Ragged Claws

It is the night, the silent shroud that calls
upon these images of soldiers,
locked in trenches,
waiting for the order to arrive,

tomorrow or tomorrow:
to rise and leave the safety
of the dull and horrid clay,
the company of the newly dead,

and join the screaming and the silent;
those who were hung on the barbed wire
or lie half-drowned, half-frozen
in the gas-filled craters.

When history seeps through
but not explains itself in dreams,
through the breach of night,
when Ypres and the fields of France

become the words that now unleash the dark,
and all our fears and strange desires:
to be there, out among the dying and the dead;
to taste this fear and die one night -

alone and screaming – die another,
in the company of men, who die
in their hundreds, within seconds.
Die in a sea of screaming red and then

to rise again in dreams like these -
where death is but a fever,
a memory half-sought;
a testimony of sorts,

to be forgotten in the morning,
when the birds set off the dawn
and the street wakes up to the sound of cars,
to the walking order of the day -

when the soldiers lie forgotten,
like the graves and statues
that must try to keep the dark alive,
as a murmur, as the waves -

and as I rise, and now walk slowly to the kitchen
and that first quick cup of tea,
to the shower then, to wash my hair,
and feed the cat;

to do the things to do with living,
the trenches die again;
the dead lie silent.
The past no longer beckons.

There are thoughts of you,
your body, as my body now recalls it,
next to mine.
The way your life now holds most of my dreams

(but for those soldiers dying,
lost, forgotten -
merest shades,
vague recollections)

all of my stories and my daily, fleeting life.
My heart for now restored to this,
to me, to you;
my body moving through the early day.

All is, again, this moment,
the silence of these new beginnings:
the love and touch and whisper
of our wakening clay.

The pubs are mostly closed by now,
the Prinsengracht all but deserted;
bicycles well locked or casually disposed of.
Stolen this last night, tomorrow the police will take them,
sell them off next month:
recycling’s just another game.

A February rain,
so cold it feels like fireflies stinging:
every breath and every word a comic strip balloon,
torn apart by harpies’ wings;
the cobble-stones, softly coated now with freezing film.
Extremities are numb.

Amsterdam, more than a city -
not destroyed by bombs but maimed severely
by eighties yuppy architects:
a hooker that’s grown careful,
no longer so outgoing,
no longer so convinced of immortality.

No stars tonight: sky hanging low -
though Heaven is no closer.
The Prinsengracht, quiet as a requiem;
and pock-marked and still:
the old canal, covered with white,
whispering ghost stuff.

Lying in bed and thinking of you,
honouring some old agreement
with some deity of hope,
I do not even touch myself:
I lie awake, laid out like a corpse -
not really waiting;

hardly aware of slowly leaking breath;
not really thinking of the flesh
that I refused tonight.
(This is my body; this is my blood.)
Not in the mood for sacrament I was polite:
I’m sorry, my sweet stranger, not tonight.

In a fourth floor bed,
close to the February sky
(still far removed from Heaven)
I think of you and counting camels winking at me
with their needle eyes and locked or stolen bicycles:
small February fever stuff but then -

then the ceiling is a mirror,
made from splinters that I salvaged
from a thousand garbage-cans,
glued with blood from fingertips,
glued to the smoke of dreams -
and suddenly I feel breathtakingly alone.

Ghosts of Ice Age flowers
drip from night-dressed windows.
Sirens in the street proclaim the living
are still chasing the dead.
My heart won’t stop though – no,
not this time anyway.

The pubs are opening by now.
The Prinsengracht is as of yet deserted.
A February rain turns into snow:
a miracle as minor, as flesh and blood,
touched by religion;
the sky still low – no closer to Heaven.

If love was enough or wanting;
if words were enough or deeds;
if despair could be translated or distiled -
if love was enough or contagious…
(A dirge of crib death angels, melting on my window,
singing Adam’s blues: calling upon you.)

Dreaming’s not enough
and explanations only painful.
Faith is for all the tourists,
off to Heaven in a little row-boat.
Back to the city though that spawned me,
the only thing I know:

that I was born of woman,
there and then -
a mother who abandoned me at birth
and left me there,
to be picked up by strangers,
as if I had not happened.

Leaving me with nothing
but some questions:
Was she raped, or careless;
touched by incest or a stranger’s lure?
Stupid questions:
I will never know what happened.

Back to the city -
to this place of birth:
the only place I know is mine.
Not important in and of itself
but I like all symbols, all Hermetic stuff:
the roots I cannot claim.

Back to the city:
February feelings – Amsterdam a shell,
where memories I do not have
are like so many bicycles,
well locked or casually abandoned, stolen.
(At times not thinking is all that I can do.)

But still I can forgive -
if that’s not too presumptuous.
Even if I have no rights to judge
or to condemn, I do forgive;
even if that’s not enough,
but let’s get back to more demanding issues:

Lying in bed, watching my blood
working its way through cracks of mirrors I collected,
built from scrap.
Lying in bed, counting to nothing,
thinking of you -
thinking of you and Amsterdam,

I realise at last I have a choice of February symbols:
feeling locked out, lying abandoned -
or like these low skies slowly reach
and take my feeble chances
for some, almost forgotten
but soft-whispering need of Heaven.

