Terrific, Alison -- I loved lots about this, but I was 'specially struck by
the rhythm. It's not quite free verse, and it's obviously not orthodox
formalism, but it sure as hell works in that area. As in others.
Robin
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 11:48 PM
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
didnąt 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 Tiamatąs 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
