00.000-07:00