Torn from the dark
and delivered to reason,
the child, dressed in blood,

now is turned to the light
and explodes into tears,
and it howls.

Torn from the dark,
from the thorns of the stars,
and the top of this hill

I can suddenly see
this vision of silk and soft flesh,
made of longing.

Torn from the dark
and delivered to you,
all my senses explode.

I am healed; I am shaped.
I am forged:
in lust, and in love, and in laughter.

First came the wind, carrying the smell of spices.

The boy, still asleep, saw his grandmother, standing in the kitchen, while she bruised the roasted cardamom and other seeds in the mortar, adding olive oil, then thyme and rosemary, then garlic, more oil.

Sometimes, at this stage, his grandmother would call him inside and watch approvingly how he, with his bare hands, rubbed the lamb roast with this mixture of spices, herbs and oil.

Then, they would sing one of the songs that the old woman had learned from her own grandmother. Time was held close to the chest on the island, and always passed along with care.

The meat would go into the oven with vegetables, fresh from the garden – with a lemon with ten cloves stuck into its skin, two glasses of red wine and a bit more olive oil.

The smells that filled the kitchen when the oven door was opened a few hours later was the smell on the wind that now touched the hills.

The boy who was supposed to tend his uncle’s goats woke up and tasted the wind on his lips. It touched his hair like his grandmother’s hand used to do, before he went to sleep each night, when he’d been much smaller.

He was ten years’ old now – which was old enough to be astonished and mildly afraid, when confronted with the unknown.

Then came the sound of a flute, hesitant at first, like the early spring, but then fuller, more assured. Sound became melody, almost a soft singing. The boy stretched, then stood up slowly: sleep still held his legs. His head was still filled with scraps of dreams.

He looked around, automatically counting the goats. All was as it ever was – except for the wind, except for the music.

He crossed himself, muttered an old incantation that he’d learnt on his grandmother’s knee. Words from way before the Christos, way before the churches came and littered the island: small, stone churches that remained pleasantly cool during the summer, full of shadows and filled with the smoke of candles and incense.

Yet the land, the stones, and even some of the olive trees were much older than these small churches. There were even older things, and far different creatures on the island, neither understood nor acknowledged by the priests and their Bibles, their new rituals and incantations.

The Virgin was not always the mother of the Christos. She had different, older names – and she had not always been a virgin or a mother; not always a welcome, and a mercy. The boy had learnt all the old stories and the old incantations from his grandmother.

Once more, he looked around him – still somewhat suspicious. Above him the sun, as of yet not burning with the full force of summer, around him the goats and the old olive trees – but now, as well, a low mist that seemed to rise up from the many big and small, scattered old stones.

The smells and the music now drifted on the mist that surrounded the boy and his goats. Then, in front of him but still some distance away he saw the stars. A cloud of stars which danced like moths along the treetops on red-rimmed summer evenings, vibrating like the air itself and waiting for the hunger of birds and bats.

How many stars made this dancing cloud: twenty, fifty, a hundred? It was impossible to say – impossible also to judge how high, or how far away from him this dance took place.

Without understanding but no longer afraid the boy looked at the cloud of stars. The mist reached now almost chest-high. The goats had disappeared. The branches of the olive trees were now the arms and fingers of strange creatures that reached for him but couldn’t touch him.

The boy started walking towards the dancing stars. The meadow, no, a road now slowly led upwards. The boy didn’t even notice that his feet no longer touched the moss, the stones and the sparse grass. He smelled the wind. He breathed in the music and he watched the stars dance, still some unknown distance away from him.

The mist reached even higher now, higher than the olive trees and the top of the worn-down hills but didn’t reach higher than the boy’s ankles. He walked on and on. The mist now formed the hills: new hills or much, much older ones.

There were trees of mist, villages of mist and sometimes sailing ships of mist that slowly moved in the wind that still smelled of the old kitchen, when the roast was put on the table, with the rice and the bread, the cheese and the olives, and the harsh, red wine.

The wind smelled of the safe enclosure of Sunday evenings at home, when outside the goats softly bleated and the green, stone-strewn hills guarded their small village. The music now seemed to be the only thing that kept the world in balance and it spoke of the calm and coolness of night, the closure and abandoning of day. The stars danced: so wondrous, so still.

The boy now stood on top of a hill of mist. In front of him, right in front of him now, the stars danced. Beneath him was a lake. Beneath him she waited.

She sang the music. She was the wind. She called down the stars that danced in her hair. She was unearthly beautiful. She was naked. Her flesh was the colour of old marble. Her breasts were young and glistened. Her belly was all soft curves, the promise and the beginning of all. Her long hair was black as the night where the stars danced. Her eyes were closed.

The boy stood on the hill of mist and drank her in, and ate her, and danced with her.

