The Bee Hut (2 page)

Hallelujah

for all your future

false prophets

and glorious. glorious.

lost gods.

T
HE
E
NCHANTED
A
SS

BLACKBERRIES

I can't shake

that ghost-town pub

whistling empty-bottled

through its black windows,

and its strangled verandahs

creaking with a terrifying

ancient thirst

under a two-storey coat

of bristling blackberry.

Is it taunting me

with the dancing skeleton

tune

of my own life's mystery

struggling for rhythm

and lyrics?

I hold in my hand

the greedy, bleeding

pen

that has always

gorged itself.

The bliss-mouthed

gluttony miracle –

that stained Keats

grape-purple

that had cynical Byron

reeling on the ceiling –

when the plump berries

sing

and your pen slashes ahead

like a pain-hungry prince

hacking through

the bramble's dragon teeth

to the heart's most longed-for

comatose, but ardently ready

princess.

THE ENCHANTED ASS

So tender is the Queen of Fairies'

mouth

on all your unsleeping parts

her kiss

arrives

like summery moonlight

her kiss is the mole's bliss

the blind

blinding way

her green magic breaks in you

like a warm storm

you grow

ears, tail,

and a hee-hawing

lightning.

A WALK IN KENSINGTON GARDENS

Solitude is where writers

chatter best

a soothing static –

the ambulatory, admit it,
happy

ticking over

like this afternoon

in the sweet green cold London

spring

I watch a tall grey heron

stomping down its reed nest

that's sprouting everywhere

like garden-sheared hair

and all my living

and all my dead

run up my arms

like squirrels.

THE SILVER BRACELET

We were lost.

The map was a useless tease.

The afternoon was golden-green

cold.

It was old Ireland

after all.

Things happened that afternoon.

The dwarf at the door.

The strange dirty man on a bike

with an impossibly narrow face.

All gave false directions

to what we were so doggedly dreamily

looking for.

We pushed through an old gate

into a meadow

dancing with green light.

And found

the stone circle

so clearly, so mundanely

marked on the map.

Lichen-tipped, warm

as if squirming

with old friendly blood

the stones stood.

I can't remember how long

we stayed.

We danced around the stones

and took photos.

I still remember

the thin tune playing

in my charmed head.

On the ferry back to Holyhead

my bare wrist pinged

where my silver bracelet used to be.

Was it just something superstitious

young Yeats said

that made me believe

the fairies had taken

the silver bracelet

instead of me?

THE HOUSE

Is this what middle age

does to the imagination,

setting up haunted

house

in every idling cranny?

It's time I sent

my own premature ghost

scarpering

to a cobwebbed nunnery.

AFTER BRUEGEL

Let me join the frilled and flying

damned

and live vivid

as a wet dog.

THREE SONNETS

I . I
S IT NOT THE THING
?

After Byron

Trying to get a gutless friend

to get it

Byron wrote

Is it not life, is it not the thing?

He was praising the bawdy

spurt

of his own poem, his own

ballsy Don Juan.

Every poet wants to write the poem

that penetrates

with the ice-cold shock

of the Devil's prick.

The poem that will fuck you awake

or kill you.

II. W
HAT A PLUNGE
!

After Woolf

This morning the street

stings

like salt in a happily healing

wound.

A memory breaks under

your ribs

and plunges you

in turbulent sweet water.

Life is so dangerous,

but this morning you can take

the wave

right to the sparkling shore.

You can bear knowing

the street will one day dump you.

III. B
EAUTIFULLY BONKERS

After Blake

Blake's burning Bow

turns and turns

in your inadequate trembling

hands.

What holy war

are you trembling for?

What purging dazzling madness

are you raising?

You squirm in paradox.

Hell today.

Paradise tomorrow.

It's all bliss and grist.

Or is it just those Arrows of Desire

spiking your drink again?

BLUEBOTTLES

In living there is always

the terror

of being stung

of something

coming for you

on the unavoidable wave.

In living there is always

the terror

of the alien boneless

thing

of something

blue

coming for you

from the blue and salty sea

spat

on your bare and shrinking

skin.

In living there is always

the terror

of the poison finding

your heart

of something

whose stingers

will stretch over you

like stars

with an ancient burning

patience.

THINGS

I.M. Ruth Tedeschi

Wafting

half hallucinating with brain fatigue

through Berlin's massive

Pergamon Museum

I think

how strange. how sobering.

that our things outlive us.

Whether it's the gleaming

loot

of gold jewellery

and silver plate

or the splash

of vivid, intimate

usefulness

in the broken

ceramic jug.

