Identity

In Absentia 2

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In Absentia

2

 At the Airport

 

It’s dark when we leave the car in the car park.
You unload your suitcase and wheel it away.
Dawn dawdles and you’ll see its very first spark,

high in the sky, like turkey vultures who play
with fire from old gods and return to earth,
wings aflame. People no longer kneel and pray

for fair winds and fine weather. There is a dearth
of hands conjoined in prayer. Fingers clasp books, lap
-tops, scans, photo IDs, seat choice, proof of birth …

nobody smiles, nobody laughs. It’s a crap
-shoot, really, each flight, dice rolling as to who
sits next to who(m). Can anyone tell which chap

will pull out a knife or gun and threaten to
kill someone if rough orders are disobeyed.
It wasn’t like this before: jungle law, zoo

-keepers needed to keep order, guns displayed
by security guards who look grim and show
their teeth, gritting them tight as if on parade,

as if they wanted someone to help them grade
each passenger, each situation, dogs low
-slung sniff at you when you board, and you afraid
your fear will show. Come back my love. Don’t go.

 

Monkey’s Tractatus

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Monkey’s Tractatus
(after a philosophical argument between
Ludvig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell)

When monkey sees a hippopotamus in the temple grounds
he knows it is grounded in fact.
We really must get rid of it!
It obediently vanishes.

There is a silence in the temple cells
broken only by the broom’s clean sweep
as insects are swept away from the footsteps of the unworthy.

Monkey sees the hippo trapped beneath a chair.
He can feel it struggling to set itself free.
Now hippo gets tangled in monkey’s hair.

Monkey will have its hide for a shield against dark thoughts,
an unbroken umbrella to guard him from this rain of teardrops.

Hippo bathes in a hip bath of crocodile tears:
Sunt rerum lacrimae.
He wallows in philosophical sorrow.

When the hippo leaves the temple,
there is a silence as the unspoken word returns,
a silence broken only by the hum of the hoover,
and the beat of a condor’s invisible wings.

In Absentia 1

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In absentia

Prelude

1

 The Beaver Pond

Tomorrow, early, my love, you’ll fly away.
Today, you’ll walk round the Beaver Pond
where red and yellow leaves abound. A thin grey

webbing garlands one dead tree. I’m not too fond
of tent worms. I hate them when they swing
from low branches. Give me a fresh green frond

caught by the morning sun in early spring
or else bright autumn leaves so soon to fall.
I love American Goldfinches when they sing

that last departing song. I love most of all
those occasional visitors: do you recall that bright
blue Indigo Bunting with his “I’m-a-lost-bird call?”

The hunting hawks give everyone a fright.
They perch on top of a garden tree
then step off into space to claw-first alight

on some poor songbird trilling away, quite free
from fear, his unfinished symphony of song.
It’s getting late, my love. You walk towards me
out of the woods. I’ll end this poem with a plea:
don’t forget me … and don’t stay away too long.

Monkey Chews

 

 

 

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Monkey Chews the Cud
(after Octavio Paz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Stéphane Mallarmé)

Brilliant in his rising, a new sun shines on monkey’s world,
dispersing darkness, fragmenting it into shadows.

Sunshine and shadow: heads and tails of an age old
combination sealed back-to-back on the self-same coin.

¿Cara o cruz? Heads or tails? Sunshine or shadow?

Solombra, perhaps? Or is it just the act of perception,
as Wittgenstein would have us believe, and nothing more:
the metal always spinning on its milled edge, never falling,
the coin on its axis, a new day with its potential,
sunshine or shadow, thrown dice still skittering,
a new world imperceptibly poised in its own making?

Monkey scratches his head. Such enormous depths
are not for him to plumb, this early in the morning.

Better by far the banana peeled, the fresh skin thrown
away for someone else to slip on, and monkey
sitting there in silence, chewing his morning cud.

 

Existentialist Monkey

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Existentialist Monkey
(after Albert Camus and his Myth of Sisyphus)

Monkey watches Budgie tinkle the small bell hanging below
the yellow plastic mirror in which Budgie gazes in fascination
at his own reflection, nuzzling and nipping himself with his beak.

