One woman's fact is another man's fiction.
– Lisa Jardine
I am unknown, not forgotten
But erased, no suitor of Penelope,
But her friend and lover. I escaped
The wrath of Odysseus, shrewdest
Of men as he was, and I,
Most gentle, at least in the annals
Of the women of Ithaka in my time.
I defended Penelope's integrity
Against the lechery of Agelaus
And the other murderers whose eyes
Begrimed her unadorned beauty,
Her chiton without golden thread,
Her tresses, by me seen long and
Flowing, to the barbarous consort,
Born to do nothing but eat fruit,
Only the knotted ball of modesty.
She was crafty but pure
In her chastity, true spouse
Of Odysseus, who was not worthy
Of her cold fidelity. To me
She came, just after the sun
Unfurls its roseate fingers
And Hesperus leads the way.
Near a mountain top she found me,
Having come there for once alone,
Not to watch the horizon for the ship,
But to leave everyone, especially
The thoughts and eyes of men.
She was wandering in the grove
Beneath the summit where I sat,
Tuning my pipe to the last light
Next to the spring as pure as she.
I was there puzzling my own fate
In love, finding little comfort,
The only solace afforded me
The slender harmonies of the shade.
She was laughing among flowers
When first I heard her, between
The silences of my long notes of woe.
I will never forget her first words,
‘O why not play the glories of the day
So sweetly you sing its sorrows?'
She pointed to the skies where she stood
In the light, flushed with
An inner glow that seemed the sun's.
My face turned red knowing how
She had heard my unburdening mind.
No further words need be spoken.
She seemed stunned when she saw my look.
Who knew not the beauty of the Queen?
But no one else I knew heard her laugh.
Weeks went by before the time
I journeyed to her house to sing.
Antinous mocked from his couch:
‘What tune can come from this dreg
Of the wood? Where's Metrodorus?'
‘Metrodorus is ill, my lord,
His lyre broken in your games last night.'
So Doracles, true servant to the good,
A source of amity, as he'd prove to me.
That night of distant worlds I sang,
Laboring out the stars anew,
Of faraway oceans and many moons,
Of waves that spill over diamond rocks,
And Astraea's smile welcoming back
All the forlorn of the earth. ‘Beat him
In his fit if he sings that way again
Or better yet, let's make of him
An Orphic stew and feed it to the dogs!'
But I persisted, by my master forewarned.
To Hermes and his love for this
Newest of worlds I turned my mind,
Of his desire for the myriad sea
Where eons of Time churn endlessly,
When the eaters of fruit stood up.
Penelope was on the stairs. The gloom
Of the smoking meats could not conceal
The penetrating gaze of her solemn eyes.
The clatter of voices ceased, and silence
Emerged like a homeless child finally
Allowed to sleep. Only my song
Drifted up towards her as the men
And housemaids watched her with eager
Mouths and eyes. She was listening
To my rhapsody, its final chord
Drifting into the night, into the sea.
Then she turned up the stairs again
When Agelaus spoke. ‘Why not join us?
I have kept the best seat for you,'
Indicating the one next to his by the hearth.
She turned her head down to mute her scorn
For this refined man of Mantineia,
Where Arcadians defamed her Spartan claim
To kinship with the gods through Leda.
She looked up, calm and recomposed,
Looking into his eyes to deter his gaze.
Her words rang out clear and strong:
‘I heard the strange voice lifting up,
Singing of the birth of worlds, and I knew
It must be our bard's protégé. Come forward.'
And so I did, averting her solemn eyes
As I unwillingly stood among suitors,
Barely shod and ragged, just one more man
In a palace of mirrors where all was desire
To behold and feast upon the beauty of her way.
Her words made me lift my head as if law.
‘Well versed and well taught in ancient song
You are, young poet, clad in leaf and sand.
Metrodorus's high praise of you is deserved.
But I would hear once more the sorrows
Of how new worlds begin, the spring
Of sadness and the setting sun. Play on.'
And so I took up her theme that I knew
Secretly acknowledged our meeting in the glade.
First how Apollo and then Pan, I sang,
The universe and all creatures yield
To what even the gods cannot rule,
The lyre and the reed, all song
Out of longing shaped. It drives the sea
And fills the fields with asphodel.
But what makes the swift huntress run
And the lonely moon rise? Different still.
An abundance of streams is the world.
Who can fathom their endless flow?
Daphne and Syrinx are enshrined
In their own virginal powers,
Beyond the arms and eyes of love.
As I sang, she walked up the stairs
Slowly into the dark stars I could not see.
My whole song was her praise under shadow.
Eurymachus was first to break the lull
After song. ‘You have upset the Queen
With your weird words and hymns.
We want festive tunes at a feast,
After all, and you're like a mangy dog.
Stick to the hills, outcast as you are,'
And with that, he struck me with a cup
Of wine, reddening me like a new born.
‘There, now you're fit to sacrifice
To the dancing boy, that faggy god
Thigh-born, your kind loves to invoke.'
Melanthius chimed, ‘Yes, hairy Pan
Better suits him than he does us
Though my sheep would run from his wails.'
‘Leave off this foolery,' Polybus commanded,
‘It's easy to insult a man with a lyre.
Put a sword in his hand and then mock.'
I slipped out into the night, to the star-clad
Cliff where I would find some peace alone,
Watching the heavens descend upon the shore
Of Dulichia across the way.
This hovel had become my home if an exile
Of love and loneliness can speak of such.
For the next few days, I felt justified
In my nomadic state, wanderer
Of the wild shore, sojourner of the woods.
Better to live among the birds and beasts,
Content in what they are, than human animals
Who aspire to be Titans and become insects
Of their own pride, hunger and lust.
Of the lore and life of Linus I sing,
First of the holy sages. His footsteps
Traced through the grove the courses
Of the stars and how all things begin.
His voice calls me from an ocean inside
Though I am unworthy. What choice
Do I have, what other fate can be mine
Since the visions come to me unbidden?
The path is the calling that Linus sang,
His song the open mystery of the wood,
The whole world under heavens
Where stars are leaves and oceans tears
And the child of Love dances among the dead.
Who feels not the miracle of the ever new
In the oldest of forests and the dew
That shines never again the same way twice
And makes life from air, earth, fire and ice?
O Walkers of the flame and of the wave,
Those powers without end, themselves
Maker of the gods! The path is our own
Wherever we roam and the sky's ours
For a day. Such prayer I hope
Advances the ancient way, shadow
Before light, the future come what may.
It was at night beneath the moist stars
Above the sea that she came back to me,
Seeker of my song, lover of my freedom.
A slave in my own eyes, in hers
A portal to the world beyond eyes,
Where she could in solitary walk
Be her own soul in the dominion
Of her hearth. She surprises me
As I leave my hovel in a cave
Above the shore. ‘O Queen,
Why have you come here alone at night?
Where is your escort, Melantho,
And your other maidens? It is dangerous
To be among the dark pine with all those
Suitors of yours pursuing you.'
She is in tears now, her head covered
In the shame and abuse she has suffered
At the hands of men. ‘My father,
Icarius, is sick and dying, and I cannot
Succor him. My own home is lost
To the mob. I walk the night
To invoke Cybele among the firs.
Just let me sit by your fire awhile.'
I am speechless at her being there.
In silence beneath the night
We sit shrouded in the darkness.
I look away to let her be
As she reaches out to still
My hand trembling with fear.
‘You need not be afraid of what I want
Or of what will be said, Archias.
I have come just to seek some peace,
Slipping out down the stairs while they slept.
With my son gone off, I can trust
No one in my own house, but you,
You will lend me an ear, all I ask.
I know of your wisdom in dream lore,
And I have need of your counsel.'
‘My master has doubtless praised me
Beyond my worth, and I am your servant
Who dare not advise you, my Queen.'
‘Just listen to my dream and tell me
What it is the gods would have me do.'
I sit there watching myself
Listening to her as I hover in the air
Hearing the deep tone of her voice
Like a sea gently swelling the night.
‘I see a giant rise above the horizon
Towering up from the land to walk
One step into the ocean. Eagles
Attack his massive head to no avail
For he swats them away. He laughs
As the sun sets, growing higher than ever
Until suddenly he bursts into red sand.
Then a woman comes along the beach
And gathers all the glittering dust
That had been the giant into baskets
She is weaving out of her own hair.
She works and works with eager hands
But she begins to weep, seeing her labor
is endless. The waves bleed red.
I wake, deeply moved by this strange vision
That makes little sense at all
Though it lingers for a week inside
Until another dream, weirder still, comes to me.
Whatever you can make clear, give me.'
‘What little could you make of it?' I ask.
‘Remember your waking thoughts.
What made you feel especially sad?'
‘I felt no grief for the woman and
Certainly none for the giant, but the dream
Disturbs in ways I cannot understand.'
The sea swells beneath us, the crests
Pounding the cliff-side white in frenzy.
A silence follows as I watch the horizon
Where a bird flies downward from the heights.
I think of her great spirit within.
‘Yet, my Queen, from your own mind
Glean the sovereign truth of your fidelity.'
‘This sounds like flattery, Archias.
My title befits me little like a basket
Of my own hair, a crown of sand.'
‘Yes, my Queen, but not inside you
Where you are just, good and wise,
Leading a life of dignity in the midst
Of squalor and the mire of men.
No one can steal your glory there
For that sun and its light is all your own.'
‘But by that cold light it is hard to live
When hearth and home are not your own.'
‘Yet all must crumble into sand, o Queen.
We walk into light curling into the past
Like the foam of the wave receding.
And this is the way, where the bird sings,
Where the pond is too broad to leap.'
‘Yet who is this woman on the shore?
I am not her, grieving for a giant
She cannot hold. And the red waters,
What are they if not the flux of things?
What had once given life in the blood
Returns to the ocean of time inexhaustible.
Each one of us is but a pebble
Though our lives to us seem gigantic.
The basket of life spills out once and forever,
And that is all of eternity we can know.'
‘I see you are wise in fable and lore
And have found the wisdom of the dream.
What is it that you would have of me?
I will do anything to serve you, my Queen,
But how can I possibly counsel you?'
‘You speak of a world always beginning.
I would find some strength in that.'
