Wolf Tongue (2 page)

I am irregular as poker chips.

Her body is mine,

12-string guitar,

Medieval flute.

                  (a Matryoshki doll, I find you,

                  peel you like a tangerine)

She glows in ballet

    of the life she leads,

    firebirding me.

Ice on the river

river flows deep,

never seen the icicle eyes

of those three dead

Three bullets,

              three neat death holes

              ladybirds on the brow)

              two duels, a suicide.

Burning cannon of loins

blasts me like eggshell.

Clay fires birds eyes.

Water, stone,

                     tungsten wings beat a shadow

over the lives of three dead Russians.

You make up for their loss –

      Russia doesn’t know.

You make me forget turbulence,

the North Sea in me,

          touch me with your fingers

          look to me for love

Bored with bad poetry

I’m off to Russia,

drink vodka with poets there.

Ball-points and bayonets

are singular in Moscow!

       – gallop through the Caucasus

                with Lermontov’s ghost.

My love mis-understands,

                      but her name is sweeter

        than bells of funerals,

                      her tongue quicker than

        a beam,

                      pelvis moist as moss. lips to blood

I am yours,

more than a swallow to

    the sky, my love,

more than a swallow to

   the clouds.

Tell me you will lie with no other.

In case I should topple,

Like a clown

                     do

                         crazy

acrobatics,

Steady my heart with yours

     put away old scenes.

They stood smoking damp and salvaged

cigarettes mourning their lost bundles,

each man tagged OF NO FIXED ABODE.

Mattresses dried in the early sunshine

blankets hung over railings and gravestones

water and ashes floated across the cobbled hill.

A tinker who wouldn’t give his name

bemoaned his spanner, scissors and knife-grinder,

which lay under 30 tons of debris.

Water on the steps in the dining-room

but none to make a cup of tea

Tangled pallet frames smoked still,

men lounged around mostly in ill-fitting

borrowed clothes other naked in only

                a blanket or soaked mac.

We looked at the scorched wood and remarked

how much it resembled a burnt body later we

heard it was charred corpse

we remarked how much it resembled burnt-out timber

Last night tells me today what went

    before. That cruelty, your nagging

sobs, your body rocking and heaving against

    me, a huge planet pulsating thunderously

in my weak arms, weak with the feeling

    in my belly, knowing I hurt you much.

Grasping at thin things for support, but

    finding nothing but books, devices,

verbal chicanery, & cosmological range,

    which no man can see, but writes about

and cannot feel. What’s the use of feeling

     intangible things, like some bad actor,

hamming up, hamming life, meaning nothing,

    valued less than that. Country to me

means nothing. Politics, entry into

    Europe, which I read everyday as my trade,

means little, save that for sustenance,

    means of carrying from Monday to Friday

my flagging body and head.

    All that fails to the acid test. I am no

chemist, nor writer. Once I had a friend

    from my town. Now he is a fraud. Once

he was my golden calf, but now warped by

    that gilt-necked stream, he twists about

the stone, and chokes the living good.

I have a friend who shelters me, and tho

    beyond me in years, he is brother,

father, teacher, child to me, who has

    seen him in different shades, have heard

the tensile grasp of music, which demands

    much, reducing me to sleep, as some careless

rock for leverage. He is my friend, so

    how will he take this, this testament,

established as he is, as I wanted to be,

    to be sufficient in all ways, in that

durable fyre I was after too.

    What pale imitations these people are

about me. What castings on the true self.

    I cannot answer any call, nor am I valid

if I know it is myself lying to myself.

    What happens when the legacy you search

for, that supposed grail, wretches in your

    belly, leaving you weak-kneed and crying

into a lavatory-pan? When the one

    person you really love is ‘being torn

apart’ by selfish transparency. Pathos

    of melancholic distance leaves me dead.

I have only one half of my parenthood.

    The other isn’t dead, but he lingers on

this side of breath with the tenacity

    of a rat. That breakdown in relations

doesn’t even bother me now. I just want

    to be left to be inhabited by my furn-

iture if needs be. Or the music of an

    empty room.

