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The seven lamps
(after Ruskin) By Linda Black
Look abroad into the landscape so bent and fragmentary: the flowing river, its pebbled bed, out of the kneaded fields, concretions of lime and clay loosely struck, small habitations alike without difference, built in the hope of leaving, lived in the hope of forgetting, vanquished in the hanging thickets of hillsides. Ribands occur frequently in arabesques, flitting hither and thither among the fixed forms, apologetic, drifting into what they will, no beginning nor end; no strength, no skeleton, no make, no will of their own, only flutter. Let the flowers come loose...
Long low lines rise, soon to be lifted and wildly broken. Far-reaching ridges rend their rude and changeful ways, those ever springing flowers, conquerors of forgetfulness, more precious in memories than in the renewing. The pavement rises and falls, arches nod westward and sink, not one of like height. These inclinations: the accidental leaning, the curious incidence of distortion - differences in which they are lightly engaged, exquisite delicacies of change tallied to a hair's breath - have grace about them, a sensation in every inch.
The goodly street: many a pretty beading and graceful bracket, the warm sleep of sunshine upon it. Count its stones, set watches about it, where it loosens bind it with iron, stay it with timber tenderly. When the pitcher is rested, the breath drawn deeply, what pause so sweet? In the declivity of a hill, between the heights of stories, serenity holds out its strong arm. But if to stone be added intervals, arched and trefoiled, hangings of purple and scarlet, taches of brass, sockets of silver, twisted with tracery and starry light, charged with wild fancy, I would fain introduce a narrow door, a footworn sill, a hearth of mica slate, a steel grate, a polished fender.
Rests and monotones settle at first contentedly in the recess of a rose window. Under the dark quietness, blunt-edged rosettes neither bend nor grow. This interval - an arboresence, a candied conglomorate through which we pass - not that it is indolence or the feebleness of childhood breaks away the bark in noble rents. A life of custom and accident, losing sight, animates, puts gestures in clouds, voices into rock. A double creature, feigned or unfeigned, speaks what we do not mean, like the flow of a lava stream, languid, settling, crusted over with idle matter.
In the discontented present a certain deception, the root unseen, spreads like a winding sheet. Irregular stems of ivy run up hollows; a falling tendril, the creeping thing. The very quietness of nature restless against a dead wall. In the chasms and rents of rocks, the wind has no power, ridge rising over ridge in absolute bluntness. Cut and crush what you will. More has been gleaned out of desolation. At the meeting of the dark streets, the spire with its pinnacles, winged griffins stirring within the tympanum; in gloomy rows, disquieted walls, shells of splintered wood, foundationless, tottering. A desecrated landscape - walk in sorrow, rend it lightly and pour out its ashes.
I once thought that which I could not love diminished more than it increased. The snow, the vapour and the stormy wind, cold interiors of cathedrals bordered by the impure in all the meanest and most familiar forms - I could not bear one drifting shower! Details, even to the cracks in stones, rise, strange and impatient, chrystallised as with hoar frost. Memoranda thrown together - I cannot answer for accuracy. There is something to be grateful for. Even weeds are useful that grow on a bank of sand.
The hours of life, as if measured by the angel's rod, let them be gathered well together in woods and thickets, in plains, cliffs and waters; the setting forth of magnitude beheld with never ceasing delight; infinity of fair form - fairest in the quiet lake, the surface wide, bold and unbroken, light blossoming upon it. A great entail. So again it sails! The face of a wall is as nothing - is infinite! - its edge against the sky like a horizon, the eye drawn to its terminal lines. Time and storm set their wild signatures.
