Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
See also my Woodrat photoblog and my Flickr account.
Though there’s a short street in London named after him, the actual spot where Samuel Pepys lived and worked on Seething Lane has been converted into a garden—or had been. It’s now part of a massive construction site. The above poster appears on the hoarding. Continue reading “On the trail of Samuel Pepys”
Skylight, pale light
rains softly on the red silk roses
and the complicated chandeliers,
the turquoise-blue mosaic
and the pale mural where
a pale, veiled woman sits beneath a vine.
This is pretend Morocco, theme-park
Morocco, but gentle and understated,
in the best of taste, like the food
that alludes politely to north Africa –
merguez and hummus and mint tea
on an old brass tray that glints and rocks,
harissa careful to be not
too hot.
On Saturday, I was invited to join a sort of huntless hunt in the wilds of darkest England. The local beagle club assembled next to the barn on a big estate belonging to a member of the titled aristocracy who had given permission for us to ramble over hill and dale, following a well-trained pack of beagles who were in turn following a scent trail laid down the day before. This is known as beagling. Since the actual hunting of hares with beagles was banned in 2004, this is the best that the beagle clubs can do. I’ve always been wary of sports with too many rules and I like to walk, so it suited me just fine. Continue reading “Beagling”
When you wake in the night again
and the temperature’s dropped
and you’re frosted with anxiety
and you reach for unconsciousness,
but it won’t come because someone
started throwing stuff around
in your aching head, pulling out
one ghastly scenario after another
and waving them in your face so
you try instead to summon all the
places you’d rather be, the walks
you dream of taking, the countries you
long to visit, the beloved who, sensing
your distress, would of course leap
out of bed to make you a cup of tea and
you wonder if imagination is a blessing
or a curse and wish your wondering,
wandering mind would just
Photo: mural by RUN, Dulwich Village (detail)
Isis or Oasis? This ship of fools we’re on has no permanent mooring. Continue reading “London in December and other absurd notions”
Every time I stay in London, I pay a visit to Hampstead Heath—which, despite its name, is in fact more like what we Yanks would call a forest with a few large meadows (while many of the historical “forests” around the UK are, I gather, more like heaths). Continue reading “Return to Hampstead Heath”
Visitation, the long poem that begins Jacques Brault’s first collection, Mémoire (short extract with translation in this earlier post), is a complex evocation of cultural oppression and the poet’s sense of exile from self. It’s full of words and images that cannot but also evoke today’s physical exiles, the millions of refugees, and these suggested a much simpler and shorter erasure poem. French, with its changing word-endings, gives less scope for erasure than English, but the process was still an interesting way of engaging with language and emotions.
Remember
Remember your nakedness, their exile
the man struggling to live
I find myself again at the appointed place
and thirsty for these words
I left my country with little pride
Exile is hard, my fear follows me
Silence is no longer possible – listen
some evening to what I shall say
Come closer and touch my voiceless misery
my faceless body, my silent hope
Poetry has no importance, but it speaks
Sweet violence rises up
My despair arrives with broken neck
no name, no past and harbouring no hatred
Some grey morning a comrade I cannot name
and a beloved country tremble
I shall live weighed down and bent over
my words still resounding from land to land
A shadow will trace the outline
of your pale face when I find it again.
(words and phrases culled from Jacques Brault’s nearly 900-word-long poem, Visitation)
Souvenez-vous / de / votre nudité / de leur exil /
de celui qui a mal de vivre /
Je me retrouve / au / rendez-vous /
J’ai soif / de / ces paroles /
J’ai quitté / le pays / peu fier /
L’exil est dur / ma peur / me suit /
Je ne sais plus / me taire /
Ecoute / ce que / je / dirai / un soir /
Approche et / touche / ma misère / sans voix /
mon corps / sans visage / ma silencieuse espérance /
La poésie / est / sans importance / mais elle / parle /
La violence / douce / se relève /
Ma détresse / arrive / le cou brisé /
sans nom / sans passé / et sans haine /
Un matin gris / une /compagne / innommable /
et / un pays aimé tremblent /
Je vivrai / lourd et penché /
Mes mots / vibrent encore / entre terre et terre /
Une ombre / tracera /
ta figure blanche / retrouvée.
