Blue Nest woodcut © Bill Fulljames
THE BLUE NEST
The place is very beautiful
But you do not see it –
The rugged creek
Where Rigoberto painted
The fisherman and his son
Once setting out at daybreak
Again when they returned at dusk,
Moonlight green as glow-worm
On the boy’s pale blouse.
You hardly notice
The slate-calm sea
Or the sloping tile of Formentera
Wedged against the sky –
The immense gull
Perched on the treacherous rock
Of Santa Eulalia,
Which has drowned Phoenician silver
As well as corsair gold,
Is as indifferent as you are
To the bell tolling
Beneath the sea
From the church that slid there
When the men wore red caps
And the women garlands.
In the end, Rigoberto fled the Blue Nest
Bruised by the Argentine
Who plaited her red hair
In the nets of the fisherman –
He no longer saw slate, tile, or steeple –
He was blind to everything
But her soul.
Halfway House
Like a book he could not put down
Rigoberto returned to the Blue Nest,
To the little house shielded by pines
And the breeze they baffled –
He regretted Laura, regretted their battles,
He had a dream she would receive him
Like an old comrade,
Have him sit by her,
Drink and eat the old times,
They would dance to the flamenco
As it played on the phonograph –
He was not seeking love
Nor to usurp the fisherman from his nets
But if that came too he would not demur.
He knocked at the door of the Blue Nest
And a voice gruff with garlic and wine
Demanded what he wanted –
She was so thin
It seemed the door opened itself.
She howled at him in her tramp’s overcoat
That possessed no shoulders
Only spidery arms.
Fleeing from her barbs
He scrambled across the creek
As baffled as the breeze.
Rigoberto’s Envoi
Having laboured so long and gained so little
Rigoberto could not believe
The news the postman brought
As he scrambled down from the tree house
He had built on the tallest pine
To evade Laura.
The prize in Barcelona paid for
The house he built
On the purple hill at the back of Santa Eulalia
Flanked by almond trees still in blossom
The first night he slept there.
Rigoberto left the Blue Nest to Laura,
Left her for the fisherman and drunken waterman
Who caroused with her
When the fits weren’t on her –
He could not believe the wonderful peace
Of his spacious house –
No voice scolded him,
No moans honed his cuckold’s horns –
All the night through
He could not sleep.
North East West South
(7/7/07)
You only made a triangle
But intended a cross
From Edgware Road
to intersect with Aldgate
And Russell Square.
King’s Cross was closed
So in Tavistock Square
You detonated your scrambled mind,
Finally shattered the vengeful dream.
On the side of the bus an advert states:
“Outright Terror Bold and Brilliant”
A gleeful god laughs,
Your god, Bomber,
Who brings misfortune at the crossroads
And the wrong sort of posterity.
RIMBAUD FOUND
“This time we’ve got him! We know where Arthur
Rimbaud is – the great Rimbaud, the true Rimbaud,
the Rimbaud of the Illuminations.”
La France moderne (February-March issue 1891)
At this altitude, it is,
And will be for another month,
Unpleasantly cold.
It rains and hails, and the wind
Is like a mother when she scolds.
Had to buy a mattress, blankets, overcoats.
Forgive me recounting all my troubles,
But I’m about to turn thirty or thereabouts
(Half a lifetime!)
And I’ve worn myself to death
Wandering the world,
To no effect.
The descent to Ballawa from Egon
Very difficult for the porters,
Who stumble at every stone,
And for me, who falters and almost
Tips over with a moan.
The litter is already half dislocated
And the servants completely exhausted.
I try to mount the mule,
With the sick leg strapped to its neck.
I am forced to dismount like fool
And get back into the litter
Which has already lagged a kilometre behind.
This journey is bitter and wrong.
On arriving at Ballawa, only drizzle.
Furious wind all night long.
Please then, Monsieur Le Directeur,
Send the tariff of services
To Suez from Aphinar.
I am completely paralysed, and so
Wish to embark in good time.
I must be carried on board.
What hour should I come?
I shall go under the earth
And you shall walk in the sun!
Hunter
In Memoriam - Hunter S. Thompson
A moment like no other
Came and went -
The wave rose so high
When it was spent
A different world emerged,
Worse and better
Than what had gone before.
Charting it, your head full of
Booze, your pockets packed
With acid and sedition,
You railed against the
Villainous dull ache
Of the everyday.
Firing bullets
At all and sundry
Till one got you.
Triptych
(7 January 2006)
Night
My dad loved art and Shakespeare,
Hated football and the royal family –
He was born in Wormwood Scrubs
To a neurasthenic soldier
Who left.
Brother Eric died at five,
He told me this to burst a depression,
Revealed the secret of my childhood,
His dark youth, because he loved me
And wished to see me well.
Brother Tommy was killed at Arnhem,
A mangled parachute in a nest of snipers,
I found a daughter and said
This is her because he loved me
And wished to see me well,
Her mouth was Tommy’s,
The same slant of smile,
And in profile
My dad’s Barrymore nose
In his knight’s repose.
Sixty Years
Sixty years they loved one another
I missed eight -
Six steadfast decades
From Rommel and the ATS
To Iraq and the PLF
In their true love loyalty
They bickered and squabbled
And danced round the kitchen table
Shouting words of love.
Sweet Father Death
Sweetly he went
His body riddled
With disease but in
No pain, he died
Serene, went to meet
No maker that he owned
Yet still believed
In a love allotted evermore.
Sweet father death
Into your dark stables
Take these hooves -
Let them gallop!
Proverbials
Silly me
Walking out on everything
Like the proverbial bull –
All that broken China,
Sixty million dead they say,
But I’m so busy with myself
I can’t see the wood
For the proverbials.
Siren
Pitched in the key
Of Solomon’s desire
He rent the veil.
Tired love’s clichés
Smouldered at the chords.
The senses’ mountaineer
Climbed the scales,
The circle of a moan
Praised the unrelenting bone.
But in the modern age
The hero crushes death
With razor blades,
Sees it all in a mirror.
On the rocks
Tim Buckley
The narcotic siren
Broke you.
