DITCHLING BEACON
End of life and before death
Feathers dipping towards oaken frost
A bird heard that shot:
The ink sky burst,
Stone colliding with the sun
Echo stunned its wing
String hauled it down.
Gamekeeper or poacher
Cut its free flight to the sea.
Vice had tongue, veins, teeth
Dogs in panoply, pressure
To ring a sunspot fitting neat
The blacked-out circle of a gun.
LIZARD
Fiddle-tongue and spite
Hang as if asleep
Safe on his tipped world,
But lizard-shoulders hunch
Pulsate at a fly on slanting wall.
Belly smooth, feet stuck firm
A thousand volts of paralyzing tongue
Rifle out and kill;
Weapons in one stomach pit.
Death is quick when looked on,
Sweet as food when the lamps of paradise
Blacken a brain that one day
Hoped to know.
Sparking tongue ignites
A common wink and into oblivion:
The lizard unaware of upside down
Eats as it runs.
EMPTY QUARTER
He meditates on the Empty Quarter:
Mosque of sand dissolving through eggtimer’s
Neck. Looks on camel-loads
Starting for Oman or Muscat
By invisible Mercator’s thread
That burns the hoof and shrivels
All humps of water. Empty Quarter lures,
He travels with his heaped caravan
Earth-tracks marked as lines
Of unstable land, golden sandgrit
Lifting up grey dunes near vulcan-
Trees and foul magnesium wells
That asps and camels drink from.
He throws off bells, beads, silk, guns
Knives and slippers, scattering all
No longer needed — camel meat
For scavengers, everything
But his own dishrags of flesh.
Naked and demented he hugs
A tree rooted in the widest waste
Catching dew from God at dawn
And dates dropping through rottenness,
Tastes the lone tree’s shade
No one can chop or whip him from,
Till one day ravelled in his own white flame
He abandons the Empty Quarter
And trudges back to terrify the world.
FIRST POEM
Burned out, burned out
Water of rivers hold me
On a course towards the sea.
Burned out was like a tree
Cut down and hollowed
No branches left
Seasoned by fire into a boat:
Burned out through love’s
Wilful spending
Yet sure it will float
Kindle a fresh blaze
Burn out again
On a stranger shore –
Unless pyromaniac emotions
Scorch me in midstream
And the sun turns black.
LOVE’S MANSION
To keep them healthily in thrall
They build a little fire in the hall –
And burn their opulent home to ash.
A ruin is better than no love at all.
Dark and ageing timbers crash
Cats surround it at full moon.
Did they abandon love too soon
Full of happiness to see it fall?
Let it fall, in sight of all
It kept them long enough in thrall
As cupboards burn and timbers fall.
They’re still inside, nowhere to run
No windows through which they can crawl;
Only the trapped and burning see it fall.
It kept them like a snake in thrall.
A ruin is better than no love at all.
They smile unhappily to see it fall.
TO BURN OUT LOVE
To burn out love is to burn a star from the sky
But can touch reach so far,
Feel the fire increase
Careful the heart but not the star will burn?
Star that pulsates like a fish:
My heart meets you in dark or light
To taste the waters of the star which says:
Trust once gone can never be restored –
Such love can surely be put out,
The power to break its fire with my fist.
SEATALK
Talking on the beach:
Love has broken its heart
Is a pomegranate split
A waterfall pouring in.
Each half lifts
Drifts out to sea,
Eaten clean as January boats
By frost and salt.
One will sink, one go free:
Withered fruit-husk without salt
Or soul. Could be you
And could be me, watching January waves
Erupt like whales and thrones and tractors:
Stones clash back into their places.
You wait for a boat to come
And snatch you from love’s pandemonium
Of humping tide and screeching stones.
But what shipwrecked you there?
Want to know, and cease to wonder:
The boat lurches into seas of danger
Waves turning phosphorous, turn fire:
Rowers begin work, and you not with them
When the numbness in you burns
Because you do not want to go, or stay.
Pomegranate is a far-off fruit
Scattered seeds fulfil no circle.
Love cannot kill
A broken heart, nor mend it.
The sea defends its dead
And those born from it,
Believes in broken hearts
Burns when it boils so.
No boat can stay, must fall apart
Floating through the open heart,
Like fruit bursting
At the shock of moonless water,
And two more hearts pulled in to slaughter.
NAKED
Naked, naked, I never see you naked
As if to be naked is to tell lies
With the body that you show –
Cover it and keep the truth.
Hide naked, keep it close
You never let me see you naked
Unless half so by accident or tease.
Hide it carefully: those lies are yours,
Not mine, speak them loudly if they burn.
Belong to someone else, not mine.
I see you naked through them,
Through love, naked beyond the truth