Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems, 1964-2001 Read online

  Didsbury

  Sunday was fed

  Up to the teeth

  With church bells

  Summer hats

  Gardening

  Birds were squabbling

  Over Lord knows what

  Among the withered

  Chestnut blossom

  The presbyter went

  To his May devotions

  And it took

  A long time

  To get dark

  Before it did

  The birds made

  A din

  In the trees

  Giulietta’s Birthday

  The French windows

  Are open still

  As if in the theatre

  People wait

  On the colors of the carpet

  In the cadence of dusk

  Irony it is said

  Is a form of humility

  Glass in hand

  They come and go

  Stop still and expect

  The metamorphosis of hawthorn

  In the garden outside

  Time measures

  Nothing but itself

  In the courtyard of a monastery in Holland

  My name escaped me

  Early in life according to Scott

  Swift had acquired the habit

  Of celebrating his birthday

  In dejection

  One leaves behind one’s portrait

  Without intent

  Time Signal at Twelve

  for Lejzer Ajchenrand

  His eyes

  Home in

  On the real

  There is

  Skulduggery

  Afoot

  A raven alights

  At God’s ear

  Tidings he brings

  Of the battlefield

  Father has gone to war

  The monk from Melk

  Sleeps in his quiet grave

  The snow

  Falls on his house

  If no one asks him

  He knows

  But if someone asks him

  He knows not

  When the Weisers

  Will meet

  Something not a soul

  Has ever seen

  Children’s Song

  for little Solveig

  Fieldwards goes the day

  Mildew grows in the garden

  Measles cover the man

  Like a thousand butterflies

  Fieldwards goes the day

  Long long ago

  Studded with stars was the sky

  A thousand butterflies

  Come from the fields is a day

  A coachman stands at the bone-house

  Holding in his hands

  The thousand butterflies

  Votive Tablet

  Weary of always

  the same trees and

  a country far from crossed

  the legionnaire rests

  in fancy’s meagre holding

  Revolving around him by turns

  his life and a bloom of tobacco

  smoked by the wayside

  The hammered out sections

  show him whenever he moves

  which of his organs

  alas are sick

  Cheerful after all

  humbly sat on his shield

  he bids us good day

  the one-eyed

  king of the blind

  Legacy

  Our memories are quite similar

  but pickled alive

  in a poison which

  accompanies objects too

  as a part of this emptiness

  The heartening message

  that Pythagoras once

  would listen to the stars

  barely comes down to us now

  Then let us hope

  our children are learning

  to dance in the dark

  Sarassani

  With borrowed voices

  the ventriloquist renders

  others’ pipe-dreams

  A gentleman disguised

  as a moth pulls

  tropical birds from a hat

  The gaudiest parrot

  weighs a memorized

  word destiny

  in his hand

  As accustomed dupes

  the local fowls

  sit in the cheap seats

  thrilling to the da capo

  Day’s Residue

  Dialectically thrashed out campaigns

  and drafts from days

  pending wasted battles

  Like every evening

  the set task is left

  undone in the sandpit

  Heeding a dubious silence

  I sleep at night

  with my ear to the ground

  Its distant sounds

  spell out

  the lessons of a lighter world

  Border Crosser

  My beard grows overnight

  every time

  like a dead man’s

  I have even begun

  to speak in foreign tongues

  roaming like a nomad in my own

  town weighing the witch’s

  thaler in my hand

  It would seem to be time

  to apply to the outworks

  and register what

  we have forgotten

  Once there

  given the superior outlook

  my poor sedentariness

  will pass

  Lay of Ill Luck

  In honor of my canny schoolmate

  and god of wonders

  I had promised a

  Chinese fable

  In crow’s-feet characters

  the black bird

  translated itself

  nimbly to my page

  The little vixen however

  escaped and tumbled

  in the grass and all

  but laughed herself to death

  So all I have left

  is this monosyllabic

  creature on my shoulder

  Memorandum of the Divan

  The mightiest however

  seem those kings

  who have never lived

  Even today

  they tempt us

  on tours

  to Soliman’s garden

  on a horse

  with clipped wings

  To comfort the bereaved

  it is advisable that reports of such trips

  be prepared in advance

  For it will often have proved

  far too lovely to return

  in any calculable future

  Il ritorno d’Ulisse

  Returning from a lengthy trip

  he was astonished to find

  he had strayed to a country

  not his place of origin

  For all his encounters in scattered spots

  with the black paper hearts of men

  shot by the arquebuse

  his bow-and-arrow story

  did not happen

  Then there was Penelope’s

  Castilian grandmother

  blocking his entry at the garden gate

  wordless and busy with embroidery

  Sure, the grandchildren

  are smiling in the background

  apparently better disposed

  towards foreigners

  Their furtive hopes

  still almost too small

  for the naked eye

  (But the idea is good

  and the noise far away

  even the building)