‘Let me hear the second dream that struck
Your mind like this one, a portent.'
‘Yes, a sign, but not of things to come,
I think, but of the past, the crumbling giant
Of yesterday bootless to weep over.
But in this other dream I feel a mystery.
Listen, o poet, to this marvel of the night.
I am flying in the dream watching myself
Sitting on the roof. The night above me
I have unwoven from the day, both shroud
And sheet, the work of day and night
From my own hands. The flying woman
And the squatting, neither one I am.
I see the horizon like a painting
In a shutter I can close, and so I do.
I walk down a hall I have never seen,
And there are statues in the rooms
But I do not turn to look at them.
They seem everywhere so I hood my eyes.
What others think can turn you into stone.
So that is not my goal. I see a forest
Ahead where there is an opening
Bright in the noonday sun. A stream
Echoes through the woods, drawing me on
Until I come to its dark bank and the light
Of its shimmering rocks. Deer run off
As I enter the stream to drink, the pure
Cool waters enveloping me, the sky
Above dancing like a bird between trees.
I feel delight and joy as I never have before
At the mossy top of a waterfall,
And I am free to sing and laugh.'
Half dreaming this dream again, she turns to me,
As if fallen from a moment's peace, troubled in her gaze.
I look deep into her gray eyes and softly speak.
‘Into the liberty of that place no one
Can enter for it runs off like a deer.
Is this not the way of Artemis?
The very path of her arrow is the purity
Of the moment that will never come again,
Yet it is there we live the body's life alone.
Whatever invades us there will be
Devoured, the just wrath of what we must be,
Our soul immersed but not hidden.
Beware the flatterer and the spy, my Queen,
Be strong against them, the way the goddess
Does to Actaeon first what he would do to her.'
She laughs and after a while retorts,
‘But surely that old myth does not imply
How one must live in the body alone?
It is how women can be strong
In turning the gaze of men back upon them,
To let them be devoured by their own lust.
I have learned that look the hard way.
I am both at the top and the bottom
Of Ithaka, richest of pawns,
Most powerful in my poverty
Where I will learn to live in some peace.
I do not ask for what cannot be.
Let that witch of time turn men to slime
If that is what they will. They can dally
Like statues and blame the gods for their fate.
And their wives can join them too
Hollowed into shells by what they cannot have.
If Odysseus never comes back,
and even if he does, what of my life?
The leaves quiver upon the bough.
The curlew works at what the sea has left.
I cannot stay upon the bank like a stone,
Unable to do what my way decrees.
And it would be wrong to find no joy
In things that must be. That is the wing
That will hold me in place however hard
The path turns in the wood. I need to live
Inside where the forest offers its light
And the stream runs fresh and cool.'
‘And that is the moment of the kairos,
My Queen, the dancing child of the universe
That forever must laugh, or we die.
But what is it that you would know from me?
You draw wisdom from your dreams
Better than anyone I have known.
My mind can be no more than mirror
To your own and say what you have said.'
‘What I need from you, you have given already,'
And with that, she kisses my forehead,
And then my lips, and we float
Into sleep above the shore. This story
Of our care may unravel the legend
Of what has been formed out of its erasure.
Penelope was as free and strong as her mate.
And she taught me much about the world.
Be faithful to yourself, the true spring
Inside, and feel what it is to be chaste
Whether woman, man or beast.
And so Artemis and Aphrodite can hold hands
And Hephaestus and Ares too, their weapons down,
And Strife from the wedding kept, with her silly gold ball.
What happened to me upon her husband's return,
You might ask, if you can still consider
My tale worthy of your mind? I knew
How Aegisthus fought the Argive King
Who tried to kill his wife for having a lover
Though he had his Briseis as concubine.
And the horror that Orestes then faced
When out of conflicting laws no man can solve,
He felt he had to kill his own mother.
I would not have Telemachus destroyed
Or Odysseus burn his own house down.
For who can rule the freedom of the kiss?
Spite and rage follow in its wake
And crash upon a lonely shore.
As for my beloved, my Penelope,
Queen of my heart forever, she
Gave herself back to the sailor of fate
Whom the poet of heroes praised.
But even the Myrmidon with the demon
in his chest would not have died
had it not been for that malice
that showed up at a wedding feast.
Love is stronger than the war its loss brings.
And is not bliss once gone more desired still?
So Penelope became Muse to my songs
of lovers, how Paris was forced to steal
The woman of his dreams when Aphrodite swayed.
Who knows what the gods condone in the dark grove
when they themselves have succumbed?
And how lovers will find each other trembling
with that touch more sweet when secret
no matter how would-be masters peep and rage.
Of Helen too I sing, cousin of my beloved,
Who went off with the shepherd prince,
one eye in joy, one in sorrow, for she knew
The chaos that love would have her make.
And the sacred three who claimed the fruit
Eris plucked from her tree of hate,
Were victims of their own envy and scorn,
The dross left behind when love's not golden.
Even Zeus could not settle the matter square.
Above all, who wants that hag Strife at a wedding feast?
And yet there she is – in our obsession to own.
No matter our will, fortune's wheel
gives way to necessity's spindle.
Even the gods cannot seal the book of fate,
Return the wave or unchop the tree. This is why
Love cannot be forced for it chooses us,
In a whir of wings, in the arc of an arrow.
Its nature will out however pent up,
For she will deliver her babe anew.
And so I left Ithaka, even though
I knew he did not love her the way I did,
The reason why I do not hide my head in shame.
I continued in the path of Linus
And sang in many a land and isle
How Hermes is in love with the world
And out of longing makes eternal song.
This is the way of the ocean and the bard,
Her poet, whose heart and eyes cannot falter
As long as hers are in the world.
I swear you can see
By starlight
Looking straight into the night
Above a river.
I swear you can walk
The air that sways the bridge
And lift above the stream,
Never to be seen.
Come and join me here,
In the rain of the forest
And the suns inside the dew.
What are the woods without you?
And if you think time holds still
Waiting for your silent footfall
Across the moonlight over the stream
Where I lie awake with the owl,
What do you make of a flower
Not to smell it until tomorrow
When heaven would have taken its due
And the best has been lost to the wind?
When he enters the town–
Is it Jerusalem?
With thorns stuck sharp in his crown,
spare a thought for his ass.
When he crosses that bridge
all the light bulbs explode–
even the one in the fridge,
in a splintering rain.
An atheist half-Jew
and a sceptic too,
I know squat about JC,
but I remember that donkey,
all sweetness and bite.
Bottoms up and etwas Sachertorte all round;
Just a raw carrot for me, said Zarathustra,
from the high moral ground,
sitting there with flypaper
waiting for his ideas to stick.
A Ladybird.
The first book I ever bought
was hardcover
Ladybird
called Ned, The Lonely Donkey.
That would be Der Einsam Esel in German
the language of Nietzsche,
who made his own sensibility the measure of all things,
and spoke about himself in the name of Zarathustra.
I've always had a thing about donkeys–
and so it seems, does Zarathustra
like Ned
leaves home in search of friends.
Guided by the twittering wisdom of an owl,
Ned tries a number of alternate lifestyles,
until 52 pages later,
Ned, the lonely donkey finds happiness
with Timothy, the lonely boy.
It takes Nietzsche 297 pages to walk off into the sunrise.
You can hear a donkey's hee-haw
over 3 kilometres away
or so they say.
The First World War depended on the mule.
Since then, various politicos have tried
to pin the Aussie values tail on Simpson's donkey,
a beast
by the name of Duffy.
Saint Francis, Aesop, Sancho Panza
Winne-the-Pooh, George Orwell, jackets and work
associate all with Equus asinus.
Ditto King Midas of the golden touch
in another myth
Pan and Apollo have a musical play-off
the judge says Apollo's the winner
Midas says no
so Apollo gave him donkey's ears.
Midas tried to hide them under a steep-sided hat
but his barber knew
and his barber knew
he was a chatterbox
so he dug a hole, whispered the secret into it,
and layered earth
over the top.
From this spot within a year
sprouted reeds that murmured:
Midas has the donkey's ear–
each time the north wind blew.
Then there's Chesterton, G. K.
with his blood-moon moments
of anti-Semitism
critics say we should understand
in the context of his time–
and his time was the nineteen-20s and 30s
and they were nasty times
to be a Jew.
After Ned
I read
Robinson Crusoe,
the story of a lonely man.
Jesus meanwhile has got off his ass
and is doing something
with the chickens that count
the horse in midstream
and the fish
in the plentiful sea.
Nietzsche is the man who said
God is dead
Which makes Jesus just another random bloke.
Nietzsche is the man who said
Get a-head
Be an Übermensch
Change the light-bulb, get the joke.
Last night Googling around
I hit the wrong key
missed the donkey
and ended up at Lego For Adults:
How to build a working gun with Lego.
I'm not kidding.
Bang, bang–
You're dead
God is dead
but Zarathustra is still talking
the hind leg off the proverbial.
I picture him scrawny and stoop-shouldered,
sharp nose and not much face below.
Nature made her point
then lost interest,
leaving his face to dribble
back into his neck.
His favourite sound is the gasp
as the rubber lips of the fridge door unstick.
He leans into its cold air
and there's his hairy ass …
and the carrot at the wrong end of the donkey.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
Walt Whitman, 'Song of Myself'
1
Wading. Wading is itself a dying skill,
but fishing and wading through a hollow,
with the sun assaulting from above and below,
with the river just touching at the neck?
This is an heroic polaroid – snap it,
snap the boy as he holds his ground
against the surge of north-bound water.
Capture his surprise – the situation,
the regression of environmental flows
to the echoes of green torrent and flood –
to find himself wading, not half an hour
from greener playing fields, shopping-towns,
nipple-deep in a real gouge, an honest-to-goodness river.
Don't shoot the fight with quiet fish –
the inevitable fight, tangential drag.
Immortalise instead the coin of shadow.
Catalogue a moment of stand-and-stare,
when a soul blinks, stifles a metallic laugh,
seeing, in an eddy, the quietest pocket of himself,
surrounded on all sides by the liquidity of rage.
2
When the Titans tackle bags of sand,
lit by improbable lights, when the stadium
is quiet, and the peakhour Thursday night
traffic flows around a roundabout like the river
does around an abandoned car, our Odysseus
stands still.
