Ten poems From 'Mouth,' a new sequence
1.
In San Marco the colours shine
like the feathers on a linnet's throat
as we gaze from the shadow
gathered beneath the galleries
and round the great altar.
We tiptoe where we haven't been
and won't ever come again,
the queues being long and slow.
A faint noise of trumpets
and trombones for atmosphere,
though a theme of recognition
passes like a golden echo
from group to group, strangers
without fear, in good heart,
turned towards the steady sea light.
2.
Burnished glints in the furniture and glassware,
trumpet and trombone in Canzone e Sonate,
the hundred voices in my head unite
and answer one another, cori spezzati,
the dust motes dance in a light now blent.
I quit Gabrieli's sounding chamber
for my balcony and a cigarette
and the conversation of a thousand crickets.
they have no throats and rub their legs together,
a sound as soothing as the Cheshire cat's purr,
which is everywhere and nowhere and unseen.
Not all the world has to open its mouth to me.
Otherness sends to otherness. I can be seen
and heard as I rub my right calf slowly
with the heel of my left foot in sympathy.
4.
I
could have lived on this mouthless island,
a
windswept place of relative quiet
not
to mention peace of mind,
the
boom boom of the sea on the rocky side
bursting
into caves at high tide.
What's
that buzzing? Monks move among the bees
draped
with fine nets over their faces.
They
are figures from willow pattern porcelain
with
their shallow triangular hats and thick gloves.
They
lift a humming gospel from each hive.
With
signs and gestures they move the bees
to
their summer residence,
but
one bends in slow motion
then
turns to me with a golden beard
that
seems to move of its own accord.
Among the flowering apricot twigs
bees investigate a metallic sweetness,
scrambling from bloom to bloom
until the pouches on their legs swell
so they seem to trail saddle bags.
On the pot beside me a shiny bee crawls,
black abdomen, black thorax,
black mouthparts and antennae so precise
it could be a tiny motorcycle cop
dipping its head into blue speedwell.
What's that buzzing? More a rumble.
Thunder crawls around us all afternoon,
clouds forming mouth shapes about to speak
and make distinct the language of storm.
But no wind rises, no rain falls.
6.
Tiny bronze ants swarm across my hand.
They have rebuilt a yard from where
I boiled their nest to death last year.
They haul their white larvae to safety,
diligent beings that live in silence
with a composite black and white vision,
who communicate scent trails to one another,
no tones or vowels, perhaps vibrations
and a sense of sweetness from far off.
How much of our DNA could be similar?
We share processes, Krebs cycle
to produce formic acid and energy.
I should let them live, but my flowers must bloom
so bees can unzip their tongues into their nectar
and then dance at an angle to the sun.
7.
Give me a long sinuous vista,
a fabulous dragon's tongue
neither Welsh nor Chinese,
of a sentence extended like a lawn
where I can stroll at ease
and listen not to idle chatter,
but to bird song, inhuman,
having nothing of my pitch or tone
though I might discern warning,
mating ritual, a claim to territory
and turn them to my own account;
omen, desire or mystery,
bird flight a sign on the sky's stave
seeming to write a music,
the measure of the measure of myself.
8.
I'll lie dead with my mouth shut,
not bound up with a grave cloth
with a top knot on my head
like an old-fashioned steam pudding.
Undertakers now have subtler arts.
I'll lie dead with my mouth shut.
Biographers can go whistle
for a life that is secret
and not worth investigation.
Write your books, write your books - I wish.
I'll lie dead with my mouth shut
though not I think forever.
What's that buzzing? Little dancers
limbering up in the ballroom
as my mouth falls open in a grin.
9.
Everything that has lived
from virus to Einstein is God.
Utter a simple word,
tree or stone, and we become
nothing less than prime movers.
Our garlic laden breath
will be affecting molecules
long after the dancers have performed
their last reverse and twirl,
collected their coats and departed,
long after the music stops,
long after syllables have ceased
to convey any meaning,
long after the sun suddenly bursts.
So creator, lift up your voice.
10.
I saw him dismount and send his horse off
with a slap on its rump before he turned
and began to climb invisible stairs
hidden by Tien Shan's fog, his stick tapping
on marble he'd told me was the colour of stars.
Sophia floated above him her small mouth pursed
as though scolding or comforting a child.
"You once flourishing breath is long departed.
You will never speak again on this earth.
Your last words buried you, broken-hearted."
She drifted down unpinning her hair
and walked beside him as he laboured up
his lips working hard for breath in the thin air.
Then he stopped, straightened and, as they vanished,
the old poet blazed briefly, a falling star.
NOTES
2. Giovanni Gabrieli (1553 -1612) the measure of whose grave yet radiant music I've sought to reflect in the poem.
10. Lines 8-10 Qing Shih Huang-di, the first emperor of the Ch'in dynasty from 246-221 BC, unified the Chinese empire, built the Great Wall, standardized weights and measures, coinage, the width of wheel axles, and writing, created the terra cotta army, burnt all the books except those relating to useful subjects such as agriculture, medicine, astrology, divination and the history of the Ch'in state and, finally, unsuccessfully sought immortality dying poisoned by the mercury in the elixir supposed to prolong his life.
He died while on tour of the eastern part of the empire but legend has it that he refused an opportunity to meet the Queen Mother of the West, the goddess, Hsi Wang Mu. A Tang poet nine centuries after his death wrote:
'His flourishing breath once gone, he will never speak again,
His white bones are buried deep, the evening mountains turn dark blue.'