  For a Northern Reader

  Until the light has

  failed as if bereft

  the white mist

  barely infiltrating

  the trees

  and as if they were painted

  on a green landscape the animals

  descending to their black shelters

  come to a standstill

  at the edge of our gaze

  resolute


  half his journey done

  our ailing neighbor too

  pauses

  reckoning the distance left

  Florean Exercise

  The band was playing

  and singing a little Turkish

  marching song, with ensigns

  shouldered they filed out

  onto the plain at their ease

  to where their ships lay

  concealed beneath the cliffs

  Their camp has long

  been abandoned the soldiers

  long ago returning to an older

  post in a different time

  But in Northamptonshire

  their legacy has remained

  green acanthus and orchards

  houses inhabited still

  by the Roman gaze

  Guarding what once

  was brought here

  safely from afar

  the Dardanian gods

  Scythian Journey

  Faced with the deep shadows

  of the mountains of growing darkness

  we had to break our journey

  Making ourselves at home

  high in the canopy of the forest

  with the birds and fishes

  Discussing the dragging winter

  and maybe blowing a tune

  on the Berecyntian horn

  Savoring our dawdling

  the poor Penates

  smile among themselves

  Saumur, selon Valéry

  The beginners have concluded

  an exercise in the accomplishment

  of elaborate figures

  as part of their training

  in advanced impromptus

  Abandoned now

  the sand-track curves

  into the lengthening shadows

  Then, slipping through subito

  from some other place an apparition

  crosses our field of vision

  at an astonishingly measured tread

  Démonstration, Messieurs,

  the zenith of my art,

  riding, at a walk, and

  that without flaw

  or flourish

  Says almost imperceptibly

  bending down towards us

  prior to vanishing

  at the other side

  Chiron the old centaur

  L’instruction du roy

  The real disaster

  so they say are the consolations

  the garde bourgeoise

  in the republic of our dreams

  Repetition once mere play

  a five-finger exercise suddenly

  a repertorial must

  for intractable pupils

  To cheer people up

  they shift the scenes now and then

  in our moral institutions

  The mountain backcloth sinks

  into the waves and time sheds

  its skin every year

  Out of sorts in the stalls

  the Troubadour beholds

  the panoptic spectacle while

  poised at the entrance

  Malatesta forks out for his ticket

  Festifal

  Setting:

  On the Sandwich Islands

  the Dictaean Grotto

  Personae:

  Basil the Rainmaker

  and the coiled polar dragon

  Plot:

  Somnia, terrores magicos,

  miracula, sagas, nocturnos

  lemures portentaque Thessala

  Intermezzo:

  Acts of negligence in accordance

  with relative beauty

  strength or wit

  ex. gratis: The plump Etruscan,

  the ivory flute

  and Latin song

  aut:

  Proteus sub aqua submersus

  putting ugly cattle to pasture

  aut etiam:

  The Sphinx

  fleeing toward Libya

  Final Tableau:

  Victorious Basil

  earns the sobriquet Fifty

  Analysis:

  Salomo Schellenkönig the skilled

  basket weaver counts his coppers

  Balance:

  A small

  fortune

  Pneumatological1 Prose

  Recently seen

  in the vicinity of Flore

  Northants, the rhinoceros

  appeared this morning

  in my garden

  With a sly look albeit somewhat

  nonplussed it stood in the herbs

  wreaking as it shifted its weight

  from one foot to the other

  considerable havoc

  The animal is a victor

  the elephant’s mortal foe

  for when he comes upon it

  the beast will charge headfirst

  between its front legs

  They also say

  the rhinoceros

  is quick joyful and

  lusty too

  Odd to say it did not retire

  to the bushes after its wont

  but with its head arrogantly

  cocked on one side ascended

  skywards in a gaily embroidered

  Californian moored balloon2

  A monotheistical

  creature it would seem

  while the elephant

  as Pliny tells us

  is clever and just

  and worships the sun

  and the moon

  1. Pneumatology: Geisterlehre (Germ.), or Doctrine of Inflatability.

  2. Large and very handsome flying and sailing device constructed by Messrs. H. and C. Artmann, Royal Engineers.

  Comic Opera

  The program enlists the turqueries

  of a newly lapsed century

  a potpourri with bells and cymbals

  orchestrated obscenities

  Masked players swell

  the plot in a green theatre

  their true faces overwritten

  Rather than greater virtue

  the happy ending proposes

  more trivial vices

  The hedges rustle with applause

  and the bygone ladies

  of the court return

  below the lawns

  Back to reading

  cubist

  novels

  Timetable

  Grown sheepish

  by morning I study

  the grounds of my coffee

  At midday I cut

  a slice for myself

  from the hollow pumpkin of summer

  And not until dark do I risk again

  the Cretan trick

  of leaping between the horns

  Unexplored

  Great-grandfather

  in his gay jacket

  casting a horoscope

  A perfect

  heptagram omitting

  the malefic houses

  Those white areas

  photoset and printed

  in my historical atlas

  Elizabethan

  As you know

  the owl was only

  a baker’s daughter

  And Sheikh Subir

  a professor expelled

  from Persia

  Baroque Psalter

  After numerous

  proselytizing expeditions

  to Paris

  Geneva Smyrna and

  Constantinople

  he was burned at the stake

  in Moscow

  Cold Draught

  Surrounded by German

  mothers and conscript

  sons homeward on the

  Bundesbahn: the leaning

  tower by Landsberg

  the murder at Hotel Hahn

  the Buchloe cheese factory

  the lunatics of Kauf beuren

  the abbey school windows

  the abyss of childhood

  And in the dark

  lifting her skirts

  Sai
nt Elizabeth

  stepping daintily

  over glowing ploughshares

  Near Crailsheim

  Precisely undulated fields

  little globular trees

  sculpted and dark green

  pedantically aligned

  rows of maize

  Thereabove to the west

  God’s pleasure

  pink candyfloss

  from the recent funfair

  Mumbling the enigma of their

  crosswords pensioners sit

  on the express, limbs benumbed

  in the quicksilver of their angst

  Already the shadows are smoking

  in the valley of Jehoshaphat

  Here comes the railwayman

  his lamp bouncing on his bib

  Poor Summer in Franconia

  The poster in the village shop

  recalls the yellowed terror

  of the Colorado beetle

  In the backroom behind her

  the shopkeeper’s children sit glued

  to the nation’s wooden eye

  Windfalls lie leaden in the garden

  and blue in the crayfish-stream

  flow the suds from the washing machine

  The Moor on the hill

  peeps from an American tank