TRAVELS IN THE MIND (1985-1997)
Copyright: Philip Rogers, Lucan, Dublin
* 1. TRACKS IN MARBLE
TOP
Rome, Vienna,
Heathrow...
the bustle of airports is the
same.
Cleaners buff floors. A trolly
squeaks -
the one with the bandjaxed
wheel
turns up everywhere.
Through tinted windows tarmac
shimmers,
spiked with tail-fins,
torpedoed with fuselages.
Yellow vans, patrol cars,
luggage trains
and fuel tankers scurry about.
It was only a small track, a
pockmark,
a shallow score of death on a
marble column -
not worth a second glance.
I eyed the wealthy
traveller,
a study in studied nonchalance,
with her diamond rings, her
black cheroot
bedded in amber and gold,
her silk semi-seethrough
blouse,
her skintight leather pants.
All her curves and creases
were anatomical, au naturel
except for the bulge of the
wallet and passport
kissing her 'Frisco-handed ass.
I was not the only one to lech.
She demanded attention and she
got it.
Potbellied men seemed to tuck
in.
Younger bucks stood straighter
or glanced admiringly.
Plainer women looked away.
Was she here when hooded
butchers
slaughtered the jet-lagged
sheep?
Did she dive under the Uzzi
hail,
press those magnificent
breasts
to cold marble? Did her nails
scratch through a lacquer of
blood?
Did she know that today
is a good day to live, a good
day to die?
I looked into her
eyes,
into her grave, into mine.
She looked away with dignity
and self control.
I looked closer at the marble
and saw many tracks.
Marble is appropriate for
headstones,
John Brown. More durable than
wood,
John Brown. More etchable than
iron,
Adam and Eve, Samson and
Delilah, Jack and Mary Spratt.
Is it coincidence
that abattoirs have tile or
marble walls
in the slaughter halls?
Three hours' flight
across the sea,
shock and nausea swallow me.
Bladder shows that I must die;
woollen kilt keeps head up
high.
New York, Hi!
From all parts they
gather in,
faithful for the great Coven.
Five days' session, work and
play,
secret treatments all the way.
Austin, Texas, Hi!
Thirty minute plane
delay.
Not to worry they all say.
Angry lady, sassy clerk,
plane's just left. You bloody
jerk!
Chicago, Hi!
Lee Greenwood in
full flight
sets the Country Crowd alight
with "God bless the USA"
(one thousand watts on a Jap
PA).
Cincinnati, Hi!
Master Vet on
racetrack call,
standardbreds who stand so
tall,
pains, disease which them
enfeeble
banished by the Chinese
needles(1).
Lebanon, Hi!
Screaming jets at
Kennedy;
lights in millions below me;
heading East into the dark;
at dawn we cross the Phoenix
Park.
Dublin, Hi!
(1) Marvin Cain is the best vet that I know in equine veterinary acupuncture
* 3. ICE, ROCK AND
FIRE: IMPRESSIONS OF
ISLAND BY A MODERN IRISH SLAVE
TOP
PROLOGUE: HEATHROW
The metal detector
finds my bunch of keys.
Polite but expert British
hands
frisk pockets, armpits, groin,
thighs, back and calves.
Mindful of the murder of their
kin
daily in our land,
I submit resigned.
OK Sir, thank you! Carry on!
Boarding pass in my
mouth,
I board the plane for
Reykjavik,
long-armed by duty-free and
topcoat.
Cache of Jameson stashed away,
I muse that the men of Island
came for us in another time,
their longships raiding out of
the north-west sea,
oars flashing in the sinking
sun,
ram-horns sounding doom,
spears glinting blood-hunger,
tunics wet with woman-lust.
Congealed blood and
semen
yoke the Icelander and Gael.
Now we come to them
freely, as friends,
not as slaves or breeding
stock in chains,
but in high-tech trawlers,
or in longships of the air,
on a meagre Apex fare.
Keflavik!
a mars-scape on earth.
Lava stretches grey,
brown and black to the coast,
nibbles the heels
of red roofed fishing villages,
hugs clear blue bays.
How many legs were broken
in those cracks and potholes?
And where's the grass?
Where the cattle?
The joke of Vulcan
pumices the earth,
sculpts desolation
from here to Reykjavik,
taunts wispy growths
of lichen, moss and heather.
Kavanagh!
Your hungry soil was fertile,
the loam of the rich and fat,
compared with the brooding
lavafields that crunch
away from those looming peaks.
Who or what can survive
in this barren land?
This land would
starve
the hardiest Kerry goat.
But the light, the searing
light -
I never saw light before
until that touchdown -
pure laser light which cuts
the retina
with photon savagery.
Here are no factory plumes,
no fuming power-stations
to dim light's clarity.
Those peaks seem just beyond
arm's reach. The blues, the
greys,
the browns are real.
And, out there, the
sea nods
its affirmation of life, of
death,
waves, beckons its blue-green
fingers,
swirls its white lace
petticoats,
enthrals the dreamers who
hunch their backs
against the hunger of the land.
Small wonder its people plough
the sea instead
in laughing fishing boats.
* a. CAVES AND WATERFALL
The wind whispers
"Gullfoss, Gullfoss".
It groans past gaping cave-mouths,
shrieks eerie flute-sounds,
sad siren songs of doom.
Out of dark, tormented silence,
the sad mad monk, anchor gone,
moans "I'm unwed and God
is dead".