And the new reality, the real, is full,

    kicks you over, tells tales, whistles at

you when you walk, leaves you for someone

    else, but leaves no sentiment (spelled

sediment), nothing to scrawl on sheets

    about, to talk about at night, when the

bed and the world wait, cold as each other,

    when piety cocks its capped head, like an

old owl after little, little mice. It flies

    from the oak, which used to be a sign of

strength, but now is only a sign of age

    and decadence. Humanity is pale, and don’t

grin at this, so young in conception, only 18

    years this has come out of, a few thousand

hours; mis-spent and irregular, so even

    in the writing of it, concrete things became

false on the page, prostituted, wedged

   onto pedestals. The poets putting one

another on stands, laughing a little,

    slap a back or two. Break a back or two

then write about THAT. The glass floor

    moves slowly, like the months of mealy

personage. Down into the pit.

    I am rejected and leave in haste. Today I

read: ‘Love is not Love until Love’s vulnerable.’

    Is this too close to the

heart for the telling? If so, reject it,

    and cut yourselves deeply, for I’ll be gone,

and am deaf to windborn cries and sobs,

     and there is one I know will sob.

That one lends me virtue, and I live

     thereby; she knows the grammar of the

most important motion, the song in a flame.

     ‘I came to love I came into my own’ and

left behind last year’s skin of commerce,

     which is a nice term for poetry and friendship.

For water moves until it’s purified, and

    the weak bridegroom strengthens in his bride.

So love is all I know, and that the dead are

     tender. What I need is a puddle’s calm,

a unit so small that I can span it in one

    go, in a single drunken lurch, delicate

and strong in intent. And not to fall quarter

    way across and graze my heart on sullen

teeth. My heart is bruised enough. That was

    the final lesson. With a spinning head I

listened to a lecture of anguish, bawling

     out of the wet darkness, but white hot too.

In the whirlpool, sleep takes over, the

     boat bobs like a ball: this is the

lullaby of death. Friends and skeletons

     hold hands in the marriage of evil.

There is no evidence.

     Sterility asks how, and I answer from

the Gates of Dis:

Some lie at length and others stand

    in it. This one upon his head, and

that one upright. Another like a bow

    bent face to feet; in life that is,

in purity and love, in masking each

    other from each other’s parts; clouding

the dense way (dense already as it is),

     and shades across the eye, clear as sunlight,

feeling for the soft heart, groping for

    the plastic spine, to twist about the

hand, to turn into a bow, to fire the

     arrow of the aim into the void.

Reality too takes care to step aside.

    Even romance sidesteps into darkness at

their passing. Their soft soles, their

    black cunning, peeling the earth with

knives, unable to peel with their hands,

     implementing the very innocence I have

foregone and given up, and now hold from me.

     Frugal though it was then, starve shall

I now, until habit takes away the larger places,

     and age moves me into smaller, smoother walls.

And her who is Israfel takes me to

    pity through pain, searching for

satisfaction, which wasn’t for me.

     It is like climbing or dancing:

practice makes perfect. Break a foot

     or crack a bone, so wait until it mends

then carry on. That is the indomitable

    spirit of the backbone of centuries

that held down the dark skin of culture

     in a manicured hand. That smelled of

talcum, that greased the stallion’s back,

    and pricked the elephant’s flank.

That dubious imperial concern and greed

      for guarding those less fortunate than

the hand holding the whip. That dark

     continent of man has lived very well

since this ball of dust aborted itself

    from the sun’s legs. So I carry a

burden no longer. Weary, I laugh at the staunch

    proposal of further action, and cry

behind the bedsheets at the coldness of

    my body. As the lover does, as she,

darkened with care, leaves the lintel for

    the street, and the decay of unloving

and the noise of greed. But that is not why

    I leave. I leave for the weariness of

staying the chase, of spurring my steed

    over fences of wicker and match: crumpling

paper houses, trampling on almond eyed

    children, bloodlusting pregnant mothers.

My horse flounders, ditch water soaks my hair.

    I came, I saw, I leave, leaving my sword to rust

by the dead charger.

Ah the last version of forgetfulness

    in the raindrops of dreaming. A king

bids farewell to crowds, palms for his

    feet curl under sunshine, while the

disciple (in any book in any clime), leaves

    to the accompaniment of stones. Pitiful

he trails his body over fields, the true man.