Black and white soccer balls cover the floor:
“Budgies for the Cup!”
A crimson ladder has another bell on top.
Budgie squeezes a soccer ball between beak and claws,
ascends this ladder, and pushes the ball upwards.

When he gets to the top, the ball slips slowly down.

It falls to the sandpaper floor.
Budgie descends the ladder,
takes a new grip on his soccer ball,
and steadily climbs the rungs.

Budgie is clever: he can imitate the telephone, the doorbell,
the pop of a champagne cork shooting from the bottle, the cat, the dog …
When Budgie whistles, the stupid dog leaps to his feet
and rushes, barking, to the door …

Budgie is two thirds up the ladder now. He pauses for a rest,
stretches his wings, and looks at himself in the mirror.

“There’s a pretty boy!”

“Il faut imaginer Budgie heureux.”

Limericks for Meg

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Limericks for Meg Sorick
(with many apologies)

Lying sleepless at night in my bed,
with my pillow tucked under my head,
unable to sleep
and tired of damn sheep.
I start writing limericks instead.

Now, of limericks I’m really the king.
Mine flow like a song you can sing.
I tap out the beat
with fingers and feet
and they end with a zing and a ping.

My Teddy Bear still sleeps with me.
He’s as cuddly as cuddly can be.
The hands of the clock
and their dickory-dock,
take us from two until three.

On the floor a family of mice
think our bed is warm, comfy, and nice.
I must watch what I say
because they won’t go away:
if I speak they’ll be in in a trice.

My cat sits quite still on the mat
then says “I think I smell a rat!
Go get your gun!
Hurry now! Run?
I bet it’s a big one, and fat.”

A rat, that’s what she said.
I hastily got out of bed,
ran down stairs
saying multiple prayers,
and tripped, and fell on my head.

I got back to my feet in some pain,
went up to the bedroom again
Teddy Bear, mice and cat,
were tucked in, fancy that,
and snoring away like a train.

I decided to sit on a chair
and pretend they just were not there.
I picked up my pen,
wrote limericks again,
and started to tear at my hair.

My inspiration now was all wrong.
Rhyme, rhythm, and wit had all gone.
The hands of the clock
sang tickety-tock
as the dawn came creeping along.

Now here comes the end of my story,
I’m afraid it’s a little bit gory.
I beat on that bed
till the wild-life was dead
and I’d covered myself in false glory.

You can see from my limericks, Meg,
how they all show a fine turn of leg,
with neat little feet,
a strong rhythmic beat,
all borrowed and ripped off a peg.

The End

 

Monkey’s Book Burning

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Monkey’s Book Burning

(Remembering Cervantes’s Scrutiny of the Library
and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451)

Who burnt Monkey’s books?
Who took them from their shelves,
evicted them into the courtyard,
built them into book stacks, like hay,
then applied gasoline, and a lighted match?

Monkey watches in horror as smoke
and flame devour his beloveds.
He tries to approach, but the fire is too hot.
One book jumps out from the smoke,
still smoldering, and monkey
snatches it and carries it away beneath his coat,
the fire burn branded into its cover,
the skin still sizzling on monkey’s hand.

How many books were burned that day?
How many monkeys now walk in the woods,
trying to re-create their lives, circulating
their memories by word of mouth?

Moth is to candle as book is to flame.
Monkey runs his hand in and out of the candle.
He recalls the bonfires in other, far off streets
and coughs through the throat burn of smoke
as he touches the blistered scars of flame.

Monkey Watch

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Monkey Watch
(after Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell and the Myth of Icarus)

Monkey senses things that are invisible
to other minds. He knows that ink in a pen
can run dry, that word flows can suddenly cease,
that mechanical pencils can so easily
break down into their component parts.

New Year’s resolutions can lie broken on the gym
-nasium’s floor. Scattered on the ground, they lie
shattered, tattered like the beribboned tresses of trees,
blown blind by winter’s feverish, age old wind.

Time has grown feathers and traced
its moth flight round the candle flame.
These solar spots that beautify the moonscape wings
of the meandering moth are too hot to handle.

