elbows on the table my hands clasped around this soccer ball I call my skull
its global reach the totality of all I hold and know and understand
past games long forgotten gone the skills of which I was so proud
my life the circumference of this paneled circle wrinkled and peeling
the ancient onion skins of old corruptions newly found
Comment:
Moo calls this painting, which he forgot to sign, Crater with Creatures. He thought it would be a good painting for this circular poem that also goes round and around like the creatures in the crater. Wild thoughts, they are, gnawing at each other as they circle. I had to tell Moo what FIFA meant. At first, he thought I had written FIFI, the name of his cat. No, I told him, it’s FIFA, not FIFI, and that’s why I call my skull a soccer ball. “But FIFA isn’t corrupt,” Moo said. Well, that made me laugh. “I wasn’t referring to FIFA as being corrupt,” I explained. “The corruptions are all my own.” “But you aren’t corrupt,” Moo exclaimed. “Think of them not as corruptions, but of little errors, little sins, the little mistakes we all make in life.” “Oh, those,” said Moo. “Nobody cares about those things. They are all little nothings, best forgotten.” “I usually do forget them,” I said, “but once in while I pick at them like I pick at a scab, and then they all start bleeding again, or flaking away like thin layers of onion rings.”
Moo looked at me, long and hard. “You are just like a world cup soccer team manager,” he told me. “First you pick your nose, then you pick yourself, then you pick your best friends and put them on the team. But that’s not corruption. That’s the way of the world. Everybody does it.” “Not everybody,” I said. “That’s because not everybody is a soccer coach,” he replied.
Good old Moo. Such a world wise philosopher. I remember when he had his index finger in plaster. “What wrong with your finger,” I asked him. “It broke,” he replied. “How on earth did that happen?” “Someone punched me in the nose.” “Well that shouldn’t have broken your finger,” I said, amazed and rather doubtful. “It was in my nose at the time,” he sighed. Que lo creas tú.
My poem, The Dancers and the Dance, refers both to the danzantes and to Monte Albán. Monte Albán was the capital of the Zapotecs and the principal city in the Oaxaca Valley (Mexico) between its foundation in approximately 500 BCE and its abandonment in approximately 750 CE. The White Mountain, thus named by the Spanish conquistadores, is justly famous for its temples, its tombs, and its carvings.
Two natural phenomena affected Monte Albán and its population. The first was drought and the dried earth with its brown and yellow tinges is clearly visible in these photos. The second natural problem came from earthquakes, for this is indeed an earthquake zone with active volcanoes causing tremors at regular intervals. The temples, even today, sometimes need repairing as earthquakes have been known to destroy even the reconstructed temples.
In fact, the abandonment of Monte Albán may well have been caused by an earthquake that cracked the enormous natural cistern in which the population’s water supply was stored.
The Danzantes are strange, grimacing characters that have been carved into prisons of stone. They may be captured warriors awaiting sacrifice or the chieftains of conquered tribes humiliated, perhaps tortured, and then flash frozen into stone photographs where for centuries they have danced out their torment. Whoever and whatever they may be, they still dance on Monte Albán.
My poem, The Dancers and the Dance, captures a different form of dancing. It is taken from my book Sun and Moon: Poems from Oaxaca (2000) and contains echoes of the vibrant folkloric culture that thrives to this day both in the city of Oaxaca and in the Oaxaca Valley. Here, traditions are remembered and relived. Each year, on the Day of the Dead, for example, families place food and drink alongside photos of the dearly departed on altars inside their houses and their doors are thrown open to welcome their deceased family members as they return along the marigold paths that lead to their former homes.