Bearing the leaves of fried chicken boxes at his feet,
absorbing in his stance the tremors of nightly news,
holding off the song of Cleopatra's special feature,
he stands, not even wading, as a whole suburban citadel
sinks around him; the flood of Interest Free!,
the torrent of pornography licking at his thighs.
3
Before the scouting geologists and the thrum
of a swarm's construction, Warragamba
was an unassuming river. Like the Coxs,
the Nattai, Wollondilly and the Kowmung,
it squirmed and threw its back through green
ruffles and orange biscuit crust, unseen
by the families coughing out their little grids
in the arid valley.
Odysseus was christened
a day before the dam, as the river split like fruit,
and Burragorang Town broke its waters
and the coal mines became green fingers,
stiff with the dead silence of drowned work.
4
The valley of his youth is going slowly bald,
so the frigid hero feels ill at ease in a garden
so overgrown and dewy.
The evening yawns.
The barbeque smoke blues over sweetpea vines
and a cattle dog chases its tail on wet grass.
The night is a car park. His whole world, a carpark –
bitumen night
sprayed with gummy stars and shooting durrie butts.
If he could just stand long enough, until
this beer shrunk in sun, until the river rose,
until the coin of shadow swelled to take it all –
‘Turn the music up!' someone yells,
‘The party's only just now getting started.'
5
When planning to build a dam, it's standard practice
to test a scale model in an industrial centrifuge.
The forces brought to bear are the same ones
that tear blood cells from viscous blood plasma.
That the wall will fail is never at issue.
Instead it's Chronos ‘gainst the clock. The spin –
the same lame trick Superman pulled in sequel –
skips the best bits of a wall's short life, speeds,
slows at a crow's feet fissure, groans and
stops
when Jupiter booms ‘Enough!' and cleaves it through.
6
The high street brims with cotton-sack people,
and Odysseus stands
with Telemachus at the traffic lights. The green,
the red. The nearly dead pedestrians swell at the weir,
waiting, then wading through the road, to the shops.
The orifices of shopfronts, closed and opened,
closed again – tobacconists, gift shops and butchers –
give the street slack-mouth, like a row of carny
clowns switched off, ready for transportation.
Telemachus looks up – the bright, bright sky a lure –
and catching his father's face by accident,
asks with his quiet screen-burned eyes,
‘what does my shirt mean?'
7
A pair of black cockatoos chase a skywriter to the east,
and Odysseus,
still standing in the street,
thinks of Penelope – her sleeping, mountainous waist,
the deep water of her early morning skin.
8
Silence
rends the shopping mall, turns the spruiker stony.
Somewhere distant, concrete girders shatter.
Complication, like a deluge fans across the plain.
Hot signs hiss.
Lost children look to their palms
for answers. The railway station chimes for a train.
The Titans retreat to their world of entertainment,
leaving thick boys to cry on the distant shore.
Frantic tweenies turn in tightening circles,
chasing chimeras and High School Musicals.
Odysseus stands smiling in his river.
He called it with his quiet,
and it came.
At the heart of this respectable city
is some filthy secret.
I know it.
I can see it in the dark glint of the river
in the evening
from the railway station
where I sometimes wait on a cold platform
for a late train to take me somewhere else.
It never comes.
It will never come.
I know it now.
He who brought me to this city
ripped my heart out
ripped my pure and loving heart
out of my bruised chest.
He took the best of me.
He knows it
but he pretends
with all the other weak pretenders
that it's all right
everything is fine, everything is fun
everything is carnivale
like the giant ferris wheel
whose skeleton is filling up
a part of the evening sky
where the stars once had a place.
It is as if there needs to be a show
for everyone to be distracted from the space
where the real wheels are turning
and Jason and his circle of assassins
make their killings.
When I met him in my own country
he was a beautiful thief in the night
adventurer and sailor
smelling of salt and sex
a secret foreign scent in a place
where my senses had arrested
and my own beauty was wasted on old men.
He came and took what he had come for
and then he took me.
In that order.
In the order that I failed to see
and then became accustomed to
as we do
when we place ourselves
somewhere on the lower rungs
of someone else's ladder.
And he was climbing high
believe me
ambition was the hot flame
that I mistook for passion
in his cool eyes.
He was a wheeler and a dealer of bad hands.
I should have seen
how he operated in my country
in my poor country
where all the important deals are made
by foreigners like him
and all the important foreigners
are aided and abetted by monsters
and by dupes like me
and everything is made legal
in clean documents, suspiciously sparse
and written mostly in English
which is the tongue of international business
more than it is the language of poetry.
In my country
where the belief in poems is still strong
and the language fairly chokes on images
I imagined him a poet, a balladeer.
Not a racketeer.
Not the kind of man
to use you.
I listened to what I thought was his song for me
and I surrendered my inherited resistance
to the siren song of strangers
and I was moved
to betray my own fatherland
and my father
and my blood
to be one with him –
the smiling, wealthy, worthless
Jason.
Now I sit in this vast ugly house
in an affluent and vulgar suburb
where he has put me
and his children
so that we are respectably out of the way
while in the very centre of the city
at its very core
where respectability does not count
so much as money
he and his hip-swinging harlot
play their games
force their way to the front of fashion
dance the dance with the rich and famous
shove their faces into photographs
like pigs into a trough
and then to hide their vomit
throw around the stardust
of the glittering gold
that he and his brutal buddies
have fleeced from my country.
Blood money.
My blood
and blood that runs through the veins
of his children.
This little matter
he has overlooked.
Poor Jason.
Poor filthy rich Jason
cannot see where his betrayals have been leading.
Jason my husband
in case you haven't noticed
I am bleeding.
I am bleeding.
Alone again, she strains to push the too-heavy door shut.
It shouldn't be open. Why is it? Her neighbour's
nowhere to be seen, though the car's in the drive,
there are playing cards laid out on the table.
That night she watches the man next door
through binoculars. Her own husband
ridicules her suspicions. Aliens, he says,
not murder. It's the last thing you'd suspect, after all,
though it happens every day somewhere in the world.
She plucks a sliver of glass from her toe, but there's nothing broken
to explain it. She finds a key without a lock.
Steam from the bathroom. What lurks there, hidden
in the tub? The bath is full, but never filled.
She pulls the plug and screams
as the water sucks and whorls.
Psychiatry's the answer, they decide. She must be mad.
Fragile, let's say. Hurt somehow. To find out why
will solve all mysteries and rid their home of its ghost.
When talk effects no cure, she consults the spirits.
Darkness falls. The door creaks open
and in plods the family pooch. Such disappointment!
Such relief! Day follows day. She is too much alone
in the cold, blue house. The noises come again, and steam.
She rubs it away to show her own reflection
everywhere. Turning back, she finds the dead have scrawled their pleas
and accusations on her mirror. She flees.
Her husband thinks she resents him. (It's all about him, he thinks
− they always do, don't they? And she probably does
resent him – who wouldn't?) Back to the shrink,
since she accused her neighbour of killing his wife,
who promptly appeared, quite alive, at his side.
(It's all about couples and absences, those left behind. Was there once
a child?) There is a missing girl. The story of her disappearance
tumbles from its hiding place behind her husband's photograph.
(Which is telling, don't you think?) She believes
she has found her ghost. Her husband, of course, is furious. Don't talk to me
about ghosts! She won't be moved. Research leads her
to the missing girl's kin. (I'd like to go to bed,
but could I sleep not knowing
who the murderer is? I hunger
for the final twist that pulls all loose strands
taut and gives a meaning to all this suffering and confusion.
− I think her husband killed the girl! She suffers,
is haunted because she's the killer's wife!
Joined to his guilt by bonds of matrimony,
she now pays penance for her partner's crime,
must seek justice for the one who was wrongfully slain.)
Possessed, she tries to seduce him with her dangerous love,
then suddenly remembers all: his affair, how
she discovered them together in their house, her nearly fatal accident
soon after, in fact, attempted suicide. (Is that it, then?
The haunting: was that in fact no more
than the slow and painful re-emergence of buried truths?)
She returns to him in sleeting rain. The power's off.
He doesn't answer. The bath! He's in the bath!
Nearly shocked to death, an accident it seems,
but the power cut out just in time. (Those safety switches
really do save lives!) She thinks the dead girl's ghost
is trying to kill her husband. He claims she'd threatened
to kill herself, or to kill his wife, and then just disappeared.
(I don't believe him.) Together they burn
a lock of the dead girl's hair to break the spell.
She hugs her instrument, the gift she gave up
to be his perfect wife. But she forgives him finally.
And then the key – remember the key without a lock?
− falls from her robe, chimes like a tinkling bell
against the bathroom tiles. Now she must find out
where it fits (it will destroy her, destroy them).
She finds the box in the mud of the lake's bottom
at the end of the pier. The dead girl's necklace is inside.
She knows now. He denies it, claims
she killed herself, he merely disposed of the body,
tipping it from the bridge into the lake's dark heart.
On his knees he pleads. Forgive me!
Exhume her, she replies. Bring her into the light.
He phones the police and goes upstairs to change.
She's wearing the dead girl's necklace
when she follows him upstairs. She finds the phone he used
and not trusting, presses redial, gets only Information.
Now he must kill her too. He goes to work
quickly, without sentiment, without hesitation.
But before the final blow can be landed, he talks
and talks, confessing all, blaming her
for all his dreadful crimes. (Oh, yes. If only she'd been
a better wife!) He carries her to the bathtub. (All roads.
He will drown her, or she will survive by killing him. To come:
only the desperate and unlikely acts of the finale.)
He sees she wears the dead girl's necklace.
That won't do. Bending to pluck it from her neck,
he catches a flash of the dead girl's face, blue and swollen and changed
by the waters of the lake − panics, slips, cracks
his skull on the bathroom sink, and ingloriously
falls down dead. (Most accidents happen in the home;
most murders too.) Those spidery fingers crawling
to the lip of the tub are hers. His body, though,
isn't where it should be. He's downstairs, playing dead
or slowly dying. She's outside in a flash
with the keys to the truck, and off down the dark road
to the bridge (the bridge!). He's in the back, of course.
