More for Helen of Troy (2 page)
Read More for Helen of Troy Online
Authors: Simon Mundy
When the revolution came,
Eight generations earlier,
Your ancestor said the guards' bright
Costumes dimmed to khaki, girls
Ambled outside the harem,
Mice multiplied and though at night
It became your silent playground
There were no cushions, no fires,
No kitchens, no fallen viziers
Seeking the comfort of a purr,
Warm fur and the sweet lament of the oud.
A Prayer for a New God-daughter
Preserve the moment
When nothing is decided:
Not name, not the pace
Or direction of childhood,
The shape or frequency of love,
The pull of money, home or duty.
Cry for the future and smile
At your new day, the few already past,
And let no-one organise your mind,
Dictate your prayers or their destination.
Let your conquests be in hearts
And your mercy boundless.
Do not blame the silence
If you cannot hear the songs,
For they are all yours to compose.
It seemed the perfect lie
Nonlucent, impervious, elegant.
So it remained for a day
From the first insistent message
To the fluent second, too fluent,
The embellishment, the doubt trigger
The new unnecessary place where you
Had to be for the satisfaction of the gods.
Did you decide early or only
In the morning when the dread set in?
After Auden
and the art of Klara Pokrzywko
Translated daughter
Who prints a foot
Into virgin paper
Or compliant silver
Leaves a torso
To bronze in the sun,
Takes the sweat
Of spent bodies
Tainting the sheets
And hangs them
To dry in the wind.
Come down then
And blend the acid
With immortal fire
To catch a version
Of your arms and teats
Your curling lips
Against this skin
Startle this itinerant
Mortal to perform
And serenade
The natal moment
We transform
This sombre night
Into glorious dawn.
You are my cauldron, my petals of flame
Consuming hope, dropping molten rings
Here, there, nowhere near enough
For even a pentathlete to reach your body.
I want you to dive from aeroplane high clouds,
Cut the water silently, touch and score gold.
When you step up to bow your head
For the medal, freshly cast, this special anthem
Will banish nations and tell how you,
My sweet youth across the world,
Have gathered at these games for me alone.
A Poem for the Opening, St. David's Day 2006
.
Watch the words fly in their aviary of toughened
Glass, mingling with other languages,
Obfuscating in front of everybody as if it were decent
To debate without resolution, their consonants
Finished with the thud of English,
The crack of Welsh drugging meaning
Until they float from the chimney of the politics bothy
Or are netted, protesting their innocence
And captured digitally for all to read,
Shameless in the cold of history.
That was an unusual manifesto by any standards,
A plea for anti-votes, for noughts not crosses.
The crosses were no protection
And the noughts contained no promises.
Thirteen candidates were enough to cause
Alarm but escape from the conclusions was futile,
The message from the people clear but silent.
All twelve party candidates had voted crossly for themselves,
Thirty-three thousand, three hundred and thirty-seven voters
Approved their choice with nought. Abstentions won.
The others were all equally cancelled, the noughty manifesto
Adopted â no more laws nor regulations,
Three terms results in surfeit, redundancy rules.
Commemorating the European Commission Conference âDialogue Between Peoples and Cultures: the Artists and Cultural Actors, Held for Two Days in Brussels' Palais de Beaux Arts (BOZAR) During the Brussels Bravo Festival, February 2005 under the Patronage of President Barroso of the Commission and Repeated at the Berliner Konferenz A Soul For Europe, November 2007 to Official Acclaim.
Men spoke and left
A heap of words.
Gradually the molten breath
Set hard,
Syllables married phrases
Helixed into paragraphs.
Soon we had a mountain,
A jagged unloved peak,
The accidental
Inconsequential spoils
Of Europe's thought.
Mohammed will not come
To this mountain
And no-one has the money
To move it.
Above Manhattan the clouds were trying to snow
Paltry flakes, apologies
For America's apocalyptic weather.
We had a rendezvous for Amsterdam Avenue
On a Sunday uncomplicated in any way
The Baptists in their funeral house
Or the Jews next door would understand.