Howling in despair, he lopes
through brush, dwarfed twisted
trees,
savage lances of gorse,
finds the thunder-path,
runs to the canyon's edge.
The frigid daughter of
heartless ice,
the white-green writhing
torrent, hisses
"Come to me, my husband,
my only love".
Ghosts of countless
suicides
wait for the jump, the scream.
Praising mighty Thor,
they chant of rock and water,
chorus of ice and fire.
My tired, tired brother,
entranced by spray and foam,
pauses on the brink of hope,
resists awhile, sees leaden
skies,
fails to hear Christ's shout,
then topples slowly
down,
down,
down,
arms flailing, branches
tearing,
tree-
like
in
storm.
* b. GEYSER
Every
7th minute,
Vulcan groans
in molten bowels.
His straining wind
balloons up to heaven
through silver boiling ice.
Bursting through domed stone,
it rips apart the steaming
sphincter
with whoosh, hiss, flop and
splatter.
Our round towers
of granite stone
decay, fall down,
leaving our land
unguarded. Hiss,
of mystical steam
from fissured stream,
reincarnates every
seventh minute,
year after year
keeps its watch,
with sun and moon,
on leaf-budding,
leaf composting.
* 6. HOFSJOKULL
TOP
Highlands barren,
silent,
barren, of bleat or bellow,
silent of whinny or bray,
barren of bark or scratch or
shout,
silent even of wings,
blaspheme their Maker,
howl cold curses
to listening sky, satellite
and star.
Nothing but lichen,
stunted scrub, limp moss
lives, can live,
on magma-poisoned rock.
Ripple fold of lava,
pocked pumice phalli
cringe in petrified awe
of silent glaciers
which grind their teeth,
slowly, painfully in cold rage.
Brooding rock and scree,
dry mountain stream-bed
thirst for seed-drink,
ice-water from laughing sun,
or warm tears from weeping
cloud,
in stony silence,
unbroken silence
like that of the proud Irish
slave,
mute until her child was born
but even then, mute to her
ravisher.
But the barren may bloom
when young life comes,
may smile and sing
cradle-songs of life.
* 7. THINGVELLIR
TOP
Thingvellir,
hub of power,
towers its shaggy head
above green plains of peace.
Writhing her tortured journey
to lake and sea, the waterfall's
daughter
flows past the sacred circle
of the dead.
Coins of hope and prayer
glitter in the depths
of crystal holy water no
thieves dare desecrate.
At the rock wall fault,
man quakes this time,
quakes and shudders
at human impotence
against earth power.
But old beards knew
earth power
and held the Althing here,
governing by vote. And woe
betide
ditherers who could not decide.
Those cave-men of
yesterday
were statesmen, democrats,
while Europe's overlords
fucked, fought and feasted
on muscle, blood and sweat
of oppressed poor.
Thingvellir,
light that lasts,
your caves may echo human
voice again
when deadly mushroom clouds
have passed.
* 8. LAUGARVATN
TOP
Hekla
smoulders angrily
at sacrilegious man,
who steals her daughter's soul,
rapes her virgin child with
blue-black eels
which slide across her valleys,
over her breasts,
between her thighs, powder
tracks for four-wheeled drives.
Mourning the loss of elfin
innocence,
she broods over the windswept
lake,
whose red-brown shallows ford
the blue-grey deeps.
Wind surfers glide
over yesterday's ruffled
mirror
under blustery wind-torn skies.
Fishers, ignorant of spear-
and snare-craft,
flick automatic reels.
Feathery marsh-reeds
dance a circle around the lake,
to timid, hesitant applause
of seedy grass. Slope-meadows,
light of calf and anxious cow,
dream of rich manure.
High above the death-marked
trout,
a fish-eagle circles the
clouded sun.
Bare marsh, thin bog,
hungry for crannogs
and stone-built church,
vibrate in the windows
of the Mercedes-rally bus.
These wilds are tourist-tamed,
just a radio-call from help.
Lean hardy sheep,
long fleeces black and grey,
search for tasty fog and
heather
on treacherous slopes.
Through purple
tussocks and pumice tors
strings of tamed wild horses,
trot-glide along narrow tracks,
wild men saddled before and
behind,
proud men fit at seventy years
but a hundred years too late.
Bellies full that evening,
we ramble in happy groups
to the lake-shore bath-house.
Steam-plumes and sulphur-smell
betray old fire-gods below.
In the changing room,
graphics show in stipple
the parts to be soaped and
showered
before entering the baths!
Hanging over hell
on wooden benches,
steamed bodies glow and
glisten
with cleansing sweat.
Men and women slowly roast.
Children chatter, wipe the
window glass
to see their mountain mother,
Hekla,
who appears briefly
until steam hides her breast
again.
Parboiled enough,
we flop into warm sulphur-water,
its occupants making room.
Whose hand, whose leg, that is
is not an issue in bubble
trance.
Bodies, close-pressed head-to-tail
like tinned sardines, relax.
Centred between the adults,
children dunk and play with
toes,
their parent's, mine.
Shoulders in ice-air, trunk
immersed,
under a near-full moon,
the group is one,
ready for the farewell-night.
In the early hours,
my language guttural on their
tongues,
tongues loosed by unaccustomed
wine,
earnest students ask
"Do Irelanders back the
IRA,
hate Englanders?".
