Wolf Tongue (6 page)

Chaucer came here

as

Clerk of Works

for

King John.

We

photograph the

stark

remains.

Marriage

is

dusty

excuse.

Kiss

tapestries.

Love

is

a terrible child.

You

walk backwards

up worn steps

from the cloven

palace

door.

False queen

adieu.

History is a lie.

Selected from the gutter realm

of citizens

who work

and find no

peace

in pain.

I am chains.

Barricades emptied the

square

of bossy sparrows.

Liberty’s love is an arrow.

Flags

of plexiglass

consume my pores

&

the fighters

who

carry them,

torn from their skin.

Let them in!

     1

  bee-like

        we cluster

                    & suck

Mie blodde steyned Veste

    I lacke noe Wite

Farquars ghasted Holborn flange

       in draped cartoon

  lions suckt my death

      quills in my bonnet

  from mie Londe be fed

               which is poetry

   under the sea. A gorie anlace

         by her honge, Walpole

  selling his shares in the future

            of english poetry, quilted

        drawing room beaneries

                  foisted on a magnum

           of almond tasting wine

             Ynne hys streyninge

       fuste, eyes

              like sand, bonemeal carpets

     down among his mushroom

             windows, skywards

  in a flush of finger blood, his

         single intellect blazed

             Gronfyres, scillye wympled

                    gies ytte to

                hys Crowne. Terrain of fires

                    in a land of black geese

                        & rain.

                      strev to ryd

                              mie Londe of Payne

                      moths

                            inside his moonstone jacket:

                  blood pressure 90/40, clonic

                         twitching pride

                            of lions suckt a death.

                         wrath jockeyed hunger, botte

                         falleynge nombers sable. Swan

                           fever defoliated

                             brightly feathered

                      Aella. Dorsiflexion

             writhed his feet

                        into the living history

       of language, wythe Lockes

                 of blodde red die. Saracens

drained the Severn

     from his head blood, counter-

   feiting

         jealousy

    in a rising star. Snail, forfeit

         your parsley grange. Panther, your

     jet body is a star – amenge

                   the drybblett ons

              to sheene full bryghte

                the Nine will be mine.

             quenched gronfers rodde

                  & anlace sheene,

                               fanned

       upwards

                      northern

   feet

      vexynge our coast. Acrostics

  early fumed his mouth blood

          vixenated raven strokes

  on the slain. coffee shop Campbell

                 Bannerman your frosted

          boot studs flaked away

     each diamond in the chalky

                neonised headwear

          of his journey north.

          hard-featured men

             levyn-bronde yr brow

          music pealed along

              cowarde Londonne burn

                poised on twelve columns

      ate the shadow of a language

                cooked with albionic herbs

                as he floated down. Crystal

   children suckt

         life their ankles

   snapped into a wilderness

             of speech. storven ynne theyre

   smethynge gore, no prisoners. Their charisma

                  shattered into space

                              when he died.

2                                                             

I ate brondeous Hotspur’s rural
rrr

        my lips inside an acorne-coppe

I learned in Florence how to poison flowers

     & sheath this quill in absolute commitment

to a language going north

without maps.

Cartoons abounding

in their brain blood

bent my face

towards an Omega

of horns

whose presence was like French

in the dark.

An ake inside these marrow pipes

muffed beakless

ossianic

fakery

in boundless collar blood.

Churned to swivelled

spindrift

in a restless family

of hunger, I

gathered consonants

& stars

from the six windows.

      Wythe a swotye Cleme

and sheene fulle bryghte

this pageant suffered

dissolution before

its chemistry was known.

 Glabrous vegetative hordes

extend their fin

into my other eye.

    They cool to blood

the tungsten carpet

of my tongue.

 I have shewn the romantics

all my drierie Pryde.

    Inside this poem

is

a Beme of daie.

    3

whanne from his lyfe-bloode

        rodde lemes

                     were fed,

                        berten

                        Neders

         flashed across a fen

of sky blood, no man so potent

            breathes to vitalise

the language in his day.

                         My takelle

                                   poured a shag of fire

                         into a heart

                                   which thinks

                        & swims.

Or let me taste my horse across vast Northumberland

            like a thunderbolt of blood: cyanide from

                                               his mouth no

                                               water flows.

           
yn the Bowke

           
nete Alleyn

                            to run is

                     limed fire, eat

                            motion

                         with rust.

          I eat no Latin bread.