Instead you melted away like the fire trucks
After they failed to find a fire,
Like the love of the couple at the adjacent table
As babies were discussed and her
Desire became his discarded theory.
The snow came to nothing and the lemon trees
Stayed green without the bitterness of fruit.
Looking out from your twin windows
The view changes little with the hours,
A wall, some graffiti, multicoloured,
Left by small men with few words.
You wait for the scene to shift,
For true landscape to be revealed,
Then the brown curtains that shield
The inside, forbid outsiders to peer through,
Will be drawn, letting the sun
Tint the sparkling lenses green,
Granting rare permission to approach
The soul, not yet with understanding
But with a silent clue.
Altay and Smokey Mountains,
Siberia and North Carolina
I have slept between these mountains before
And heard the river swirl perpetually
Interrupting dreams and the cries
Of excited children on the rocks.
Another continent, enemy country
Hosted me then, held me
Hostage for the weekend, secured
By ropes of hospitality, expectant smiles.
The mountains curve gently, letting trees
Creep up their skirts all the way
To the summit. Valleys are nursed
Down to the plains, easing the summer heat.
Without the people sharpening their languages
The mountains know they are cousins
Stranded like colonial lovers around the world.
Now and then they remember each other,
Sigh contentedly, and tip settlers
Skirmishing through the rapids.
I
On the ridge above Radnor
Four barrows prick the skyline
Half moons for the bones of kings
Who became pointers to the stars.
Now their hunting fields are mine
For I can out-span their arms
Swoop faster than their rabble,
With a cry soar and open
Their horizon to the falling sun.
II
I've lost the key, no
It's worse than that.
I've lost the lock,
The secret, the reason
For the secret
Four
Always guarded by four
Corners of a circle
Castles in the south
Forts from a time when
Iron meant victory
Not slag and unemployment,
Barrows on the crest
Stones for sun and constellations
Quarters for soldiers.
What for?
All I have
Is a list of what has been,
The feeling of missing
Fun, sport, import, point
All four.
III
Sewing the field patchwork idly
Caring nothing for irregular sides,
Making noises that soothe the animals,
Ingratiate the birds and lure
Weekend lovers to your blooming meadows,
You are the perfect gill for summer.
Major brook, non-commissioned river,
Winter roar worth little more
Than a minor flood.
Who now can hear the ice that gave you birth
Or in your feline waters
Taste the warrior blood?
IV
Flat out, stretched with no more to say
After we had made the earth our altar,
Sown, reaped and threshed under the full sun,
We lay, gazed at the buzzard circling
High enough to mistake us for prey.
In this strange field we had been a sacrifice,
Content leeching into the shorn grass
Four millennia after the lost knife
Had caught the glint of a midsummer morning
In the national stadium, cathedral close
Bounded by posts the width of forty year oaks.
You sang, and round the valley
Delighted larks understudied the ghosts.
V
What ambitious streets this city has,
Broad enough for oxen, hay and castle stone,
Straight and crossed as a grid for New York
Four centuries too early.
The church would kid you it's Italian
But this is no Verona,
No room for a piazza or even a café,
No colonnades to strut among the plotting ladies,
No opera nor dancing den.
Radnor sighs and wails
For enlightened settlers
With more energy than time.
VI
Caught between the placid green of hopeless farms
And the road rush, fleeing or seeking cities,
Each tree and turf flank shields an era,
The rubbish of violence, the boundaries of lost significance.
A path leads nowhere, ditch to bramble patch,
Pint to table, pub to bungalow
Instead of castle moat to thoroughfare,
Stadium to sanctuary.
There is no truculent Roman, or Conqueror's
Man-at-arms, no rebel or persecuted priest.
The chariots rot beneath unnecessary sheep,
Aristocrats have dismissed their servants,
Sold their mansions to democracy, rabbits breed
Where chieftains sacrificed
For a benign scene such as this
Ravaged by tranquillity.