Things

outlive our sweetest

most durable friends

things

stolidly, persistently

outlive our wildest

loves

where we fling ourselves

into the heart

of the black spitting fire

and declare

we'll live here

forever.

We bury our friends

we sink in their clay and weep.

We walk –

in time –

dripping wet

with remorseless

common sense

out of love's fabulising flame.

It's just our things

that survive

dissolving in the end

even the most sticky

of our clutching

smudges.

P
OEMS
: J
ANUARY
–A
UGUST
2004

For Andy with love

THE NINTH HOUR

The ninth hour

is here

The ninth hour

makes no sense

The ninth hour

rises up wearily

in a freezing mist.

I have come to a river

of blood and vinegar

I have come to a river

where only pain

keeps its feet

I have come to a bridge

of dissolving bone

I have come to a place

of burning cold

I am trapped in a space

deformed

by my own

leprous fear

have I the strength

to pay suffering its due?

* * *

There is a calm

that is no cousin

to courage

There is a calm

that sits

like a quivering ape

under the python's

hypnotising eye.

Everything makes you

shiver

The hot wind. The rank river.

The poisonous euphoria.

But it's your shrivelling

flesh

that has the whip hand

Your flesh

has its own tumorous

will

You may think

you have been here

before

You may think

your quicksilver spirit

has your furtive flesh

licked

But darkness

is stronger

than light

The flesh knows best

who'll win line honours

in this fight

* * *

The ninth hour

is here

The ninth hour

makes no sense

Don't pray

for a flash flood

delivering miracle

or clarity

During the ninth hour

reason dies of thirst

Your blood stagnates

stale

as a base metal

in your mouth

You dangle

in a cacophony

of retching noise

with no grandiose riffs

of heroism

You will never forget

the foul sound

of the ninth hour.

* * *

I have come to a river

of blood and vinegar

I am here,

ninth hour,

I am here

stripped and shivering.

But listen, ninth hour,

listen

and pay heed

to a new sound

in me

I am not here

silent and alone

Do you hear

the fighting hiss

of this geyser

in me?

I stand my ground

in the undaunted spray

and company

of my own words.

NUMBERS

I get magic

(sometimes I get more

than I bargain for)

but I don't get

numbers.

Numbers do worse

than humiliate

or elude me

they don't add up.

I am no algebra tart

ravished

by the meretricious music

of the spheres.

My eyes and nose

never streamed

with incontinent ecstasy

through geometry classes

as my disastrous triangles

collapsed in a cacophony

around me.

Perhaps it's a failing

to grasp

or even want

the utterly perfect number

burning through my retina

like the utterly perfect morning.

Instead I peer

with nauseating vertigo

into the deep dark pitch

of numbers

like an exhausted mammoth

dangerously tottering

on the edge

of a bottomless mystery.

THE HAMPSTEAD HEATH TOAD

For Roger Deakin

It was one of those

beautiful

English summer nights.

The lilac shimmer of silent

lakes.

The whisper of ghost fox

through your heartbeat.

But the toad in the hand

stank real.

Stank through his palpitating

skin.

Stank of fear.

Is the fabled hallucinogenic

touch of toads

just as Macbeth

witnessed

a hypnotising snare

of toxic apparition?

What thrilling doors of perception

open

to the musky ooze

of panting paralysed

terror?

Of course

intoxicated on moonshine

you wanted

and will always want

the toad

to calm down

smell sweet

and give up his phantasmagorical

secrets

generously.

But the toad in the hand

protected himself.

The toad in the hand

stank real.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
'
S GRAVE

How do you bury a poet?

Surely not

how they buried Baudelaire

thrown in with his parents

like an infant death.

It stretches

to a ghastly irony

Pasternak's remark

that poets should remain

children.

Do poets really want to trade

the lingering savour

of experience

for guileless eyes?

There's something

repulsive

about an empty fresh

adult face.

Such baby faces

can be seen in uniform

or with a foot

on a slaughtered tiger.

They can be capable

of anything

or a long lullaby

of nothing.

I want to exhume Baudelaire

and give him his own

magnificent mercurial vault.

From one angle

an arching ebony cat.

From another

sneering black marble

spleen.

No poet

dead or alive

should rot

with their parents.

EARLY MORNING AT THE MERCY

This six a.m. moment

in the cool-blue cool

of early morning

is not eternal.

It will pass

like the faint bat squeak

of an early bird call.

It is silent again

even as the dark

fades

and the white eyes of buildings

emerge

slowly gleaming

as they drop their grey veils.

But now the birds

are getting serious.

More and brassier

calls

as my first cup of tea

chills.

And I turn back

to Gwen's poetry

wondering

how on earth she could write

so eloquently in hospital.

Her spirit

must have been