And so it goes, until in the final irony
he is drawn down to his watery grave by
the dead girl's ghost, rising from the depths of the lake
to grasp her revenge and free the woman
she once usurped. The torment is over.
She is beautiful again. A red rose on her tombstone signals peace
and time for bed. Matrimony has its dangers,
professors can be cads and monsters, and
two good women − one dead, one living – prevail
against one evil man. A balance is restored
for now at least. Tomorrow new crimes will howl for justice.
Until then, sweetheart, simply sleep.
Stop wheels
Hector's hurting
Priam cries
Dusty from playing in the yard Hector
Astyanax wails
Faint Andromache
Hecuba lactates
On Hecuba's weeping breasts
Rest Priam's drooping cheeks
Whose guts
Garland the dogs of Troy
Not Patroclus'
Intact elevated
Body feted
A high friendship keeps you
In good stead
Your funeral games over now
Release Achilles Release Hector
A man who grieves for a boy
Must have a soft spot
A man Hephaestus shields
Must be made of flesh
His heels I'll cuff with my wrists
His knuckles I'll press my lips
Here salute the roaming stars and stripes,
here we admit we, too, are implicated
(so galling) in this?
She'll be right types
may have no doubts which need be placated,
but we must feel there is something amiss
with the history & circumstance bit;
which, of itself, cannot explain this.
Our abject fawning, we mean. It
is a given.
We, of course, deplore
lapses―but theirs, when you come to it,
are those of gods! A shared past, en rapport…
That seems only partly adequate
the longer we ruminate. That contrary
our claims won't matter one shit more%0
The sky is raining
clouds and medication
morning is broken
only 2 megs remaining
I must write away
Belmont Chevron 18.02
Pacific Power 49.59
Aero Sanitary 41.95
North West Natural 32.41
(BandAid Medical 422.02)
(BandAid Dental 63.61)
Ambient Properties 700 bucks
Belmont Chevron 22.02
Protection Services 92.85
Portland City Water 148.34
(BandAid Medical 422.02)
(BandAid Dental 63.61)
I must write away
Belmont Chevron 27.05
(BandAid Medical 422.02)
(BandAid Dental 63.61)
Ambient Properties 700 bucks
I must write away for a 20-dollar
The idea of America is a mail-in rebate
The idea of America is a flickering screen
The idea of America is a toy from China
The idea of America is a gaping warehouse
The idea of America is a condo conversion
The idea of America is no work forever
The idea of America is camouflage gear
The idea of America is go-go-go
The idea of America is a medevac liftoff
The idea of America is a burning jungle
The idea of America is an empty sky
The idea of America is death in the desert
The idea of America is an automatic weapon
The idea of America is urban warfare
The idea of America is fighting for crumbs
The idea of America is justice denied
The idea of America is a mechanized wheatfield
The idea of America is a free-floating billboard
The idea of America is to steal what you rescue
The idea of America is a sunset to ride to
The idea of America is only one limousine
The idea of America is its own 5th Amendment
The idea of America is a helicopter thwopping
The idea of America is Special Forces now
The idea of America is an airborne disease
America's the other side of the wind.
My father worked at General Motors
1938-1966.
He retired after 28 years.
The previous 10 had been spent in the Great Depression
no work, little work, fear.
So far I've worked 36 years
(2008-1971-1)
But my father worked 30 hours/week
And I work 40.
So for every 4 years my father worked
I've worked 5 (since coming to the States)
(2008-1982)/4 = 6.3 + 26 = 31.3
So altogether I've worked
(1982-1971-1)
(1 = p/t, looking for work, etc.)
+ 31.3 = 41.3 years
and I have to work another 10
(= 12.5 barring death)
= 53.8
I want to devour the midnight and the morning.
I want the creaminess of cloud.
I want the secret life of flames.
I want to be a Chinese punk
spiky black hair & singlet & jeans
cigarette & swagger
I want to strike sparks from concrete
kick holes in the horizon
break the neck of Heaven
I don't want a job.
I want a future.
The arrival of the monsoon―
warring tribes forced south
the black-back frogs returned.
She heard the rounded cluck
of their swollen throats.
Jade slippered-feet
down eighty-nine steps
the heat of the day
still on the temple wall.
Then the light, the light,
the holy light
flaming the valley
silenced frogs all at once
struck Fu Bao
out of abstraction
a luminous sting
circling from behind
the throne of seven stars
white light that broke
into pieces
and travelled the ground
to charge at corpuscles
charging like Henan stallions
rearing up, arrived soft-hoofed
at the stable door
of her blood chamber.
She collected only red and
white stars that night
threaded them loosely
around her waist
felt them reach up
for her breast, down
to the tiger grotto.
First month―
The seamstress teased
insisted she would stitch
Fu Bao's eyes closed
if she did not
dream of dandelions
taken to the sky
by a benevolent wind.
Second month―
The wild-storm girl with
bleeding gums whispered
pluck the blue feathers
of kingfishers
weave them into a seal
the shape of peach flowers.
Live in a quiet residence
undisturbed by males.
Third month―
For a son
practice shooting arrows
an old woman's counsel
smooth river-rocks falling
from her apron
offered as apples.
Fourth month―
Unknown woman;
do not eat rabbit.
Fifth month―
The widow who beat
her daughters said
stay away from strangers.
Sixth month―
All the nodding bent-double
field-women agreed that
to make the child's spine strong
go to the country side
and look at wild horses.
Seventh month―
Insistent, her mother
would not let her bathe
in the morning under
dripping eaves
in her qing-blue tub
or at any time.
Eighth month―
She was told
by the six-nippled fox
who surrendered the family's chickens
avoid grimacing
or shouting.
Ninth month―
When the melon is ripe
it will fall off the vine
sung her grandmother
like a yellow bird
as she snuffed
the evening candles.
Lei Zu never saw the mountain
open its twilight belly
to release the firebird into the sky.
They said that giant creature
with her grandfather's brow
wings like a horizon cloud
tail of spinning planets
eyes of winter sun
sent from heaven only
in times of greatest fortune.
It hovered the valley
above her ancestor's fields
as she peered into the throat
of a snow-bud
tiny horns rearing back
to slap a late-summer missile
onto a bee.
A fisherman said
the bird visited the river
to slake the bell flowers
of honeysuckle
that ignited the embankment.
Flowers, wind-loving
in the last gloaming light.
She noticed their pink-quiver
their swollen skirts.
And how all flowers
appeared as virtues
peonies in faithful sway
the wu-wei of dragonheads
violet-hued rehmannia and the courage
of their blood-quickening tubers
clustered, dusk-spells
in meadow grass.
The first time the bird appeared
did she ask how much of life
is spent in waiting?
as it landed silent
on the empress tree
displaced two leafs
goose-breast almost reachable
seemed to blow away the clouds
enough fading sun
to brighten up
the gaps between its feathers
a repousse of cerulean
unfaded reds, bijou ochres
beyond her acquaintance
of colour or form.
Then it was gone.
Her betrothed smiled
as Lei Zu's story panted its drama
from beautiful spaces
between her lips
like the plum-blossom
he saw that day
taken by the wind
graceful, announcing
its own history.
Was it a hand that released her sash
or the wind that swept it eastward?
It fell like a snake
landed like an arrow aimed at the river.
Did her gown open in its own time
or did the peaks of her breast-points swell
to breathful bounty, that all clothes
became possibly impossible?
His fingertips like butterfly antennae
lifting in plucked suspension
considered all surface options
testing the layers outside of thought.
On a leaf above, one worm
a winged-cloud stuck in its throat
cocked its head, praised her behind its eye
yet the mystery of adoration
too difficult for the air of its short life
returned to its patch.
It took four seasons of waiting
before the catkins' spores
quick-shot faster than a trilling flute note
to thicken the air, swirling
as if discharged by
the pulse-beat of bodies,
dust-motes unpressured
in an uninstructed breeze.
That day it was said
an unceremonious cocoon
fell into her teacup opening its twine
to find her finger,
a billowing strand trailing
from a chrysanthemum sea
―a song for her emperor―
thread-written on blue sky
Like a night jar, I tremble in flight
follow a stream from Kunlun mountain
to the dark river's mouth
I ask the dawn hidden in reeds
to renounce honour
withhold its flame to keep you here.
What was the sun's collaboration?
Only the hearsay of doves
on a mulberry bough
doves that refused gossip,
yet Lei Zu stitched their beaks
on his battle coat
her visionary silk-armour,
to madden
the four-headed stone-eating beast.
Delphi, one of the oldest sacred sites in Greece,
includes rebuilt Temples to Apollo and Athena.
The 2500-year-old retaining wall has withstood two
earthquakes which demolished all surrounding buildings.
Pale stones, dark-rimmed, limestone edges pressed together,
a cushion of air between. Pocked with age, the slabs interlock
for strength, connecting space to absorb history's blows: earthquakes
and other vandals. The wall is a document in stone two metres high,
thirty metres long, outlasting parchment or vellum.
Two fault lines run under the site; the wall remains.
Shapes of words imprint stone like fossils, chiselled in small square script,
more beautiful than lichen. Stories are patient,
silent until we are ready for them.
What is strength? Perhaps the names keep the wall standing;
one thousand ex-slaves
and the nobles who relinquished them into the hands of the god.
The swaddled stele lies on the bed of the cart, delivered to the estate
by the mason. We carry the headstone as we carried the old lord's body,
shrouded for burial, three slaves to each side; small, slow steps.
The young lord directs us under the lintel, into the men's chamber.
We rest gravestone on trestle, peel cloths. Dust from the journey
flurries in late light. The line is true; the old man's craggy face,
looking sideways into forever. Grapes on the vine, his walking staff.
Only in stone now; there was never a day without him looming
in grove and vineyard, busy with livestock. Bitterness rises like bile.
My father was one dead slave among many, never remembered on stone.
His name and liberty taken, though he was scholar
from a noble Persian house. War overtook him en route to Athens.
He should have been lauded at the Academy –
not captured as war-spoil; a chattel-slave sold at auction.
War takes all the seeds of the future – the mighty and the humble.
The young lord dismisses us, stays with the gravestone of his father.
Fear passes like a baton in the games; shepherds, grove workers and domestics
whisper it along. Will we be sold at auction? The desk where I tutor, stylus
and writing tablets, will all these, even my own self, pass from one hand to another?
