Out of the Blue (3 page)

Again, that light bid the gates open. Lucifer answered

‘What Lord are you?’ A voice said aloud

‘The lord of power and might, that made all things.

Duke of this damned place, now undo these gates

that Christ may come in, heaven’s son.’

As he breathed these words, hell broke, and all Belial’s bars.

No guard could keep those gates. They opened wide.

Patriarchs and prophets, the people that dwelled in darkness

sung with Saint John, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’.

Lucifer blazed into blindness, and saw nothing

while those that our Lord loved flowed forth with that light.

‘Here I am,’ said our Lord, ‘body and soul,

to claim for all the rights of body and soul.

They were made by me, they were always mine.

My law and my justice promised them

that if they ate the apple they should die,

but I never condemned them to hell for ever.

Their deadly sin came by your deception,

you got them with trickery, trickery took them.

You crept into my Eden in the shape of an adder

to steal away what I loved and looked after,

you teased and tricked them and destroyed my Eden.

The Old Law teaches that tricks will catch tricksters,

and truss them up in a web of deception.

Those that take life must lose their own lives,

the Old Law teaches. A murderer’s life is exacted.

One soul must pay for another, the sin of my Crucifixion

wipes out Original Sin. For I am human,

and capable of making amends for human sin.

Through my own death, I undo death,

and I ransom all those crushed through sin,

and I trick the tricksters of hell through my grace.

So do not fool yourself, Lucifer, that I come against the law

to fetch any sinful soul by force,

but by justice and truth I ransom what is mine.

What was got with guile, is regained by grace.

As the human race died through a tree

so by a tree they shall come to life,

And your deception begins to turn

inwards, and stab your own flesh,

while my grace flourishes.

You have brewed bitterness, now swallow it.

Doctor of death, drink your own medicine.

I that am lord of life, love is my drink,

and for that drink I died today, as it seemed.

I do not drink from gold cups, or refined teaching,

only the common cup of all Christian souls.

But your drink shall be death, and deep hell your bowl.

After the great fight thirst grips me still,

my thirst for every human soul.

My thirst is so great that nothing can touch it –

all your spirits and rare vintages

will never slake it, till the grapes are ripe

and the dead wake. Ripe, and purple, and heavy-hanging

in the valley of the resurrection,

and then I shall come into my kingdom

and bring out of hell all human souls.

By right I will lead them out of this place,

all those I loved, all who believed in my coming,

but because you lied to Eve, Lucifer, you shall pay for it.’

And the lord bound Lucifer in chains.

Ashtaroth and the others hid in hell’s crannies:

They did not dare even look on the lord

but let him lead forth whomever he chose

and leave behind him in hell whomever he chose.

The angels sang and swept their harps,

hundreds of angels poured out their music:

The flesh sins, the flesh atones for sin,

the flesh of God reigns as God
.

Then Peace played these verses on her pipes:

‘Glittering sun after rain,’ sang Peace

The warmth of sun after rain-loaded clouds,

no love is sweeter, no friends dearer

than when peace comes after war.

Peace, armed with patience, puts an end to danger,

stills violence, destroys terror.’

‘Truly,’ said Truth, ‘Here is the heart of truth.

Let us offer one another the kiss of peace.’

‘And let no one say that we argue among ourselves,

for nothing is impossible to God,’ said Peace.

‘You speak the truth,’ said Righteousness,

and she took Peace in her arms tenderly.

Mercy and Truth have met together

Justice and Peace have kissed one another
.

They sang together in my dream until the day dawned

when the church-bells rang for the Resurrection,

and with that sound I awoke

and called Kit my wife and Colette my daughter,

‘Get up, and honour God’s resurrection,

creep to the cross, venerate it, kiss it

like the most precious jewel there is,

most worthy relic, richest on earth.

It bore our Lord’s body to do us good,

and in the shadow of the cross

no ghosts can gather, no evil can live.’

Old warriors and women

cough their glots of winter-thick phlegm

while a dog hackles for the bone

that the boy on the floor has stolen.

Whining, mithering children

in swaddles of urine-damp wool, prickling

with lice, impetigo and scabies, again

the toothache, the earache, the scabies, the glands

battling. Hush by the fire again

sing him a song, rock him again,

again, till he sleeps, still whining and wizening.

On the earth floor rocks his squat cradle

on the squat earth he has come to,

while one of the obsolete warriors

wheezes away at an instrument

made of sheep’s innards.

He is a man of skills

learned painfully, not much of a singer

wheezing for the second time that evening

of the boar he killed with a dagger

of the bear with razor claws

that scooped out the face of his brother

then fell to his spear.

In song he remakes his brother

and their small play on the earth floor.

The baby cries. Smoke fills the hall,

the eyes of warriors and old women,

and nobody listens.

