Dreams, Endings and Disasters

Doc Williams, (nicknamed “Steamboat”) – he could teach.

But how to concentrate on ‘Faustus’, when

through the glass double-doors, beyond our reach

sat Hazel from the Girls’ End, playing Bach.

Remember Hazel? Heavenhazeled eyes,

hair like Golden Syrup, her sure touch

wasted, WASTED! on some baroque dirge

while twenty love-lorns, eager to explore the surg-

ing Terra Incognita of her bust,

hazeled, half-crazed with half-formed Sixth Form lust,

tried to read ‘Faustus.’?  “Westwood!”  “Me sir? Well -

‘Bell, Book and Candle. Candle, Book and Bell,

forward and backward goes Hazel . .’ “Oh hell,

Steamb . . Sorry! Mean ‘Sir’, Sir.” Come, Lustrous! Make

tracks for this fumbling schoolboy’s fiercest ache.

My mouth read ‘Faustus’, but my mind went blank,

apart from Hazel, giving me a - “Thank

You, Westwood. With luck you’ll get an E.”

Hazel completes her Prelude. Book One, in C,

rises, loosens her blouse top button – WOW -

takes a waist-deep, exaggerated bow,

sticks out her tongue – this behind Steamboat’s back.

But we read you, Hazel!  Your brassiere is black.

She stows her music, jams her beret on,

closes the lid, waves, turns - and  then is gone.

Leavers’ service in the paneled Hall.

Fox-trotting Hazel at the Leavers’ Ball,

her dancer’s cheek this close . . . her shoulders bare,

her long, smooth long smooth longsmooth polished hair . . .

“Your playing. Really good!” Callow, I croaked.

“My Bach’s worse than my Bitehoven,” she joked,

and kissed my on my rugby-crooked nose.

“Westy – you’ll be O.K.”  Well . . . I suppose.

And that was that. Goodbye School, Hello Life.

Uni. Job. Twins. Car. Satisfactory wife.

But . . hearing Bach, whose fingers stroked the keys

playing back Faustus, Steamboat, School, to tease . . ?

Years on, I heard she’d had a child.  One day

she slashed her wrists when Steamboat walked away.

Full Circle

It is as you said. The beacon

from the promontory beyond the wetlands

visits your little room and wakes

a shadow dance along the mantle.

A cut flower artless in a jar.  The clock.

A bowl of nectarines.  A snap-shot - you and I

ringed in some distant calendar.

And I,  and you, love, now in this veering light

have come to terms at last,

each by each forgiven and reprieved.

I cannot say how long the pact will keep.

for now trust only that our mood

has turned full circle -  or perhaps

we see where lifetimes of wan hopes 

have run aground.  I will not ask.

I will dim the lamp and watch

your beauty wrap itself in sleep,

beyond the urge of flesh or gravity,

free from your questing fevers.

The forgotten yet familiar makes us weep -

that blemish in the cusp where neck meets shoulder,

eyelids I somehow never quite believed,

the fragment of my name, the way you stir

and turn and like the beam that sweeps the sea,

beckon and pardon us, and guide us home.

An Answer For “No.”

“Milkmaid – lie with me.” 

                                    “Ploughman - dream on!”

“ Bailiff, I saw rude things this morn,

the milkmaid suckling a cow’s teat.

Sure as I’m born, white milk trickled.”

“Milk that stank of  . . ?” 

                                    “Witchcraft?”

“Witchcraft. Thank you, Ploughman.”

“My sweet bewitcher - lie with me.”

“Not you as well!”

                              “My rosebud, peach. . .”

“Hands off now!” 

                               “Suckler . . . I fear

your vileness was observed! Promise

to lie with me or magistrates shall hear

how you sent the ploughman for his frisson

to the horse’s wobbling rump as they turned the sod,

how, calling curses on our living God

you’d strip your girdle off, and give yourself

to joy with goats and donkeys!”

“Sir . . . you do jest! Begone! Such twaddle!

I’m to my milking.”

                                 “Maid, this is not ended!”        

“Well, Master Bailiff . . have you told the town

how Satan’s handmaid rips the hearts from frogs

and compacts these with feathers, which,

fed to young boys would make them daemons?”

“Nods and winks, Lord Justice, nods and winks!

The town smells woodsmoke.”

“Then have the turnkey fetch her. Ensure dry logs.”

“Madam, charges are laid that rest with me.

These can be set aside, and made as nought.

I have that power. Do you but lie with me.

I’d dress you in fine silks and tulle.  You’d live

in Great Hall, take tea with ladies, yours . . .”

