The fire drinks oxygen with every one of its forked tongues, but it doesn’t spread. In fact, it doesn’t really burn. It rides in the back seat like a family dog. Someone else spots it and gets alarmed, so I get alarmed too. We run for buckets, dump water on the fire but it simply shakes itself and goes on speaking in its sophisticated way. We try to reply, but only barks and whines come out. Children, take note: This is what happens when you play with the fire in your belly, when you let it get away. I fill my bucket again at the outside faucet and carry the water as gingerly as if it were an infant, and peering in, I see that it has inherited my face.
You should see all these trees in flower:
arms full, masts spread, creamy as sails
preparing to catch a good wind—
I walk under them and I want to be here,
now; I want it to be like this always,
for the light to be gentle
like the skin of an almond or the flesh
of paper or a puddle of milk; but also
I want to be there
on the other side, wherever it is still
night, wherever the moon is still
touching the roofs with the tip
of its measuring chalk, and fingers
interlace beneath the sheet whose woven
patterns remind me of the sea.
In response to Via Negativa: Under Sail.
Land Ho
Having sailed all night,
we come in sight
of a fresh gale
and a good deal.
Great was the shout of guns,
the rattling of guns.
Smoke came,
the captains came.
I wrote to my wife,
drank wine to my wife.
It was in the morning.
We parted this evening.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 9 April 1660.
Gain and Ache
Gain and ache are the greatest guides.
We lay with women, being pretty handsome.
We went to bed, being somewhat ill,
afterwards disputing for and against
extemporary prayer.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 8 April 1660.
Salt Lick
Preserve a body in brine
and dry it in the sun.
Lay it alongside others
in a shallow basket
on a hot roof, or strung
like laundry on a line.
Keep an eye on the cat.
I am talking about fish,
of course. Be patient:
this may take a few
days; this too
involves transformation
—from scale and fin
in flashing water,
to leathery skin
crisped on a heated
pan. Afterwards,
avid again for what
it spurned, the mouth
turns to any source
of water.
In response to Via Negativa: Medicine.
The Continuance
“…I cannot tell
if I hunger, or am hungered for.” – seon joon
How can I take this light in both
my hands this morning, this skein
of cool air that doesn’t sting;
how can I fill this mouth
that stumbled, parched,
from seeming oasis
to oasis through the years?
The canopy beads with heathered
sound: small, tufted bodies
call to each other through the trees.
And I imagine they are sure the notes
will fall on their intended ear,
certain the vines that screen
the other from view will lift
with the next wind. And so I face
the window where the light looks
kind: is there to be an accounting?
There are so many more questions
I have not found answers for—
But what could it do with me now,
that it hasn’t done before?
In response to Morning Porch and thus: Devour.
Medicine
Wind among the sands.
I eat oysters all afternoon,
walk to keep myself from clock and caudle.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 7 April 1660.
The flaying of Marsyas
One of the reasons this myth exerts a pull over me is that I cannot help but feel there are contemporary resonances not only of the myth itself, but also of the rhetoric that, since Plato, has surrounded it, a rhetoric that all too often translates naked brutality into the high-minded language of moral justification. I cannot help finding echoes of Plato’s ‘not at all strange’ when I hear government ministers announcing the latest cuts to services that are there to help those who need it most; and I cannot avoid seeing the same rhetoric at play as the gods of international monetary system sharpen their knives for austerity measures that strip away the livelihoods and hopes of ordinary people.
And it is the rhetoric that chills me most. It is one thing for Apollo to run rampant with his flaying-knife: but it is quite another to drown this out with the sweet, reasonable music of the god’s lyre, to cover over the brutality and the horror that comes from assigning others to ‘truth’ with soothing justifications. Sometimes when I listen to the news, it occurs to me that in those calm and reasonable debates, everybody is playing Apollo’s tune, whilst meanwhile—somewhere out of earshot—Marsyas is screaming in terrible agony.
Ad infinitum
Proverb: “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.”
What if a covey of quail skitters into the marsh grass?
What if the spider weaves a ladder that spans the distance plus half?
What if the egg yolk rises and does not settle in the bowl of water?
What if the tree lowers its one fruit but I don’t want to eat it?
What if we made a crepe paper limousine and burned it down to ash,
but father insisted on walking all seven hills to the other side?
And what if the messenger was mistaken, and delivered
the letter to the wrong house? What then?
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Under Sail
This desire to be here
or to be there: all day
under sail, the money in
my hands, the fine moon
walking upon the sea…
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 6 April 1660.