Will it be a better hand? Before the old man died
the young one returned home from Athens, with news from the polos.
Decades-long the bloodshed, then war with Sparta paused.
Into that peace like birdsong into morning, the voices of the brave ones dawned.
Lycophron, Alcimadas; the whole School of Gorgias causing tumult.
They challenged Aristotle's claim that slaves were living tools,
property to be used at will. Stalwart against wrath, they urged
freedom for slaves, saying foreigners were not barbarians,
Greeks could learn from us.
But Aristotle argued louder, his word had the crowd.
What I would give to see the rebels best him in debate!
The young lord returned on fire.
Is he made of more than words?
The old master's son sends riders to call slaves back from grove and pasture.
We're gathered as at harvest festival, but uneasy, in the atrium.
Food is laid and jugs of wine. What are we to celebrate?
We're restive as a flock when strangers pass through.
Autumn, end-of-day sun pours honey-coloured light over us;
it blesses us when his news may not. Harvest-time will be soon,
already the grapes fatten. All that was husbanded in his father's time
is nearby; the storeroom with crocks of honey, amphorae of grain and wine,
olives in brine. Cloths of sheep cheese and strings of dried figs.
We never lacked in food. I saw other slaves when I went with the broker
while he sold olives – so thin; they kept their eyes down, cringed.
Some bore welts where skin had been opened by whip or knife.
Our master didn't use weapons but often raised a hand.
Short on patience, rage at mistakes and slowness;
life was misery for some.
I'm not grieved to see the old man gone.
We fall silent as the new master walks out through the colonnade,
his robes dyed black for grief.
He stands – a pillar between heaven and earth, bows before the altar,
lays an olive branch heavy with fruit.
The mistress follows, places the bowl of oil. We drop to our knees,
children hushed. His lips move in prayer to Athena and sun-bright Apollo.
Our lips form the same shapes. Many minutes pass with only the coo- coo
of doves in the cote. He is rising: this is your home; always a roof, food.
His held-up hand gives pause. Are there are to be conditions?
Those of you who wish it, he says, I will release into Apollo's hands.
No-one moves, says a single thing. Moments pass before I hear words again;
… always my dream to set right what was wrong. To each who wants,
a pony and purse of drachma. Or you can stay here as free folk.
Marry, raise children with mine. He is fired with enthusiasm,
wants us free! Someone is already pouring wine.
All I can do is drink and hope to swallow his news.
I never thought he had this in him. Talk it over with your loved ones,
he says, no small detail to decide overnight.
Take your time and we will speak again.
Meanwhile, come eat with me and my kin.
I am to be freed? It hardly seems possible.
My master, he has never more deserved the title than now, in its relinquishing.
Only a handful of us, the hardy ones, decide on freedom.
The rest wait for news. Our carts sway and buck
in wheel ruts like coracles in water. The roads are safe,
for now, no strife from Sparta for months.
Dust covers everything like a pelt. We talked of nothing but freedom
along the plains from the coast; now grit closes our mouths.
Near to towns plane trees arch the road give momentary shade.
Signs of the gods abound. Athena's silver backed olive leaves flash
in the sun, Demeter's green gown is lush in pasture and crop.
My master Demetrius – I must practice saying his name – is named for her.
Three carts and a team of oxen ship us to Delphi. We carry his father's
grave marble and votives for the temple. When night covers us
in dark cloth, Demetrius sleeps in the taverna, we slaves in a shepherd's hut.
Like an underground watercourse, we hear taverna-talk of freed slaves
running furtive under discussion of crops, yield….
many fear reprisals.
Once I accepted the given as ordained. But if Apollo can receive us
into his hands, what's ordained about slavery?
Walking unravels knots;
limbs, spine, thoughts begin to loosen from confinement.
Walking my way to freedom.
Imagine a statue; a figure emerging from stone.
The front is already chiselled free, arms reaching into open space,
chest bared to air. But behind is still imbedded,
still buried shoulder deep in stone. Worse than an ankle gripped
when you want to run. Worse than trying to pull free
from the suck and lock of mud. No matter how hard the struggle
it's not force that will part this back from rock.
That's me, a figure half way out of bondage.
how will I account for myself in the world?
Never been alone abroad or handled my own coin.
There's security in stone, bulwark against life's shocks.
I have taken the purse and the pony will be given me at Delphi.
I have taken the decision, but I'm still thinking like a slave.
We climb Parnassus. Delphi's temples cling to the mountainside.
Our wheels seem hardly to turn – I feel like an ant labouring.
The oxen heave. Walking between lead animals
I grip neck ropes with both hands, as if to haul them bodily.
My arms ache from the effort, but effort makes me stronger.
Turning the final corner, I glimpse the marble of Athena's Temple;
bone-white against the green of foliage, round like a hearth
columns rising vertical as pines, summit crowned in cloud.
My head spins – the audacity of coming so close to the Gods!
People from all over mill on the road waiting for the Priest.
Dull bell-metal rings from round the necks of tethered creatures,
echoes into the valley – the familiar sound makes me feel at home.
Delphi, the navel, Omphalos.
* *
It's no small thing to be given to a god. First, bathing in the Springs.
Never before allowed to kneel under that torrent,
but years back I dried the old man when he came
before making offerings. I tuck my votive into the niche
then step down into cold. Water roars from the lions' mouths,
cleanses spirit as well as body, pummels doubt away.
Demetrius bought Metic's clothes for each of us;
the garments and sandals of free men.
My chiton and mantle are newly made. I didn't know what dignity
came from robes which cover your knees.
Fasting and prayer are night-long in the athletes' dormitory.
After travelling I crave sleep but fall deep instead into fears,
worrying when I should be praying. I hope the god will forgive me.
Should I return to the estate with Demetrius?
Or head straight to Athens? Such a pull to the capital;
plenty of work for scribes, I'm told.
And what of Persia – do relatives survive?
People who knew my father? Am I bold enough for travel?
I wrestle with choice; it takes til morning to decide on Athens –
perhaps some of the others will choose it too.
* *
New day comes mountain-crisp, pale in the sky
like the blue of alpine flowers. Apollo's precinct is huge.
Sheep and goats bleat in the forecourt; resist handling and stamp
the marble with their hooves. Attendants tie the ceremonial ribbons.
They calm the animals; lead them in procession to the sanctuary
of sun-god Apollo. Sun spills like liquid on the altar-stone.
The Priest is good with the knife and quick.
Animals fall surprised not afraid; a whole flock to please the god!
Their sacrifice takes all morning. We leave votives from the home forge,
and drachmas. The carcasses are taken to prepare for feasting.
Now it us our turn at the altar. No knife this time, just the Priest's warm hand
of blessing on our heads. He offers us to Apollo, bids him give us care.
Outside the temenos we rejoice, loud with joy. Embraces are tight enough
to crush olives. There aren't words enough…
now I can choose a name, wear clothes of the free-man, travel, marry.
But this isn't close to what it means to call my life my own.
I know fear will return. For now, though, I am strong…
I think of my father, ex-slave son to slave father;
offer silent pleas to Apollo that my parent knows what dignity
was returned to us this day. One final task remains
before we can slake thirst and feast on haunches of sheep and goat.
We go to the mason's stoa, watch him scratch our details on a tablet.
Later he will carve our names on hexagonal wall-stones, for all to see;
Demetrius, son of Demetrius, gives the slave Theo into Apollo's hands.
Pale stones, dark-rimmed, limestone edges pressed together,
a cushion of air between. Pocked with age, the slabs interlock
for strength, connecting space to absorb history's blows: earthquakes
and other vandals. The wall is a document in stone two metres high,
thirty metres long, outlasting parchment or vellum.
Two fault lines run under the site; the wall remains.
Shapes of words imprint stone like fossils, chiselled in small square script,
more beautiful than lichen. Stories are patient,
silent until we are ready for them.
What is strength? Perhaps the names keep the wall standing;
one thousand ex-slaves
and the nobles who relinquished them into the hands of the god.
‘This is a man of great evil, as the President said.
And he is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time.'
There once was a man who lived in a house,
It was a large house built on a hill.
This man was strong and righteous
A straight-talking valorous man
Respected by all in the village.
Now, far on the other side of that village
At the place where two streams meet
Was another, smaller house, very old,
Where men and women of wisdom had lived
For as long as anyone knew.
The third millennium saw a series of developments basic
to most of the fundamental institutions and concepts of
the mainstream of all later civilized life.
But the man who lived in the house by the streams,
At the time of this story, had lost this wisdom,
And had now become a tyrant.
Two of his sons had hair that was brown,
The other two had hair that was red,
And these last would be beaten unmercifully
Whenever the wind was in the west,
After which those two boys could not walk for days.
But on the lucky brown-headed ones
He bestowed a great many favours.
But the thing that the bad man loved the most
Was a wonderful goose with sleek white feathers
That once a year laid a golden egg
Which the family could exchange in return
For all manner of wondrous goods.
President Saddam Hussein is believed to be sitting on
reserves of at least 115bn barrels, the second-biggest in
the world after Saudi Arabia.
This goose had indeed lived in the house
For as long as memory lived —
But could not live away from that place
And keep its magical gift.
Now the man who lived way up on the hill
Had always liked that goose,
And grew sadder and sadder in the knowledge
That he did not own such a thing.
So one morning he rushed out and raised a cry
That the man in the valley had twelve vicious wolves
And was going to let loose these creatures
On the people at any moment,
And all their sheep would be slaughtered,
And all the little boys and girls
Would be in dreadful danger.
‘Wolf, wolf!' he cried
And his servants cried ‘Wolf!'
And his gamekeeper cried ‘Wolf, wolf!'
‘What are we to do?' asked the villagers.
‘We must save ourselves from this evil,'
Said the righteous man from the hill.
‘We do have evidence of it. We are not suggesting that there
is a 9/11 link, but we are suggesting — and we do have
evidence — of connections over the years between Iraq and
Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.'
But another man came up to him
And said, ‘I've not seen or heard these wolves.
Perhaps you are mistaken.'
And the man from the hill then looked at him
With glowing eyes, full of valour,
And said calmly, ‘What I tell you, my friend,
On my mother's grave, is the truth.
