Alison, I like the way this seems also to revise and extend what
a "Greek chorus" could get away with saying; though since it's
for a single voice I realise this is not necessarily trying to be
a choral ode or whatever. I'm no expert on ancient tragedy
(though, reading this, I think obviously of the _Oresteia_ ) so I
don't really know the full extent of social constraints
playwrights were under.

(I also enjoyed very much "Medea" in Chide's Alphabet.)

Nicholas

----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 8:48 AM
Subject: Re: STIMULUS: POETRY AND VIOLENCE


I was going to write something, but poems seem to be the go -
this is from a work in progress, as yet untitled - I'm afraid the
lineation is only approximate -

A


You will only want me when your life no longer makes any sense to
you

And I will offer you no consolation
Although of course my hands will be purple with all the grapes I
have eaten
And my arms will smell of the children I have held and my breasts
will be
  starred with spargosis
And twined in my hair the bays and the ivies although I give them
no heed
I have always stood here naked, waiting your coming, and I will
show you
  no pity
                                                 That is a
promise

I can only say, of course! It was always like that! How is it
that you didn¹t know?
And now in this terrible clarity you will put on everything that
is human
Your skin that you left behind you, while you were thinking that
you were God
And all your desire lay within the span of your will!

Did you think my muse was gentle, dipping her sandalled foot in a
  domesticated brook?
You were blind if you could not see how she turned everything to
stone
                          Behind her eyes were fountains of lava

Perhaps you stoppered your ears saying such things
                                       Are not the intelligences
of civilisation
But poetry is barbaric, the nursery chant of the dispossessed

Crude and sad and throbbing
Did you think Virgil was not a slave of Empire? He knew it and
wept. And
   think how Athena conned the hideous hags
                                                        Because
the Poet was hymning the Lawful State
           Like a good boy
                                                Earning his
supper

                Since Tiamat¹s dismembered corpse was scattered
in swampy Ur
When her intestines were spread over the sky like a terrible
raincloud
                And her cunt became the cave
                                                                A
decent man dares not enter
The poet is homeless and bitterly
                                                        Sings her
want in the face of the primal crime
Which opened its eyes on that first watery horizon
                 And since then all has been war
                                          Even the smallest
glasshouse

        And poverty
                             Might be all we know of freedom
                                                        Slaves
know love will burst no chains
But will nevertheless sing of love
                Scrubbed of its illusions
                                                How it lies on
the bed its scrotum all anyhow
In the lovely limb-tossed languor of itself
                                Its breath soured with
intoxicants and the folds
Of its skin slantwised into shadow

Know there is nothing else apart from death
                           And purchase a little life with the
waters of your tongues
Having nothing else to heave against the weariness of your
labours
Which cripple your hands and clot your beating veins
                                                           A
little love and a little wine
                                Sipped on a bench in the shadow
cast by a wall
Might sometimes be enough
                                        And sometimes not

Sometimes not at all