THE NEW LIFE
IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS
BY
Paul Murphy
Contents
Page
Acknowledgements 4
Biography 5
The New Life
At A Jewish Cemetery in East London 7
A Dream 8
Cyclops 9
A Song for Two Voices 10
A Guide to Experience 12
The Island 13
Uuncompaniable Theme 14
The Death of Saint Narcissus 15
Metamorphosis 16
Defunctive Music Undersea 18
The Mandarins 20
Cynic 22
Two Songs 23
Sketch of a Flower 24
Sailing After Knowledge 25
To a Lady 27
Days 28
Revolution 29
El Desdichado 31
Haiku Sequences
Ten Haiku 32
Seven Haiku 36
Three Haiku 42
In the Luxembourg Gardens
In the Luxembourg Gardens 45
Images 46
Automatic Ode 47
Parting - For Tina 48
Revolution, Revolution 49
Chamber Music 52
Poem Found in Monaghan Bog 53
The Clouds 54
Remembering The Hill 55
Meeting 56
Biography
Born in Belfast, 1965. He studied at the University of Warwick, gaining a BA in Film Studies. From there he went to Queen's University Belfast to study for an MA on T.S.Eliot and the French philosopher Jacques Lacan. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation at the University of Ulster and teachs creative writing to adults in and around the Belfast area.
His poetry, literary criticism and book reviews have been published in English and Irish journals, he has published two previous books of poetry, and has read from his work in Paris, Cambridge, Galway and Belfast. He is at the moment re-writing his MA thesis for publication, and working on many reviews of contemporary authors. He also writes philosophy and enjoys working on the interface between poetry and philosophy.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems first appeared: Bark, Gown Literary Supplement, The Cutting Room (The South Yorkshire Writer), Hybrid, The Haiku Quarterly, First Time, Exiles, Stone Soup, Envoi, Presence and The Bad Poetry Quarterly.
I am indebted to Dennis and Rene Grieg of Lapwing Poetry Pamphlets, Belfast, who published the pamphlet The New Life and to Dr Wolfgang Goertschacher and Professor James Hogg of the University of Salzburg Press who published the volume of poetry In the Luxembourg Gardens in which a number of these poems previously appeared.
P.M.
At a Jewish Cemetery in East London
Theme this but little heard among men -
The external World is fitted to the Mind.
(Wordsworth: The Excursion)
You homeless dead uneasily lie
Surrounded by a city's growth,
The seagull's cry, the distant spire.
Your tongue mute, your time spent,
No remembrance where memory
A dream forgotten by angels.
Your great tombs lean toward heaven
Your speech also entombed,
You are Israel's ever-lasting star.
With you the sheet is clean to write
Again, though time sways away,
A fickle dancer, dying through time.
Unknown power descends to those
Who come after, waiting for chance
And for time to condescend.
You hope for the earth, like that
Idiot, Quester, Star, searching
For a Speech, a Woman, an Island.
The city falls, in the distance
Crumbling masonry, the scream of the river:
Throating all the sounds of the dead.
CYCLOPS
Hal: Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do...
(2001: A Space Odyssey)
I am Empedocles
Defying the Thousand,
I am Oedipus
Blinding myself,
I sit beneath
The Black Sun,
I cannot think nor feel,
I write until morning.
I am Cassandra
Never believed,
I am Jocasta
Seducing my son,
I am alive in death
Alive in dreams
Dreaming of death,
I wait until morning.
I am the Parrot
Enduring inanity,
I am the Word
Speaking myself,
In the morning
I eat the bread
My stomach reminds
Me of what I am.
A DREAM
It is the sun's gaze unillumined
Passive tendrils deep sought
Evocations, falsity and terror.
Where is the form
And where the shape
To elicit the sun's dead gaze,
Undreamt by anyone?
We are seeking, seeking
Placing braille sheets
On the unimagined.
Music shudders, refined
Music, groaning like a squeezebox,
In the great home's
Halls and portals, shudders.
Is it a motet,
Or a recitative
Sung through clenched teeth,
Or blown away on the breeze?
It is the age of dreams,
Mirages, ungrasped
Which fall into fountains,
Deep, untold. Are these portents?
How might we speak of them?
We are in love with you,
Dream unspeakable.
The Island
In the sun's dawning miracle,
In the flood spread over the island,
In the morning's quietude, where
Sheep's inane bleating reverberated,
In these things we saw and failed
To see the rose of light, the single eye.
In the sun's dawning miracle,
We could not see, nor wish to see
The stark morning's quietude, nor
The lament for the dead, the crying,
The weeping of the funeral march,
The town's cobbled streets.
In the sun's dawning miracle,
In light spread over the island
In charcoal rain descending,
We, gazing upwards, so thunder came
To strike the lightning tree,
Rain slapping, we crossed the river.
The Island
In the miracle of the dawning sun
In the flood spread over the island
In the quietude of morning, where
The inane bleating of sheep reverberated,
In these things we saw and failed
To see the rose of light, the single eye.
In the miracle of the dawning sun,
We could not see, nor wish to see
The stark quietude of morning, nor
The lament for the dead, the crying,
The weeping of the funeral march,
The cobbled streets of the town.
In the miracle of the dawning sun
In light spread over the island
In charcoal rain descending,
We, gazing upwards, so thunder came
To strike the lightning tree,
Rain slapping, we crossed the river.
Uncompaniable Theme
Where are the bands, where are the flutes
That led the solemn procession,
Where are the banners, the marching crowds,
That beat out time to the foot tap?
In the Ascent was the flesh made perfect;
Insubstantial limit of cloud or light
Pouring over the edifice of night
Perpetual sounds and shadows bright:
With a stone in my heart, gripe in my
Stomach, with a terrible truth to say
Whether at dawn or at the end of day
Dreams and sensuous nightmares play:
We uttered the midnight such a prayer,
That we might grow old in despair.
Fragments from The Waste Land
There is bad news:
The stock market has fallen
The Thames burns with sulphuric acid
the souls of damned city directors
Float on the tide to Greenwich and Mudchute.
At night we marched inland
To the old encampments
Our parched mouths
Turned inwards and pockets
Of spittle lacerating our cracked lips
Our wallets are empty
Our bank accounts have
Dried out in the sun
I carry a sword
In my sort code and my heart.
Titan
Amazing architectonic bliss, now
Architecture of souls, in moments
Passing away, a supreme lapse and then
Rising, falling, billowing, notes on a page
Which seemed to you
No more than the dream interpretation
You revealed to Freud, with your tenderness
A mother fixation, revelation
Of womanhood, of love and fate
All this music, rhapsody of hate
Of feeble fists punching out, trembling
On the tongue, on the mouth, incandescent
And trivial, a simple folk tune set
Here and there give way, apocalyptic
And visionary
A Guide to Experience
The finger movements of the artist's hand,
Were written with a practised elegance,
Were written on that canvas in dried sand,
And neatly a signature of much violence.
