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 Kyari



No 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