BBC monochrome newsreel flickers

         jerking on small family TV screen –

   Sorbonne students hoy parking meters

            paving stones ripped, military phalanx

lowers grinning plexiglass

bodies’ confrontation on sensual Paris boulevards

        tolerated hash in Amsterdam cuts down riot-quota

        ‘our correspondent says there will be no

        repetition of the 1968 near-revolution

           because students have not gained support

        of the French working-class’

Leftists mount insurrection

                 neat covert agents ensure safety

     When does ‘made payments’

                            become ‘offered bribes’?

Will the Labour Party uphold the jailing of pickets?

Of course.

– TUC inner cadres make closed door pacts with the Govt

This allows the
£

             some relief on the European market

        Bank of England dwarfs

   up the lending rate

         affording confidence

                      to other dwarfs/

Circles broken circumferences ripped

           perimeters buckled

        facts revealed

                must be published

        because they are seditious

Dragged by the hair students

                 on Daily Telegraph page one

    suitable captions

             of a certain persuasion    

‘Days lost in strikes are the lowest

                in seven years

     The people of Britain are determined

                  to beat inflation’

Whipped legs

   of left-bank women students

            blur on the shimmered screen

            625 line consciousness –

   systems of response have woven into them

        a right to decide on issues

   pertinent to individual consciousness, local energy

                & mass development

              – plugs are juice-taps

                       inside skirting boards

                   overalled workers come on shift

                      in Scottish grid complexes –

       ‘At three minutes past eight you must dream’

                    Sir John Gielgud/

                                        Lee J Cobb dead, Sal

                Mineo dead in Hollywood suburbs

             alleys exploded liver burst

                    muggers’ dark blade

            elegiacs & glittering heroes

              sour with mediocre filmwork

       ‘There is work and there is art. So far all

              I have done is work – you could say

                    I feel bitter about that’

      Lee J Cobb in manly cowboy snarl

            20 years after
On the Waterfront

                 & Sinatra paid his debts

   no revolution repetition on the hour

     les flics keep low profiles

         hooligan is an easy word to use in Paris

                 for the gauchistes

                 as is sincerity

        when referring to the obedient athletic policemen

            Bird, bat or strangling reynard

            wheeps in the graveyard

            domestic cats snarl at window-sill

            through leaves & long-grass

How many fantasy robot women

                 of university poets

      have ‘coral-branch’ limbs

             breasts ‘full of secrets’?

            Breasts are for kissing

            & for bairns’ milk

            a lovely touchable part

            of both sexes

      these poets take to bed

                   wind and water – monochrome opposites

           of reality’s many shades

           – pine matches burn

                   in coal

        flare because

                      parts of the wood

            remain worthy of fire, like a poet

                      growing older.

          Winds of southern dawn

              blow vermilion gases

                     in my skull.                

           Barbiturate environment!

              Marshmallow urbanity!

              Newcastle poets

           aim pearl-inlaid shotguns

           on Allendale & Nenthead fells

              heads down behind

                  desolate lead workings

              where John Martin

                  looked in terror on the pitman’s lamp

             Bunting translates Catullus

                      in Wylam

                 old as the century.

Pickard lams battered arts council grant landrover

        into cathedral snowdrifts

              on bitter dale hillspine –

            rural economics are a laugh

                if you don’t compensate

                       for snow.

         On the hour every hour

         Paris correspondent reiterates

         his dirge – snow dances

                       by itself in Northumberland

         & doesn’t recognise farmers.

Newcastle helicopters fetch emergency cowcake and hay.

     Pondwater wine stinks

          raw meniscus on wrists

      Less hair on head of husband

          ageing quicker than clocks tick

     You chuckle in sleep

         blissfully away

     from aweful consciousness

         for a few hours – I stare at you

         in this dark

         which is like a hurt, afraid

                                for your safety

         alone.

  I deal in secret financial reports

    confidential manpower utilisation documents

        council Deep-Throats with secrets to tell

  I must protect my sources

           to weld Press trivia

       in low-key suburban rags.

            Obvious conflict for a poet

                  in this predicament –

                 to be worked out

                      as it goes

                 & as it falls

                      to be cleaned.

Foot stretched out sleepy cramp alone

    Cooling coals crack and shift

        in London hearth – Real miners

    ripped that coal – to chuckle

          in your sleep, wife, is better than shaking

                  at sunrise / solitary

             chic rocking chair

                 slowly hisses

                                 to a stop,

           Baroque mandolins

               plucked music

                  before the next normal news from Paris.

1977–78