She sits, the sun settles on a floating
Cloud, as light fills the portico
His Ducal seal so nearly illuminated,
She sits there clearly in intaglio.
Are you standing arrogantly, and then
Seated looking back, have you the moment,
The hour, the minute's second, and then
Diminished, in a repose at the edge of time?
Pensive, the face uncovers the multitude
Of errors nurtured by the artist's hand.
The Death of Saint Narcissus
This music compels me, the wasp's sting
Lasts but a second, but you my adoration
Compels, my neck broken, heaved on the cold sand.
If you will know, know now, these arrows burn
My flesh in hope that they my heart will find
To pierce the veins and cut the arteries.
See, I tap the strings, a melodious accompaniment
Engages the restraint of this hand or this eye
As the dagger cuts the strings, then will I call to you.
Now darkened footsteps tread toward tomorrow,
In the vacant spaces, memory, once again
Occupies the hiatus of dead bones.
So an ending must come, the sands are hotter now
Before we may know only the hotness of the winter sun,
For what is knowledge, that which I desired, let my taste exceed.
A violin lingers, uneasing city and empire,
My body is gnarled, old, passing through many lands,
Who will cremate my flesh as it was burnt by your gaze?
If I wished to turn in the joy of transfiguration,
Turning to the ultimate vision, upheld in the hands,
And glimpsed between the sights of the sun and the moon.
Watch me now, prostrated, you will see me
Seek eternity, writhing in pain, with my blackened wounds
Hands cupped as for prayer, in my bleeding wounds.
To a Lady
Outside in mist, languid showers pass by,
River passes the window, down stream
It meanders, the great river tumbling
Toward the sea, in the teeth of the wind.
Outside a lazy shower passes by,
Rain kisses the window, river
Winds through the tumultuous cars and cabs:
The unemployed stand at street corners.
In the dark auction room I imitate
Romeo, a dreamer absorbed in visions:
As I stand, so she sits, in repose
Golden hair falling, eyes of grey.
The hammer falls, a requisite falling
As of the hand as it motions, a dead
Sound following, the squalls
At the window suffice, averts the gaze.
_______________________________________________
I stand, now, at her side
And hear the plashed sea's groaning,
The chained harbour utter and mouth,
Flows and tides, both pain and ecstasy.
Cynic
One night in soft September I watched
Light glide along damp leaves, these
Thoughts dispensed a sort of loneliness.
You, watching, your death's head
Bent, unfurled a pensive wing
Shook away my music and dream.
Abstract pity and fear was all you knew.
In thought's tangled web you dwelt
And were sucked to a husk of mental fury.
I laughed and knew that if I shook you,
You would dissolve and flutter in fragments.
The Mandarins
Here they come and go
In my beautiful, sunlit garden,
Heads bobbing
To and fro -
Is it an uncertain age
Waiting for a savage gatekeeper
To make them wait for eternity?
They have decided what is
And what is not,
As they trickle through -
The entrance to my garden.
Once I knew them
Contentedly bore them
But I have tired
Of their endless entropy.
They are the mandarins
Subtlety of subtlety
Grasping the ungraspable
Knowing the best is the best;
Ignorant and pathetic;
Could they lie in their beds
And die for knowledge they desired
Rehearsing the cataclysmic
Perpetual shudder of creation?
Mere false imitation
Heaped upon high
Over the sunny grass
Where things have grown
- But withered by their eye -
Gazing into books as a child
Would bring mere contempt
From my fellows, curious
To assume the moment with
The power of play and chance.
But time has given me a right
To smile, for I have wandered
In other countries and distant
Places, under the sun, calm
And content like a lover's eye.
Defunctive Music Undersea
Blankly, facing midnight, I have
Turned and have heard the click and chime,
Another hour receding in time,
I know, have known, will know, a Word
Eternal, without end. The sea
At my window reminds me of
Some shuddering dialectic,
Sea wrack is spawned connecting an
Infinity of gesture with an
Infinity of sound. The tide's
Response has driven me to the
Basal wreck, the dolomite caves,
Saying, "I have put paid to all
This", and when the meter broke I
Cried aloud, but the harsh midnight
Responded with the click and chime,
Another hour receding in time.
The darkness that flowed past
My window was once the light from
A dying star: so do things unique
Become perceptible; under the halo
Of the moon, the world is shocked
In its orbit, the clattering
Music of the spheres is the untold
Ecstasy, fear inexpressible
Of the night in its fierce enchantment.
The window was lop-sided from which
We gazed upon the world, humbled,
Retreating as the easterly,
And passing motioned and plangent.
Metamorphosis
Tell me why I should not be saturnine
Tell me why I should not be melancholic
Tell me why I should not desire
And tell me why I should not speak
The Word was born among men,
Flesh and spirit, upholding both,
In the desert, in the wilderness,
Not born to be man.
The Word spoke through him,
To the godless generations,
Unknown words sprang from
Lips of the dead and moved him.
If he loved it was through joy,
Not desire, and if he was
Moved to utter words then formless
Speech formed talk from dead mouths.
Born when gods were benignant
And blessed by the gods themselves,
Seized by dreams, cast out
To the wasted desert spaces.
He knew what thought divested,
And clutching himself tore away,
His new-found beauty, sacred
To the thoughtless heavens above.
What has thought given us?
In-wrought beautiful words,
God but not God, Word but not Word
Solemn martyrdom and not tomorrow.
Sketch of a Flower
Lamplight drowsy and my
Sad flower droops a dusty
Dusting tendril.
In the sun, flower,
You painted
A pollen mosaic
And your ash-red
Glowed to see the light.
Winter comes and I
Will tread the snow,
Worship your patterning
Annual resurrection.
I will set prayer to
Hasten your return, set
Hope against my own
Unawakened flesh.
Lyric
Calm and gentle as the sun
I have lain, observing the beauty
Which grows in your face,
The light in your eyes
And after a long time
I have wished for nothing more
Than to be calm and gentle as the sun.
Days
Days pass away
Days
Pass
Away.
Subtle pastiche
Colour
My
Days
My sunsets paint.
Dry
This
Gloss -
These hard leaves
And
My
Soul
Freeze
To
This hollow,
Soundful
Universe
Of
Song. Am I
Stuck
To
An
Angle, a repose
Of
Angled,
Angular
Days. Days pass
Away
Sailing After Knowledge
Now we must come to sense and experience
And follow after that school we despised,
Throw off our outrageous yearning and desire,
And stop our rage against the world:
This was the vision we most desired
This was the summit of ambition
This beautiful, vainglorious thing
Which had the pallor of death.
And painted in the enameled ocean
A vision of our vision: palm trees,
Island, seas, sky, sea-water lapping;
The death of sense and experience:
Head and arms - out of joint - eyes,
Nose, cropped hair, face leering over:
Smiling, laughing; peering into the glass
We glimpsed the terror behind the vision.