We have no time to lose.'
Hearing the news of the strong man's plan,
The red-headed boys waited eagerly,
Knowing they would be saved at last,
But the brown-headed boys were much afraid
Because of being their father's favourites,
While the old man dared one and all to take him on,
He would fight them unto the death!
You are going to die.
So it came to pass
That the strongest men of the village
Went out the very next day,
And descended on the house by the streams
And killed all the family,
And razed the house to the ground
That had been a place of wisdom for so many years
So that not a stick was left standing.
Luckily, they said to one another,
All the twelve wolves must have burned away
For not a trace was found.
But, lo and behold, the goose was saved
Through the foresight of that resolute man
And the townsfolk, to thank him for his courage,
Bequeathed to him and his descendents
All the eggs that the goose might lay
For ever more.
‘The campaign has ended, and the United States of
America goes forward with confidence and faith.'
Now once a week goes his bravest servant
To that place by the streams, to feed the goose
Which continues to live in its fine silver cage,
Midst the weeds and rotting splinters.
Brave indeed must he be,
And quick enough to enter and leave
Before the foul stench of Truth overpower him
And he suffer the same fate as that bad man,
And the brown-headed sons and the red-headed sons.
Thus it is that he who cries ‘Wolf!'
may have the good luck to receive golden eggs.
Well the bankers had taken over the asylum
and I was still waiting for our ship to hit the fan,
for the shit to hit the shore and leave the sure behind,
unsure of just what the shore is for
As we walk through the streets of debris,
the valley of banality –
the cultural desert were the only thing that grows
are the plastic plants of distraction;
TV's the size of guilt complexes,
& opiated computer games so hip
that you don't even need to play them anymore,
just drop your pay-cheque off at your local store
& take their word for it,
while you get back too earning money more, more, more,
which it seemed to me was our state religion.
So I got this job ringing people and hassling them
about the job they were doing ringing people & hassling them
into buying some consumer durable drug or exotic drink
so that they could forget about much how they hated their job
ringing people & hassling them
into buying some consumer durable drug or exotic drink,
so that their bosses could ring & hassle my bosses
into hassling my supervisor
into hassling me into hassling you
about the level of harassment you been receiving of late
from the makers of fine consumer durable drugs & exotic harassment,
and round and round and round it goes
like the boiling fur in my toilet bowl,
because I couldn't give a damn if a toilets clean when I'm blue
& in the end it's just a choice between being scared or being bored;
bound up and bored as a battery hen,
or single and shit scared
as a feral stray cat in a McTuckey Fried Pie factory –
Utterly, but naked.
Utterly butt naked in the beautiful eyes of the world,
Utterly butt naked in the sad taxi cabs of existence,
Utterly butt naked on the 422 to Tempe Tip & Temporal reality,
via Newtown North & Newtonian Physical myths,
Utterly butt naked in the ocean of amore,
Riding the waves out to sea
& leaving the sure behind.
So anyway, we gave up on sobriety
and dived into the peculiar sea of our local piss hole
where the patrons garbled and yarbled in the pidgin English of Pub;
the soapy beer washing their brains into the guttering around the bar
as steroid raddled dogs ran rabidly after a rubber rabbit on a radio in the air around us
just like the debt of gambling addicts
abusing the invisible bitch of Lady Luck
that they've failed to pick up again
but still putting another lobster on Race 6 at Dapto today anyway where
‘My Embittered Liver hugs the rail against Sweet Escapism'
as they hug the rail in vein around the TAB betting desk
between the bar and the junky blue lit loos
as we sit surrounded by the salty ugh sounds
of the homoerotic violence of rugby
emitted by the pay TV in the corner,
until it's turned down of an evening only to be replaced
by the post-midnight mumbling stumbles and stupid attempts on
any females unfortunate enough to be in the visual perimeter of The Pub
‘Where anything can happen, and probably won't'
says the cynical amphetamine fuelled freak next to me, buying me drinks,
and wishing he could roll a number,
or a number of numbers, of Lebanese Blonde,
but he can't,
even though you can purchase a bag of sad cones
from the yob drinking himself to death with the off-duty cops in the corner
who only stop to oil the reams and reams of pokie machines
lined up against the wall like loaded fits
as the patrons garble and yarble in the pidgin English of Pub –
the soapy beer oiling their libidos
like the legs of ex-lovers lulling in laughter in the back of their brains
and driving them to drinking games,
till they're drunk enough to act as stupid and insane
as the school boys they become again.
Until something goes wrong
and the humidity puts humility on heat
and some drunken punter gives somebody else their fist to eat,
‘‘cause they were talking like a horse's hoof, with aspirations Mate!'
and we begin to think that we might be mixing our drinks
a little too untactfully to keeps ourselves intact around here
as my companion hits the pavement like a packet of beer nuts
& begins to scat ‘Taxi, Taxi, Taxi'
like an old snare drum
and I'm thinkin' that maybe what I need is the Wagon.
So anyway, the next day,
like you do, I crawled out of the doona
gathered up a shadow of my former selves,
bounced a Berocca off the bottom of a glass
& prepared to 'take on' once more my intimidating existence.
And then it occurred to me,
what for reality?
What for this rat race of running around
like a mixed metaphor with it's head cut off?
Or worse still, waiting around frustrated on hold
for something, who knows what, to happen?
‘your call may be placed in a queue,
and you may be slowly tortured by classical muzak
till you learn your lesson and stop ringing us.
Your life may be placed in a meaningless void,
and your calls for help may be unmonitored.
If you don't wish this to happen, tough.
Your sense of self esteem may be placed in a precarious position
above a vat of boiling innuendo,
if you wish upon a star, press on.
Your sense of place in the universe may be placed in a vice,
& dropped slowly into a bucket of warm nuns
were it will be tortured by Catholic and Capitalist Guilt.
Due to current demands on our operators
you may have to wait as long as six incarnations
for anything bordering upon a sense of enlightenment.
Reality doesn't so much apologise for this inconvenience
as lay in the corner of the room having a quiet chuckle to itself.'
What for all this eat, shit, sleep, eat again?
‘give in to temptation: a quarter pound of fresh lard in every
Mc Pig-Fat shake and bake – good on ya Mum, offal's the one.
Tar and feather me Colonel with Kentucky battery farm strange fruit McUnidentified Pie
and the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan's 11 secret herbs and steroids.'
What for paid employment?
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
drink and shop till you drop, no time for art or beatific visions, because you must
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can…
What for money?
It takes money to make money
money makes the world go money
shut up and do what your money told you
I can't get by without my money
money knows best
money put aside for money will money into money
Money, just killed a man;
put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he's…
and on Money Street today, Money's up five points against Money
so I suggest you money your money on super money till you retire at 60
then money that money straight into a super-duper money
until you're bed-bound and have a lack of bladder control
then e-money that money into trust no fun money
until you are blind, deaf, senile and coughing up blood.
Then take your money out of money
and let your money realise your money's dreams
as you of course will be busy dying
which is one thing you can put money on.
So what for wake up in the morning
when your dreams are bound to be better
than the day time TV that reality tends to be?
Because life's a pitch,
and then you buy it
and everyone in Sydney's an actor anyway
and all sincerity is these days is something else you've got to learn to fake
as you sit there suffering one another's small talk
then swing back the symphony of sycophancy to
Me, Me, Me!
Before diving once more into the
beer and bullshit laden seas of socialising,
metaphorically pulling people off for fear of getting passed up for promotion
or perhaps netwanking with other stressed out wannabes
in conversations about as captivating as watching
the Weather Channel, or MTV
just so they can help justify your drab existence by
making your film or fucking you,
staging your play and publishing your poise-on-us poetry
till you cum all over the public's face in a vile volcano of kudos
or am I just being cynical?
Playing the game just as much as the rest of them
licking their bits with my B-Grade wit,
so I can feel superior to the suburban saps that I grew up with
wasting away on the factory floor as we speak.
Well the answer of course is yes;
I'm just oiling the wheels of wank with my whining,
and wasting more minutes of your precious existence,
and therein lies the irony, sleeping liking an ethnic stereotype
So I'll just shut up now,
be cause I'm sure you've got some very important shit to get on with.
The wind talks of its travels (and the muse's head
does turn to listen to the words it so wants to hear).
And its wildness is something remembered,
as if long, long ago it clung to me.
And it is wild-reaping. It's the future coming at us,
the past just loitering that little bit too long.
And it is distance, and does not sow its sides to bring us together.
Instead, it leaves the measurement as is:
Horizon without any trace of you, and
these eyes searching and never getting close enough.
And my head is in the ocean; my head is all out to sea.
Full of splashes, I'm fleet-footed
As the weather turns sharply like cut stone.
It blades the face and all that it touches.
The evening air is like a ghost tonight
embracing all things,
yet our frozen breath covers the distance.
And breath is touch.
It comes like storm, full with lightning
full with high cloud cramming the sky.
And this breath comes like wave,
rolling over and into this room
like a king tide sinking the night.
This breath is like moonlight,
falling across my cheek, and then onto lips
in all its illumination.
And this breath speaks.
This breath that finds me in the darkness.
This breath that falls and is fallen.
What we do well is sleep and talk.
The talk is much the same,
it searches for hands.
We mutter words.
We sing a psalm of syllables
under a cloak of many midnights.
And we wait.
We wait for the passing of cloud,
then we do our talking in our sleep.
It's a measured language of fingertip,
of palm on palm. Of skin on skin.
(My lips are yours and always have been.)
We talk the night through
until the world's ears listen.
Until things fall ever still.
And this phenomenon owns mystery,
it glows like a pearl. It is polished so.
It buries darkness, it undresses itself from itself
to allow us a soft-steeped journey.
Then we wait.
We wait for birdsong,
wait for sorrow to return to us.
This is how we breathe our lives through.
Your presence surrounds all things today.
Even the trees are talking to the wind,
even birds call your name. Clouds look like angels.
I remember how you tasted like honey
inside a room once full of sunshine.
These curtains, how they fluttered like wings.
There are a lot of tears in the Bible.
A lot of promises
and a lot of zesty talk –
the right hand of love
and the left hand of hate.
I get to thinking sometimes
as to whether or not
God has a great ledger book
slapped fat and wide across the sky
where he writes all the lives out.
