Love may not exist, it may be only a word, it may do nothing useful. To erase love is easy, it forgets itself, its weapons are bread and wine, it sings, its hands are empty - Still - it persists, like poetry, idling on a tiny green lawn as death marches its vast armies through the deserts behind it.
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| The Triumph of Death, Breughel |
XXI Beowulf spoke, the son of Ecgetheow: “Old man, don’t weep. It’s better to take bitter revenge than to hide in sorrow. Each of us must face his end and the warrior grabs what glory he can before death stops him. After his death, that’s what remains. Arise, O King, let’s study the trail of Grendel’s dam. I swear to you that I’ll track her down. No earthly cave nor mountain wood, no ocean bed, will do to hide her. Have patience now, endure your woe, and be the man that I know you are.” The old king leapt to feet and thanked God for those words. He called for a horse, and a handsome mount with braided mane was swiftly bridled. He rode out shining, his shield-bearers marching behind him. The trampled track ran through the forest, plunging straight into murky moorland where the monster had dragged the bloody corpse of Heorot’s champion. The thanes then scrambled up steep screes, trod single file through narrow cliff-ways where demon-haunted waters tumbled far beneath them. Beowulf went on with a few good scouts, and found by chance a stand of ash casting its shadow across grey stone, a dismal wood! The water beneath seethed with blood, and when they found Aschere’s head by the edge of the cliff, each man present felt his grief break newly open. As they stared, the flood welled ruddy with hot gore. A battle horn sang, quickening pulses, and the troop stood and watched the water. Sea-snakes curled there and strange dragons wove through its depths, and on the reefs such water demons as wait their chance to strike the ships on the sail-road. Swollen with rage, the warriors ran to the wailing horn and one of the Geats lifted his bow and struck a monster straight in the vitals, slowing its struggle against the waves. They snagged it hard on sharp-hooked boar pikes and dragged it out of the noisome shallows, staring in wonder at this strange wave-spawn. Fearless Beowulf put on his armour, hand-braided mail cunningly made. No grim malice could pierce his bone-cage to harm his heart or crush him in a deadly wrestle. On his head was a royal helm as bright as when the smiths first made it, rimmed with boar-shapes, iron-encircled, to break the bite of the bitterest brand. Not the least was the ancient blade lent by Unferth, Hrothgar’s spokesman, to meet his need. Its name was Hrunting. Edged with iron, tempered by blood, pattern-welded and scored with runes, this sword had never failed in battle any who bore it, venturing far into enemy strongholds on dark journeys. It was well used to courage-work. Surely that muscle-head forgot how in his cups he had taunted Beowulf when he gave his blade to the better swordsman. He’d never dare to risk his life under the waves, in the water’s tumult. He lost his manhood then and all his chance at glory. Not so Beowulf. XXII Beowulf spoke, the son of Edgetheow: “Half Dane’s son, I am eager for battle. Remember now your earlier pledge, that if I die serving your need, you would be a father to me. If I lose my life, beloved Hrothgar, take in your care my young retainers and send to Hygelac all the treasures that you have given me. Gazing on gold, the lord of the Geats will know my deeds found generous thanks from a good king. Let Unferth have my wave-edged sword, this ancient heirloom, to match his fame. I’ll use Hrunting to forge my glory, unless death takes me.” Waiting no answer, he plunged into the surging waters. Long he sank: a day passed by before he glimpsed the floor of the mere where she watched, wrathful and greedy, ravenous ruler of the flood for a hundred seasons. She knew at once that an alien from the world of air sounded her strange home. Groping upwards, she seized the prince with savage hands, crushing his body. The ringmail kept him from deadly harm, her loathsome fingers fumbled against the handlinked armour. When she touched bottom, the she-wolf bore him back to her lair. For all his courage, Beowulf couldn’t wield his sword as weird sea-beasts thronged about him and tore at his mail with war-like tusks. He found himself then in his enemy’s hall, free of the water, its roof holding back the snatch of currents. A bright fire blazed and in its light he saw his foe, the mighty mere-wife, cursed mistress of the deeps. He hefted his sword, swinging it down with all his strength, and the ring-marked blade sang hungrily for blood. But the stranger found that the battle-flame refused to bite, its edge failed the noble lord in his need. It had endured many hand-to-hand combats, split the helms of many doomed men, but for the first time its glory dimmed. Resolute still, remembering fame, Hygelac’s kinsman angrily hurled that precious sword to the ground, trusting his strength, his mighty hands. So must a man act, careless of life, if he wants to win lasting fame in the fury of battle. He grabbed her hair – keen for the insult – and swollen with rage, the battle-hard man flung Grendel’s mother down to the floor. She quickly repaid him, holding him fast against her hide in her wrathful grip, and then even that sturdy soldier, the strongest of men, stumbled with weariness, and fell. Sitting astride him, she drew her dagger, deadly and edged, to avenge her son, her only offspring. His mailcoat saved him, barring the point its bloody entry. He would have died there, Edgetheow’s son, far underground, but for that war-mesh. And holy God who gives out victory decided easily whose was the win when Beowulf sprang back to his feet.