I groan and ask
do they back Cain,
do they hate Danes?
We quaff our final glasses,
shake hands, depart
each to our own dark hell.
Wind scents of fish-guts,
sea-wrack and spray
vie with diesel fumes and chips.
White paint on blue metal, the wheelchair man
rock-rattles in wind, chair-dances
to tunes of bells atop tall metal flagpoles-
street wind-bells in the town of wind.
Sand-blasting, whirling wind
was bane of an ambassador
but gift to this voyeur.
Dresses cling tight
to breasts, buttocks,
thighs, mounds. Fantasies arise
when flaxen-haired women
throw their shoulders back,
smile from pale blue eyes.
Fantasies die when those steady eyes
gaze straight through my soul
and the women stride on home
to flaxen-haired, blue-eyed fishermen.
Two drunks in denim,
dishevelled heavy-weights,
close in, demand: Give us 100
crowns!
I hesitate, step back.
You rich, fine Sir! 100 crowns
is nothing.
(Where in hell is the taxi?)
Where you come from
Sir,
Denmark, Norway, Finland? No!
Sweden, Britain, Russia? No!
Ah! America? Wrong
side of the Atlantic!
They like the game
but forget their Irish blood-
slave-blood.
You, red haired Sir,
you come from Australia!
Well... not exactly...
The taxi arrives, thank God.
Sorry lads! I
should have dropped
100 lousy crowns.
In Dublin you'd have shared a
pint on that
but only thimblefuls here.
* 11. US AIR-BASE AT
KEFLAVIK
TOP
Keflavik, Your soul
is gone,
sold for coke and
junk to Caesar's Pentagon.
Rock on, rock on,
Keflavik rock on!
At the third hour,
atop another rocky mound,
the loneliest Man of
all, groans skyward: Abba.
He weeps on a sweat-drenched
tree but understands and loves.
At the third hour,
atop another rocky mound,
you cut yourselves
off, deaf to your past.
Turn up the volume on
your Walkmans!
Thor, Vulcan,
Christ never existed anyway, you say.
Rock, earth-child,
rock, that's all there is, you say.
Rock on, rock on,
Keflavik rock on!
* 12. WITH OPEN EYES
(To Stein Steinarr, 1908-1958)
TOP
Stein,
your seer's sigh
of the soul-hunger in lonely mankind
wrenched a twisting spasm
from my hardened heart,
wrung mourner's tears
from my misted eyes,
for you and I believe
the joys of earth
to be certified as dead,
except in dreamtime.
The childlike dream
on,
from cock-crow to bat-flight,
shut out or sanctify
the pain of cruel day
and hungry night.
But the awakened see all
- births and abortions -
and, with open eyes, they choose
to walk by soft or stony paths
to waiting graves.
* 13. DREAM OF A
DRAWING-BOARD
(To Steinunn Sigurdardottir, 1950 -)
TOP
Steinunn, was it
the booze in the Buttery,
or a vigil on Lough Derg, or a tumble in the Furry Glen,
that made you dream "that we who seek the truth seek in vain?"
Or do you have the same nightmare every day as I,
when I try to dream my truths alive?
My truths are
colours, vivid, pale, soft,
harsh, warm, cold, sullied, pure
but I'm a terrible painter with a shaky hand.
On my drawing-board colours fade, merge or run
into strange unwanted shapes. My heart jeers me
as the greatest liar alive- one who lies to oneself-
and the self-cleaning membrane retches,
throws up my colours, spews them back at me.
They dribble and gobbet back to the earth,
hopeless, forlorn, like refugees against advancing armies.
They flow as a sluggish river
from bog to wilderness,
mixing, losing identity, coming to rest in stagnancy,
in one large blob of black.
And I still pray (do you?)
"...Thy Kingdom come..."
for it preserves my sanity
until I try to paint again.
I smoked the hemp leaves once,
layered in pipe tobacco-
they made me sick
but I saw grey shapes instead of black.
Maybe some day I'll try mescaline,
paint mushrooms in clearcut reds and whites,
their caps and collars bursting,
their soil-stained stems straining
from tender brown-green moss.
Or maybe
I'll paint a horde of the little people,
of black wit and golden hair,
as they dance in silver buckled brogues
in a moonlit misty rath
or, maybe,
I'll just paint one single blade of grass,
the first to peep above the February snow,
or a white-washed cottage with yellow thatch
and blue-grey smoke against the blue-black slate of Clare
and peace and truth and love
shall I paint there.
Or maybe I'll paint
the wind,
playful in its whorling of autumn leaves,
loving in its combing of the wave's hair,
fierce in its slaying of the oak.
And all my lines will be crisp and clear
except those I choose to break,
make fuzzy or erase
in the moments before the drug wears off.
And still I pray (do you?)
"...Thy Kingdom come..."
in hope that there is meaning,
in hope that we may resonate
to the universal Word/Song/Om,
that we may paint our colours in the dawn
and not need mescaline.
* 14. NO SMOKING
PLEASE
(A leper remembers)
TOP
Veiled in flimsy
wisps of cloud,
as silvered Salome before the dance,
the shameless moon
eases her silver fingers
into the terrazzo circle,
dim-lights two stairs-
one up to other spheres,
one down to the concrete street.
Central heating fails to warm
the cold, clinical
functionality
of this circular stage.