Published in I am twenty People! Enitharmon Press 2007, edited by Mimi Khalvati and Stephen Knight
from YOU By John Haynes for Afiniki KyariNo aunts, grandmas, cousins, those second mothers in a compound. Us alone to rock and soothe away the cosmic baby terrors for him with the melody of talk that means nothing, means love, until he stopped, and we could hear the birds. You are the only Africa your son has got. Plus me. And I'm already old. I called him Tristan, therefore, he who's growing now to love me - is that possible? - too much, the one soonest to slide into the laps and hugs that make his home. Dad, look! Dad, look! - You shrug and smile how it's me in particular, he shows the moon in his binoculars. A child is like a soul. That outlives us. That starts off wholly physical and then is slowly transmigrating as it must, a voice, a face, a bike left on the lawn, because love's also made of metaphors of other things. We become sentences. We get translated into something else. Dad, what's it like to die? And when you're dead will you still hear me play the violin? Will you be you? Or just the word instead of you? No, I'll be you. I'll snuggle in your memory like hide and seek again. The similes he knows are not quite lies are not quite tears quite standing in his eyes. We watch The Four Seasons played by a fifteen year old girl. First there are daffodils behind her, and her cotton dress is green, changing to blue on blue sky with a circle of white sun, high up and small, then whirling dead leaves on a stream, the dress auburn, then frost on glass like silver fronds of fern. The bow creaks slowly up, swoops juddering, then plucks and plinks the drips. The time will come for both of us when it's embarrassing for him to lie his cheek like this along my chest, rubbing my jumper with his thumb, since love is not, whatever kind we mean, like daffodils, each spring the same again. And nor is ours. Remember them, those Buzus on their camel we met driving back, as into sky after that first night ? - Blue People, so far from home, so tightly packed in line together between hump and neck, the man, the wife, the child, the camel's springy lope, their leather bags and bare feet swinging, so far inland from the desert - home which didn't seem like home, not in the way I'd think of that, as somewhere closely known, and fixed, owned and owning, a sense of place not theirs, which is to do with kinds of space of sky, of rock, or thorn, or grains of sand so fine that they just turn into grains of mind - or I imagined, through the windscreen glass as they came on until the tufts of fur and folds of knee skin loomed and then were past, but not, of course, just like the poem Wordsworth wrote, the one on memory you'd learnt at school, not knowing what they were, until I told you, those creatures called daffodils. . . as real outside our English kitchen window as the yam you turn in groundnut oil and dip the suya pieces in borkono, thread them onto skewers, close the grill: exotic daffs, the common asphodels each common soul finds on that desert plain where thoughts turn into plumes of breath and then to air, and so this is amnesia not memory at all, is it? - the loss of who he was, in Dorothy's own here and now, her boat, her stream, her daffs, her grass, of what his eyes, in hers, could see because loss is precise, and fixed, as if still there defiantly behind his long dead stare. Narcissus botanica, that lost gaze his lost gaze gazes back at him from, out of light that glistens on the surfaces of eyes, or pools, his White Man's stuff about the need to love ourselves going deepest down of all - and then the English that your father spoke, in which ourselves meant just each other. Dad planted them. They come back every April round the Cox's orange pippin roots, the time for love or so my medieval folklore had it once, the rustic flutes carved out of hedgerow sticks, as if the notes had lifted through the sap, as if the beat of drums came through the mud into our feet - now more like childhood, and those sand martins shrieking around me as I climbed to steal the eggs from nests down arm deep burrows in the sandstone, just some - proto sexual, it seems now - need to reach right in and feel the white straw and the down, and didn't know they'd crossed the desert, sleeping as they flew, for that small fawn and white shell that I stored gently inside my mouth as I climbed down again and pricked each end once with a thorn, then gently blew, then watched the stuff come out like shaking phlegm, caught in the wind, that loot, from Africa in cotton wool to keep beside my bed as weightlessly as sleep. As weightlessly as your own, too, on the sofa when those first small baby sounds begin and, as they say, you've got back to Kagoma - that house that I met your mother in with her tall headtie and her Dutch wax print and just a little shy to meet your White Man, but so glad, her wrinkles smiling tight - and then I'll bend across you, turn the lamp off, draw the curtains, thinking with what skill I managed it on that rickety camp bed, making love with not the faintest squeal or crunk of springs. Like press-ups, I recall, rugby-fit then, mouth open while I howled into the dark not letting out a sound. Or that night, at the dam, when we made love, remember, there beside the road, half in the car half out, with confidence enough to dare the world to drive towards us, then, with full light on. Or nights at Number Ten insane with flesh and resurrected new again each time as neither I nor you. And Lara born almost the day your mother died, a second soul, the joy and sorrow child across all this, look, sea, Sahara, tongues, customs, the slow notes of a cello from her room we pause here in the hall and listen to - her in the melody, that she's absorbed in, lost in totally as I am, staring