Presteigne Festival/Gwaithla 25 Years On
Where I planted a slender hedge
A damson forest spreads across the field
And apple, cherry and copper beach
Have shrugged off their sapling support,
Hold their own against the storms with confidence.
The curlews have fled the breeding buzzards
And the faithful swallows have left the bats
Their stretch of roof which sags where the builder
Once said, rightly, it would last for years.
Outside, in front, the ground has risen perceptibly.
A century has changed, a quarter passed,
A generation's beauty has furrowed and eroded,
Desire crumbled into bitter flakes
Through parenthood and worse, our circumference
Grown without accomplishment to match.
Music, once so new it frightened,
Now rests easy in the catalogue of old invention
Waiting for revival, measured by fresh fingers,
Counted, like us, quite sweet, motherly
Though misshapen by neglect and time.
The plans have progressed from paper
To ash, to compost nurturing
The accidental damsons. Will there be
Hours enough, and inclination
And hope to reap their fruit?
I
The party started at three in the morning, give or take a hoot and whoop,
Became a near riot as the little road clogged with mokes
And jeeps and rattletrap trucks
Delivering fuck-you boys to the beach
And clever-clever girls to the music by the sea.
Friday night, Friday Fight Night,
When the horns are worn and sounded,
Conch against car, parish against parish.
Only the dawn brings peace to these tidy rioters
Who love and leave nothing broken in the wrack.
II
How did we know the world would never be the same again?
We had seen the rain coming towards us across the sea before,
Though mainly in the morning, out of season, with a wind basking in its wake.
Once we had seen a vast flock, an air force of boobies
Commanded, it seemed, by a lone white gull.
We had seen them break from the water, attack
A whole cruise liner of Americans, cheered on by flying fish
As the decks were bespattered and beshat,
The bright shirts ripped and stripped,
Stippled with the blood of Dakota.
It was revenge, of course, for the music and the flashing,
The awful voices and the thud of engines in good fishing time
But it was good to see the boobies bite the complacency
Off the imperial backsides out to sea.
We had even seen the water in the harbour boil, then drain
Suddenly as if the plug of hell had been pulled in a pissing rage
By Satan quenching the fire of his slovenly devils.
Then we ran as he and they cooled down, as he let off steam
And the water, superhot, rushed to swamp the houses and
Place a banana boat in the aisle of the Cathedral, parked so neatly
That Rita nearly gave it a ticket.
We had seen things go wrong and right, even occasional weddings
Before the children were born and called
Industrial non-biblical names,
But we had never seen â not even when the water
Was as crowded as a London tube at five on a Wednesday afternoon
Like a Jamaican election party â we
Had never seen the dolphins
Crash.
III
Along the wharf the schoolgirls, nearlywomen girls
Ranged, their convent skirts bluer than the harbour water,
Flapping as pointlessly, a sea of cloth concealing
Everything but the contours of the bottom.
In the crumpled streets without pavements
Crisp uniforms were everywhere,
Shifts of pink and navy nurses leaking downhill from the hospital,
Each medalled with a watch â the only record
Of island time except the baton
Beating the police band into shape behind sun-crumbled walls
And official pick-up trucks (no questions, no answers).
Where is there to hide in this ragged town
When every wall supports a lazy spy,
A business relationship, a whatever service now,
Where we all watch and play?
Every pillar of the community stops
A house of repute and ill-consideration
Slipping from the hillside
On the ash of the snoozing volcano.
IV
Can an age be right to discover, to unwrap,
Drift, to live unsupported on the slide of a mountain?
Is there an age to braid your hair with glass and gold,
Swim with the fish brushing tight fins against receptive skin
Without the let and hindrance of bashful cloth?
Can the age be right for a mother to be mistaken for a schoolgirl
Or the rampant man for an old sage,
Treasuring his sucked thoughts like a sperm whale
Hoarding air a hundred feet below the pressure of safety?
Can the age be right for loving and leaving behind?