It constrains my feet
as I pace solo
round and round in silent gait
past three doors of 2" steel,
spy-holed to protect the worldly goods
of Lindstrom, Hammer, Bulow.
Behind one door, an inch ajar,
five friends eat Chinese,
laugh at the empty chair.
The addict smoker,
outside their circle,
orbits in see-through wisps
like the frenzied dancer
who circles Herod's floor
lusting for the Baptist's head,
or as the outcast moon
circles its doomed earth,
waiting to return again
to its Atlantean womb.
Farewell sour lava-fields,
sweet fields of home
to sons and daughters
of Gunnar, Magnus, Thor.
But to this islander-
descendant of an Englander,
a hired Cromwell blade-
you are stark reminders
that my home is pasture-land,
rich green fields
fertilised with red
(and also poisoned in its head)
by the ice and fire
of fear and hate.
* 16. EPILOGUE:
HEATHROW
TOP
12 hours to wait,
I scribble memories.
Ink words flow, solidify
like lava-stones on plains.
Three capital letters - IRA -
defile the edge of a cluttered
page.
A placid Englander sees the
letters,
looks five seconds in my eyes,
and, wordless, looks back to
The Sun,
page three. On page one, the
heading:
"8 soldiers dead in Omagh
massacre".
I write on, waiting for the Dublin flight.
* 17. MEMORIES OF
POLAND
TOP
Yesterday
they doubled the cost of living
and upped the workers' wages 20%.
The hoary 1980 joke - that Poles pretend to work
and the State pretends to pay them -
is as fervent as the words of Consecration
in the underground cathedral
hacked from weeping coal.
Out dead-eyed men cemented in the lobby!
Out madam supervisor on my corridor!
Let me forget food-queues at dawn,
the half-empty shop windows,
the airline staff
who chatted and filed their nails
indifferent as I missed my flight.
But let me remember Poland
with Irish solidarity -
the lunch-sheebeens in tower-flats,
where worker, professor and guest
drank beetroot soup
and shared a meagre lunch together,
earning the housewife a few black zlotys;
the delicious, double-centred women
with great, giving hearts
and flowing wells of love;
their ardent, moustachioed men,
clones of Burmese temple gods - all hands -
hugging their women and their friends' women
and any other women in sight
with glint-eyed vocation.
See them when they meet, the hugs,
the kisses full on the lips of friends.
See them party in tiny flats, happy crowds,
though church-mouse-poor in our consumables -
booze, coffee, sugar, bread,-
scarcities so razor-sharp
that a pack of Bic disposables
or a jar of Nescafe
and the giver would have to fight
to repel twin sisters from his bunk.
Yet they are richer than the golden king
in laughter, friendship, song
and filthy rich in pride in men of Polish iron,
the two Ws, Walesa and Wojtyla.
* 18. FLYING HIGH
TOP
Five miles high on
a long-haul flight
how on earth can a poet write
with popping ears and trembling feet,
senses numb from the hiss and roar,
mind dried out, despite the 7-Up
and nothing outside to be seen
through porthole windows fogged between?
The symbols must come from within.
We crossed Mount
Hekla's dormant cone
and white-grey Greenland's frozen fjords -
snow, rock, ice, spiked like a hedgehog's back
with glaciers two miles deeping,
cold secrets keeping,
past Thule, Eureka (chilly Greek)
in the islands of Elizabeth.
At the pole, religion, politics and dole
rank less than food and coal.
The Beaufort Sea
and Fairbanks in our wake,
we crossed Alaska's wastes, safe berth to make
at Anchorage. Take-off again into the sapphire sky
to fly above the sealed Aleutian Isles
and cross the Bering Sea, Kamchatka to the right,
necklace of the Kuril Isles below,
pearled from old Hokkaido's neck
in the land of the rising yen
and electronic, busy men...
sorry! persons,
people of indeterminate gender,
irrespective of how obvious on visual inspection!
For not too many males in Tokyo
wear silk kimonos, combs of ivory,
jade or coral ornaments.
Not too many
females wear the blue-black
suits and hats; teeth, spectacles and watch of gold;
tight-cropped heads; carry brollies
briefcases and cameras in black.
Persons busy, busy persons.
Five miles high on
a long-haul flight
how on earth can a poet write!
* a. AIRPORT (ARRIVALS)
Panic-stricken
woman with three cases,
too late to catch her
bus,
puddles the street in
fear.
Her tears are spears
of shame to stab the heart
but none appears to
see.
Time is the master
in Japan
and airport transport
waits for no-one.
* b. CITY
Hordes, rushing to
the fray,
monkeylike but no
monkeys,
close-cropped and
uniform,
blue-black suited
businessmen
with knowledgeable
eyes
on the march to the
cut and thrust
of multinational war.
Students uniformed
in black -
cadets in training,
only the katana
missing.
The graceful bows and
Geisha smiles
of the coal-eyed
women
belie the steel
within -
fit mates for
ruthless men.
Computerised hotels
bug the icebox.
Do they bug the loo
too?
Hi-tech in the lobby:
bewildered travellers
signed in, ripped off,
signed out
like merchandise.
* c. AIRPORT (DEPARTURES)
Black eyes stare
impassive
underneath steel
helmets.
They guard the access
gates
with gun and bayonet
and riot shield
of tungsten steel.
These soldiers
take no crap from
anyone.
The entrance to
Departures is no joke!