The Dancer and the Dance
1
she comes here to dance for me only for me does she dress this way she shows me her dreams unfolding them one by one silk and cotton garments drawn fresh from her scented closet thin copper bracelets carved wooden mask only her eyes reveal subversive flesh and blood
2
she orchestrates her story skin drum rattle of seeds in a sun-dried pod single violin string stretched across an armadillo’s shell I too am tense like an instrument waiting to be played the bones of my love reach out towards her
3
when she makes her music familiar spirits return to the earth dancing in a sash of moonlight she recreates an ancient spell gold letters plucked from dark scrolls no wands no words just water’s purity flicked fresh across lips and face she binds me with the string of notes she undoes with her hair our bodies form an open altar we worship with mysterious offerings drawn from wells set deep within us
4
Rain falls from the sky Moon turns his face away suddenly in darkened alleys clouds hold hands and dance dense streamers of light dangle from street lamps shadows remember their forgotten steps gently she draws me to her I try to follow frail whirlpools of withered leaves fragment weak sunshine in light’s watery pool
5
her magic grows I take my first step an unmapped journey into desert space we move to old rhythms across moon flecked clouds raindrops fall more slowly faltering drum beat diminishing water
6
high above us the ghost of a melody shaking its head wringing its hands we return at last to light and air the moon’s vacant face scowls in an empty field someone has plucked the stars one by one and threaded them like a chain of daisies now there are no sky flowers to adorn the night
7
noche de rábanos someone has taken a knife and peeled an enormous radish this cartoon moon face this full skull hanging from nothing this lantern lighting from above now my lover sculpts time and space into small chunks each sacrifice a jewel between her fingers I pin to my chest three small notes and a skeleton of words
8
inside my dancing head the fires have gone out without her hands to guide me my feet have turned clumsy scars layer my wrists and ankles star crossed bindings cutting against the grain I gather a harvest of stars she holds them in her eyes her fingers are grasshoppers making love in my hair when she kisses my fingernails one by one we both know our bodies will never be the same
9
together we weave a slender cage she cuts out my heart with her tongue placing it on an altar inside the bars she locks the tiny door a silvery key wrought from moonstone my fluttering heart grows miniature wings next time the door is opened my wings will fly me to her lips my heart is a caged bird on a tiny perch it chirrups a love song its image in the mirror answers back breathless it scrapes its wings on the moon its body striving upwards to the stars
10
on Monte Albán the danzantes sway to soft music their shadows dance in and on stone as they have danced for centuries wind rustles the grass moon casts sharp shapes darkness ascends the temple steps huge fingers grasping upwards an owl’s feathers clutching at the skies at dawn tomorrow the sun will rise beneath our feet we will squint down on its majesty we will pluck the ripeness of its orange in our outstretched hands
11
our last night together I pluck a blossom from the tulipán tree a final offering of my love she gives it back I place it in the pocket of flesh where I once kept my heart tomorrow when the flower breaks it will stain my shirt a damp splash of blood no longer running in my veins the scent of our happiness will cling forever to my fingers
A car tire hovers above a pothole filled with snarling monster sculptures.
Big Sister replaced Big Brother and generously generated this image
“Watch out for that pot hole!” “Which one?” Snap, crackle, pop! “That one.”
Pot Holes
Jack Pine Sonnet
Welcome to Pot Hole time. It’s all yours and it’s all mine. Mine, possession, not land mine, though hitting one at speed will rattle your teeth, shake your spine, and leave you feeling far from divine.
Pot Holes, Pot Holes, everywhere, filled with water you can’t drink. They hide the depth of every hole with waters, dark as ink.
Spring’s freeze and thaw breed ever more Pot Holes than we had before. I think at night they stay out late, to fornicate, and celebrate.
A low spring sun in the driver’s eyes makes shadows shift and slide.
A mazy life full of chance drawing a labyrinthine thread through a maze of Pot Holes that we dread, the morning sun blinding our eyes so we cannot see the Pot Holes’ size nor how they move and dance.