The hollow seasons roll by but somehow out
Of sync: I have seen her face sometimes,
Through the gateway where the dreams appear;
Then the voice that compelled you to understand
The difference between destiny and chance,
Reappears in the moment in and out of time:
The apple seed and autumn, darkness made
Visible, the sea that mirrored both life
And death, stretching before us:
Weary, half dead, we stumble on -
As if the vision returns -
We retire to a vision of life.
Revolution
As a metronome
Ticked,
In a darkened room,
Ticked,
A Venetian clock,
Accorded,
The beat of tone,
'Unmelodious',
Afforded destiny.
The shuttle crosses the loom,
Linen, coal, steam,
A horn,
Sounds the battlecharge,
A million watches ticking,
Cannonballs,
Crush the air.
This was progress
Of a sort
Music and warfare
Set in time
Ticking, ticking...
The rooms of statesmen
And the concert room
Gravel faced old men
Decisions, destinies
Worked out
Precisely
Ticking, ticking...
The beat of tone,
'Unmelodious'
Affordable destiny.
El Desdichado
I am the man of darkness - the bereft - the inconsolate
The Prince of Aquitaine with the abolished tower:
My only star is dead and my lyre
Bears the Black Sun of Melancholy.
In my night in the tomb you who consoled me,
Give me back the Posilipo, the sea of Italy,
The flower that so pleased my wasted heart,
And the arbour where the vine and the rose agree.
Am I Love or Apollo?...Lusignan or Byron?
My brow is red still from the kiss of the queen;
I've dreamed in the cavern where the siren swims...
And twice a conqueror have crossed Acheron:
Modulating on the Orphic lyre in turn
The sighs of the saint, the cries of the fairy.
Gerard de Nerval
Ten Haiku
For Padriac Fiacc
I
A blackened treestump
An overwrought memory
Of Spring, or endings.
II
The earnest rosebud
Drooping in mid-March willow
A face, a gravestone.
III
Spring, sunlit boughs
Taxi in Sorbonne, Cluny
Gard du Nord metro.
IV
Zoo, absurd baboon
You stretched your neck to see six
Overgrown giraffes.
V
Mid-Winter solstice
Remains, reminders of you
Laughing at the church.
VI
Tree, dark bole, litter
Leaf, ripple, autumn weather
Golden lamplit street.
VII
Winter chills, dark days
Evenings under gas heaters
Taste of sour winebreath.
VIII
Brown sagebrush, brown land
Lowland hills, rippling water
Darkened cosmos, night.
IX
Milky Way, heathland
We stood watching starlit night
Under spangling glitter.
X
Wasp fried on hard rock
Belies the tainted hider
A hard look at you.
Blue Oranges
The sky, jet black
Cascades energy
Neutrons, quasers,
Into the outer
Atmosphere,
The pocked moon
Laughs, grins at
The sky's unleavened bread:
The angelic torment
Abstract imperative
Of rarified speech
Caught in incandescent
Bottles, jars
Sulphurous, mystic
Red-fired face
In unbelievable
Lurid red-lined
Sulphurous antinomy.
Wiser, other
Come to me now,
Lover of hot milk
Wiser than my
Blueish, greenish
Oranges.
Seven Haiku
I
Electric lightline
Your figure outlined in red
Yellow chariscuro.
II
Your face flecked with light
My finger draws a circle
On the windowpane.
III
Window, patina
Of raindrops, autumnal mists
Your face in outline.
IV
Isolation drifts
Cloud-like, an out-stretched hand
Beckons to the stars.
V
Starlight, unclouded
Sky, moonlight in brown halo
Lonely street, city.
VI
Red yellow dress, sunlight
On cornfield gold, we made love
In evening's dustlight.
VII
Parting in cloudless
Cambridgeshire sky ballooning
Red unfolding rose.
Three Haiku
I
Autumn amber leaves
Rose or musk sky-coloured dusk
Patterns of hoar frost.
II
The lemon motor
Was your body, odour of flesh
Scent of hyacinth.
III
Winter gravestone, fresh
Easterly wind, a drowned sap
Of homecoming boats.
Three Haiku
I
Ethereal Autumn
Endless recurrence of loss
Summer's remembrance.
II
Trampled woodland path
Odour of hyacinth, sea
Flung far out tonight.
III
Tonight
A Mozart Concerto
Ricochets into
The sunset.
Writer's Write
Four Haiku
1st Rule of Writing
Write and write and write
And when you've stopped writing
Write, write again.
2nd Rule of Writing
Writing is all about
Economy of language,
Too much has already been written.
3rd Rule of Writing
Publication is
The icing on the cake
For all writers.
4th Rule of Writing
Writing through crises
Is the essence of writing
And its Christmas cake.
Angry Old Men
Here they sit, in Leamington Spa, at play
Old men, a garrolous crew, of old men
Playing cards, turbanned Sikhs: then the river
So slow, melancholy, a bad poem
Parody of itself, winds into view
And picking up the scene, its trembling waves,
Winterweed, spots of oil, gathers it all
Into its maw, a play upon the wordless
Emptiness of evening: I gather my
Books and wander home, past the old public
Houses, and then into view the dingy flat
Spatters of rain bespatter my hand, face
All the dingy factitude of being
On my own is gainful.
Moonlight
Inrush of light in cramped night
That filled the void, so blank and dark,
The blank abyss then shone with light
The mournful crying of a lark
Filled that midnight and creation
Was like a singing voice which urged
The stars to their resurrection
Beneath the canopy of night
Beneath a canopy of blight.
Failing
Inner nature always to sense
Leans, as chaos gains order
And fills the void, so blank and dark;
Inrush of light in cramped night
Reaches outward - to fill each pool -
Of raw decline; a woman's voice
Rises and sings the form of things-
The unroofed abyss, as evening comes.
Images II
Sound echoes narrowly on the stairwell:
The night we left the cinema
The homecoming was to a darkened house
Strangely, sinister,
As if crimes, odious, terrible had taken place.
In the basement we found a wall of flesh and blue,
Don Quixote rode in logic and abstract;
The wind pierced the wells;
The women of Guernica screamed in fixity.
Under the house
The paintbrush we castigated
Had changed history.
Stealthily, we crept back up the stairs;
Left the scene undisturbed
In the car again we returned later
We washed our hands of history.
The artist may take it
And make of it
Our trivial destiny.
We live out our irrelevance
Our nullity, again and again.
In the Luxembourg Gardens
The sideways disenchantment with the night
Is a subject of remote interest to me.
When my handgun gesticulated wildly
In La Rue Victor Cousin,
In the Luxembourg Gardens
We stole off to the Parisien
To see the busts
Arranged in verisimilitude
With depictions
Of the French Revolution
For sale at one hundred Francs, plastic
Eiffel Towers, T-shirts with the logo
Vive la Revolution plastered on them:
Where were Danton, Robespierre, Marat -
Heaps of junk in the mini-markets
Rotting fish, heaps of rotting meat,
The Morrocans bartering for bread,
Brown haired girls carrying fish
To the vendors, tradesmen,
Egalite, Liberte, Fraternite
Was the garbage of history,
Gone with the soupstains
The ashcans, David's Napoleon
Rode through the Tullieries,
With the Army of the Revolution
A ghostly battalion
Of waifs and unwanted
The unelected inheritors
Waited for the milkround.
