Collected Poems (9 page)

In which one lived as long

And learned far more

Than after the exhaustion of a quick decision

Or the utter ruin of a right one.

UNITY

Memorials being sacred

God made a star of Lucifer

Launched the brilliant morning star

That suited navigators best.

God being what he is

He made another star

The first star of evening

That all women blessed.

They were the hinges of the sky

And never met. One chased,

The other followed. Who did what

Was impossible to test.

Neither wondered who began it,

Trapped as they were, and are,

In the same planet.

NIMROD AND LUCIFER

No one knew why Nimrod shot at the sky.

Such emptiness worked his arms

And sent each arrow whining

Its steep incline at God's power.

Nimrod is a mighty hunter, said the Lord.

Spring was gone. Adonis gored, already

In his furrow, sorrow forgotten,

Wheat whitening a plain too hot for dreams,

The sky blue, God invisible, day vacant,

Animals hiding from the sun.

Lucifer steered each iron point,

But Nimrod was a man, not God:

No feral tip could reach its mark,

Though Mighty Nimrod, wanting God to die,

Wondered why God wasn't dead

And why the arrow fell back from the sky

Anointed with red from notch to tip.

Nimrod wept for shame on seeing

Lucifer's left foot was lame.

THE ‘JOB'

The three-decker wooden ship broke its ropes,

Each impacted fibre torn by cobalt water

Lifting its tall stern;

Grating the granite quay

The ship was loose in storm-fists

And no safe harbour locked its arms.

Refuge was in the fang-teeth of the gale

The horizonless ocean

Wood against water

Sails in salty phosphorescence

Mainmast an impaling spike.

The merciless twisting left a hulk

Which Lucifer could not drown:

Not possible for him to know

What made that scabby coffin stay afloat,

Find an unending mirror of water

And merit in God's eye for its long fight.

LUCIFER AND EMPEDOCLES

Progress is an orphan:

Throw a crust it starves to death.

Give it a golden cloak,

A hundred thousand people turn to ash.

Progress either snivels or it kills:

Who owns it holds a sun to limping Lucifer

Who vowed God's rebels harnessed his effulgence

And made galactic storms.

Progress will be the death of me, said God.

Let me turn the notion on its head.

God said: ‘Empedocles, say this:

“Progress is the bitch of war;

Love and discord suckle it.

For once I'll speak plain:

War gets the world nearer to death,

Does no one good.

No sane man cares to die a king,

Or idiot become a god.”'

Empedocles simplified, and got it wrong:

‘War is the father of progress' –

Then simpered in his golden sandals

To Etna's hot volcanic rim

Wondering whether God was right

To give such force the name of war.

Lucifer smiled. Empedocles stood close,

Peered into the boiling din.

‘Your question has no answer,' said Lucifer,

And pushed him in.

LUCIFER THE ARCHER

Robin Hood's light-hearted men

In Sherwood Forest shot

At silver pennies marked

With a silver cross.

Lucifer, toxophilite,

Tipped the arrows true,

Drew back every archer's yew

With fingers of Sherwood green.

Thus, fletched missiles overseen

Found numismatic tracks –

God's son or not, the cross was shot

By Lucifer's speeding sticks.

When two lines met

And, meeting, crossed,

And closed themselves in a ring

Lucifer felt a prison clang

Around his brow and through his eyes –

So made the outlaws' arrows smash

Against all silver pennies

That bore a silver cross.

LUCIFER AND COLUMBUS

Lucifer became the sun:

Drew Christopher Columbus on

Into oceanic dusk.

Under the basin of the night

They followed stars

He patterned in their track.

By morning Lucifer arose

And deigned to push them over

The daily fortitudes of dawn.

The navigator's cross-stays

Angled him

To guess the distance of the day.

When the fathom-line was flung

Its lead-head hit the sea and burst

In Lucifer's fluorescent sparks.

He steadied the flickering needle

Through the Sargasso Sea,

Goaded a meteor to perform

A spectacular welcome,

And lured the Sons of Adam

Back to Paradise.

LUCIFER THE SURVEYOR

Lucifer the surveyor didn't look

He measured, hands performing

A theodolite not prayer.

A dot behind the eyes held cosmography

In thrall, geometry intuition as he spanned

Paced and taped a kingdom in a day

Triangulated oceans in one night.

God took the credit

Every action in the world was His,

All seas and continents. He led

Footsteps on and filled all hearts

A wind banging the canvas sails

Of a ship whose crew was drunk

On loot, lewdness and the Lord.

Rejected Lucifer was bruised

Since science followed him not God.

He melted raw materials, lay rails, grew cities

Rolled lightning in a drum and made it work.

Adam's sons ripped milk and honey from the earth

And God was praised.

But Lucifer saw his limp on every foot.

LUCIFER THE MECHANIC

Lucifer invented speed, taught

That one slow pulley drives a fast,

A sluggish stream revolves a mill

How fire melts and wind shifts

And iron floats and alloys fly.

Lucifer's willing scholars learned

How one metal cuts another

And steel spread on a spindle

Is in its weakness flaked

By a stilled blade set against it.

A lubricated drill-tip

Tempered to diamond strength

Spins to steel clamped in a jig:

By playing speed to altered speed

Steel teeth in a circle

Mill into a shank of steel.

Lucifer in every lathe

Manufactured objects beyond

Man's vulnerable version of himself;

He unmade God, and at his most demonic

Turned Man into an industrious mechanic.