There’s the skin of the bear on the floor

and a hearth gaping with flame

red-mouthed, then smoke hides it again.

By thirty everyone’s teeth are broken –

look at that kid worrying his bone.

Ships on brown water

wings unruffling

masts steep and clean,

There goes the dredger,

there the steam crane

downcast, never used.

Tide goes wherever

tide goes,

forty foot rise

forty foot fall,

ship waiting

to clear Hotwells.

Time rises

time falls.

Two hundred years

shrink to nothing,

huge tides

shrunk to a drop

caught in a cup

where the men sip

tea, coffee

laced with rum,

talk venturing

westward, moneyward.

This is the slaver

money funded,

good money

from tradesmen’s pockets,

guinea by guinea

fed into it.

Double it, treble it,

build on it.

Don’t stare –

you’ll cross them:

William Miller,

Isaac Elton,

Merchant Trader,

Merchant Venturer,

powerful men.

Edward Colston’s

almshouses

(slaver panelled)

still standing.

Sugar houses

(easy burning)

all gone,

brown water

brown rum.

Custom House

African House

bonded warehouse

almshouse

sugar house.

Mud slack

licking its chops,

bright water

fighting to rise.

Look in their eyes.

They’ll stare you down

for it takes guts

to get returns.

Investor,

speculator,

accumulator,

benefactor.

See their white wings

fledge on the Avon.

They speak of cargo,

profit-margins,

schools they’ve founded,

almshouses.

If you stare

at the brown water

you will see nothing,

every reflection

sucked and gone.

Slaver’s gone

on savage wings,

beak preying.

Tradesmen’s guineas

got their return:

coffee, cotton,

cocoa, indigo,

sugar, rum,

church windows,

fine houses,

fine tombstone

for Edward Colston,

the cry of gulls

goes after them

always lamenting,

always fresh

beaks stabbing

at their soul-flesh.

Those words like oil, loose in the world,

spilling from fingertip to fingertip

besmirching lip after lip,

the burn; the spillage of harm.

Those words like ash, mouth-warm.

Because she told a lie, he says,

because she lied

about the hands not washed before shopping,

she had to learn,

because he wanted her to learn

the law that what he said, went,

and that was the end,

and because she was slow

she had to learn

over and over.

He was an old-fashioned teacher,

he taught her hair to lie straight,

he taught her back to bend,

he taught silence

but for the chink of coathangers

stirring in the wardrobe.

He kicked the voice out of her.

There were no words left to go

with the seven-year-old girl

soiled and bleeding,

marched along the corridor

by this man, rampant

with all he had learned.

Later, locked up once more

she called through the door to her mother

‘
It’s all right, Mum, I’m fine
.’

But she was lying.

Say we're in a compartment at night

with a yellow label on the window

and a wine bottle between your knees,

jolting as fast as the sparks

torn from night by the wheels.

Inside, the sleeping-berth is a hammock

and there I swing like a gymnast

in a cradle of jute diamonds.

Outside, the malicious hills,

where to stop is to be borne away

in the arms of a different destiny,

unprotesting. Too sleepy to do anything

but let it be. So, that oak, lightning-cracked,

shakes where the flame slashes

and kills its heart. Swooshing up air

in armfuls its branches unload

toppling beyond the rails'

hard-working parallels. Say you join me,

say your eyes are drowsy,

say you murmur,
The rain's coming in,

pull up the strap on the window,

the rain's coming in
.

She comes close to perfection,

taking the man on her thigh,

sweeping him home

in a caress of glitter, that way and this,

that, this, each muscle stripped

to bulge and give. See how her hair

streams in the firmament,

see how the tent

jutting with spotlights

puts one over her, then another,

another, a spurt of white

that slicks to her thighs

while the crowd claps time,

faster and faster, wishing she’ll fall

wishing she’ll plunge for ever

licked all over with glitter

love-juices, spittle.

Back she comes on herself,

her bird costume flaring.

As she lets him down

you see the detail: the rosin,

the sweat that follows her spine,

the sly, deliberate spin

with which he steps onto land.

But the crowd won’t stop clapping.

They want her again,

they’ve been translated, they’re Greek,

shouting
Die now! This is as good as it gets!

If only I’d stayed up till four in the morning

and run through the dawn to watch the balloons

at the Festival ground,

and seen you as your balloon rose high

on a huff of flame, and you’d waved,

and a paper aeroplane had swooped to the ground

with your mobile number scrawled on the wings.

If only I’d known that you were crying

when you stood with your back to me

saying that it didn’t matter

you’d be fine on your own.

If only I’d trusted your voice

instead of believing your words.

If only I hadn’t been too late, too early,

too quick, too slow, too jealous and angry,

too eager to win

when it wasn’t a game.

If only we could go back to then

and I could pick up your paper aeroplane

and call you for the very first time.