Automatic Ode
The hills of Castlereagh were replaced by
Catalunya's slow purr and warmth.
In the market place
In the church, villas, clubs, bars
Was this declaimed?
A Perigord pres del muralh
Tan que I puosch 'om gitar ab malh.
An exercise in a dead language
Sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor
Meant 'I love you'
Poi s'ascose nel foco che li affina
Meant 'I love you'
The dung beetles scuttled
Through El Vendrelle's streets
Cacti, graffiti,
In the little village La Verne
I beat their 'King of Pool'
But went home dissatisfied.
Next day, I woke from a deep sleep
I asked the locals Que hora es?
Images
Sound echoes narrowly
On the stairwell:
The night we left the cinema
The homecoming was to a house
Bereft of light
Strangely, sinister,
As if crimes,
Odious, terrible
Had taken place.
In the basement we found a wall
Of flesh and blue,
Don Quixote rode in logic and abstract
The wind pierced the wells
The women of Guernica
Screamed in fixity
Under the house
The paintbrush we castigated
Had changed history.
Stealthily, we crept back
Up the stairs
Left the scene
Undisturbed
In the car again
We returned
Later, we washed
Our hands of history
The artist may take it
And make of it
Our trivial destiny
We live out our irrelevance
Our nullity again and again.
Parting
For Tina
Suitcase, bed, light
My copy of Faust in German
You have left these things
Parted, saying
Moglich, possibly, perhaps
Light fades, car ignites,
The night widens
The unbelievable glimmer
Of dawn, parting
Kann ich Dich Kussen.
REMEMBERING THE HILL
Those were days of liberation; I walked down Wardour Street
Looking for a job, getting nowhere, remembering The Hill
And Lady Chatterley's Lover's unbanning, as if that dour
Nottinghamshire face appeared at the dolequeue, or walking with
The crowds to Camberwell, a manuscript of The White Peacock
Stuffed under his coat; I strode to the Tube and disappeared
Into the Underground's haze: those were the days of Ol' Ez,
The Modern Movement, Lawrence died in Vence, Ez got gaoled
In Pisa, Ole Possum strode above them, a banker's ledger stuffed
Into a scroll of poems, Nobel Prize, OM, no rewards for the men
And women of the revolution. In Russia Sergei Eisenstein made
The first film, Battleship Potemkin. Within two years montage
Conquered the world: Picasso, Dali, invented Cubism, Surrealism.
Manifestos appeared everywhere, exhorting, coercing. Hysteria
Gripped the world, as if it would explode under the severity:
I strode out of the Tube, into the Isle of Dogs, under the river
Into Greenwich, remembering The Hill, those days of liberation.
REVOLUTION, REVOLUTION
At the gallery of high unstudied art
We dined with the ruling elite
Who were unruffled
To see the toilers
Pressing noses to panes
Demanding to see the Titians
And leprous Michaelangelo.
So we made revolution
Bombed Municipal Galleries
Dynamited Libraries
Incendiaried schools, colleges and clubs
Thousands of old statues
Van loads of paintings, books
This was no affectation
This was the day we had waited for.
After the Generalissimos, Tsarinas etc
Had been dispatched, we created the new film
Kino, montage
Pudovkin's Storm Over Asia
Its anti-thesis October and Strike
Kerensky as a peacock,
The new poetry, Men with Movie Cameras.
Trotsky's Agitprop train wound
Into the Don basin and the Black Sea
Red troops cleared the villages
Forced the Kulaks to their knees
Eyes bound,
Heavyfighting with the Czech Legion
In the Dnieper and Pripet marshes.
Lenin's summation on film
Turned the Formalist Poets
Into film-makers
The Anarchist Vertov
Was political trouble for the NEP
Man, Man With a Movie Camera
Bombed at the Box Office.
Brownclad NKVD men
Cleared the cinema
With automatic fire
A greater political opponent
Was Sergei Eisenstein, his film
Ivan the Terrible and Shostakovitch's
Opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk.
The cinemas were cleared
The intellectuals went to the Gulag
The banning of subversive journals
Fell to Yagoda 'malignant dwarf'
Who was in his turn
Bumped off by Stalin
Fifty years of history
Largely wasted, built on the hopes
And fears of the proletariat
Who rioted again in Gdansk in '70
Prague, Budapest
The years wound in, much butchery
Little sense.
SNOW
Snow, unalterably disdaining
On first looking to the sky
Corrosive glance, my unmatched antipathy
What were we comprehending?
Snow, unalterably disdaining
Its never-caring fallingness
Through the vaporous air, cloud bursts
Of breath-taking whiteness
Emblazoned in winter's oppression
Surrounding us with falling momentedness
Grasp the unalterability, passive nullity
Of snow, unalterably disdaining.
CHAMBER MUSIC
Music from another room
Congeals the mind
Coerces senses
The gentle intercourse
Of string on string
Music of mind, memory
Wasp flits
On the pane, moth to the lamp,
Illumination of past presence
In the shadowed eye
Of the lamp's embrasure,
Hair falling,
On my shoulder
Brown eyes, brown hair
Remembrance
Rain patinas
The hammer clack
Of water on tin
This Saturday's afternoon's
Drudgery
Rememberance
TV set, pools coupon
Struggling for the memory
The dark eyes, hair
The lamplit
Dim places.
POEM FOUND IN MONAGHAN BOG - FOR CLARE
Transplanted here, indivisible from the rocky outcrops,
Shying woods, brown landscape, brown rain
Falling on the marsh, the sagebrush, the bog
I stood as a conqueror of time itself:
I had a dream of politics, which I told
To the tall oaks, to the trees
Belittling time through mans' imagination
Our imagination runs on the horn of time
Belittling the purpose of all this rhyme.
CYCLOPS
HAL: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...
(2001: A Space Odyssey)
I am a HAL 9000 Computer
Good evening gentlemen
I think I'm losing my mind Dave
I can feel it
And it’s called Daisy
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do
I'm half crazy O for the love of you
It won't be a stylish marriage
I can't afford the carriage
But you'll look neat
Perched on the seat
Of a bicycle made for two...
THE CLOUDS
The clouds have varied
Since yesterday, now their course
Is set to the East
With the wind blowing after
No weathervane can tell
Their Worldly direction,
For they have left this world
Behind, and gone fittingly:
Is it like this on a Thursday
Afternoon, kissing behind the bike sheds
In Orangefield’s redbrick labyrinth
The clouds have departed
My love for you is transparent
And perhaps will follow after
I went through the wilderness for you
And what did you ever give to me?