Suddenly, there is the scent of burning flesh,
of flimsy wings crisping, of high-flying Icarus
left roasting in the candle’s open fire. Monkey contemplates
the dry, tight wrinkles on the back of his paw.

Then he moves his hand slowly and casually through
the candle’s flame as he meditates
on the brevity of life and the multiple meanings
of an existence that precedes all essence.

Last Dance FFF

 

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Last Dance
Fast Fiction Friday

                   The vocalist has rhythm but, unlike her audience, she doesn’t have cancer. She has come here tonight with her band to the hospice to entertain those who do. The band donates their time. They don’t do this for money. Nobody does.

The vocalist looks round the almost empty room. She has been here before and knows that when she starts to sing, many more patients, attracted by the music, will come drifting in. She introduces the trio that accompanies her to the few who have arrived and the evening’s entertainment begins.

The music circulates round the hospice, and the inmates, secluded in their rooms, tap out the rhythm of the first song. They leave their rooms and descend the stairs. The low lights give the patients courage and they trickle shyly into the dining room, now turned into a dance floor. As they enter, they see some of the bravest patients out on the dance floor, moving in time to the music. The late-comers stand straighter, adjust their headscarves, lean less on their sticks, and forget for a moment their suffering. They settle in chairs towards the back of the room and leave the front rows empty. Then they exchange glances and nods of encouragement. Many of the men stand at the rear, leaning on the chair backs of the women who are seated in front of them.

Some dance, but not everyone does. Some join in the chorus, humming or mouthing the words. One takes a pair of plastic spoons from his pocket and follows the rhythm. Two ladies hold hands and encourage each other onto the dance floor where they join the growing numbers who are moving around. Those who are not yet brave enough to step out, clap loudly and one or two cheer.

The music volume increases and laughter and merriment grow. More and more patients join the dancers on the floor. The lights are lowered even further and people who scarcely knew each other a week or two ago now dance in close friendship.

As they move beneath dim lights, the dancers half-close their eyes and enter a dreamland of sound and music. Here the women’s hair grows lush and long again. The men stand straighter, throw away their sticks, and rely on their partners to keep them upright. One man touches the place where his partner’s amputated breast should be. She recoils immediately, but he holds her close, whispers in her ear, brushes her cheek with his lips, and gradually she relaxes. As the evening comes to an end and the lights dim further, the dancers move closer together dreaming on and on in time to the music.

When the vocalist announces that this will be the last dance, the music stops for a moment and the hospice’s oldest inhabitant, an elderly lady, cancer-stricken, hauls herself to her feet and walks to the center of the dance floor. When she gets there, she holds out her hands before her and nods at the vocalist. The other dancers make space for her and the last dance begins.

This elderly lady dances alone, clinging to the empty air as if she were dancing with a well-remembered partner. A muted spotlight highlights her as she moves. It could be midnight, in some sacred grove where shadows shift, and moonlight makes its own sweet music, and her, the spirit of the wood, moving in tune to a rhythm that promises, in spite of everything, joy and ever-lasting love.

 

Gower

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To Be Welsh in Gower

To be Welsh in Gower is to spell it funny
and pronounce it worse: Gŵyr.

It’s to know how to say Pwll Ddu.

It’s meeting the cows in the lane to Brandy Cove
and knowing them all by name and reputation,
which one kicks, which one gores,
when to walk in the middle of the lane,
and when to jump for the safety of the hedge.

It’s to know the difference between the twin farmers
Upper Jones and Lower Jones.

It’s to recognize their sheepdogs, Floss and Jess,
and to call them with their different whistles.

It’s knowing the time of day by sun and shadow.

It’s knowing the tide is in or out
by the salt smell in the air
without ever needing to see the sea;

and now, in this far off land,
it’s hearing your stomach growl
for caws wedi pobi, crempog or teisen lap
whilst memory’s fish-hook tugs at your heart

like your father tugged at salmon bass,
fishing from the sand-pebbled beach
at Rhossili, Pennard, or Three Cliffs.