Wolf Tongue (13 page)

Beak to phone

(feint crackle):

I am in a burned-out building

Powerscourt House

fighting weeds

in the Japanese water garden

I have returned the architect

to Versailles

with his glass ideals

I have ordered the turning off of fountains

in the Alpine park

floodlights dimming

lights going out

Black Rock to Louth

giver of feathers

to Agincourt fletchers

arrows bedded

in the emerald sodpark

alone in my bonsai

reduced and reduced

feathered slave

to unreasonable demands

*

prayer in peltchest

where are you love

psalter protected by wings

keep me going, Lord

plaid laid by pipes

My feast, brother

palace of his making

My house, keep out

Lord

to be called lord

prince

standing right in a princedom

fisted vigour

and prayer

Cuthbert busy

with Codex

and the travelling flame

Howling at the stone in her

beak-songs

he lapped her edges with

he winged her water

the lost darling

words and letters

drifting on the wind

four for the condition

six for her name

*

tracking the spore

Charing Cross to Lee

last train down

the Dartford Loop

station blacked out

like Ranter

tripping, falling

down subway steps

welter of blood, sick

lost luggage in his fury

chin cleftsmote

blood matting feathers

music hall routine

key in lock

Stroll on, Bill

where’s me eyes

Who nicked

the lightbulb

Who pulled down

the permanent blind

Ranter upright

on the sofa

Bloodcake shirt

vomitbib drying

Courtesy of

London gin

Ranter

the lurcher

living in a friend’s bathroom

head intermittently down the pan

feint flush on his cheeks

spew-syphon in his beak

*

waking: This is not possible

*

Ranter

torn from his trust

threshed & broken

down in the granary

cracking pods

Rhiannon

black lambswool plaid

twinklefeet

turning

kidleather shining

striding

rock to rock

wanderer

never chain her

to family stones

she spat in my face

dewy nipples

dried in defiance

larking sunlight

caught her hair

black

as dragon breath

Breton madness

lighting her lips

fleetfoot Diva

showing quarter irons

sparking flint

above Ranter’s handwave

body and soul

a budded rose

ready to be opened

by kings

*

Ranter’s children

driven out

by D’Aubigny

foster fathers

for orphans

driven on by Mobray

Durham to Evesham, 1069

Ranter’s head

carved and set

beneath volutes, 1075

on the voissar

scratched on his neck

ROBERT MADE ME

grooved snout

separate from other men

women too high to touch

in 1100

I was a silent watcher

eight men hanging

at Bury St Edmunds

ropes and rings

knotted over pegs

gallows-man

in a scarlet gown

ruddy slippers

and black hose

pink fleurs de lys

invaded the psalter

1130

St Oswald’s, Gloucester

I slept for a year

and woke

winedrunk from day one

drinking from a costrel

from hostel to hostel

hating the French words

invading my books

driven out

by the wife’s dark looks

kicking dust and traces

with Wulfric and Harthacnut

jabbering Saxon verbs

the poetry of battle

blood on the words

which are Northern

Writing:
I am Eadwine

Prince of scribes

*

Shivering primrose

and the wind’s dark beat

down his tunnel

Ranter’s grooved beaksnout

glowing in the dark

dark of his making

changing frequency

Ranter. Mad & brain-sick,

Captain Pouch, Plug rioter,

verb for rising, knotting ropes

in Spithead, offering wrists

for chains

slippery digits

in his oily duvet

banged to rights

shimmering rape

and the heart’s dark beat

And Ranter’s bride:

disappeared

over every horizon

praising civil disorder

singing for the sleepless

Chaucer in her lap

*

Ranter the leper

sheet on his back

hedgerow kingdom

ditch den rain

hole he sprang from

scattering stones

his head burst through

perforated eyes

shooting bloodleaks

noseglove squeezing

through the gap

arcing, twisting

punching grasshumps

rolling in rosehip

flaked on flags

teeth buried in clover

fists in thrift

pollen on eyelids

more gold than gold

bell on his neck

bell of her leaving

from the aching hole

flopped on the ground

bootless, without fable

molars mincing tilth

broken like he should be

alone on Ranter’s Rock

gull-smeared woolsack

lochtide sunblade

falling to the far shore

under McCleod’s Table

like Ranter

exhausted with bringing light

Resentment

rising like liquor

pity of her silence

in little rooms

she made life

part of their neatness

No big swoops, she said,

in a fragment

in the village he loved.