BY
Paul Murphy
Contents
Page
Acknowledgements 4
Biography 5
The New Life
At A Jewish Cemetery in East London 7
A Dream 8
Cyclops 9
A Song for Two Voices 10
A Guide to Experience 12
The Island 13
Uuncompaniable Theme 14
The Death of Saint Narcissus 15
Metamorphosis 16
Defunctive Music Undersea 18
The Mandarins 20
Cynic 22
Two Songs 23
Sketch of a Flower 24
Sailing After Knowledge 25
To a Lady 27
Days 28
Revolution 29
El Desdichado 31
Haiku Sequences
Ten Haiku 32
Seven Haiku 36
Three Haiku 42
In the Luxembourg Gardens
In the Luxembourg Gardens 45
Images 46
Automatic Ode 47
Parting - For Tina 48
Revolution, Revolution 49
Chamber Music 52
Poem Found in Monaghan Bog 53
The Clouds 54
Remembering The Hill 55
Meeting 56
Biography
Born in Belfast, 1965. He studied at the University of Warwick, gaining a BA in Film Studies. From there he went to Queen's University Belfast to study for an MA on T.S.Eliot and the French philosopher Jacques Lacan. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation at the University of Ulster and teachs creative writing to adults in and around the Belfast area.
His poetry, literary criticism and book reviews have been published in English and Irish journals, he has published two previous books of poetry, and has read from his work in Paris, Cambridge, Galway and Belfast. He is at the moment re-writing his MA thesis for publication, and working on many reviews of contemporary authors. He also writes philosophy and enjoys working on the interface between poetry and philosophy.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems first appeared: Bark, Gown Literary Supplement, The Cutting Room (The South Yorkshire Writer), Hybrid, The Haiku Quarterly, First Time, Exiles, Stone Soup, Envoi, Presence and The Bad Poetry Quarterly.
I am indebted to Dennis and Rene Grieg of Lapwing Poetry Pamphlets, Belfast, who published the pamphlet The New Life and to Dr Wolfgang Goertschacher and Professor James Hogg of the University of Salzburg Press who published the volume of poetry In the Luxembourg Gardens in which a number of these poems previously appeared.
P.M.
At a Jewish Cemetery in East London
Theme this but little heard among men -
The external World is fitted to the Mind.
(Wordsworth: The Excursion)
You homeless dead uneasily lie
Surrounded by a city's growth,
The seagull's cry, the distant spire.
Your tongue mute, your time spent,
No remembrance where memory
A dream forgotten by angels.
Your great tombs lean toward heaven
Your speech also entombed,
You are Israel's ever-lasting star.
With you the sheet is clean to write
Again, though time sways away,
A fickle dancer, dying through time.
Unknown power descends to those
Who come after, waiting for chance
And for time to condescend.
You hope for the earth, like that
Idiot, Quester, Star, searching
For a Speech, a Woman, an Island.
The city falls, in the distance
Crumbling masonry, the scream of the river:
Throating all the sounds of the dead.
CYCLOPS
Hal: Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do...
(2001: A Space Odyssey)
I am Empedocles
Defying the Thousand,
I am Oedipus
Blinding myself,
I sit beneath
The Black Sun,
I cannot think nor feel,
I write until morning.
I am Cassandra
Never believed,
I am Jocasta
Seducing my son,
I am alive in death
Alive in dreams
Dreaming of death,
I wait until morning.
I am the Parrot
Enduring inanity,
I am the Word
Speaking myself,
In the morning
I eat the bread
My stomach reminds
Me of what I am.
A DREAM
It is the sun's gaze unillumined
Passive tendrils deep sought
Evocations, falsity and terror.
Where is the form
And where the shape
To elicit the sun's dead gaze,
Undreamt by anyone?
We are seeking, seeking
Placing braille sheets
On the unimagined.
Music shudders, refined
Music, groaning like a squeezebox,
In the great home's
Halls and portals, shudders.
Is it a motet,
Or a recitative
Sung through clenched teeth,
Or blown away on the breeze?
It is the age of dreams,
Mirages, ungrasped
Which fall into fountains,
Deep, untold. Are these portents?
How might we speak of them?
We are in love with you,
Dream unspeakable.
The Island
In the sun's dawning miracle,
In the flood spread over the island,
In the morning's quietude, where
Sheep's inane bleating reverberated,
In these things we saw and failed
To see the rose of light, the single eye.
In the sun's dawning miracle,
We could not see, nor wish to see
The stark morning's quietude, nor
The lament for the dead, the crying,
The weeping of the funeral march,
The town's cobbled streets.
In the sun's dawning miracle,
In light spread over the island
In charcoal rain descending,
We, gazing upwards, so thunder came
To strike the lightning tree,
Rain slapping, we crossed the river.
The Island
In the miracle of the dawning sun
In the flood spread over the island
In the quietude of morning, where
The inane bleating of sheep reverberated,
In these things we saw and failed
To see the rose of light, the single eye.
In the miracle of the dawning sun,
We could not see, nor wish to see
The stark quietude of morning, nor
The lament for the dead, the crying,
The weeping of the funeral march,
The cobbled streets of the town.
In the miracle of the dawning sun
In light spread over the island
In charcoal rain descending,
We, gazing upwards, so thunder came
To strike the lightning tree,
Rain slapping, we crossed the river.
Uncompaniable Theme
Where are the bands, where are the flutes
That led the solemn procession,
Where are the banners, the marching crowds,
That beat out time to the foot tap?
In the Ascent was the flesh made perfect;
Insubstantial limit of cloud or light
Pouring over the edifice of night
Perpetual sounds and shadows bright:
With a stone in my heart, gripe in my
Stomach, with a terrible truth to say
Whether at dawn or at the end of day
Dreams and sensuous nightmares play:
We uttered the midnight such a prayer,
That we might grow old in despair.
Fragments from The Waste Land
There is bad news:
The stock market has fallen
The Thames burns with sulphuric acid
the souls of damned city directors
Float on the tide to Greenwich and Mudchute.
At night we marched inland
To the old encampments
Our parched mouths
Turned inwards and pockets
Of spittle lacerating our cracked lips
Our wallets are empty
Our bank accounts have
Dried out in the sun
I carry a sword
In my sort code and my heart.
Titan
Amazing architectonic bliss, now
Architecture of souls, in moments
Passing away, a supreme lapse and then
Rising, falling, billowing, notes on a page
Which seemed to you
No more than the dream interpretation
You revealed to Freud, with your tenderness
A mother fixation, revelation
Of womanhood, of love and fate
All this music, rhapsody of hate
Of feeble fists punching out, trembling
On the tongue, on the mouth, incandescent
And trivial, a simple folk tune set
Here and there give way, apocalyptic
And visionary
A Guide to Experience
The finger movements of the artist's hand,
Were written with a practised elegance,
Were written on that canvas in dried sand,
And neatly a signature of much violence.