They check the cars
and buses
with plodding
thoroughness. They are
the Samurai of jet-age
Narita.
They could not see
the woman cry, those Samurai
and if they had,
would they have shielded her
as a sister loved, or scorned her callously?
* 20. HIMEJI CASTLE
TOP
The Shogun built
his fortress well!
The central keep,
five tiers of stone and wood,
perched on an eyrie
on the highest hill,
surrounded by Himeji
Plain,
with unobstructed
view to every side
is a fierce, white
eagle, landed, preening.
Two hundred acres
nesting on
two hundred thousand
tons of rock, within three moats,
intact since thirteen
thirty three
and not once taken by
an enemy.
Six thousand Samurai
behind those massive walls,
with boiling oil and
stones,
longbows, lances,
flashing spears
and in the later
years, flintlock,
balls of lead, could
outlast any siege.
To slap in slippers
with the rustling crowd
on satin-polished
corridors,
past state apartments
with their sliding doors,
their halls and
banquet rooms, their inlaid floors
and see the fertile
land below
is to know power,
naked, over life.
I heard the screams
of wounded soldiers,
curses and the clash
of steel,
weird songs of love
and battle,
the glug-glug-glug of
sake poured,
women whispering
behind their fans,
women pleading "No!"
in vain,
the grunts and snores
of weary men
and the shouts of
children playing.
To Nippon's ancient
capital on Coronation Day,
the man descended from the Gods was carried with great sway
but through the mighty Solar Gate he strode alone,
to walk in isolation to the sacred throne.
None else could enter by that Gate -
not wife, nor concubines, nor Ministers of State.
Tradition, under threat of death, dictated other doors
according to established order.
When the Crown was
set, the Emperor withdrew
to meditate in lotus-scented air, bedewed,
in stillness and beauty unknown to round-eyed peoples,
the Royal Gardens of the Golden Temple,
that marvel, once torched by a moon-crazed monk
to snatch its splendour from the jealous eyes and Nikon rape
of visiting barbarians.
(The Temple was restored some thirty years ago
to former majesty. Its upper room,
the Place of Peaceful Minds, was clad
with sheets of solid gold, one hundred thousand auric squares
to scale its sides, like those of golden carp
that swim within its shade.)
Late that evening,
with his soul at peace,
he left the Garden to return to Tokyo.
How could he leave such beauty so?
* 22. SEVEN-FOUR-SEVEN
TOP
Take-off.
Two Scotches, Hong Kong crab,
German wine and other
microwaved delicacies,
topped off with a man-sized hunk
of Danish Blue.
Am I dreaming, is this true?
Liqueur Sir?
She smiled the hostess smile
and tried professionally
to please her kind
but showed her prejudice
to dark and olive skins.
Towel Sir? -
instant freshness
dangling
from a silvered tongs.
The moist warmth,
fragrant with Chinese herbs,
dispelled tiredness.
Anything else Sir?
The boss, a beaming
face
and portly frame,
resplendent in peacock blue
and a red carnation,
sauntered through the aisles,
confident of his magnificence.
Later, electronic
sound
in perfect stereo
swelled the "Men of Harlech"
far from the collieries
and valley Chapels.
Ah! This was first class luxury,
a sky fantasy.
Behind lay Asia,
struggling to survive;
continent of poverty and grit,
of sweating workers in their millions;
of reeking hovels, lurid high streets;
multicoloured lights
to draw the monied moths;
memories of svelte
umbrella-men
anting the night streets,
hustling pleasure or pain for rice.
Below, a shark-filled sea,
junk-dotted. Ahead, an overdraft to pay
but not today.
Touch-down.
* 23. TAIWAN
(Publ. D. Spark, Anthology of Veterinary Poetry, 1986)
TOP
* a. WOOD-CONCEPTION
O terrible orgasm
of Mother Earth,
awesome power in aeons past!
With mighty roars she came and came,
no pleasure here, no pleading sighs,
no gentle fingers, slippery thighs
but bowels churning with white heat,
gushing, pouring, spewing, heaving
sulphurous molten rock: Taiwan.
* b. FIRE-BIRTH
Her bearing closed
by sand and sea,
alone and unattended, She expelled
Her screaming child through gaping wound
across Her belly.
Up, up it rose from ocean floor
to tower over boiling shores: Taiwan.
* c. EARTH-DEVELOPMENT
Over Yang Ming peak
I saw you born.
Fierce winds and waves and blasting sprays
scraped and shaped your wondrous bays.
On Chunan plains you saved the rice and corn.
From little junks you hauled your nets.
In alleyways you placed your bets.
On crowded streets you hurried by,
by cycles, taxis, nearly killed.
O slant-eyed beauty of black hair and eye,
you caused my semen to be spilled
deluged in desire for you: Taiwan.
* d. METAL-MATURITY
Young girls proud
in a country free,
young men summoning Tai Ch'i,
army alert constantly,
face the threat from o'er the sea: Taiwan.
* e. WATER-DEATH/REBIRTH
O little jewel of
the East,
may your people live in peace.
May they never have to see
obscenities as Nag'saki!
May the West learn
what you teach:
hard work, honour,
family,
pride of self and history: Taiwan.
* 24. ON THE 37th
ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
TOP
Between the Park
and Ailesbury
all the lights were
red.
Frustrated traffic
crawled.