V
The most comforting sight from an island is not the ship
With sails full and ropes thwacking against the mast
In the offshore wind dragged to sea by the sunset.
Neither do the waves flattened
To a rhythm no more troubled than breathing,
Or breezes out of the hurricane months
Carry more than cursory touches of relief.
The sight that slips hope into the soul and excites the dormant heart
Is another island, seen clearly in the morning for the first time.
From this littered shore it seems paradise,
Smaller with gentle green peaks, the turquoise of coral rich water,
Maybe a hint of an unexplored interior full of waterfalls
And humming birds and a skiff ready to transport me,
And is that â below the shallow channel â the line
Of a forgotten causeway,
Fordable only on days of auspicion?
VI
Aeneas Arrives at Mount Erycz
Is the fire on the headland more propitious than
The pyre on the continental beach we had deserted?
Looking back across the sea
There was the smoke of the dead against the sunset.
Looking forwards into the dark mountain of the island
The red glow of the holy beacon lit for love (the sailors said),
Though whether for the future or in commemoration
I could not tell then or since in the wandering years.
There was a storm of welcome
That night when we anchored, a viciousness and tenacity
In the bite of the wind on our backs
That would never let us turn, whatever the answer.
Repairs were a week's work.
I was tired of leadership, of the price of decision,
The scorn of indecision, so in the morning
I left the chandlers to their nails, commandeered
Two slaves, females not above fifteen,
Packed food, rolled cloaks
And set a road for the mountain.
There would be a night on her slopes
Whether or not we achieved the summit together.
I expected an arduous climb but easily found the path,
Well trodden, marked by the detritus of lazy pilgrims.
Still it would take all day and I
Was soon too far-gone for marching.
The girls joined hands around my waist,
Buttressed my arms and we meandered to heaven.
Was I ready for Aphrodite?
Her priestesses seemed ready for me, if unimpressed
By my sheepish arrival, the gauche servitude of my companions.
I was tolerated a night's lodging and told to return
When I had more to offer the goddess than guilt
At squandered love and the loyalty of slaves.
VII
I have circled myself with a sea of noise and anonymity,
The cliffs of my chair fortress against conversation.
Age is on my side rendering me as invisible to the firm young wayfarers,
Especially the cadet women, as a sandbank in the morning fog,
A November morning fog of unassailable stillness,
The sort that breeds disdain, caresses alienation.
I have the mass of a small continent but bottles,
Comments and salutations pass unobstructed from coast to coast.
I am forgotten geography,
Only spotted on the map at closing time.
VIII
The sad insistence of the waves
Lapping against stone foundations,
Ruffling weed to its perpetual annoyance,
Gave a solemn lilt to the ballad
Of how the island was spoiled.
There was no need for a volcano
To send earth to heaven or turn
Rain to powdered rock, no need
For such a monumental fountain.
Signals were not hard to spot
Though many daily irritations
Were invested with false significance
The noise from engines, for instance
Or the sludge that sat and stank
Along the river banks and infested bridges.
These came after the spoiling
Like the slow demise of flowers
From poison in the water,
No, each rebuttal was born a spoiler
And though they seemed easy enough to sweep away,
For years they bred and colonised with crimson
Field after field of pale green hope
Until the island's reflection in the morning
Sky was livid with their triumph.
IX
Blow the bridges, all of them,
Left to right, bank to bank,
Royalty to university, church to commerce,
Theatre to bookshop. Three of us
Have colonised this point of the tributary island,
Poet, painter, poet, no talking yet,
(We would hate each other's art)
Think, watch the light, the roofs,
The passing dullards of every nation,
So blow the bridges.
Here goes.
X
All islands are linked by the sea, Poseidon's net,
His rape of twisted water. Is it really spume or the
Great god's sperm that spots and crusts
The drying sand?
Within mountains you can trace
That ancient ejaculation
On the knickers of the land.
Will the seed respond
When we expire
Break open with birth delight?
Perhaps he will haul
A mate for my island
Through your Bosphorus
Emancipate the Blest Aegean.