stupid out across the parked cars and the house fronts she, your Mum, could never . . . Me thinking again of loss of who somebody is, the I am sum and end beyond which, well the others come and in their heads it's I as much, and true, as I've also ever been I or you. And then the door-bell rings, and she comes out surprised we're standing here and wonders why we haven't gone for it, pauses, then "What?" then "What? What?" as if there's something we are hiding, weird as we are, totally unlike in every thing, she says, "you two," still grinning, " you, you two, the two of you." Buzu: Hausa: Tuareg, or Tuareg's servant, also known as 'Blue People' Asphodel: etymological origin of 'daffodil' Borkono Hausa: hot red pepper powder mixed with ginger ourselves/each other: in Hausa almost the same reflexive construction is used for love ourselves and love each other - which gives rise to the non-standard English in which the first means the second THE LEGEND OF LALLA MAGHNIA A Sonnet Version By Lucy Hamilton Following the Arab Tradition Lalla Maghnia is an 18th century Muslim warrior-saint, or holy woman, of Algerian myth and legend. She lived, loved, fought battles, married, had children, performed miracles and finally died young in Northern Algeria, where she was Raj-es-Salin of the religious centre (Zaouïa) in Maghnia, the town to which she gave her name. These sonnets are selected from a total of 46. 24 Toward the Holy City Oars-men The chain is heavy and the heart's route is long. Mariner The ship is waiting to leap towards the horizon. People O Rose of Allah, we are loath to see you depart. Warriors You are the steady beating in our hearts. Women We greet you with the day's tears of departure. Priests We bless your ship as it prepares for Mecca. Slaves We unfurl before you a rainbow of prayer-tapis. Shepherds We cascade flowers from fields where your dew is. Elders We offer the olive branch of Allah's will. Poor We say your right hand's bread and the left is milk. Nomads Your name is clear fresh water from the oasis. Merchants Your name's the scales where perfect balance is. Children Your name is always Mamma: kind and lovely. Mariner The ship's now ready: filled with sugar and honey. 25 On the Winged Ship Laïleh Time passes and days are the same in the balm of the double sky: the storm has clipped our wings. Pilgrims But we felt more alive than in this calm! Laïleh Tell me, in which direction are we sailing? Mariner A huge wave took the needle in its case and I can't say precisely where we are. Laïleh Is your judgement not an honest compass? Mariner The ship tossed like an orange and the stars for many nights have veiled their guiding eyes. Laïleh The pilgrims tire: they are hungry and thirsty. In truth our ship must be a distant cry from land for you to be so miserly with rations. Were they also snatched by waves? Mariner And I regret that our pilgrims are not brave. Pilgrims To drink! To drink a little quenching water in this exhausting hell of bitter sea! Mariner You are not worthy of Lalla Maghnia. Pilgrims But Allah brings her food! She isn't hungry! Mariner If that were true she would have portioned it between her faithless servants like Mohammed who shared his dwindling rations in the desert. Laïleh An evil thought has formed in someone's head back home at my Zaouïa on this day they dedicate to our safely reaching Mecca. So, as the sheep are roasting and the honey is flowing and dates tumble down in clusters, the angels will relieve them of their feast and serve it up to us as we drift East. 26 A Feast from Heaven Pilgrims The folding doors of Heaven are opening and down the brilliant gold and azure stairs two double rows of angels are descending with dishes Allah's kitchen has prepared. Six cherubs proffer condiments in cupped and chubby hands: red and green pimento assorted into heaps and finely chopped upon bright-yellow rounds of fresh-cut lemon. Two cupids who are slightly bigger, with wings still glowing from the fires of the kitchen, approach with a white peacock they are lifting on a plate above their heads. And after them the succulent meat is carried by adult angels _ a sheep, wild boar and a young tender gazelle. And for the dainties of dessert the houris _ those nymphs from Paradise with fragrant arms and long black hair and mocha-coloured eyes _ bring luscious cakes of date and char-grilled almond, croissants with ornaments of scarlet pearls, oranges, roses, nougats and pastilles, and gâteaux _ all adorned like our beautiful girls! _ rolled in sugar and perfumed with vanilla. Come forward, oars-men, for your well-earned share. At Allah's feast the portions will be equal. Lalla And as sheep turn in the ashes of the spit Maghnia and the rowdy revellers are about to eat, they are dismayed to watch it disappear before their very eyes at my Zaouïa. 27 Circle of Desire Laïleh The feast is finished and angels bring mint tea and coffee, and in the perfumed vapours of the pipes _ the coconut bowls of the narghileh _ the houris dance with wispy scarves of cloud-fluff. Mariner It's thanks to you, O Lalla Maghnia, that Heaven saved us. But intoxication corrupts the mind of brother, husband, father: their hearts are full of lust and bad intention. Pilgrims We all want you, but give you the right to choose amongst us. On the wedding day the joy of the groom is contagious: no-one loses when each shares the love of the lucky man. Mariner O Laileh how, with my old bones, am I going to protect you from these madmen? Laïleh O Allah, I'm afraid. Be in my eyes and words. Let me crush them under my feet like worms. Grant that any man who tries will not be able to advance _ or retreat. Pilgrims She's bringing out her faithful talisman but what can the golden hand of Fathma do? What can it do against our thousand hands? Since you won't choose, we will