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So where do you end up when your eyes are finally working so well you can hardly see in front of you instead you look inside out you feel the acid in your brain working through to the page as pitiless as economists adding up zeros you live in this world it opens its arms exactly what you feared it is worse than your dreams shutting your eyes to find the tortured boy printed on your retina the hole in his cheek the slashed arms bloodless now the cigarette burns how did they and the big stupid money fracking the laws of mercy all the connections obvious and obscene and still you dream of linoleum in kitchens that years have demolished into hygienic visions mothers in aprons squawking for decades of migraines and butter or bending over shining ovens in their Good Housekeeping skirts their hair in scarves their perfectly polished children executive husbands televisions you murdered them all you stood in high heels and vomited blood better than madness your sister’s eyes turned in to policemen coming to slash her to ribbons her visions of Lear her naked pain poetry you never saved me but there was the rail of words that promised a fake redemption you knew it was fake but out of the dream stepped those ample summers as real as the camellias opening outside your window red as your fingers red as your newborn babies beautiful vaginas speaking the possible here in this same world where chemical nightmares scour the skin from children o poetry who stepped down and clapped her manacles speaking her legislations knowing the sentence is life its fluid chains its solitary rooms its knives of ice and blood opening inside you like forgiveness you think of your mother’s will where she ministers justice your sisters and you laid out in columns neat and shy and obedient scrub the skirtings weed the roses death will visit at last and run his finger along the shelves and find us wanting but he can go to hell him and his little brothers all those feminine lessons I flung on the fire of my ego refusing death although I invited him in with every word every cigarette every failure poetry you never lied to me
1.
I marvelled at the squid’s mantel,
The sloth’s curled hook,
The magenta lips of orchids.
Behind me barbed feathers
Tore air to turbulence
And then were still.
The soluble sky thickened
As grief heats an eye
To astonished blindness.
2.
You who love me best,
Have you traced my pulse
Through city walls?
I was lost already, I retched
As oil plumed through my blood.
The clouds are still falling
Huge and angry wounds.
Your heart is an executive
Who remembers nothing.
My face is the face of a man
Who looks down amazed
At the murdered thing
His stained hands
Open like hunger.
3.
It will not lack colour –
consider the intricate brachiation of silica,
pale spicules green with cyanide algae –
conifer needles in snow, their colours
unaccountably reversed –
or the butterfly lustre of sulphur lakes.
Will your eyes blur at this beauty
so unlike you? No, you have long dissolved,
you, your reflections, your aqueous desires,
into the flame-coloured sky.
it was the sound of a bird
startled from sleep its wings hurting the air
it was a sound like shame
since then I have not slept
my ears multiplied I heard the hammers
ringing down the cries of men and women
the wing of sorrow
beating louder and louder
words betray the delicacies
which hide in each freckle of each face
each gesture each strand of hair each voice
calling its own call like no other
it is the shadow of love
kicked bleeding from the garden
whose hands burn
through barricades of flame
The woods were beautiful as always, but dry. It seemed a subtle poison at the roots drained them imperceptibly of life. A want, or heightened colour, in each leaf hinted profound disease, as if the rites of generation faltered and withdrew beyond emergencies of flood and fire to deserts that no green could penetrate. I shaped my stanzas, but the form seemed trite: all metre euphemised a deepening flaw. I heard no frog calls, and the birds were fewer in species and in number. I trod ungodly glows, a covenant betrayed, a humus rotting slowly into fear.