Steering wheel guided
by a practised knee,
I scrawled - ideas
spun, as clothes in a Zanussi,
rough as they emerged,
but unsorted and
unpressed.
Think of them in
their crumpled state,
glistening with drops
of autumn rain
before they went into
the drier -
far better that way -
half formed and clamouring.
A purple-faced man
accelerated past,
swearing visibly.
Was the mating or the
meeting
to be that great?
Ming Ming and Ping
Ping were gone
but over the well-trimmed
Embassy lawn,
echoed the crunch of
clubs on skulls.
Kaleidoscopes of
bamboo-shoots, green and tender
and dissident shoots,
scarlet and brutalised
floated in the air
against a sea of blood
and righteous bullets.
Feudal lords, sated
and peasants ground
to poverty and blank despair
whispered from the
Ballsbridge trees.
Sweat dripped from
heat-struck oxen.
Terrible diseases
fought each other
to be first in the
land.
A rapist laughed as
he buttoned up
but his mouth became
a giant O
as his severed head
was shown to the crowd.
More warriors clashed
among the flowers
before they petrified.
The unlucky ones
lost their arms in a
Dublin hospital
but the arm of Wu
Song-Fook,
severed by an
unguarded band-saw,
was replanted to his
living trunk
by a macro-team of
microsurgeons
in a Shanghai
hospital.
Opium the religion of
the people no more.
The opiate receptors,
deep in the brain,
now explain the
potency
of tiny needles in
the skin.
Miracles of ancient
sciences,
the needles, moxa,
herbs,
help the hopeless
cases.
The soldier,
paralysed by a stroke,
drives again the army
truck.
The polio child walks
without her braces,
which recycle
endlessly.
The dumb speak.
Miracles of our
science
irrigate the fields,
yield four crops
of living rice. And
paddyfields yield
fish and ducks and
not a Paddy poacher to be seen.
We try to understand
but fail,
our superior
politeness wearing thin.
Chinese fiddles and
strings
create their weird
cacophonies,
background to the
high-pitched and bass
voices of the Beijing
Opera.
The artists move as
if on strings themselves.
Are they mindless
marionettes
or experts far beyond
our dreams?
We strain to catch
the meanings
where there are none
for us.
Twirling his fourth
glass of wine,
a shrewd observer
mutters
that it is all above
him.
Good on you mate-
there are others less
perceptive!
The gulf of
comprehension narrows
slightly when we
realise
the discipline and
method
behind the sounds and
movements.
Control, control! A
game of mastery
with different rules
and codes from ours.
The dawning as the
black eyes smile
into the puzzled blue:
THEY are Chinese.
They are CHINESE.
This is their way,
perfect in its form
and execution.
More images mirage
the lawn.
Slender women run on
unbound feet,
free and equal with
their men;
laughing children
point at the bearded ones;
workers meditating at
the factory lathe;
Tai Ch'i in the
streets,
control of mind and
body,
bees in the hive
where there is no queen;
one thousand million
on the march to peace;
a flawless pearl,
sand-itched from the Yellow River -
love, respect,
morality and strength,
a fearsome
combination, backed by boundless hope.
To the next thirty-seven
years
and their
kaleidoscopic clones,
Kampe! Kampe,
Ambassador!
Between our heres and
theres a bridge is built
but treat your rebels
without guilt!
* 25. SPARE RIBS
TOP
Over the radio
waves
came the voices of
men
who live above the
pigpens.
The boss is a kind
man -
others must live on
the street.
Eight hundred
families
squat in car-crate
houses,
built over the
pigpens
in a Bangkok abattoir.
To survive, they
butcher pigs
through the screaming
night.
During the hot Thai
day,
they sweat-sleep
exhausted
beside their women.
Their pallid children
thirst
for hope and need
more sun.
Their bewildered eyes
slide
from Coke and Seiko
ads
to the thrusting V
and breasts
of a neon Go-Go sign.
They see white-men,
with bulging flies
and pockets,
buy hungry yellow
flesh
for the price of a
sirloin steak.
They see white-women,
bejewelled and
becameraed,
herd their pampered
daughters
eyes averted, past
the sex-shops,
to buy yellow art and
silk
for the price of a
manicure.
Barbecue sauce to
the ears,
I switched off the
radio,
chucked a stripped
spare rib
onto the pile of
bones.
Belching, I grabbed
another.
* 26. AUSSIE ARCHITECT
TOP
* a. THE THREE SISTERS
That poignant
evening,
the setting sun
postponed farewells.
Grey mist concealed
the chasms
clefting our earth
for miles below.
Untamed as the
dinosaur, chaotic native bush
grew thick on ochre
soil.
Three Sisters towered
proud and red,
mystics meditating on
the silence,
three virgins
together, unmounted and unmountable,
a rare thing in that
land for either sex.
Atoms in the vastness
of the place,
we felt our spirits
rise, connect.
Then we knew the
Aussie Architect.
We worshipped in silence.
* b. THE LAWSON PEOPLE
We party-crashed
the Lawson crowd,
community of broken
minds and sane,
of loving people,
people needing love,
in age from four to
four score,
from all religious
groups and none.
AC-DC, gay and
straight,
each attempting to
create a loving centre
through rebirth of
the psyche and the flesh,
experienced in pain
and fear,
struggling, screaming,
from parasitic
comfort of the womb,
gasping into worlds
unknown.