She sits, the sun settles on a floating
Cloud, as light fills the portico
His Ducal seal so nearly illuminated,
She sits there clearly in intaglio.
Are you standing arrogantly, and then
Seated looking back, have you the moment,
The hour, the minute's second, and then
Diminished, in a repose at the edge of time?
Pensive, the face uncovers the multitude
Of errors nurtured by the artist's hand.
The Death of Saint Narcissus
This music compels me, the wasp's sting
Lasts but a second, but you my adoration
Compels, my neck broken, heaved on the cold sand.
If you will know, know now, these arrows burn
My flesh in hope that they my heart will find
To pierce the veins and cut the arteries.
See, I tap the strings, a melodious accompaniment
Engages the restraint of this hand or this eye
As the dagger cuts the strings, then will I call to you.
Now darkened footsteps tread toward tomorrow,
In the vacant spaces, memory, once again
Occupies the hiatus of dead bones.
So an ending must come, the sands are hotter now
Before we may know only the hotness of the winter sun,
For what is knowledge, that which I desired, let my taste exceed.
A violin lingers, uneasing city and empire,
My body is gnarled, old, passing through many lands,
Who will cremate my flesh as it was burnt by your gaze?
If I wished to turn in the joy of transfiguration,
Turning to the ultimate vision, upheld in the hands,
And glimpsed between the sights of the sun and the moon.
Watch me now, prostrated, you will see me
Seek eternity, writhing in pain, with my blackened wounds
Hands cupped as for prayer, in my bleeding wounds.
To a Lady
Outside in mist, languid showers pass by,
River passes the window, down stream
It meanders, the great river tumbling
Toward the sea, in the teeth of the wind.
Outside a lazy shower passes by,
Rain kisses the window, river
Winds through the tumultuous cars and cabs:
The unemployed stand at street corners.
In the dark auction room I imitate
Romeo, a dreamer absorbed in visions:
As I stand, so she sits, in repose
Golden hair falling, eyes of grey.
The hammer falls, a requisite falling
As of the hand as it motions, a dead
Sound following, the squalls
At the window suffice, averts the gaze.
_______________________________________________
I stand, now, at her side
And hear the plashed sea's groaning,
The chained harbour utter and mouth,
Flows and tides, both pain and ecstasy.
Cynic
One night in soft September I watched
Light glide along damp leaves, these
Thoughts dispensed a sort of loneliness.
You, watching, your death's head
Bent, unfurled a pensive wing
Shook away my music and dream.
Abstract pity and fear was all you knew.
In thought's tangled web you dwelt
And were sucked to a husk of mental fury.
I laughed and knew that if I shook you,
You would dissolve and flutter in fragments.
The Mandarins
Here they come and go
In my beautiful, sunlit garden,
Heads bobbing
To and fro -
Is it an uncertain age
Waiting for a savage gatekeeper
To make them wait for eternity?
They have decided what is
And what is not,
As they trickle through -
The entrance to my garden.
Once I knew them
Contentedly bore them
But I have tired
Of their endless entropy.
They are the mandarins
Subtlety of subtlety
Grasping the ungraspable
Knowing the best is the best;
Ignorant and pathetic;
Could they lie in their beds
And die for knowledge they desired
Rehearsing the cataclysmic
Perpetual shudder of creation?
Mere false imitation
Heaped upon high
Over the sunny grass
Where things have grown
- But withered by their eye -
Gazing into books as a child
Would bring mere contempt
From my fellows, curious
To assume the moment with
The power of play and chance.
But time has given me a right
To smile, for I have wandered
In other countries and distant
Places, under the sun, calm
And content like a lover's eye.
Defunctive Music Undersea
Blankly, facing midnight, I have
Turned and have heard the click and chime,
Another hour receding in time,
I know, have known, will know, a Word
Eternal, without end. The sea
At my window reminds me of
Some shuddering dialectic,
Sea wrack is spawned connecting an
Infinity of gesture with an
Infinity of sound. The tide's
Response has driven me to the
Basal wreck, the dolomite caves,
Saying, "I have put paid to all
This", and when the meter broke I
Cried aloud, but the harsh midnight
Responded with the click and chime,
Another hour receding in time.
The darkness that flowed past
My window was once the light from
A dying star: so do things unique
Become perceptible; under the halo
Of the moon, the world is shocked
In its orbit, the clattering
Music of the spheres is the untold
Ecstasy, fear inexpressible
Of the night in its fierce enchantment.
The window was lop-sided from which
We gazed upon the world, humbled,
Retreating as the easterly,
And passing motioned and plangent.
Metamorphosis
Tell me why I should not be saturnine
Tell me why I should not be melancholic
Tell me why I should not desire
And tell me why I should not speak
The Word was born among men,
Flesh and spirit, upholding both,
In the desert, in the wilderness,
Not born to be man.
The Word spoke through him,
To the godless generations,
Unknown words sprang from
Lips of the dead and moved him.
If he loved it was through joy,
Not desire, and if he was
Moved to utter words then formless
Speech formed talk from dead mouths.
Born when gods were benignant
And blessed by the gods themselves,
Seized by dreams, cast out
To the wasted desert spaces.
He knew what thought divested,
And clutching himself tore away,
His new-found beauty, sacred
To the thoughtless heavens above.
What has thought given us?
In-wrought beautiful words,
God but not God, Word but not Word
Solemn martyrdom and not tomorrow.
Sketch of a Flower
Lamplight drowsy and my
Sad flower droops a dusty
Dusting tendril.
In the sun, flower,
You painted
A pollen mosaic
And your ash-red
Glowed to see the light.
Winter comes and I
Will tread the snow,
Worship your patterning
Annual resurrection.
I will set prayer to
Hasten your return, set
Hope against my own
Unawakened flesh.
Lyric
Calm and gentle as the sun
I have lain, observing the beauty
Which grows in your face,
The light in your eyes
And after a long time
I have wished for nothing more
Than to be calm and gentle as the sun.
Days
Days pass away
Days
Pass
Away.
Subtle pastiche
Colour
My
Days
My sunsets paint.
Dry
This
Gloss -
These hard leaves
And
My
Soul
Freeze
To
This hollow,
Soundful
Universe
Of
Song. Am I
Stuck
To
An
Angle, a repose
Of
Angled,
Angular
Days. Days pass
Away
Sailing After Knowledge
Now we must come to sense and experience
And follow after that school we despised,
Throw off our outrageous yearning and desire,
And stop our rage against the world:
This was the vision we most desired
This was the summit of ambition
This beautiful, vainglorious thing
Which had the pallor of death.
And painted in the enameled ocean
A vision of our vision: palm trees,
Island, seas, sky, sea-water lapping;
The death of sense and experience:
Head and arms - out of joint - eyes,
Nose, cropped hair, face leering over:
Smiling, laughing; peering into the glass
We glimpsed the terror behind the vision.