what I am saying is assuming nothing locate the perameters sight hearing touch what am I saying cliché as violation fear as unbeing the voyeur flays to aphasic wreckage seduction is always dishonest / therefore liminal gestures dissolve in cities of representation the joke of culture an abstract capital a smile perhaps cheating the stockmarket despite all that a hesitant outline drawn and withdrawn something specific in the peripheries orchids budding their luminous rhythms what am I saying what am I not saying
gently we are saved: your body formed from bodies so long grieved by mine is warmed the moment that you sleep my mind awakes I have nothing to keep for our sakes nothing to break or hold nothing to lose the generous powers fold to emptiness the nothing that we are is all: vulgar and opaque and rare and mortal
1.
CHORUS There is nothing stranger than man.
As if he were a storm
he strides through the waves
of the winter seas
and year after year
he wears down the oldest god,
earth herself, with his ploughshare.
In his clever nets
he captures whole nations
of feather-headed birds
and the ocean’s salty brood.
He masters the beasts
that wander the open hills
and yokes with his cunning
the long-maned horse
and the muscled mountain bull.
He taught himself speech
and the flight of thought
and imagined the laws of the city.
He shelters himself
from the hostile weather.
He never meets the future
without something in his hand.
He has found a cure
for every illness.
Death alone baffles him.
Skilful beyond imagining,
subtle beyond hope,
he can turn in his wilfulness
to good or to evil.
When he honours the laws
of the city and the gods
his standing is noble.
But the man who betrays
the laws of the city
deserves no home.
May one such as this
never sit at my table.
May a man like this
never share my thoughts.
2.
CREON Hard wills are first to break.
The smallest bridle
tames the wildest horse.
Those whose pride is bitter
are more shamed as slaves.
This girl laughed in her insolence
when she broke my law.
Am I the King of Thebes
or is she?
She is my sister’s child
but even if she were my daughter
I’d take her life for this.
I’ll trample all her pride
under my law,
she and her sister.
Summon her:
I saw her just now in the house,
out of her wits with madness.
Often the mind convicts itself
when plotting darkness.
But I hate more those who do evil
and make a virtue of it.
ANTIGONE Do you desire anything more than my death?
CREON No more than that.
Your death is everything.
ANTIGONE Then what are you waiting for?
You have nothing to say
that can please me
and I can say nothing
that will charm your ear.
What greater glory could I seek
than to honour my brother?
All men would say so
if fear did not silence them.
But you are a king
and can do what you like.
CREON You are alone among Thebans
in thinking this.
ANTIGONE They know it too
but keep their mouths shut
for fear of you.
CREON Are you not ashamed
for thinking differently?
ANTIGONE I see no shame
in loving my brother.
CREON And wasn’t it a brother
who died opposing him?
ANTIGONE Yes, a full brother,
born of the same parents.
CREON Then is not your loyalty
disloyal to that brother’s memory?
ANTIGONE My brother would not say so.
CREON He would if he were given
the same honours as a traitor.
ANTIGONE He was not a slave who died.
He was our brother.
CREON A brother who laid waste the land
the other died defending.
ANTIGONE In death all are equal.
CREON There's no equality
between this good man
and that impious corpse.
ANTIGONE Who knows what laws
rule the land of the dead?
CREON Even in death
an enemy is an enemy.
ANTIGONE My nature turns to those I love,
not to my enemies.
CREON Then love the dead
when you walk with them
in the world below.
While I am king
no woman shall rule in Thebes.
tonight a small boy is weeping in a forest he misses the black dog which lay down beside him if he lives he'll shape his heart around a trigger tell it to the birds if any are left to sing of it a man with ambitions sold him down the river a woman with a microphone identified the price a beggar on the riverbank knelt down and held him tell it to the birds if any are left to sing of it what price a brain smoking in the mud? what price a baby spitted like a piglet? what price a cunt ripped open with a rifle? tell it to the birds if any are left to sing of it the man in the bunker makes love to his money the poor woman pulls a pebble from her pocket and the face of a child rubbed pale as a dream tell it to the birds if any are left to sing of it