Forest that froze and murdered yet gave him air
To create a miracle by silent prayer
In my too-undying heart;
My brother became me, memories welded with steel
United in fever and flame, but never to heal,
Only meeting to part.
ON A DEAD BLUEBOTTLE
Dog-fought to its death by folded paper:
An overloaded bluebottle
Crossed the window on a clumsy track
Like a Junkers 52 aimed for Crete.
Survivor of the rains,
With the temerity to try it on
Too long with autumn,
It never knew what happened –
Landed on a matchbox, dead but hardly damaged:
Convenient for what it carried.
One by one its passengers came out:
White-hooded monks debouching
From a still war-painted aircraft
At its dispersal point;
Wriggling over fuselage and wings
As if inspecting flaws after a crash-landing
Of skin and wing that covered
A maggot-cargo from the summer weather,
As if they had paid ticket, food and board
And wanted refund for a trip cut short,
Turned and drew back in lily-whiteness,
Upright with peevish nagging
At some travel agent robber.
Horror was what I felt at filth on filth
Too quickly feeding
To feed the many filthy mouths within,
Horror at the proof of life so powerful
Unsuicidable
Persistent in such ways too small to realize.
For those in need of comfort
That the human race will beat survival
To the end of time
This is it, I thought –
These little bleeders twisting out their time
Are Godsent guarantees
That you and I have season-tickets
For too long to contemplate:
For in the middle of the final maggot
One maggot will survive
To start it all again.
PICTURE OF LOOT
Certain dark underground eyes
Have been set upon
The vast emporiums of London.
Lids blink red
At glittering shops
Houses and museums
Shining at night
Chandeliers of historic establishments
Showing interiors to Tartar eyes.
Certain dark underground eyes
Bearing blood-red sack
The wineskins of centuries
Look hungrily at London:
How many women in London?
A thousand thousand houses
Filled with the world’s high living
And fabulous knick-knacks;
Each small glossy machine
By bedside or on table or in bathroom
Is the electrical soul of its owner
The finished heart responding
To needle or gentle current;
And still more houses, endlessly stacked
Asleep with people waiting
To be exploded
The world’s maidenhead supine for breaking
By corpuscle Tartars
To whom a toothbrush
Is a miracle;
What vast looting
What jewels of fires
What great cries
And long convoys
Of robbed and robbers
Leaving the sack
Of rich great London.
A CHILD’S DRAWING
A horse in a field drinking water:
A child’s drawing (with a tree)
Is how it looks to me
From a bed and through the window.
Village houses stacked behind
But horse made beautiful
Blown into shape
Back bent to water.
My view uncomplicated:
Your eager nostrils drinking
And unseen except by me
Who sees me watching you drinking
Even the slime and water
At the bottom of your pool.
Who — as well as making you –
Put you face to face
(Within the child’s drawing of a field
Looking clear into the pool
That children envy)
And me here?
No complaint,
For you have field and tree and water
And I my child’s drawing through the window.
OPPOSITES
Fire and water
Chemically meet
In mutual slaughter.
Fire would the other cook:
The evangelical conviction
Of a Six-day Book.
Water would the other kilclass="underline"
Philanthropy to bring
High temperatures to nil.
Yet ask what solid flesh may stay
Fire with swamp
Water with baked clay;
Neither compound an utter loss:
One left with dregs
And one with dross.
EXCERPTS FROM ‘THE RATS’
1
How did they begin? What oracular sound
Reached us from platforms underground?
What muzzle moved against the humid clay?
What well-clawed feet scratched into ocular day?
They waited, sleek-bellied rats
Whose memories (kept dry in old tin hats)
Were parchment-read and spread, then lit
As torches to illuminate for these rats
The runnels and the tunnels of each pit.
Revenge was not the fashion: those who shoved
Were put no fatal question, a balanced glove
Ignored upon their shoulders, while in the mines
Unchallenged diggers sent out signs
Of geologic stairways built on bones:
A noise of rodents nosing through the stones.
Where are they now? With perfect guile
They breathe good air and walk such streets above
That glisten with fraternity and love;
In plastic surgery of grim disguise
They sport dark spectacles instead of eyes
Who might be you or me or that false smile
That gives out bread-and-butter in God’s name
And silently observes responses — like a game.
Where? No need to look around, my friend
Or in big books that open at the end
(Since legibility is no great tool).
Nowhere. Stand on your head and play the fool.
How? Put out your tongue and shut one eye:
Good. Stay like that until you die.