He's up to volume 636.
And you're in it.
And he's oohing and aahing
about what he wants to do with you.
And I have no say in the matter.
And the nurse said:
The trouble is the length of him.
I still don't know what she meant by it,
But we both watched as he tumbled and turned
in the hospital bed and spat out his words:
Christ almighty, Christ almighty.
And he looked keen into my eyes
like a ghost who sees its future.
It was then that I thought that death
Grows inside of him like a talent.
It ticks a false time,
but the heart holds a prayer deep inside of it.
First, I travelled
sensuously through liquid lace,
going down, inch by slow inch,
into my private cell.
Then flat and distorted I became,
just a stain of skin,
a mere squeeze of bone and skull.
A tan of shadow, as in a strange relic,
as in an appeasement
for the gods who whisper of fertility.
Once there
I was as snug as a bug in a rug
in all my folds,
my skin growing darker by the hour.
Silence flowed through me
until I was stripped bare.
Now
I'm surrounded by a city
I'd never known nor could imagine
and I hear all sorts of things,
great whispers of gossip.
I'm all ears.
1.
the period of doubt
the period, scarcely, this period
in the psychopomp. where feeling ran highest.
and Petrine. A role,
for the survival, in part for the survival
in the life of traditions
whose chronology is now probably, so far
so far. or, so
when very distant
the prophet. and the Law.
when very distant.
pass. if only by religion
and if only by religion, if only by religion
if by religion. if by religion. pass
2.
the narratives.
the language and the batayles. possession
and transcendence
only masses and community. the person.
and number.
the names, in the life of time
and the timeless
the names. and the prohibitions.
this period. scarcely.
and if only by invention. how, this is imitation.
this is adaptation. this is a schedule of tides
see,
this period. scarcely, this period.
in the psychopomp
3.
see,
only masses and community,
a neighbor, a fellow, a stranger. the letters
and ware.
the names. the letters and ware.
see,
the centres in Palestine.
the wand and schedule of tides.
this period. scarcely, this period,
in the didaskalos
and if only by religion, if only by religion
if only by religion, pass.
for the survival in the life of traditions
whose chronology is now probably, so far
o the story goes: Glámis, the bride
of Olaf Great Blade,
had a daughter called Nadlan The Rus’
who sailed east to Byzantion.Nadlan journeyed and travelled some more.
And, because she craved adventure,
went as far as The Land of Seljuks
to trade in silk and silver.Because she was brave, bold and the tallest
of any Viking maid —
with jet black hair and silver lashes —
she was welcomed wherever she went.Or this was so till roving Hús-bands,
saw her south of Fatimid.
There she was taken to Togrul’s men,
but bought her freedom with gems.It was fleeing the Ghuzz that she found Gladsheimr —
for it seemed to her Óðinn’s plains.
The sun glided off dew-jewelled trees
and people there wore little clothes.Being fond of jewels Nadlan would join them
in this place of pleasures waiting.
She had gone in fact to Ginnungagap
and could lie around as long as she liked.On the outer shores of Ymir’s Pool,
shining with singing stones,
she lay for weeks — wounds from Hús-barbs
bristling beneath her ringshirt.She was found by chance by strange dwarfs,
subjects of a powerful queen.
The Whizzer-stormer welcomed their faces
the shade of night itself.Their leader, Alf Queen — let us call her that —
ordered Gardril, her medicine woman,
to tend the wounds of Silver Brows
(the name they gave to Nadlan.)The Black Queen had seen such ravaged women
on her northern shores.
Lately they surfaced in great numbers,
but none like Nadlan.She ordered the Archer robed in bright red,
in the finest beaten and woven reeds
boiled in richest dyes from red-parched earth
and from crimson berries.Nadlan’s Rus’-black locks and fine white-haired face
glowed under Gardril’s touch.
When the Alf Queen looked at Nadlan now
she saw the sea as she did in her dreams.To the Alfar Dís Silver Brows made deserts
into cool oceans of green
as she told stories, strange and sonorous,
of Arran and Atli’s desolate cities.Alf Queen ate and drank to tales of the Hús.
‘They are poor bowmen.
‘They make good targets,’ smiled the Turkoman-feller
‘and their shields love the torch.’She taught Silver Brows the secret ways
of desert hunting, well- fishing
and of signs to mark the highland rocks.
No bond could break the two.The Gusir’s Terror taught the Queen
star-maps and iron smelting.
They charted caves and hidden islands
where fruit and minerals flourished.While hunting for gems in the Radak Dunes,
leagues from the Queendom,
a Hús-band trader crossed their journey
with a wicked scheme.He was a midget with hands to his knees,
of a foul and fiendish manner,
with rapier toes and amulet eyes —
one who gained ore for service.‘Water for ware,’ he called to them.
‘These dunes are known
for their precious stones. I starve without them
and you are a long way from home.‘Give me your takings and I will give you
water of the mineral springs
from Gardabon Lakes. You are too far south
to make the trip in one day.‘You would not wish to travel wearied,
burdened by dust and thirst,
when you could give me your rubies and gold
for this crystal spring.’‘We do not trade with those who treat
their women like animals.
Stoop lower with shame when you face me,’
said the Alf Queen.‘Surely you deserve every respect,’
said the midget.
‘And for your bag of brilliant stones,
I would stoop lower if I could.’‘You neither provide diversion nor distaste.
You have broken our rest
in the worst heat,’ said the Alf Queen.
‘You bore us with your begging.’‘You will not last too many more days.
I hear that wind-storms wait
behind the Laak Dune and your bag is full,’
the ore-slave needled.‘Leave us to ourselves,’ said the Soot-Elves Queen.
‘We ride and die together.
You have not cared for Alf-trade till now.
You will not have our bag!’Because they refused to return his offer
of water for ore,
he now made demands to divide the two,
challenging one, then the other.He saw how much the Rus’ loved the Alf
and set out to test them,
to break their bond, for news of the pair
had reached the Seljuk chiefs.Nadlan spoke up for her lip-stream-diver,
to spare her the trouble of treachery —
this trader’s malice: ‘Bring me your chief’s heart
and take my life for my Queen.’But the midget hated haughty women
and cast a curse on them:
‘While either lives, neither loves another.’
Still, the Queen was pleased.This was a safe curse as they made no claim
to find another to fill their dreams.
The Queen had found all there was to love
in the feller of the finder-and-Gusir’s-work.As the months went by it was found out
that Nadlan was to have a child
for the man-beast of the Hús-band tribe
who left her on Ginnungagap’s shores.The Desert Rus’ so loved her loyal mistress
that she killed herself after the birth
according to Rus’-code — not to break a bond
by sharing its joys with a third.The child grew up bold and strong.
The dwarfs named him Silver’s Son.
The lonesome Alf Queen could not love him —
her heart frozen by Nadlan’s death.Under the guise of proving the man,
she sent him against the Ribat’s clan —
to doubtful wars, his death assured.
But Hel’s Boat won battle after battle.As his fame grew, the Alf-Queen’s faded.
Before long she died a lonely death.
Soon, the legend of Silver’s Son
spread to Harðraði’s camps.Loveless and unloved Silver’s Son led wars
that drove ore-mongers
from the Radak Dunes before he rode north
through the edge of Ginnungagap.He followed wars as far as Navarre,
and, later, as a trader
in Port Adulis on the Red Sea,
made his fortune in slaves.Yet some say of him that Silver’s Son
lost all he gained;
that a single stone stands in Balerica
to the Son of Togrul Beg’s flight-bright Slayer.
Half man, half bird of cursed seed
a vain and fiendish knave was he
guilty of hatching schemes most fowl
who cared nought for humankind
Whilst on the wing, there came to he
the sweetest song unto his ears
filled with all alluring charm
It was the Sirens' song
Of these plumed maids I have heard tell
are much alike mineself, thought he
Any one would make the perfect mate
Across the heavens, o'er oceans wide
the winged knave did swiftly fly
t'ward an Isle where he espied
a sailors' ship in strife
Then from the sky descended he
and low flew o'er a hapless scene
of sailors, dead and dying, strewn
‘cross wreckage, rock and sea
Struck with fear were those with breath
and thought the knave a sign of death
Then o'er a single man did pause
his dark, majestic form
How similar are our faces, thought the knave
Yet thou knowest neither sky nor sea
Ye sail in thy clumsy crafts
unable to endure even the slightest prick
from Poseidon's barb
Yet thy present fortune
owes much to the taloned maids, me thinks
Ye shall make for them a fine feast
But hark! They approach!
From the crest of craggy rocks
amidst the bones of human stock
came Aglaophone, Thelxepeia and Peisinoe
their bellies for to fill
Hearken to me, most commendable Sirens
the plucky knave thus spake
I praise thee for thy splendid deeds
I praise thee for thy splendid plumes
Couldst thee not make a companion of me?
Dost thou not know that men we loath?
spake Aglaophone
As thou art still half a man, we despise thee
But I too care naught for these feeble mortals
Oh spirited Sirens, thou art mine ilk
Birds of a feather should be cooped together
Let me feather thy nest and roost with thee
and gratify thy broody needs
Flee now, knave! Thou art unworthy
not even fit to feed upon
yet we would deign to soil our claws
to be rid of thee!
So the knave set forth to prove his worth
and swift beheld he a man of mirth
‘Twas the mighty Achilles, son of Peleus
with guitar for to play
With crew he plied the ocean wide
whose ears were stoppered with wax inside
His quest it was to conquer the Sirens
and render them powerless with his song
The Sirens sang, yet their power waned
as Achilles enchantingly crooned and played
In haste did the knave come down to perch
upon Achilles' mast
Nay Achilles! spake the knave
Thou knowest not what thou do!
What manner of creature art thou? asked Achilles
I heed no one but the gods
Well, I might well be a god
and I bid thee refrain from thy refrain
The time is nigh, brave Achilles of the bending knees,
to avenge the death of Patroklos and destroy Troy!
He was but one man
Hundreds of brave men have died in the war
But what a noble deed ‘twould be
if this one death be that which spurs thee!
Thou wilt slaughter thousands for the price of one!
Thou might spur me to slaughter thee
if thou not get thee hence!
