Stranger Music

money,
I murdered the perfumer.
Look through the window
at the shops and people.
Tell me what you desire,
you’ll have it by the hour.
I have no money,
I have no money.
THE CUCKOLD’S SONG
If this looks like a poem
I might as well warn you at the beginning
that it’s not meant to be one.
I don’t want to turn anything into poetry.
I know all about her part in it
but I’m not concerned with that right now.
This is between you and me.
Personally I don’t give a damn who led who on:
in fact I wonder if I give a damn at all.
But a man’s got to say something.
Anyhow you fed her 5 MacKewan Ales,
took her to your room, put the right records on,
and in an hour or two it was done.
I know all about passion and honour
but unfortunately this had really nothing to do with either:
oh there was passion I’m only too sure
and even a little honour
but the important thing was to cuckold Leonard Cohen.
Hell, I might just as well address this to the both of you:
I haven’t time to write anything else.
I’ve got to say my prayers.
I’ve got to wait by the window.
I repeat: the important thing was to cuckold Leonard Cohen.
I like that line because it’s got my name in it.
What really makes me sick
is that everything goes on as it went before:
I’m still a sort of friend,
I’m still a sort of lover.
But not for long:
that’s why I’m telling this to the two of you.
The fact is I’m turning to gold, turning to gold.
It’s a long process, they say,
it happens in stages.
This is to inform you that I’ve already turned to clay.
MORNING SONG
She dreamed the doctors arrived
And severed her legs at the knee.
This she dreamed on a morning
Of a night she slept beside me.
Now I was not in this dream
Or the cry of the amputee,
Yet she told me this on a morning
Of a night she slept beside me.
THE FLOWERS THAT I LEFT IN THE GROUND
The flowers that I left in the ground,
that I did not gather for you,
today I bring them all back,
to let them grow forever,
not in poems or marble,
but where they fell and rotted.
And the ships in their great stalls,
huge and transitory as heroes,
ships I could not captain,
today I bring them back
to let them sail forever,
not in model or ballad,
but where they were wrecked and scuttled.
And the child on whose shoulders I stand,
whose longing I purged
with public, kingly discipline,
today I bring him back
to languish forever,
not in confession or biography,
but where he flourished,
growing sly and hairy.
It is not malice that draws me away,
draws me to renunciation, betrayal:
it is weariness, I go for weariness of thee.
Gold, ivory, flesh, love, G-d, blood, moon —
I have become the expert of the catalogue.
My body once so familiar with glory,
my body has become a museum:
this part remembered because of someone’s mouth,
this because of a hand,
this of wetness, this of heat.
Who owns anything he has not made?
With your beauty I am as uninvolved
as with horses’ manes and waterfalls.
This is my last catalogue.
I breathe the breathless
I love you, I love you —
and let you move forever.
A KITE IS A VICTIM
A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.
A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won’t give up,
or the wind die down.
A kite is the last poem you’ve written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don’t let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.
A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon,
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.
THERE ARE SOME MEN
There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names to time.
Grave-markers are not high enough
or green,
and sons go far away
to lose the fist
their father’s hand will always seem.
I had a friend:
he lived and died in mighty silence
and with dignity,
left no book, son, or lover to mourn.
Nor is this a mourning-song
but only a naming of this mountain
on which I walk,
fragrant, dark, and softly white
under the pale of mist.
I name this mountain after him.
ISAIAH
for G.C.S.
Between the mountains of spices
the cities thrust up pearl domes and filigree spires.
Never before was Jerusalem so beautiful.
     In the sculptured temple how many pilgrims,
lost in the measures of tambourine and lyre,
kneeled before the glory of the ritual?
     Trained in grace the daughters of Zion moved,
not less splendid than the golden statuary,
the bravery of ornaments about their scented feet.
     Government was done in palaces.
Judges, their fortunes found in law,
reclining and cosmopolitan, praised reason.
Commerce like a strong wild garden
     flourished in the street.
The coins were bright, the crest on coins precise,
new ones looked almost wet.
Why did Isaiah rage and cry,
Jersusalem is ruined,
     your cities are burned with fire?
On the fragrant hills of Gilboa
were the shepherds ever calmer,
the sheep fatter, the white wool whiter?
     There were fig trees, cedar, orchards
where men worked in perfume all day long.
New mines as fresh as pomegranates.
     Robbers were gone from the roads,
     the highways were straight.
There were years of wheat against famine.
Enemies? Who has heard of a righteous state
     that has no enemies,
but the young were strong, archers cunning,
     their arrows accurate.
Why then this fool Isaiah,
smelling vaguely of wilderness himself,
why did he shout,
     Your country is desolate?
Now will I sing to my well-beloved
a song of my beloved touching her hair
which is pure metal black
     no rebel prince can change to dross,
of my beloved touching her body
     no false swearer can corrupt,
of my beloved touching her mind
     no faithless counsellor can inflame,
of my beloved touching the mountains of spices
making them beauty instead of burning.
Now plunged in unutterable love
Isaiah wanders, chosen, stumbling
against the sculptured walls which consume
their full age in his embrace and powder
as he goes by. He reels beyond
     the falling dust of spires and domes,
obliterating ritual: the Holy Name, half-spoken,
is lost on the cantor’s tongue; their pages