snipe drumming

Ranter’s wet head

turning

inside the noise

Snizort streaming to saltwater

at Skeabost

Ranter diving

out of the sun

snipe drumming

Ranter’s Pool.

Otter.

Liquid like them

revolving

running windburned

refugee in exiled fiefdom

ewe-skull

picked from a ditch

bare to the bone

stripped by predators

endless wind

under the furnace of heaven

Ranter’s cot

under eves

Ranter’s bride writing:

Mill chimneys and derelict sites,

burning rubbish in back lanes,

high moors of mist and snowdrifts,

to the land of Bloodaxe and Bede

you fetched me from the city I loved.

Kiln-bricks piled high in a yard.

Men with flushed faces and women alone,

children scratting from door to door.

Families gathering in silent gangs.

I knew city sparrows and riverside

pigeons. You shewed me the curlew

in a far-off place I didn’t like much.

The people or their guttural tongue.

Their sudden warmth disarmed me.

Woman of shame

lover and friend

silence until autumn

when we may meet again

Drumming the wold

my man

wielding the world.

How you can

do this to

me I do

not know. A

woman of shame

it comes easily.

My family &

friends. Summer

joy

without burden

of loving

you, adrift

on riptides,

anger and spleen.

You were drunk.

I didn’t like

it much. No swoops

in me.

Now I’m here,

river

I love.

*

Ranter beneath The Plough,

Taurus, Orion, starring

a universe of chaos

hiding her with a cloakclasp.

More harpstrums than kisses.

More refugees than guests.

I travel in the dark

so you won’t know me.

*

This is hopeless.

Flexing

at field’s edge,

body at home

in this country,

small baggage

of history

flickering

between us

like the film

it is.

A lost world.

*

Skull teeming danger signs.

Ready for your wildest attack.

Seek wisdom. Would go to some

great man if I could.

Halfden or Bloodaxe or Bede.

Taking my hammer and books

leaving you alone.

Using my blade to furrow

I wouldn’t be happy.

Would long for the long cry

as the prow bit your sand,

flailing villages into welts

of widowhood. Blood on my blade

in rosehip and fern.

Time for books after the scourge.

Sit in my cell with a quiver

of pens, gold-leaf for the page.

Drawing maps, borders

wanting more than I had.

For wisdom return to myself

wearing pelt because I am wolf.

Wolfric my brother a hearty man.

Killed with my axe

and now he is in me.

I am not always stone

at the end of your

accusing finger.

But when I am

it is flint

for pruning & plunder

Thor’s thunder

driving my arm.

Phantom, phantom

bringer of dread

smiter of spar

head-tosser

cross-burner

drunk from day one

lolltongue wrapper

around any bone

the one of contention

bloody love battles

splitting her crystal

to smithereens

cheekpouch stormlord

billowing plaid

thumping his breastbone

grinding his axe

Saying:
Look out

every scattered atom

on the dire pathway

And Ranter:
They’re

all behind me

lost on the moors

but she isn’t

Crawcrook to Consett

the red desert

Wylam to Prudhoe

Bunting and Bewick

Corbridge to Hexham

pearl of his princedom

Catton to Allendale

hunting for meat

Rookhope to Dirt Pot

tunnel to tunnel

Hollywood Charlie’s

to the bend in the beck

Dove Pool to Allenheads

one mile in sleet

Fir Tree to Stanhope

boarded up schools

Alston to Nenthead

and back

greasy lustre

of surface fractures

back to his beck

stream for bathing

laving his back

broken by loping

from hedgebreak

and beck level

pinebough to pooledge

turned from his track

snared on the fell

beaters with sticks

county men, stocks

at their shoulders

snouting hounds

falcons on traces

hounded and hounded

midnight attacks

pebbles through windows

flogged in fields

for breaking a hoe

and answering back

Worming down

tunnels

of history

Ranter setting

his date: 1349

Blackheath, Ranter’s

proposing place

date of his emerging

so kept under like beasts

Recording on a slate in the rain:

