Stranger Music

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HYDRA 1960
Anything that moves is white,
a gull, a wave, a sail,
and moves too purely to be aped.
Smash the pain.
Never pretend peace.
The consolumentum has not,
never will be kissed. Pain
cannot compromise this light.
Do violence to the pain,
ruin the easy vision,
the easy warning, water
for those who need to burn.
These are ruthless: rooster shriek,
bleached goat skull.
Scalpels grow with poppies
if you see them truly red.
QUEEN VICTORIA AND ME
Queen Victoria
my father and all his tobacco loved you
I love you too in all your forms
the slim unlovely virgin anyone would lay
the white figure floating among German beards
the mean governess of the huge pink maps
the solitary mourner of a prince
Queen Victoria
I am cold and rainy
I am dirty as a glass roof in a train station
I feel like an empty cast-iron exhibition
I want ornaments on everything
because my love she gone with other boys
Queen Victoria
do you have a punishment under the white lace
will you be short with her
and make her read little Bibles
will you spank her with a mechanical corset
I want her pure as power
I want her skin slightly musty with petticoats
will you wash the easy bidets out of her head
Queen Victoria
I’m not much nourished by modern love
Will you come into my life
with your sorrow and your black carriages
and your perfect memory
Queen Victory
The 20th century belongs to you and me
Let us be two severe giants
(not less lonely for our partnership)
who discolour test tubes in the halls of science
who turn up unwelcome at every World’s Fair
heavy with proverb and correction
confusing the star-dazed tourists
with our incomparable sense of loss
I HAD IT FOR A MOMENT
I had it for a moment
I knew why I must thank you
     I saw powerful governing men in black suits
I saw them undressed
in the arms of young mistresses
the men more naked than the naked women
the men crying quietly
     No that is not it
I’m losing why I must thank you
which means I’m left: with pure longing
     How old are you
Do you like your thighs
I had it for a moment
I had a reason for letting the picture
of your mouth destroy my conversation
     Something on the radio
the end of a Mexican song
I saw the musicians getting paid
they are not even surprised
they knew it was only a job
     Now I’ve lost it completely
A lot of people think you are beautiful
How do I feel about that
I have no feeling about that
     I had a wonderful reason for not merely
courting you
It was tied up with the newspapers
     I saw secret arrangements in high offices
I saw men who loved their worldliness
even though they had looked through
big electric telescopes
they still thought their worldliness was serious
not just a hobby a taste a harmless affectation
     they thought the cosmos listened
I was suddenly fearful
one of their obscure regulations
could separate us
     I was ready to beg for mercy
Now I’m getting into humiliation
I’ve lost why I began this
I wanted to talk about your eyes
I know nothing about your eyes
and you’ve noticed how little I know
I want you somewhere safe
far from high offices
     I’ll study you later
So many people want to cry quietly beside you
July 4, 1963
THE WAY BACK
But I am not lost
any more than leaves are lost
or buried vases
This is not my time
I would only give you second thoughts
I know you must call me traitor
because I have wasted my blood
in aimless love
and you are right
Blood like that
never won an inch of star
You know how to call me
although such a noise now
would only confuse the air
Neither of us can forget
the steps we danced
the words you stretched
to call me out of dust
Yes I long for you
not just as a leaf for weather
or vase for hands
but with a narrow human longing
that makes a man refuse
any fields but his own
I wait for you at an
unexpected place in your journey
like the rusted key
or the feather you do not pick up
until the way back
after it is clear
the remote and painful destination
changed nothing in your life
ON HEARING A NAME LONG UNSPOKEN
Listen to the stories
men tell of last year
that sound of other places
though they happened here
Listen to a name
so private it can burn
hear it said aloud
and learn and learn
History is a needle
for putting men asleep
anointed with the poison
of all they want to keep
Now a name that saved you
has a foreign taste
claims a foreign body
froze in last year’s waste
And what is living lingers
while monuments are built
then yields its final whisper
to letters raised in gilt
But cries of stifled ripeness
whip me to my knees
I am with the falling snow
falling in the seas
I am with the hunters
hungry and shrewd
and I am with the hunted
quick and soft and nude
I am with the houses
that wash away in rain
and leave no teeth of pillars
to rake them up again
Let men numb names
scratch winds that blow
listen to the stories
but what you know you know
And knowing is enough
for mountains such as these
where nothing long remains
houses walls or trees
STYLE
I don’t believe the radio stations
of Russia and America
but I like the music and I like
the solemn European voices announcing jazz
I don’t believe opium or money
though they’re hard to get
and punished with long sentences
I don’t believe love
in the midst of my slavery I
do not believe
I am man sitting in a house
on a treeless Argolic island
I will forget the grass of my mother’s lawn
I know I will
I will forget the old telephone number
Fitzroy seven eight two oh
I will forget my style
I will have no style
I hear a thousand miles of hungry static
and the old clear water eating rocks
I hear the bells of mules eating
I hear the flowers eating the night
under their folds
Now a rooster with a razor
plants the haemophilia gash across
the soft black sky
and now I know for certain
I will forget my style
Perhaps a mind will open in this world
perhaps a heart will catch rain
Nothing will heal and nothing will freeze
but perhaps a heart will catch rain
America will have no style
Russia will have no style
It is happening in the twenty-eighth year
of my attention
I don’t know what will become
of the mules with their lady eyes
or the old clear water
or the giant rooster
The early morning greedy radio eats
the governments one by one the languages
the poppy fields one by one
Beyond the numbered band
a silence develops for every style
for the style I laboured on
an external silence like the space
between insects in a swarm
electric