A brace of poems by Stephen Pain.




"Blue, Gold and Orange..."

blue, gold, orange, like quartz
crystals, then like blades of
grass, thin light brown wisps
and then he moved the mirror
about and it turned black and dark,
like the colour of an Alien Set,
the hairs now evident and the
appearance of an insect
more obvious, he then enlarged
it, so he could see life, smaller
life, moving on the cockroach leg,
mites of some sort, and then
the sunlight caught the glass
again turning it into another work
of art, say something by Grunewald,
a detail, from a triptych, the arm
of Christ,and before it could
blaspheme, a blink of the eyelid,
changed it to something more
acceptable, a cockroach leg
on a slide, being looked at,
by a little kid, trying to learn
more about the natural world.

Tango
     i
the dance line
takes the reader
to the Argentine
la caminata
walk with me,
slow, slow,
through the pampas,
count the cattle,
look at the grass
and gramineus,
and hidden
sometimes,
pumas,
walk with me,
the medium sized
cat, on soft pads,
pursues the stars
that inhabit his ballads,
slow, slow,
then quick, quickly,
it pursues the lovers
who sing in the bars
of Buenos Aires,
it is inside the feathers
of grey rheas running
across the flat land,
and then the poet tired
of counting the beat
cuts to the chase
in the smoke-filled room
where the bandoneon invites,
he makes love to women


  "Heart of Darkness"

the muddy effluence, carries
the catfish along with it,
and the kid knee deep in memories
pokes nooks and crannies
with a bamboo stick, while malay boys
with wide open smiles, look on,
and an overhanging limb
is home to the Mynahs,
a feathery claque,
they repeat the calls of the golden
orioles, the skinny kid wades
deeper into the river, and
emerges upon the mud flat,
kiss-me-quick sands of Weston
-Super-Mare, and the deck chair
ethos, the white plastic sunglasses,
and the candy-floss early sixties,
and he is patting a sand castle,
a castle which has an entrance,
he in an Alice Wonderland
conceit, pushes his way through
into the darkness, first his head,
and then his feet, and he comes out,
in a forest in Northern Germany,
where a black locomotive with
a plume of smoke, like the feathers
of a knight, races through the pines,
and he sees a Fraulein with a knife
cut the neck of a chicken, the blood
dripping onto the floral patterned
plate, and then he sees himself
returning into the woman, into
the warm darkness, dividing,
into smaller entities, and then he
is at the controls of a B47 bomber
flying across the Atlantic, and
he is wearing an Audrey Hepburn
tight number, looking more shy
than erotic, and they are rewinded
into images he can't understand.

"the postcard from japan"

the postcard from japan
was never sent, and its absence marks
something that could never happen
in life, the once in a lifetime, the eruption
of mount fuji, the lava flowing through
the city of tokyo, the red and black, rouge
noir, marking the irony of love, the
tsunami, the blue hiroshige waves, crested
by his thoughts, each white horse carrying
the meaning, and the wakening of the nightmare
where the haniwa come round, their mouths
uttering ancient words, and it never happens,
the white plastic umbrellas a gyre, a yeatsian
motif, modernity in a swirl, and the pachinko
balls spill out in a torrent, and the holocaust
has begun, and it was in the postcard
from japan, one that was never sent.

"Cha-no-yu"

Cha-no-yu
the way of the tea,
literally,
and it used to be
a case of having an old
kettle, and a couple of
broken cha-no-wans,
and then lighting a charcol
brazier, keeping the outside
and the inside warm, the body
and the spiritual, but this
has been replaced by big
business, where kimonos
cost a fortune, and the utensils
are works of art, oh look,
these are Picassos, and the
kakemono more than often,
is by so and so, and this avarice,
one would hope spoils
the flavour of the tea,
but no one seems to notice.







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