Give me your hardest hardness

your bitterness, your spleen

Give me the harshest harness

thrown off by beasts used to your harm

your inability, your dreadful shame

your words untouched by human warmth

all liquid innuendoes and brittle salutes

quartz-tongue flint-heart, pass me

jagged qualities of your meanest acts

Your silence beginning with O

Broken stiles

littering the princedom

neglected ditches

clogged with clarts

locked-up chapels

where lamenting starts

sheepwire stapling

her fells and fields

wild Northumberland

hemmed in, stitched up

more dismay

for me and my fiefdom

Up in the crow’s nest

beak in a twist

Shrike talk:

I’m black grouse. I won’t fly.

Ptarmigan, one of the beak mob.

You can’t beat me up

I’m a big bird.

My heart a harvest

keep your threshers at bay.

I won’t have Massey Ferguson’s

rolling over me.

Stick your agrarian plan.

My body a soviet

but I’m not yours.

I’ll fly free.

I’m a beast of burden

I won’t move an inch.

When I’m not zigzagging

I’m a stick in the mud.

I’m a growler not growling

not doing my job.

I’m the hound with a dark stain

chained up in your yard.

If I’m to be whipped

then whip me now. Kill me

first, tied to a handrail

in the filthy street.

Smashing my knuckles

with a walnut gunstock

so I can’t pay you back.

Drawing my claws.

You’d better do it

because I’m butcher bird

lancing my foes

on hipthorn and may.

I’m red grouse,

pride of the moor.

I won’t flit

this hole in the heather

because you say so.

Heaving bags of rubbish

by moonlight, dragging

the family cart from door to door.

Won’t lie in duckdown

when there is bracken & slurry.

Wander the fellsides

rather than be used by you.

You’re Boss Lip

brass in his pocket

and a brass neck

Titled Lord

but I’ll tell you this:

this is my princedom

you’re on the wrong ground

And this:

I won’t lope

I won’t fly

I won’t run away

this is my palace

I know every bolt-hole

better than the veins

on her back

Cock pheasant in my head

ploughed field my cockdom

Snipe drumming

egging on daughters

to mischief and vice

Magpie sucking eggs

until you’re broken

begging for friends

Furrow

or fiend

depending on the weather

Wound

you haven’t seen coming

the birth of pain

Mighty Leveller

one you thought resigned

to books

Phantom of distress

with blooded axe

and a fiery role

Shot from a Range Rover

I will rise

Freed from neck-chains

walking in your door

armed with centuries of anger

Friend

your wife admits

when you’re away

Family and animals

in the grip

of my cunning

Vet

with the secret stare

a secret injection

King Digger

your burial

first on the list

Prince of Lollards

with the very last libel

in every parish

beneath your shoes

I will be back

again & again

you won’t know how to rest

who to say to:

Get them seen to

Your chances

thin.

I have seen you

and never forget a face.

Had better do this:

Lock the doors

check the latch

eyes on each sash

it’s all you’ve got

Damp the fires

put out the light

look in the thatch

for a flaming brand

Listen Pal

Compadre

Colleague

Friend

Listen Dad

Lord

I know thee

you’ve had it

Check your children

in their pink cribs

Watch for the tinker

at the turn in the road

grinding scissors

to trim their hair

I’ve a headful of blood

and your daughter’s next

Your seed has reached

a dead end, Lord

you’re washed up

end of the line

for you and your breed

You’re a marked man, master

Death’s drone

at your door

Final shudder

final fling

Final chant

from the last piper

Your future & fiefdom

down on my dancecard.