SILVERBIRCH ON CANALSIDE (off Fazeley St) For company, a Flanders poppy and a brooding pair of breeding swans. This sidebranch's blocked off. Your torso's cracked like old plaster. On your bending flesh cling barnacles of wart as on a greywhale unzipped from the hiding sea. The all else is breathless, a too fast running past. Your roots swim down into slow currents, diving into the world's skin. You are the guardian of your own image, unknowing, on a scummed and lily-padded channel, where an oiled city (gerra move on) slides and wheezes by. FRAGMENTS OF A CHINESE DIARY i Each night I paw at The Book of Odes like a sad-eyed creature stumbled out of an endless forest looking at a camp-site clearing uncomprehendingly. ii I dreamt I had made perfect my rough technique on the bamboo flute. That my mind's web quivered to the pauses between raindrops or the air's troubled turns. To the heartbeat of stars. iii A woman is shouting at her own locked door. I have counted the khaki on the Great North Road. A quartet crashes through the silence of my wall. There are shirts they are struggling as the wind brawls. Bow low, kowtow, you caution, the Emperor's men 're marching. FOR MY FATHER Flemish bond, English bond, slap the trowel, plumb the line. Six o'clock, on the dot, up and out, work's about: It's seven quid a week and a ten bob note. Billycan, in the hand, white outside, black within. Morning come, frozen bone; night and home, frozen bone. It's seven quid a week and a ten bob note. Dawn and dusk: English bond: seven pound: frozen bound. NOTES ON THE CAPTURE OF FORM AND CHAOS With the phlap, phlap, phlap of a butterfly's wings on my last late noon of love in the fortress of Wendsbry she confronted the professor with: rustic songs on my last afternoon of love with a world of wrongs as a storm broke through a mind collapsed in Ledbry to the flap, flap, flap of a butterfly's wings a storm broke a mind with its senseless things a narrative sank in a subjective mire: 's hisstry she confronted her professor with it: rustic songs a narrative drowns while drunk Muses sing I cry for the end of it a creature like me with the phlap, phlap, phlap of a butterfly's wings I cried for the end of it the living broken things for a burden of being on backstreets of Wendsbry she confronted a collector with her rustic songs for a burden of being the telephone rings with a message fron no-one a desperate plea.... to the flap, flap, flap of a butterfly's wings she confronted her professor with it: rustic song THE MADNESS OF KING DAVID The servants no longer purred but barked. The Queen Consort was plotting with France. Slowly he picked the feathers from his skin. That was for Wednesdays. Other days, unlike the people in the lifts, he stayed all the time awake, knowing that by his consciousness the world might hold together. Not fall apart. Not fall .... until Thursdays, for instance, which were a particular kind of problem, as the skies were never the right colour nor the noises outside his palace (for they had the hue of small burrowing mammals) (And his puzzlement was presented with certain shots of Kim Novak in The Great Bank Robbery, wriggling her bum with a rather conspicuous tail-flounce perched on her dress reminiscent of Great Ape females on heat. Disturbingly. See zoo. See cinema.) Nor the verse forms which came to hand for their exoticism bethought him of trade wars. But there were other days again, not named on the calendar, when he revisited his telescope (the world's first, many times since upgraded and restored) a gift, the Chancellor told him, of Johannes Kepler, where, in his own perspective, the firmament hung studded with the running signatures of those he thought of as friends. STILL LIFE It was the ending of sound and the light closed with a black door's heaviness. History faded on the eye's wide lens. The long ages of ice came back to the lowlands of flesh. Only a feeling a vague smoke like a detached ghost turned on the tuneless air twisted by gravity grey on black like a question-mark's curl or beckoning finger. WI(TH)IN a print a mud trace (a hundred and eighty (ahead back there (and into the mirror I sidled: (tell me I mouthed tell (the higher animals came (touch, touch, the guide implored (and I saw the stars in their clouded nurseries (rah-too, the bird called, rah-teh (then the stones began to fable (could I but tell (how there when where not there at the first molecule twitch (Broca's patch (see icy I sea a seed) broken down) like unlabelled cans on grocery shelves) how where when there not when) could I but) one by one one) then smokily it faded from sight) and a wind- ruffled corner where a bus never came) and vanished, that's history) two by two by two by) and found myself my questioner) ah, hello, echo, hello, ha) where there began) degrees turning) the steps of breath WORKING THEOLOGY When Hawa looked up from the last call and asked David, can you answer me a personal question?, and smiled, I said, Go on, and she hesitated on the cross she'd seen hanging from a gold loop piercing my ear. Are you a Christian?, Hawa ended. I scratched my ear. No, I told her, nodding. Which means yes. DISCURSE ALPHA LYRAE REMOLD The man of the lyreways, Orpheus, after-being torn apart by a song and a woman's hands, was at a loose end and discoalescent, an almost converstation in a not quite clowd and occasions, disparts, a happenings to me. I mean biography, write. I mean ice. I mean a dark mater. I mean cosmocrator loiter. He had a loud visions in the mud reeds, flesh, old stills on star-plates, life to remind him of his skin, aways from here, the rite strain caught, almost late, mirrors that nuzzled like warm pronouns to look in from the veerside of yes he remembered his head. But, like parachute jumps off the day's brink (that is a passport backwards to the Shire) the things stayed metaphor