They kissed us
welcome, took our shoes,
plied us with organic
food and wine
until our bellies
groaned.
Then their Muse
directed
a dissecting play
which stripped
the tight facades
away,
uncovering the
smiling id.
The dance began. The
disco beat
of heavy rock, the
pounding sound
of music wild and
primitive,
vibrated through the
rooms.
While children to the
music skipped,
their grannies swayed.
Young and old cast
off the shackles of taboo,
releasing self-expression,
sensual delight
in having bodies
which could move
and feel the rhythmic
pulse of life.
We danced alone, or
men with men,
or adults whirled the
youngsters.
Proud women writhed
hips, their breasts unbound,
their eyes half-closed,
as in Salome's dance
indifferent to their
partner's sex.
We grinned in
satisfaction at the world.
Oh! Joy of being free
to free the self
and share with others!
Each one was included;
cosmic love exuded,
pulsing louder than
the throbbing sound
which blew the mind.
In that dance, too,
we knew the Aussie Architect,
worshipped in joy.
* 27. OTHER TRAVELLERS(*)
TOP
A cold coming we
had of it,
top-up with
antifreeze at New Inn,
Murphy's haberdashery
in Cashel
stocked with
opposition's lines,
Guinness lorrymen on
strike,
the Royal's radiators
out with airlocks,
and the bedroom damp.
A hard time we had of
it.
A cold coming we
had of it.
First we left the
tinder bush,
our friends, the
storks and elephants,
giraffe, gazelle and
springbok,
zebra, snake and
smirking hyena,
to mob the cloudless
sky and cross the sands,
the filthy waters of
the Med,
to fly polluted Turin
skies, the suffocating Rhur,
to pass the acid
clouds of Scandinavia
and breast the leaden
mists of Cong.
The Irish summer was
atrocious,
rain and wind
battering
our heather homes to
flattened wrecks,
our rushy haunts wing-deep
in floods,
hay floating by and
the cold,
the bitter draught,
silencing our crake.
A hard time we had of
it.
(*)The first and last line of each stanza are from The Magi by T.S. Eliot.
* 28. TRAVEL CLOCK
TOP
Inexorably,
a cheap travel clock
ticks the passing of
my life;
of my childrens'
dreams;
the human laugh and
cry;
the beauty of
orchards in flower;
the end of heavy
pregnancies;
of my wife's shoulder-pain;
the hardening, the
softening;
the clogging of
arteries;
the cruel wait of
cancer patients;
the injustices of
warlords;
the hopes of thinkers;
the melting of
glaciers;
the extinction of
salmon,
of thoroughbreds, of
stars.
Time, in our
experience,
flows onwards, only
onwards
but what if,
in the parallel
dimension,
it is reversed
and we could find a
warp,
a mouse-hole, a
person-hole,
a fucking great big
Arch
of Triumph between
the two.
* 29. UNIVERSES REFLECTED
TOP
* a. FLOW
Two lifeless
planets, coldly orbiting,
attracted and
repelled in silent dance
around two lonely
suns, hurtle onward
with their suns
through nothingness,
collide with a
sixteen-pointed star,
cruising too hungrily
to enter Eden.
Blueprinted by a
thirsty Architect,
eighteen sparkling
planets realign.
We have ignition! H2O
is formed.
The flow is fierce,
the tides are strong.
The Artist claps in
glee
as the seething sea
pounds puffing holes.
From its heavings,
from its froth,
live erupts
unstoppable.
* b. EBB
Sea-sculpted from
Easky shale,
pools at the high-tide
mark
swirl, dart-twisted
by stranded fish,
their water of life
break-dancing
to elemental rhythms.
Salty source
and final leveller of
seer and fool,
sea-fields grassed
with bubble-weed and wrack,
sliding ruin of the
careless foot.
Mines of gold and
silver flashes,
crab and shrimp, joy
of urchins
dangling threads for
treasures
and the treasures
released unharmed.
Winkles, algae,
plankton
teem in landlocked
space-time.
Birth-grunts of
dinosaurs imprint
on cliffs and human
stains dissolve
in salt-spray. Water-born
lifetimes
of centuries, years,
seconds,
riff the surface,
sink
like skipping-stones.
But mirrors reflect
the user
and images of glory
reappear.
* 30. EVAPORATIONS ON A
FROSTY NIGHT
TOP
Naked, lying on by
back,
I leave a track in
frosted grass,
a shape like those in
stone
in plundered
Mellifont,
a corpse shape of no
permanence,
for in the morning,
new frost will have
fallen,
all traces of my
passing gone.
Steam evaporates
along my length
into the cloudless
autumn night.
I peer through sweat
and tiredness
into the depths
beyond the Plough.
Distant traffic
growls.
Up there, nothing
seems to move
but the wing-lights
of a jet.
The Club Class are
getting
free drinks from cool
hostesses.
The hoi polloi,
curtained at the back,
go without, or pay.
In my garden I am
free.
Lying in state in an
open coffin of frost,
unmoving but moved, I
hear
the thump of heart,
the russ of leaf,
a distant guffaw, a
dog urinate
against my gate. I
think of mink coats,
leopard skins,
designer clothes;
of electronic dildoes
with timed jets
and latex dolls with
lubricated apertures,
posted in plain brown
paper parcels
to lonely ladies and
gents;
of golden torcs on
wrinkled necks;
of platinum and gem
ironies
on Parkinsonian
fingers;
of an unplaned pine
box
with four top nails
and no nameplate.