Thou art not dim, Achilles, and if I sayest thou aren't
thou shouldest know it be in jest
But dost thou care not for the opinions of men and gods?
They say ‘Achilles betrayed his companion
He is not noble. He is a dim old fool who is afraid to fight!'
What sayest thee to that, Achilles of the bending knees?
I know not
Sayest thou will fight!!!
Well… alright
Achilles' ship did then turn face
as the knave took wing to return in haste
to the Sirens' side, much to their distaste
who with Parthenope and Molpe now made five
Look ye sisters, spake Thelxepeia
Here again is the flying fool
He dares to greet us
thinks to charm us
Well, charm away, knave
Thus ye will earn thy death!
But beloved Sirens, spake the knave
have I not proven mineself worthy?
Did I not rid ye of that manly pest?
Thou art so much like a man, knave
like a pesky cock
whose crooning crow is only fit
for the chopping block
Do not compareth me to them
Though cock maybe, I am unlike men
And as thou art hens, we were meant to breed
Lay not an egg at the sight of me
Let me be your cock and I shall lay thee
Flee now, knave! Get thee hence!
We sisters cannot bear such jests!
Fly quickly for the land of men
for thou shalt soon be one of them!
Unto the Gods did the Sirens beseech
and to the land the knave did speed
but his feathers thinned and low flew he
till he fell into the sea
Without wings, his weak arms flayed
as tossed he was from wave to wave
till washed up on the beach was he
having been adrift for days
The knave emerged from tangled weed
and stood upon his human feet
and from his mouth live fish did leap
amidst a village throng
What manner of creature is this, spake a villager
who canst survive certain drowning?
He is no god to have suffered such treatment
but a daemon the gods did punish
The villagers then surrounded the knave
with big sticks for of him to flay
and so the knave did run away
bending his knees rapidly
Faster than a chicken streakethed he
on his longer legs and ugly feet
‘Twas not out of fear that run did he
but to escape the humans' stench
At length, unto another village he came
to a lowly chicken plucker who was lame
and a great quantity of feathers the knave did claim
without a thought for the plucker
Wilt thou not giveth me something in return? spake the plucker
Feathers are valued highly as stuffing for pillows
In return I shall giveth thee thy life, spake the knave
but only if thou wilt also afford me some wax
But of wax I have naught! retorted the plucker
Then thou had better procure some!
The plucker traded a chicken for a candlesmith's wax
and gave it to the knave so as to ward off his attack
Then with arms full of feathers, the knave made to depart
but not before smiting the plucker
Onto his arms, the feathers with the wax he stuck
then up a ladder to a roof, the knave did strut
then jumping off the rooftop, his arms he wildly flapped
but he felleth straight down to the ground
Then he ran off a cliff and into the water fell
He jumped from a tree top and then fell into a dell
He ran up a hill while the wind his back did push
he leapt up high and then he ran straight down the other side
Thought the knave of Ic'rus who close to the sun flew
as the knave did approacheth where hot flames did spew
With arms outspread, the searing heat the knave could feel
from a campfire that featherless made he
On to a great shipping port the knave then trekked
for to join the crew of a ship, but first he had to get
some clothes to wear, and so a lowly drunkard he did smite
then donned his clothes and enlisted on a ship
Once set sail, a grim storm drove them into oceans bare
For days there was no sign of life and breezeless was the air
Then an albatross perched atop the mast. It brought them luck
the winds picked up, but a mariner – that bird he shot
He'll rue the day, did curse the knave
A pretty rump it had, I'll say
yet only a necrophile would now it lay
Yet all the while, the knave did naught of duties to relieve
for his stomach was sorely sickened by the crew's proximity
and the crew did jibe him, thought his sickness due to the deck's pitch
while the knave withheld a deluge that could sink the ship
Landlubber! boomed the captain
Do ye naught to earn thy keep?
Have thee not the stomach for a life at sea
in the stomach of sharks shall find ye!
Let me take of thee thy helm
thus spake the knave to he
I knowest well the lay of land and sea
as if I had before mine eyes a map
drawn by some diligent bird
The knave then told the captain of the sea and land so broad
of the currents, winds and dangers that to them there might befall
The safest route now plotted, the captain left the knave to steer
but as the captain deep did sleep, the cunning knave changed course
At morn, the captain came on deck and knew their course amiss
He cursed the knave, who sent the captain overboard with a kick
Then ‘round the knave the crew did crowd, some overboard he threw
but too foul their stench, so up the mast the gagging knave then went
Rocks ahead! there came a shout
but an enchanting sound was all about
and to the bow the crew did run
allured by the Sirens' song
They all went mad with ecstasy
and from the rails some leapt to sea
So much impressed by the Sirens was he
that atop the mast the knave thus mused:
How wondrous is the sound they sing
Might not I also, as their kin
sing such a song to so beguile
and make the Sirens flock to me?
If I could catch but one of these wenches
she'd succumb to mine embrace
I'd squeeze her heart till its shell was broke
and plunge my bread-stick in her yolk
Then into the rocks the ship did plough
what crew remained were thrown around
the hull was smashed, the mast came down
whilst to the crosspiece clung the knave
The crosspiece tore free from the mast
and the sail was raised up by a gust
but knave and sail were not far thrust
for a long rope bound them to the wreck
Suspended high above the rocks
the knave did laugh at the view he got
But espied he then the Sirens all
and unto them he called:
Hearken to me, oh Sirens all, thee again I greet
Did thou thinkest thou couldst be so easily rid of me?
Count not thy chickens before they hatcheth
for behold, I am yoked to thee
Again thou torment us with thy presence, spake Peisinoe
and revolt us when, with bellies lean
we were just about to feed
But ‘twas I who this big ship brought you
of seamen for to fill you full
Oh grant my semen entry too
Thy cock-surety shall be thine undoing
if ye do not cease thy wooing!
The knave, forthwith, his lungs did fill
and from on high began to trill
yet his song made such a raucous din
the Sirens could not suffer him
Thou hast put us off our dinner, screeched Parthenope
For that thou must sorely pay!
Thy succulent breasts and tender drumsticks
shall be the death of me
Crush me upon thy rocks
if thy chastity ‘twould unlock!
From hence, unceasing these winds shall be
declared a curse did she
Ne'er the land shall thy feet again greet
lest upon the rocks thou fall as meat
Now, to a distant isle go we
where ne'er again thy face shall see
Some gods viewed the Sirens merely as a poultry dish
others wished to change them from half birds into half fish
yet so governed by his cock was he, the knave put Zeus to shame
and for this the gods did grant the Sirens' wish again
What kind of bird is he now, sisters? chirped Molpe
A bird of prey he surely was, cheeped Aglaophone
but not a mighty eagle
for they are the greatest of the skies
Nor an albatross, twittered Thelxepeia
who with wings so long and wide
could poke right out your eye
Nor a vulture, tweeted Peisinoe
whose table manners and bad-boy charm
such dark allure does maids disarm
The knave is paltry, by comparison, clucked Parthenope
Then perhaps he should be called a kite, cackled Molpe
They all agreed. A kite1 was he
1 During the period in which 'The Sirens and the Pesky Knave was written, the word kite referred only to various species of avifauna. The word's alternative meaning, defined as a covered frame that is flown by string in the wind, has its origins in this tale.
Canyon by Andrew Slattery
Little bit long time by Ali Cobby Eckermann
Evengelyne by Helen Hagemann
Awake During Anaesthetic by Kimberley Mann
Australian Poetry Centre, 2009
I read the four New Poets chapbooks with a high level of curiosity and expectation. Published by the Australian Poetry Centre, these collections represent the rebirth of the Five Islands Press New Poets Series, which published the first chapbooks of approximately 75 Australian poets until its cessation in 2007. The Five Islands Press series provided an important stepping stone for a number of poets who since their first collection have established themselves in the Australian poetry landscape.
Brother Anthony of Taizé, known as An Sonjae in Korean, is a retired Professor of English who has lived in Seoul for the last twenty nine years. He is also one of the foremost translators of modern Korean literature into English. David Prater caught up with him over a cup of green tea to talk about Korean poetry and society, Ko Un and the future of inter-Korean relations.
The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry edited by John Kinsella
Penguin, 2009
Since the 1990s, academic discussions about literature have challenged, if not deconstructed, the project of a national canon. These discussions have centered on the notions of representation, inclusion, aesthetics, and importantly, identity. While the debates may at times seem atomising, the effects have invigorated literature, both in how it is conceptualised as a discipline and in how texts are produced. The late discussions about national literature give context to The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, clearly a labor of love, edited by John Kinsella.
Storm and Honey by Judith Beveridge
Giramondo Publishing, 2009
Throughout Judith Beveridge's career we have seen her take an element from one volume of poetry and expand on it in her next book. Take for example her first collection, The Domesticity of Giraffes (1987) where she wrote of 'Hannibal on the Alps'. This theme was then redeveloped to become 'Hannibal Speaks to his Elephants' in Accidental Grace (1996). Again and again the subjects of these poems breathe new life into Beveridge's subsequent work, whether it be poems about India, birds and animals, Buddha or the water life of Sydney and beyond. With this as a guide, it is perhaps no coincidence that the three fishermen we were first introduced to in Wolf Notes (2003) reappear in Beveridge's new collection, Storm and Honey, in a series of thirty fictitious poems called 'Driftgrounds: Three Fishermen'.
Literary festivals happen again and again in Australia but you'll probably miss most of them. Even if you do reside in a major coastal city, then still, you'll miss things. I know. I used to not care so much, but now I read blogs and keep tabs on the activities of a lot of Australian writers; so I am privy to all the festival happenings, all the goss, and I am naturally left feeling left out. Why can't I go to these cool things if so many other people can?
New European Poets edited by Kevin Prufer and Wayne Miller
Graywolf Press, 2008
The editors of New European Poets have made their intentions quite clear. They aim to reinvigorate the transatlantic conversation between American and European poets. Such an ambitious task is not without compromise. In order to achieve their aim, the editors have had to set some constraints, some they admit are arbitrary. The final anthology then is one that sparkles with the brilliance of many poems, but which can only hint at the broader context from which they emerged.
Louis Armand live at the Globe Bookstore (15:29)
Prague, 15 April 2009