    I question the silent rain for answer,

and leave whichever well constructed house

   we were in, from what thick carpet

I lifted my shoes. Which street will I

    be walking in next time you hear me?

Wherever it is I will be doubled, into

   day and night, crawling into one

for strength, slapping down one for

   glaring into my blue eyes. Now I stand

arm in arm with potency, looking forward,

   past both our feet. So just like growing

tired of a job, or some drab government

    post, I leave you all behind in the

summer sun. Enjoy the warmth, soak in

    the lukewarm sea, wave your naked bodies

about like freedom flags. Ahead of me

    is brilliant darkness, and the king

of night. This is a signed resignation;

    I am finished with your kingdom of light.

1969

   Rock litmus. Titration from Springfield, she

wore no colour besides, unfashionable & mean, held

such chemistry in high frond.

   Nothing else to commend her before she died.

   Never mind. O Longchamps by silk blouse run

over, meander after crown trimming. Snail on the

elbow, peach-blue.

   Wake up cunt you’re living your life in bed.

   Down the sequin, par-boiled in acrylic, trim. What

next? Nets across blood drawn-out, let the wrass shiver.

Ivory Steinway for a Fink, hotel lounge that creeps.

   Notice an air.

   Blow and she tinkles. Burn the desk, my new

vampire, blousy and blue. Giraffes invade the hands

a chaque etage. Qui? Smoke your kiss.   

   Chicano fret-board. There’d be liquid over-

drive. That isn’t a bass riff that’s a copper

knocking on your foot. Crimplene in a trice, elle

a neige, au bain.

    I love you, my friendly little trout of Lambeth Walk.

   What do you think I am, a prostitute? Fabergé missiles

and the bell-boy dies. Trim yourself, slut. So different

from the founder of the Shrapnel Wood and Metal Band.

  Oh trite swanee whistle of Greenwich leave some for the

infernal onion.

   Yes?

   That’s not a Miami short that’s a policeman’s blouse

under Lambeth. The building will blaze. Time in the

Trossachs for a youth yet. Red is the colour of my true

love’s

   (A tomato in denims.

    I’m glad she doesn’t live here. It would be like

jelly. Forced to make her tinkle. That’s love.

   Fast licks as a white Les Paul zooms over the derelict

Gaumont. (Pete Townshend.)

   They played through an old tape-recorder for yonks.

   This is better than Eric Burdon’s version. Hatchet

the strip. Turn it over, lose your mind, il a neige

au bain go the hounds. If finesse is crinkly you’re a

Dairy Box wrapper, whose heart’s crisp.  

   Palpitating spitfires were the microphone he

used. One’s not happy though: the painter died

before painting you in. Rotten canvas, not a

vote is yours. Short-circuits everywhere.

   20 last week.

   Take this black box, it belonged to my

son. Glower was where we lived, his face was

alien. He was not a navy man.

   A corn of skull for Pan. Also take these

pipes. He was a wretch, they belong to you.

   Drift like a lady-in-waiting through the tripe. Open

the sand, if it was late. My pimp’s keener, unsurpassed

lacqueurs along the baize.

   Deck it, asteroid, ignore the Malaga grape.

   Bennie’s dreaming. Don’t tell anyone, sixty miles

an hour in the root. Let the methedrine affected sloth

fly. Sixty miles an hour, backwards.

   Ah pardessus d’Automne, sheep wept before

the ruby. A button of mushrooms, along the

gamboge stair. Tenderly ripped, with a chuck.

   Umbrellas too, the innocents loved it, the

dark.

   Yes there is. Fumé, en Troy. Cassowary of the

heart, pour grit on these inferior spurs.

   Death taught to children who could fire the world

last week.

   You ignored this? You are ignorant of life

itself. Corn in the washboard, the polack’s yem,

buried in a mouth-organ.

   Following, il a neige au bain, toujours.

   It’s either Keith Richard or Stevie Winwood. Shed

noose de leur rêves. A Grunewald flicker.

   Planet.

Written on 25 September 1971,

High Barnet, Hertfordshire.