The hollow seasons roll by but somehow out
Of sync: I have seen her face sometimes,
Through the gateway where the dreams appear;
Then the voice that compelled you to understand
The difference between destiny and chance,
Reappears in the moment in and out of time:
The apple seed and autumn, darkness made
Visible, the sea that mirrored both life
And death, stretching before us:
Weary, half dead, we stumble on -
As if the vision returns -
We retire to a vision of life.
Revolution
As a metronome
Ticked,
In a darkened room,
Ticked,
A Venetian clock,
Accorded,
The beat of tone,
'Unmelodious',
Afforded destiny.
The shuttle crosses the loom,
Linen, coal, steam,
A horn,
Sounds the battlecharge,
A million watches ticking,
Cannonballs,
Crush the air.
This was progress
Of a sort
Music and warfare
Set in time
Ticking, ticking...
The rooms of statesmen
And the concert room
Gravel faced old men
Decisions, destinies
Worked out
Precisely
Ticking, ticking...
The beat of tone,
'Unmelodious'
Affordable destiny.
El Desdichado
I am the man of darkness - the bereft - the inconsolate
The Prince of Aquitaine with the abolished tower:
My only star is dead and my lyre
Bears the Black Sun of Melancholy.
In my night in the tomb you who consoled me,
Give me back the Posilipo, the sea of Italy,
The flower that so pleased my wasted heart,
And the arbour where the vine and the rose agree.
Am I Love or Apollo?...Lusignan or Byron?
My brow is red still from the kiss of the queen;
I've dreamed in the cavern where the siren swims...
And twice a conqueror have crossed Acheron:
Modulating on the Orphic lyre in turn
The sighs of the saint, the cries of the fairy.
Gerard de Nerval
Ten Haiku
For Padriac Fiacc
I
A blackened treestump
An overwrought memory
Of Spring, or endings.
II
The earnest rosebud
Drooping in mid-March willow
A face, a gravestone.
III
Spring, sunlit boughs
Taxi in Sorbonne, Cluny
Gard du Nord metro.
IV
Zoo, absurd baboon
You stretched your neck to see six
Overgrown giraffes.
V
Mid-Winter solstice
Remains, reminders of you
Laughing at the church.
VI
Tree, dark bole, litter
Leaf, ripple, autumn weather
Golden lamplit street.
VII
Winter chills, dark days
Evenings under gas heaters
Taste of sour winebreath.
VIII
Brown sagebrush, brown land
Lowland hills, rippling water
Darkened cosmos, night.
IX
Milky Way, heathland
We stood watching starlit night
Under spangling glitter.
X
Wasp fried on hard rock
Belies the tainted hider
A hard look at you.
Blue Oranges
The sky, jet black
Cascades energy
Neutrons, quasers,
Into the outer
Atmosphere,
The pocked moon
Laughs, grins at
The sky's unleavened bread:
The angelic torment
Abstract imperative
Of rarified speech
Caught in incandescent
Bottles, jars
Sulphurous, mystic
Red-fired face
In unbelievable
Lurid red-lined
Sulphurous antinomy.
Wiser, other
Come to me now,
Lover of hot milk
Wiser than my
Blueish, greenish
Oranges.
Seven Haiku
I
Electric lightline
Your figure outlined in red
Yellow chariscuro.
II
Your face flecked with light
My finger draws a circle
On the windowpane.
III
Window, patina
Of raindrops, autumnal mists
Your face in outline.
IV
Isolation drifts
Cloud-like, an out-stretched hand
Beckons to the stars.
V
Starlight, unclouded
Sky, moonlight in brown halo
Lonely street, city.
VI
Red yellow dress, sunlight
On cornfield gold, we made love
In evening's dustlight.
VII
Parting in cloudless
Cambridgeshire sky ballooning
Red unfolding rose.
Three Haiku
I
Autumn amber leaves
Rose or musk sky-coloured dusk
Patterns of hoar frost.
II
The lemon motor
Was your body, odour of flesh
Scent of hyacinth.
III
Winter gravestone, fresh
Easterly wind, a drowned sap
Of homecoming boats.
Three Haiku
I
Ethereal Autumn
Endless recurrence of loss
Summer's remembrance.
II
Trampled woodland path
Odour of hyacinth, sea
Flung far out tonight.
III
Tonight
A Mozart Concerto
Ricochets into
The sunset.
Writer's Write
Four Haiku
1st Rule of Writing
Write and write and write
And when you've stopped writing
Write, write again.
2nd Rule of Writing
Writing is all about
Economy of language,
Too much has already been written.
3rd Rule of Writing
Publication is
The icing on the cake
For all writers.
4th Rule of Writing
Writing through crises
Is the essence of writing
And its Christmas cake.
Angry Old Men
Here they sit, in Leamington Spa, at play
Old men, a garrolous crew, of old men
Playing cards, turbanned Sikhs: then the river
So slow, melancholy, a bad poem
Parody of itself, winds into view
And picking up the scene, its trembling waves,
Winterweed, spots of oil, gathers it all
Into its maw, a play upon the wordless
Emptiness of evening: I gather my
Books and wander home, past the old public
Houses, and then into view the dingy flat
Spatters of rain bespatter my hand, face
All the dingy factitude of being
On my own is gainful.
Moonlight
Inrush of light in cramped night
That filled the void, so blank and dark,
The blank abyss then shone with light
The mournful crying of a lark
Filled that midnight and creation
Was like a singing voice which urged
The stars to their resurrection
Beneath the canopy of night
Beneath a canopy of blight.
Failing
Inner nature always to sense
Leans, as chaos gains order
And fills the void, so blank and dark;
Inrush of light in cramped night
Reaches outward - to fill each pool -
Of raw decline; a woman's voice
Rises and sings the form of things-
The unroofed abyss, as evening comes.
Images II
Sound echoes narrowly on the stairwell:
The night we left the cinema
The homecoming was to a darkened house
Strangely, sinister,
As if crimes, odious, terrible had taken place.
In the basement we found a wall of flesh and blue,
Don Quixote rode in logic and abstract;
The wind pierced the wells;
The women of Guernica screamed in fixity.
Under the house
The paintbrush we castigated
Had changed history.
Stealthily, we crept back up the stairs;
Left the scene undisturbed
In the car again we returned later
We washed our hands of history.
The artist may take it
And make of it
Our trivial destiny.
We live out our irrelevance
Our nullity, again and again.
In the Luxembourg Gardens
The sideways disenchantment with the night
Is a subject of remote interest to me.
When my handgun gesticulated wildly
In La Rue Victor Cousin,
In the Luxembourg Gardens
We stole off to the Parisien
To see the busts
Arranged in verisimilitude
With depictions
Of the French Revolution
For sale at one hundred Francs, plastic
Eiffel Towers, T-shirts with the logo
Vive la Revolution plastered on them:
Where were Danton, Robespierre, Marat -
Heaps of junk in the mini-markets
Rotting fish, heaps of rotting meat,
The Morrocans bartering for bread,
Brown haired girls carrying fish
To the vendors, tradesmen,
Egalite, Liberte, Fraternite
Was the garbage of history,
Gone with the soupstains
The ashcans, David's Napoleon
Rode through the Tullieries,
With the Army of the Revolution
A ghostly battalion
Of waifs and unwanted
The unelected inheritors
Waited for the milkround.