all have you. Laïleh Don't touch me! This talisman will draw a ring around me whose force you will soon discover for this invisible circle's not for breaching and Fathma will paralyse the evil mover ... Dahaau O Allah! Mercy! The weight of all the sea and all the earth and sky is crushing me. Published in Modern Poetry in Translation Part Three of the Finders of London Pure-Finders By Anna Robinson The pure-finders meet with a ready market for all the dog's dung they are able to collect, at the numerous tanyards in Bermondsey... the pure-finders are in their habits and mode of proceeding nearly similar to bone-grubbers. They are also a better educated class... who have been reduced. Henry Mayhew. She is sitting on the brown of the beach, watching the river stir itself, when a sound from above reaches her ear; a dog barks in the kind of pitch that means play. She looks behind to the bankside and there it is, a small lurcher, running along, then turning, down the steps to the beach, then spinning circles of joy down to her where he licks her ear twice before splashing off into the low of the tide. He brings back a stone, drops it at her feet, sits and waits for her to pick it up. She cups it, weighs it, drags the pulp of her finger across the smooth brown whorls, then looks out to the distance, deciding where to throw and the dog says; you don't have to do this, it's not a game. Come with me. She follows him up the iron stairs, along the embankment towards Narrow Wall and on to the East and further inland, down Union Street. The stone weighs light in her pocket. She slides her hand in and out and each time she does the stone becomes warmer. This feels good all the way to Snowsfields so it's not till then that she asks Where are we going? The dog just smiles and wags his tail, as if he's lost the power of speech, as if he'd never had it at all and that's got her wondering and then he's off down by the flats, across a small park, past the No Dogs sign, through a black gate, back onto a street, by a building that smells of leather and then a sharp left through another gate and she has arrived. They are standing in an old yard full of broken things. She sits down on an upturned bucket and to her relief the dog says We'll be needing that! She asks Where are we? Leather Market, he says. Near Morocco Street and Lamb Walk. This is a tanyard and this leather needs tanning. He brings out a skin of a flayed calf, dragging it with his teeth, drops it at her feet. It smells putrid. She coughs, her eyes water and she's not sure if it's the scent or the pity. The little dog laughs, Come now, it's easy. You have to make that skin smell sweet - like young birch bark, like ladies' gloves. We can't just leave him here to rot as if he deserved it. The task's not hard. Yours are the hands for the job so you must purify him. She looks at the skin stained with flesh and asks How can I do this? The dog replies Use what I give you, I am the source of pure. Take the stone from your pocket. It's a stink stone, a coprolite, composed of many layers; I have made my humble contribution, over wolf-shit from just before my time. Rub it hard across the skin, while I fill that bucket, together we'll dress this poor calf, make him as sweet as ever he smelt. They work hard for many hours and the dog tells her the tale of the beasts. It's well after dark when he says they're done but she cannot tell, she cannot see. Sit says the dog let the sky light our work. So they sit and wait for what seems like an hour till the sky clears of night-cloud and here, between the streets, away from glare, stars emerge in their usual way, or maybe not? The longer she looks, the closer they come and there's so many more than a normal night. Their edges seem sharper, they dip like bowls and eventually it seems to her that the compound lens of a very old eye is looking at them and she looks at the calf and then the dog, who's resting now, chin on paws. So she lies down too, taking one last look at the shape above before sleep and the morning erase them for good. From HOUSEHOLD POEMS By Ann Vaughan-Williams A DAY WITH MY FATHER Each cotton boll is set in a brown clasp. The white dots erupt on bushes in rows bent over by pickers, in the shimmer: this was the new field, opposite our house. It was an experiment in what would grow best. The seeds clung to the bolls, we tried to pull them out with our fingers; they had to be carded with metal combs. The gathered cotton was stacked and pressed by a man bouncing up and down on it, his body pouring with sweat and he wasn't stopping for our entry. He was the only one not on strike the day our father took us up to the offices, took us past them and on, downhill to the cotton ginnery factory. He was thinking things through. A day when my mother was winning a silver tennis spoon. We went with him alongside an ash-hedge, quick-growing, the leaves light green and rippling, full of birdsong - a yellow wagtail was going on and on. A mother was screaming at her children not to rush out to us, her voice sounding harsh. 'This is a settlement of transient workers,' my father explained; gave a quick smile; we walked past. Never saw them again. Like a flock they move on. We went also to see the felling of a tree, below, at the swamp; men in a gang held its branches on taut ropes. A shout came; repeated shouts. A breathless wait. The whole tree listed with a sigh - crashed. Silence. There was a tremendous clamour of birds. Standing there, I felt funny. A clearing was being made. There was unease. A restlessness. Patches of water lay there. I felt ill; bitten, more than usual. Along the paths of subsistence beyond our eleven houses the orange and pink luminous heads of composite flowers exploded with butterflies weaving up and down in their minglings. This is a poem in a sequence |