“My Lord, what’s that they cry outside?  It sounds

like ‘burn’”

                  “Aye!  Burn the witch. But why,

when to be my wife would save you?”

                                             “Sir, my honour

is with God to give away. Who’ll speak for me?”

“Blameless you’ve no need of defence. Guilty?

No defence could earn your life. Your hope’s in silence.”

“Burn the Witch! Burn the Witch! Burn the Milkmaid Witch!”

“Shut the doors against that yelling. Jurors –

this harlot maid has whored herself with Satan.

One day a black cat’s her Familiar,

next day a raven. Her ilk search hedgerows

for hemlock, monkshood, belladonna. These

they makes ointments of . . whose spelling

lets them ride the air you breathe!”

                                     “Burn! Turn her on the spit!”

“The turnkey swears how in prison

she charmed the sparrows to take crumbs

from her lap, lips, fingers, while from the tip

of all three breasts – poured Satan’s milk!”

“In Christ’s name - burn the Witch!”

“Turnkey, what help? I do so fear the stake.”

“I’ve  nightshade leaves, which, swallowed,

turn torment to dreams and fading breath

before the fetters. You’d see no glowing torch,

nor watch your flesh ravel up like knitting.

Pay me in pleasure, against your dungeon wall.

You shake your head. Hag! Is your maiden hole

worth more than easy death? God damn your soul.”

“Burn the Witch! Save us from Satan’s yoke! Burn her!”

“See her writhe and shriek as they drag her out.

 It’s said if she screams when on the pyre, her soul

 goes with the flames into the fiery Pit.

 Silent, she’ll rise with the rising smoke

 to meet our Maker.  Few that well have died . .”

“Ploughman – the tavern! God alone is satisfied.”



(This poem written with the plight of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani
in Iran in mind)

Sweetheart

Your

sweethheart

was the one

with whom delight

did not spark desire.

There's one such, only one.

After innocence has gone

the next one, and the next, lights fire.

Something you can never catch again

is done.  But your lost sweetheart lingers on.

Just for interest, I have reworked an earlier poem as an ETHEREE

Pearls

 I

found them

one by one.

Cut glass. A chime

of bells. Mists shuffling

in  the sun. Old wood with

scent of lavender. Laughter

where children run. I hoarded them,

unmatched, unlit. And in time you came

to be the thread, the thread to string them on.

Four Cantos on the Island of Salina.

2010

Along with overweight and fast-food boxes,

laughter rotted by drink and sleeplessness,

the trippers bring their mobile jabber  . . ,

“We’re on that beach. Yer know! The one

that’s in that film. An’ d’yer know some tosser

called Neruda? Yeah!  Sprayed on the effin’ cliff!

“Neruda Rules!”  Neruda?  Who’s ‘e play for?”

. . . and never look beyond the frosted glass

that separates these dreary purlieus,

the island’s present, from its past illusions.

“Can’t hear yer for the feckin’ jet-skis.

And feck!  Me signal’s goin’. I’ll call yer back.”

1994

There is no construct “self.”  It’s a conceit.

We choose from fictions that we show each other.

Even the names we use may be unreal . . .

A actor in middle age adjusts his cap, then -

“Pablo . . hold just like that. Take three . . . and . . Action!”

And nothing moves except the shifting sea,

lapping the edge of simulated grief.

Professional, as if he himself had written

Neruda’s Cancion Desesperada,

written of brown limbed children, beloved Matilde

who now must share his artifice of mourning,

wishing – perhaps – love, gratitude and time

had not made them islomanes and called them back.

1950

Most times there is little here but sound.

Sound of the small waves at the water’s rim.

Sound where the wind plucks harp-strings in the grass.

Sound of the church bell calling them to prayer.

And el cartero’s jingling cycle bell.

Was it for such as these Neruda came –

seeking for sounds his questing ear could meld

into his Twenty Songs of Love, his pain?
Or did he hope in exile here to find

something much simpler - peace, wherein to wait,

wait until Chile sought to call him back?

2010

“Needed a piss,but. Gotta betta signal.

Came down the beach a spell. Guess what?

That effin’ spray-can artist’s bin down ‘ere!

Tellin’ it like it is  . . . in green this time,

Colore de esperanza. Can’t clock that!

Some manky dago lingo by the look.

Next bit’s easy.  But why the feck’s he say

“Come back Neruda.”  “Neruda lives, O.K?”

Gloss

Cancion Desesperada,    Song of Despair

el cartero                            postman

Colore de esperanza        colour of hope.