Big Sister replaced Big Brother and generously generated this image
Comment:
This is wonderful fun. Moo has ceased to be jealous of Big Brother and Big Sister with their attempts to read my mind. And what a great job they do of it. All in the cause of the Pot Hole Dance Season. Have you seen the Pot Holes dance? You know, one minute there isn’t one and about and then a split second later – CLANK! The dreaded tire pressure light comes on. You turn it off. It comes back on. You turn it off. It comes back on.
You stop the car at the roadside, turn off the engine, get out, and check the tires. They look all right. You kick them or tap them with a stick. They all sound all right and they all sound the same. You get back into the car. You start the engine. All the lights come on. All the lights go off. Except one – the dreaded tire pressure light. Well, I can swear pretty well in about five languages. I turn the tire light off. Wonder of wonders, it goes away.
I am so happy. I turn on the radio. I clap my hands. And CLANK! I drive into another Pot Hole that appeared from nowhere and walked or danced or shimmied or slithered into the road right in front of your car. You guessed it – and the tire pressure light comes on!
Last night an east wind blew outside my window. It whistled and groaned as it herded the stars from left to right.
The stars pursued the westering moon and planets danced to the rhythms of the accordion playing music in my chest.
The sky’s planetarium folded and unfolded its poker hands of silent cards marked with my fate.
Comment:
The photo is of the Hunter moon, as seen from Island View. It is quiet out here, very quiet, with very little light pollution. At night the stars shine bright and the constellations to North and South are clearly visible. Not so much so to East and West where the older trees tower. Occasionally, we get to see the Northern Lights. They can be incredible – great curtains of light hanging from the Northern Horizon. So bright, so clear, you can almost hear them crackle.
I have always loved the image of the planets dancing. If you have followed my poetry you will know that the idea of the Master of the Terracentric Universe, in Platonic and Neo-Platonic Theory, plays a large harp. The planets dance, forwards and backwards, to the sound of that harp. Of course, all that poetic beauty disappeared with the work of Galileo, Kepler, and all the students of the helio-centric universe. It is good to remember it though.
My beloved, born a Leo, loves to follow the progress of the sun. Each day she times its first appearance as it peeps above the ridge. Then she watches for it to arrive on the kitchen walls, and times that too. It is as if we lived as they lived thousands of years ago, in touch with nature, communicating with nature. And yet we are but a ten minute drive from the city centre.
The accordion playing music in my chest – you will have to wait until stanzas 28 & 29 for me to clarify that sound for you. I have been remiss in my postings. Very irregular, like my recently diagnosed A-Fib heart beat. Perhaps, after all, everything is linked, right down to the tiniest details, like posting blog notes and remembering all my e-friends out there. The known and the unknown.
Speaking of the known – Orion is gradually striding his way to the west. He dominates the southern sky at this time of year. He reminds me a lot of the Naked Man of Cerne Abbas. Except the Cerne Abbas man doesn’t move, while Orion definitely does. Or is it us who move around him. Your answer to that question will make you heliocentric – an observer, a measurer, like my beloved. Or it will make you Terracentric – a poet like me, well, an aspiring poet, who prefers the beauty of myth to the cold realities of science. Well, sometimes. Not always. But certainly in terms of my affinities to Plato and his celestial followers.
I trace dark contours, scarred desiccated lines blurred on the back of my wrinkled hands.
Blood maps, they are, unremembered encounters with immovable objects, wounds that bleed freely, deep below the surface, subcutaneous.
23
When I dream, I imagine the sky to be a crystal ball, twinkling with stars that tell the time and my fate.
With silent steps they creep and steal hours, days, weeks, years, whittling my life away, splintering it a little bit more every day.
Time, like golden sand, trickles through night’s fingers.
I hold in my hands an hourglass through which my life, secretly, silently, slides down and trickles away.
Comment:
“Unremembered encounters with immovable objects,” – oh dear. Anti-coagulants, blood-thinners for short. Moo’s skin is dry anyway. Now that he’s on anti-coagulants, he bruises every time he bumps into something. And Moo bumps into things. He’s one of those people who fall out of bed and go bump in the night. How do I know? He stole my teddy bear and my teddy bear told me. Anyway, his cardiologist calls it collateral damage. A sort of side dish that arrives when ever he stumbles into anything. That’s Moo, not the cardiologist.