Image: Another Place — photo by Jean Morris, 2007
It was raining in London – serious rain with fast-flowing gutters and burst water mains – and I’d stopped serially internet-dating “Other-American” poets in order to hang out for a while with Jacques Brault. Both of these are from his first collection, Mémoire (1965).
Nameless
Here on the streets the water wails its old lament
Seagulls crash-land
I do not know your name know nothing any more
All these human shapes barely floating now in the gutters
Fingernails marred by eyelids
Smiles in the hollow of a groin
Jumbled faces in old windows
So many dead unadorned unlabelled
Melting in the sweet water
April casts its light and shadow on their graves
Water mingles our little hopes
Mutely agile not a bubble or an eddy
A volley of laughter rains down on the streets
Oh watery folly
The water’s soft lament against the tide of time
This murmuring of pale lips this wrinkling of old skin
All those who leave here are undone
And you scattered to the four winds
You whom I seek among these long tresses swept towards the sewers
But water runs its own business in its own way
A fine embroiderer of death’s complex designs
Water sews and re-sews a lovely length of fabric
As it flows
Anonyme
L’eau dans la rue se plaint d’une vieille plainte
Où se cassent des mouettes d’eau
Je ne sais ton nom je ne sais plus
Tant de formes humaines à peine coulent encore dans les caniveaux
Doigts à l’ongle embué de paupières
Sourires au creux de l’aine
Visages disjoints de vieilles fenêtres
Tant de morts sans collier ni bannière
Fondent en la douceur de l’eau
Avril sur les tombes met une ombre de lumière
L’eau raccorde les petits espoirs
Agile et muette et sans bulles ni remous
Une volée de rires qui s’abattent dans la rue
O folie de l’eau
La plainte de l’eau tout bas à contre-courant de l’heure
C’est un murmure de lèvres blanches un froissis de vieilles peaux
Tous ceux-là que s’en vont se défont
Et toi éparse çà et là
Toi que je cherche parmi les cheveux qui s’allongent vers l’égout
Mais l’eau mène bien son ouvroir et sa façon
Brodeuse fine des morts aux dessins compliqués
L’eau coud et recoud fait une belle étoffe longue
Et coule
Like All Those Others
You are the one invented by my gaze
like the shape of an ink blot on paper
and I am unafraid to speak my love
for you the way you are just as I fashion you
as my hands find themselves again upon your body
and the greedy expectancy of every day
the annunciation of a world scarcely beginning
the gestures of morning on a street corner
that snatch at a vagabond’s one instant of light
and this folly of feeling like your newest unborn child
I love you like all those others yesterday tomorrow
still learning this old refrain learning it always
I love you in the future wind in the rubble of fear
love you in the little life of hair curlers
love you in these paltry ecstasies these meagre glories
love you alone and abandoned by myself
Comme tant d’autres
Ton être que j’invente du regard
comme une tache d’encre sur le papier
je n’ai pas peur de nommer mon amour
tu es comme je t’aime telle que je te fais
avec mes mains retrouvées sur ton corps
et l’espérance goulue de chaque jour
l’annonciation d’un monde qui commence à peine
le geste du matin au coin de la rue
qui reprend à la rôdeuse un instant de lumière
et cette folie d’être en toi un nouvel enfant à naître
je t’aime comme tant d’autres hier demain
cette vieille rengaine je l’apprends encore je l’apprends toujours
je t’aime dans le vent du futur dans la pierraille de la peur
je t’aime dans la petite existence en bigoudis
je t’aime dans les pauvres extases dans les chiches gloires
je t’aime seul et déserté de moi-même
We sat outside the café,
stretched our legs
and soaked our feet
in the pool of sunshine
that dimpled and flickered
with the shifting
and whispering
of the sycamores overhead.
We forgot that tomorrow
the clocks go back,
that wet leaves will plaster
the chairs and tables.
en masse
they weren’t
her kind of flower
so cultivated stiff symmetrical
such vulgar uncoordinated colours
but one late bloom surprised her
with its strange translucent fingers
splayed to catch the sun
a fragile old soul suddenly
not like the dahlias
she’d had in mind
at all