almosts, quoits until no more. No more than that he was that, met her more each selving wrapped now on a pressure hold of light a gravity beat song print an inplose whirl'd a waltz to a starberth a Glowball warming a quickfire slow THE COLLECTED POEMS OF JOSHUA NENE (1955-99) (i) Walk Dead Still You modulate a Court, with all its summoned. Who's in, who's out, who has the King's ear. Who the judgement. Behindbacks, snipes, En attendant Gagool. Good Laud, I refuse your forensic, your sting-pull, your herd-manage talk. (ii) Constable Every so often I go mad, and climb a tree with squirrels. It is an English tree. Its fruit pucker from the skin like gargoyles on a Goth. Look, there's a Blake face, or here a Smart. Clare? It is a moral tree: in a breeze it shakes so, its periwig its peruke, dusty, as if an insect judgement woke. Once we thought it a Liberty tree, sang of it, too. Still, it gives me fresh perspective. Arrested, still. See? (iii) The Possibilities of Rhyme Ashbery has 'Orpheus, a bluish cloud with white contours'. A voice from the speaking crowd, too, a noise among the heard. I saw a man once in a rhetoric cloud, punneling his escape. He went anon and anon until he disappeared in the daze. Optional Ending Extra Ys. Aitch. MICHELANGELO'S DAVID Violence is a cold word and marble. And Michelangelo. Princes must needs status, statutes, Forms for their laws. Born, I drew a statue's name David. Michelangelo is marble, and a man's Hand on the cold Stone turned to the curve of warm. I touch the bow Of the huge pectorals, draw down Slow Thorax, abdomen, navel, then find Submission below. As did Michelangelo. To touch our Prince at tender, What price? To hold a man's strength, Bow low, David, Let your hands flow. The body being it, its beast this burden: Violence frozen. CATACOMB MARKSPIEL Not pow her plaice this nor no loiter art to pleas is my own fisc in howse mee (fixion of convenience - locate, this gust) bee push metaphor bee touch about be ware of them frighten hers thaim outsize messuage restore rent in (there is a grebe flake I can touch in the sky a chest-feather a warm playse a beating art re cover am bush to high'd two a pen too write Chinese 'tattoo') 'ttoo' - who being onlie kate only who while this night when said 'tomorrow take body cover' 'ta-too' did hold mee mammal quiet on heart rhythm art point sumwhile for still against the bad thing the life ~ two be warm fur "there is no more desperate tender place of mammal secure than in those wordless moments of another arms when we fore figure final inevitable moment of together art before death tear us apart" WANTS HAPPEN AMULET The moon is heavy with the full. Broken cloud, copper, smoky, aches across it. A smell of burnt powder, waste, and the loosening stones of an ancient pile, grey, its pale turretwork of embattlements, stand inviolate bar the crackle of a leaf turning, air's yearning, the remote invisible sentry's tramp and about, and a concentration amounting to a mind. That is to say the air's mind, the not-yet, the nuclear constellations being born behind the eyes. The time, delicate as a girl's waist, or a boy's, sidles by the watch like a breath walking, in this almost apotheosis of the dark. An owl hatched out of a storybook hoots at identity, fur scent blood, and a yew creaks as if a thought's mass alighted. Something's about, turns, and a black imprint, a negative, a prince of all shadows, forms, all behind scenes, childers to be seen, of a crowd's heads, a gaggle agog a heard of eyes. It is time to descend, prince, you have risen to come down, speak, ghost, from your high abstracted precipice, your speech-plinth. Focus, prince, grasp. While the black feathers of the raven ruffle, ready to ply inly, and the night-tree winces at your weight, your firstwords landing: GHOST MACHINE SELF-ASSEMBLY KIT INSTRUCTIONS I FUEL RECIPE Take three quarts of paradox from your nearest pint-pot. Add essence of dementia. Stir briskly and pepper with molecules. Allow to stand and wait for imagination to rise. Knead two gross of nebulae into a malleable pastry. Add one poppet of whatever-it-is, a broad sauce of parody and a prime choice cut of indignant indigence. Stand well back and light fuse. Never look directly at the sun. II CHASSIS ASSEMBLY Retrieve bones from elephants graveyards. Collect rusting girders from derelict factories. Connect elephant bones (A) to girders (B) using risible appliance (enclosed). Next mount with the best available 'saurian fossil (Triceratops recommended) and decorate with leaves torn from The World's Classics. Test for balance and dynamics with an improbalometer (not enclosed). Remember, you must not take it out onto the streets or to social functions until you have obtained a proper licence. III POWERING UP Once cooled, remove fuel from centre of crater. Apologize to your neighbours for demolition of their homes. (Hope they renewed their insurance!) Next, taking just a sufficient amount, in exactly the right place, never elsewhere, pour in a quantity of fuel. When the red indicator flashes on, scram. Beware of ephemera and stolid, wooden objects for the first five minutes. If elephants persist, consult your local dealer. IV DRIVING YOUR MACHINE Avoid right turns. Be considerate to other users, particularly the elderly and bicyclists. Take care at junctions, there may be an unexpected development. At all times be humane, remember, machines have feelings too. Watch out for time-hoppers and avoid being caught in their slip- stream. Regularly check your appearance in a mirror - in case of sudden change immediately turn off your Ghost Machine. Do not run engine while standing still as a personal morass might appear, particularly in the vicinity of a carpet. Alison Croggon Home page http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/ Masthead http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/