As for me, I miss the old myths. I love the idea of the platonic, terra-centric universe. The planets move back wards and forwards around the earth in a slow dance. In order to dance, you need music. So the Platonic creator is a master musician who pays the harp. The stars dance to his music. Fray Luis de León uses this Neo-Platonism in his poetry. For him the sky is ‘un gran transunto donde vive mejorado todo lo que es, lo que será, y lo que ha pasado’. – a large space where, much improved, dwells everything that is, that will be, and that ever was. A lovely thought. Nothing is lost. Everything is saved – but in a state of betterment, all mistakes erased.
Moo would like that. His collateral damage all turned back into perfect skin. Oh dear. He wouldn’t be happy. He’d have nothing to paint. I am sure he paints his bruises when he runs out of inspiration.
Flames flow sparkling waters, a cataract of fire, down church walls as the Castillo burns.
Fireworks claw upwards to knock on heaven’s door and waken the sleeping gods reminding them not to forget their people.
A knife edge slices sun from shadow, heat from cool, solombra, Paz calls his neologism with its combination of sun and shade / sol y sombra.
66
I will never forget the taste and smell of my own sweat as I walk beneath the heaviness of a midday sun, its heat falling vertical and rebounding in waves from concrete and cobbles.
I recall the roughness of hand-hewn stone heated by that burning sun, the smoothness of silk contrasting with the harshness of tares in hand-woven wool, marketed in the central square.
Commentary:
Fireworks claw upwards to knock on heaven’s door. The celebrants would buy their rockets in groups of 3, 6, or 12. When the first rocket went up – whoooosh – BANG! – we would wait for the fourth. When the sixth rocket went up, same thing – do they have a full dozen? And when the seventh rocket goes up, indeed, we know they do. Sometimes, we would be woken up in the early morning, as the joyful people returned home after a night of reveling. When that seventh rocket flew skywards – we knew it was useless to try and go back to sleep!
I remember leaving the zócalo one night, turning into a side street, and being met by a wall of people. A whole village, with its accompanying band stood there, waiting. Up went the first rocket, the band started to play, and the dancing broke out. No sleep for the gods that night. Their people needed them and had come knocking on the door. I was always amazed by the way the old gods stood shoulder to shoulder with the new gods of Christianity. The number of people who worshiped both also surprised me.
I last visited Oaxaca in 2001. I wonder how much has changed. I hope the dancing trees never change. Inside them, young children, their eyes peering through the bark, followed the band music. Occasionally, one of them would stop, open his or her tree, and invite you in. Alas, I never had the courage or the skill to accept the invitation. Even by 2001, the traditional carnival figures – monos – were gradually being replaced by Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. Tragic, in so many ways. I hope they keep the traditions of the rockets and the music and the trees.
You and I are growing old together. We have been together for 59 years and married for 54 of those.
We watch each other slowly breaking down, the memories going, the body parts not functioning the way they used to.
In some ways, it is incredibly beautiful. In other ways, it is so tragic, this slow waltz around life’s dance-floor towards who knows what that last dance will bring?
It gets harder and harder to find the right things to say, sometimes to find anything to say.
There are days when we just sit in silence, filling in time, doing a crossword or a sudoku, or just gazing into space, trying to avoid the mindlessness of endless adverts on the television.
Commentary:
Not much to say, really. The poem and the photo speak for themselves, as good art always should. Sometimes the artist plans everything, and out it pops, all ready-made. On other occasions, a small miracle takes place and words and images tumble out, fluff their feathers, settle down and wow! – it’s a work of art. As long as one other person, other than me, thinks so, then I will be happy. “If I can reach out and touch just one person.”