I begin to giggle
quietly, then louder
until laughter
becomes hiccoughs
and hiccoughs
involuntary farts,
like those of a
draught-horse forced downhill
by a heavy load. I
become a wolf-howl,
the primal scream
rising with breath and steam
to mingle in the
clean night air,
as incense in a vast
cathedral.
I am acolyte and
thurifer,
idiot child of the
ageing Earth Goddess
and her ageless
Impregnator.
Purged, I shamble
back to sanity -
children's squabbles,
sauna's heat.
Led by a tall
Centurion,
Two columns of
tunicked men,
men of leather and
steel,
were tramping back to
base,
yearning for food and
warmth,
earthy women and wine.
They
tramped the straight paved
road,
heads bent in the
English rain,
shields and spear-tips
glinting,
short-swords slapping
at their sides.
Snatches of song,
curses, jokes
echoed from
cobblestone
into the hostile air.
"Give us a
level lads!".
In the insulated
glass room,
the drummer cracked a
joke
and the band
rehearsed a bit.
The recording light
came on.
The sound-man ran the
sliders;
the cue-man's finger
fell.
Hup... two... three...
four....
Drums and keyboard
thundered;
voices and guitars
screamed out
the pain and
isolation
of the teenage junkie's
hell.
The green light
flashed
at the cymbals dying
ring
and the manager
signalled:
"Got it first
time!".
On seeing the video
replayed,
they grinned in
disbelief:
"were we really
that good?".
The sixteenth
century Manor House
straddled the old
paved road.
The two columns of
tunicked men
marched straight
through the billiard-room,
heads bent as if in
rain,
shields and spear-tips
glinting,
short-swords silent
at their sides,
their lips moving as
if in speech,
ghostly images of men,
once of leather and
steel,
of curses, blood and
passion,
now past all yearning.
* 32. PASSPORT CONTROL TO
NIRVANA
TOP
(I went forward,
passport in hand and stood before the barrier.
At His Buddhic back
lay Nirvana, before Him, the Great Ledger).
"Well, my man,
what have you got?"
"Fire in my
belly, light in my eyes."
"Not enough, my
man.
So have the
struggling millions.
Anything else, my man?"
"I have a dream,
a long-term plan,
the will to make it
work,
balls and brain and
skilful hands
and they act as one.
Let me enter Your
Kingdom."
"Drown your
dream, my man, in tears
or alcohol. It is the
dream
of the doomed Indians
of Amazonia
who dart their meat
in diesel forests,
of dole-queue
wretches signing on,
of freedom-fighters'
manifestos
penned in sacrificial
blood.
Dreams, my man, are
but uprooted trees,
rolling flotsam on
the torrent-waters of the mind.
They have no place in
My Kingdom".
"Very well,
you heartless bastard,
I will dispense with
dreams!
I know nothing worth
the knowing.
I am but a matrix of
minerals
thinly webbed in a
finite pool
of radioactive water,
a tangle of hope and
hopelessness,
a nothing in a sea of
nothingness.
Keeper of the border,
let me pass!"
He stamped my passport and wrote in the Ledger:
| Name: | A.N. Other |
| Specialty: | None |
| Expectations: | None |
| Duration of stay: | Permanent |
Smiling a wintry
smile, He pointed to the barrier.
"Cross once,
anytime you want, unless I call you first."
* 33. CLOUDS (FLIGHT EI-631
TO BRUSSELS)
TOP
It was a peaceful
flight. My heart
sang with questions.
The clouds:
I'd like someone to
explain why clouds
form, roll, line,
puff and sediment on air
like Arctic snow,
pure, crystalline yet not;
why they merge so
peacefully
into the blue beyond,
above the hustling crowds below.
And, as seldom felt
before,
I felt wonder, wonder
like those
who watched Kennelly's
child, the tightrope girl;
we willed her, willed
her, not to fall.
Though I'm a driver
who drives hard,
I felt great peace in
utter no-control
and put my trust in a
pilot never met,
never tipsy with: I
hope
he loves his wife and
she no other man.
Trust is stupid in
our time,
yet so crucial for
our kind.
And now the mental
block: poor Kavanagh,
I see you sit beside
me, stare
out the window into
space when nothing comes.
And then, from
nowhere
Vargas comes, also
never met,
a stranger, colleague,
on the Internet,
who also seeks her
wonder, like the child in me.
I told the story of
the purchased wart,
how 10 pence paid by
neighbour did the trick
when all the other
tricks had failed:
the needle, styptic
stick and the Holy well,
potato juice, dog-lick
and hawthorned snail.
And Vargas trusted
(really not) the Celt to try.
One dollar did I
pledge, half for the neck wart,
half for the armpit
string.
And now I sing aloud
this song of praise,
for on the yawning
aftermorn the Email came,
"Phil, there's
something going on:
neckwart's half its
size, keep going man".
Ah wonder, wonder, I
exclaim
as clouds stream from
my brain
to gently cotton-wool
away the armpit string.
I sense strong musk,
sweet woman perfume
from the forest black
beside the golden breast
(with Vargas for her
name, that has to be).
Now I'm a man at sea
in clouds of mystery
and my Helper,
Wartman, smiles in glee
as fragrant clouds
scud back to him:
Clouds are Wartman's
vital energy.