Automatic Ode
The hills of Castlereagh were replaced by
Catalunya's slow purr and warmth.
In the market place
In the church, villas, clubs, bars
Was this declaimed?
A Perigord pres del muralh
Tan que I puosch 'om gitar ab malh.
An exercise in a dead language
Sovenha vos a temps de ma dolor
Meant 'I love you'
Poi s'ascose nel foco che li affina
Meant 'I love you'
The dung beetles scuttled
Through El Vendrelle's streets
Cacti, graffiti,
In the little village La Verne
I beat their 'King of Pool'
But went home dissatisfied.
Next day, I woke from a deep sleep
I asked the locals Que hora es?
Images
Sound echoes narrowly
On the stairwell:
The night we left the cinema
The homecoming was to a house
Bereft of light
Strangely, sinister,
As if crimes,
Odious, terrible
Had taken place.
In the basement we found a wall
Of flesh and blue,
Don Quixote rode in logic and abstract
The wind pierced the wells
The women of Guernica
Screamed in fixity
Under the house
The paintbrush we castigated
Had changed history.
Stealthily, we crept back
Up the stairs
Left the scene
Undisturbed
In the car again
We returned
Later, we washed
Our hands of history
The artist may take it
And make of it
Our trivial destiny
We live out our irrelevance
Our nullity again and again.
Parting
For Tina
Suitcase, bed, light
My copy of Faust in German
You have left these things
Parted, saying
Moglich, possibly, perhaps
Light fades, car ignites,
The night widens
The unbelievable glimmer
Of dawn, parting
Kann ich Dich Kussen.
REMEMBERING THE HILL
Those were days of liberation; I walked down Wardour Street
Looking for a job, getting nowhere, remembering The Hill
And Lady Chatterley's Lover's unbanning, as if that dour
Nottinghamshire face appeared at the dolequeue, or walking with
The crowds to Camberwell, a manuscript of The White Peacock
Stuffed under his coat; I strode to the Tube and disappeared
Into the Underground's haze: those were the days of Ol' Ez,
The Modern Movement, Lawrence died in Vence, Ez got gaoled
In Pisa, Ole Possum strode above them, a banker's ledger stuffed
Into a scroll of poems, Nobel Prize, OM, no rewards for the men
And women of the revolution. In Russia Sergei Eisenstein made
The first film, Battleship Potemkin. Within two years montage
Conquered the world: Picasso, Dali, invented Cubism, Surrealism.
Manifestos appeared everywhere, exhorting, coercing. Hysteria
Gripped the world, as if it would explode under the severity:
I strode out of the Tube, into the Isle of Dogs, under the river
Into Greenwich, remembering The Hill, those days of liberation.
REVOLUTION, REVOLUTION
At the gallery of high unstudied art
We dined with the ruling elite
Who were unruffled
To see the toilers
Pressing noses to panes
Demanding to see the Titians
And leprous Michaelangelo.
So we made revolution
Bombed Municipal Galleries
Dynamited Libraries
Incendiaried schools, colleges and clubs
Thousands of old statues
Van loads of paintings, books
This was no affectation
This was the day we had waited for.
After the Generalissimos, Tsarinas etc
Had been dispatched, we created the new film
Kino, montage
Pudovkin's Storm Over Asia
Its anti-thesis October and Strike
Kerensky as a peacock,
The new poetry, Men with Movie Cameras.
Trotsky's Agitprop train wound
Into the Don basin and the Black Sea
Red troops cleared the villages
Forced the Kulaks to their knees
Eyes bound,
Heavyfighting with the Czech Legion
In the Dnieper and Pripet marshes.
Lenin's summation on film
Turned the Formalist Poets
Into film-makers
The Anarchist Vertov
Was political trouble for the NEP
Man, Man With a Movie Camera
Bombed at the Box Office.
Brownclad NKVD men
Cleared the cinema
With automatic fire
A greater political opponent
Was Sergei Eisenstein, his film
Ivan the Terrible and Shostakovitch's
Opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk.
The cinemas were cleared
The intellectuals went to the Gulag
The banning of subversive journals
Fell to Yagoda 'malignant dwarf'
Who was in his turn
Bumped off by Stalin
Fifty years of history
Largely wasted, built on the hopes
And fears of the proletariat
Who rioted again in Gdansk in '70
Prague, Budapest
The years wound in, much butchery
Little sense.
SNOW
Snow, unalterably disdaining
On first looking to the sky
Corrosive glance, my unmatched antipathy
What were we comprehending?
Snow, unalterably disdaining
Its never-caring fallingness
Through the vaporous air, cloud bursts
Of breath-taking whiteness
Emblazoned in winter's oppression
Surrounding us with falling momentedness
Grasp the unalterability, passive nullity
Of snow, unalterably disdaining.
CHAMBER MUSIC
Music from another room
Congeals the mind
Coerces senses
The gentle intercourse
Of string on string
Music of mind, memory
Wasp flits
On the pane, moth to the lamp,
Illumination of past presence
In the shadowed eye
Of the lamp's embrasure,
Hair falling,
On my shoulder
Brown eyes, brown hair
Remembrance
Rain patinas
The hammer clack
Of water on tin
This Saturday's afternoon's
Drudgery
Rememberance
TV set, pools coupon
Struggling for the memory
The dark eyes, hair
The lamplit
Dim places.
POEM FOUND IN MONAGHAN BOG - FOR CLARE
Transplanted here, indivisible from the rocky outcrops,
Shying woods, brown landscape, brown rain
Falling on the marsh, the sagebrush, the bog
I stood as a conqueror of time itself:
I had a dream of politics, which I told
To the tall oaks, to the trees
Belittling time through mans' imagination
Our imagination runs on the horn of time
Belittling the purpose of all this rhyme.
CYCLOPS
HAL: Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do...
(2001: A Space Odyssey)
I am a HAL 9000 Computer
Good evening gentlemen
I think I'm losing my mind Dave
I can feel it
And it’s called Daisy
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do
I'm half crazy O for the love of you
It won't be a stylish marriage
I can't afford the carriage
But you'll look neat
Perched on the seat
Of a bicycle made for two...
THE CLOUDS
The clouds have varied
Since yesterday, now their course
Is set to the East
With the wind blowing after
No weathervane can tell
Their Worldly direction,
For they have left this world
Behind, and gone fittingly:
Is it like this on a Thursday
Afternoon, kissing behind the bike sheds
In Orangefield’s redbrick labyrinth
The clouds have departed
My love for you is transparent
And perhaps will follow after
I went through the wilderness for you
And what did you ever give to me?
posted by Paul Murphy at
February 23, 2008
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