LUCIFER AND REVOLUTION

When workers assembled at the station

Lucifer had waited since the swamp was drained.

Jutting chin and jaunty cap and posh Swiss overcoat,

Finger stabbing the air to rights,

He licked his Tartar lips and stroked

His beard, nodding sharply

At each injustice he would cure,

Clipped decisive words in steam-train language

Knit the crowd into carded fabric

Any pattern could be printed on.

He had waited long for such deep cheers

And smoky mosaic of faces,

Dimmed his eyes to just the right amount

Of inability to see the future,

When the mob would do such deeds

As burned all sensibility to ash:

‘Oh boy, we did that fucking castle in!

Splintered every lintel, broke every brick.

Those Old Masters burned a treat.

Forty years ago the duke raped my mother

So I plugged his duchess-daughter.

For the Revolution, of course –

We should have one every day!'

The shock-detachment of the Revolution came

Behind a glistening array of guns:

‘All right, chaps, fun's over.

You work for us now, what?

So build that castle up again.

And who was that swine raped the duchess?

His trial starts tomorrow.'

‘The purity of Revolution shines

Bright for all to see,

A moral force that cleanses

Cleaner than the sea.'

‘You'll be sorry you spoke,'

Comrade Lucifer retorted

When everything got out of hand.

‘You helped to make the Revolution,

Now you'll be voted to the wall

Or destitution unimaginable.

I'm not Hamlet lost for a yes or no.

I'll make an omelette any day

And break as many eggs as there are heads.

Chickens lay all the time!'

His grin was geological – under the moustache.

The assassin's bullet didn't kill

But scared him. He vanished.

Only One could play that game and win.

LUCIFER TELEGRAPHIST

Lucifer, God's listener,

Took telegrams in any code

Or language, heard

the blissful separation

of those who would never touch again

the marriage of a thousand needles

knitting both victims till death

the assault of a new mouth

soon to connive at the smash of nations

the frantic beggary of save-our-souls

when a ship's parts separate in revenge

on those who ripped wood and iron

from the generous soil

communiqués that order war

when other greeds have failed.

Happiness and agony went through his heart,

God's ears not enough.

He wanted power to end all suffering

And call it peace.

Rebellion failed. Robbed of God's favour

Lucifer sat in universal grief

So that his Fall was liberation.

HYMN TO LUCIFER

Lucifer is the True God:

Not the God of Man

Or the God of God

But the God of Light.

Luminous of eyes

Limitless of sight

A thousand million miles

Are his to roam.

Ice is no prison

Fire no opposite,

The sun a cool exit

To spaces beyond.

The earth's inferno-centre

Cannot hold him,

Nor galactic spaces

Lose him.

LUCIFER'S REPORT

Newton did not go to church;

He hardly ever went to chapel:

He read Maimonides in bed

And pondered on the fallen apple.

The Board of Admirals agreed

That the first chronometer of Harrison

Was in spite of its complexity and size

Accurate beyond comparison.

Enigmatic Einstein vowed

He'd see the hardy atom burst:

The world would shrivel to a cell

If Germany achieved it first.

God concurred, yet did not know

What the first flash would do to Him.

Lucifer hoped that God might die

When that smoke-hill hit the sky.

THE LAST CHANCE

Lucifer's simple scheme was to kill God

And create another

And after mutual annihilation

Crow the victor from their ashes –

Once they cooled.

Every plotter is naive, every planner blind:

On a calm and August morning

The boil burst.

The sea was in it and the sky

The centre of the earth took part

The sun and moon looked on

And thus participated. A particle

Of every man woman child

And other creature

That had been on earth since earth began

Will be remembered for connivance –

Lucifer made sure of that.

The sun went cool to let

This fiery flood of Lucifer-vomit

Like a cauliflower fist

Deal a belly-blow to God.

Scorched and broken

Lucifer fell back,

And wept.

LUCIFER AND JOB

Lucifer met Job.

He saw flame

He touched fire

But could not get close.

Endurance is a herb

The flame protects.

The sun comes

The sun goes –

Job spoke:

A flame lives on

In darkness.

Nor is it extinguished

By the sun.

LUCIFER AND NOAH

Noah believed,

Built his boat

Called his creatures

Two by two;

Lucifer watched

The floating city

On the flood,

Could not help

Hands whose fingers

Spread before they sank.

The void world

Was life for Lucifer.

He ruled a sea of corpses –

Yet welcomed Noah

Ashore at Ararat.

LUCIFER AND DANIEL

Seven famished lions

Circled Daniel

In Babylon's oblivion-hole;

Eyes in darkness

Were the king's prisoners

And only Daniel's

Emitted light.

Your eyes hunger

Daniel spoke

But my hunger

Is greater.

The lions paced, bewildered,

As if Daniel's flesh was bitter

And God his fearlessness.

Since his Fall

Lucifer had never been so close.

LUCIFER IN SINAI – 1

Lucifer tramped from sea to sea,

Burning grit pained every step

An island moving through the land

From Carmel to the Mount of Moses.

Lucifer paid his forty days,

His flesh bled gravel

In the sleepless cool of the night,

Gypsum and alabaster glowed at the moon:

Although I fell

Although you threw me to the heathens

Although you scattered me among

The far stars of the universe;

Moulded me in ice, let heat dissolve me,

Melted me in fire, let ice find me,