I often wonder how many people are touched by traditional art nowadays. There is so much shock and awe out there, that the humble homely corner with its two doves or the image of an elderly couple dancing slowly around their kitchen, hanging onto each other – for what? And both of them waiting – for what, exactly? I expect it varies with each couple. But what I pity most are the lone doves, abandoned, autonomous, living on their own-some with nobody to talk to and only the TV to listen to. How many of them are out there, I wonder? When I walk around town, I see the street people, the homeless, the really lonely ones, just sitting, or slowly pushing a grocery cart with all their belongings tied up in plastic bags. Heads down, they plod on, never stopping, never looking.
“A sad life this, if full of care, we have no time to stop and stare.” W. H. Davies.
Ten years ago, in the Hospice for patients, the shy lady in the corner, body withered by cancer, stood up to dance.
She bowed to the band then floated into movement, dancing alone.
She clung to the empty air as she once clung to her lover.
Nymphs and shepherds played sweet music at midnight in this room turned sacred grove, where naiads and dryads emerged from the shadows.
Her dance-steps were a draught of joyous water from the fount of eternal youth and lasting love.
Commentary:
Moo offered me one of his paintings for this poem. He calls it Keep on the green side. Every Wednesday, in the hospice, a local band came in to play. Some patients danced, others sat and watched, some stood on the sidelines and listened to the music.
I had the fortune to be present at the singular performance recounted above. I never found out that lady’s name and I never saw her again afterwards. She remains a mystery, like the naiads and the dryads, and the hamadryads, who inhabited those mythological woods where so many of us dream our dreams of one last chance and one last dance.
… how will it all end does it not need closure something to bring the water-wheel full circle a golden key to open what
the museum’s door memory’s door the archives where so many memories lie gathering dust
though some may tell the truth whatever that is
or does the story go on and on never pausing never ending wrinkle after wrinkle threaded through time after time the candle burning
the clepsydra dripping all life away the pendulum swaying back and forth …
26
… Westminster Chimes chiming the quarters church bells ringing out a warning
the hills alive alight with burning beacons
what new armadas sailing now off our coast what fireflies flicker their thunderous roar frightening birds in trees driving deer into the woods
how many people cast forth like bread upon the waters to return ten-fold
hark to the bells ringing out again St. Clement’s St. Martin’s the Old Bailey hark to the children singing dancing in a circle never-ending until the music ends
and the last child is caught by the lowering arms trapped a fish flapping in the osprey’s grasp …
Commentary:
I wonder how many people still sing the children’s song about the bells of London? Images from it – intertextuality – occur throughout Clepsydra.
“Oranges and lemons,” ring the bells of St. Clement’s.
“You owe me five farthings,” say the bells of St. Martin’s.
“When will you pay me,” ask the bells of Old Bailey.
“When I grow rich,” sing the bells of Shoreditch.
“And when will that be,” sing the silver bells of Battersea.
“I do not know,” booms the great bell at Bow.
“Here comes a candle to light you to bed. And here comes a chopper to chop off your head.”
The song appeared at children’s parties. Two of them joined hands, held their hands high, like London’s Tower Bridge, and the children, in a long chain passed beneath the ‘bridge’ as the song was sung. At the end, the children speeded up and they tried to avoid the last verse when the bridge’s arms descended and two children were caught. These then had to replace the original two gate-keepers and the game started again. At least, that was how I remember it being played.
It is worth remembering how violent in their imagery children’s songs can be. The games seem sweet, but they often have dark undertones, some going back to the Black Death – “Ring a ring a rosies, a pocket full of posies, atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down.” If you don’t know what that all signifies, go down the rabbit hole with Alice and the white rabbit and look it all up! And find out what a farthing is, and a penny farthing – go on – I double-dog dare you!
And remember – poetry carries its own meaning – or multiple meanings – and they are not always easy to find. Dig, my friends, dig. There’s gold in them there hills.