She opened her arms, she opened his heart. His flesh and blood disappeared inside her. How long did he stand there? how long did she wait for him to come down to her?

The mist disappeared. The boy opened his eyes. He could still feel her closed eyes upon him. He counted the goats as if in a dream, walked off in a dream, got older in a dream. Time and again he walked the mist, in search of her.

He followed the wind and the music and he got older.

He did not marry. He did not dance at the summer feasts. He did not come to the village anymore. Everything was a dream: the years going by, and the smell of herbs on the wind. Only she was more than dream.

Time moved on and he stood upon the hill of mist. He watched her bathe. He heard her call and welcome him with open arms. And she was always naked. Her eyes were always closed. And the stars always danced in her long, black hair.

He became older. She did not. One last summer, one last climb and what was his age now: sixty, eighty, a hundred years old? Everything was a dream. Everything had gone by so fast. He stood on top of the mist, his back bent low but with the same hunger, the same thirst.

And now, for the first time, she opened her eyes, where the true night was waiting. They told him to come.

He came.

****** ****** ******

That same evening the food cooled off slowly on the kitchen table. The old woman walked to the door repeatedly. She went to the window, and looked out, towards the hills.

Later, hours later, they found the goats that still were grazing peacefully on the hill. The food that the old woman had prepared for her grandson that morning lay untouched under one of the olive trees, next to the chain with its small silver cross, that she had given him many years ago: the dubious protection of a weak, young God.

“Janos, oh Janos.” the old woman whispered.

The hills and the stones were silent. The boy’s uncle led the goats down the hill. The old woman bent down and picked up the chain with the useless, silver cross. She spoke an old curse and then she walked back to the village, back home, where the kitchen was warm and smelled of spices and the where the roast of lamb was on the table, still uncut.

A burning screen of summer sky:
the evening set alight
and touched with disappearing.
The island clouds, blue-veined
with purple hues,

as irreplaceable as porcelain -
a breath of marble floating,
so at home
against the rising shadows
of a dying day.

The stubborn threads of fading light
now move the dust that’s grown
on windows that grew tired
of the distances that must remain
between their liquid frame and eye of star.

And now I lie awake,
all swollen fever,
swollen hunger:
a summer haunting – dressed in lust
and love and loss and longing.

As in their stables horses dream
of plains now draped in lightning;
thunder riding on their breath;
the winter smell of hay now turned
to bone, to dust and

corpse grey memories
of green and hungry life
and armies riding,
waving banners,
golden shields and copper spears.

As I, like sleep,
like dream, like horses
moving through the night,
now worry clay-encumbered feet
and scrape the iron sparkles from the bone -

and yes, the hungry sky and dying,
rising shadows hold the answer:
like nothing I have been
or touched before,
I now must turn to you.

The early light,
like milk-fed ice,

slowly fills the room,
where all my dreams still smell of you.

My first smile and my hungry eyes
now look for some bright shadow

that the night has left behind:
something – some reminder of your flesh.

The winter morning curls itself
around my bed and like some sleepy cat,

with white fur sparkling and
with cold, cruel, sapphire breath,

it purrs and now it’s all
a pretty please, now feed me, please.

I lean into this early light.
I stroke the cat and think of you.

 

God (but you are beautiful)

I whisper,
half afraid to breathe
or close my eyes.
So beautiful -

so beautiful (and here with me)

and I am old and
I am hungry, lonely
and not used
to worlds of wonder.

Come (she comes to me)

now – and naked
and I die a
thousand miracles
of dreaming.

(A bit of character assassination)

Given that the play has moments of obscurity,
even before it tumbles into awkwardness,

and admitting further that a character
who has to face a bungled plot

cannot be held responsible for all his failures,
Hamlet truly is pathetic:

seeing ghosts and playing hard to get,
fleeing to England and then back again,

suddenly deciding madness is its own protection;
stabbing curtains, staring at skulls,

shouting wildly, jumping into graves -
and then, of course, his contemplating suicide…

Well let me fill you in, you clown:
people that go on and on about it seldom do the deed.

(‘And more’s the pity’, says a captive audience
of education’s fodder underneath its breath.)

Fireflies and flowers and mummified pharaohs:
everything’s dying with breakneck speed.
All of our moments are dying around us;

we’re shedding our breath with our skin.
Mozart is gone and so is next century;
now is the skull within.

There are no morals and there is no prayer
against or to Entropy.
Fireflies and flowers and mummified pharaohs:

it has been tried in bronze and steel
and cold concrete dreams -
yet all is dying with breakneck speed.

(Now watch the butterfly…)

Touch the soft skin covering the vein or
make sculptures of winter breath.
Blow the smoke of your cigarette into a ray of light,

that leaks through a crack in the roof of the barn.
Know these are mirrors and mirrors are liquid:
forever changing and dying worlds.

Put a finger on your eyelid and feel
the fluttering eye behind the prison door.
Know this is nothing and nothing can save us

but we can cheat and enjoy
these feeble few seconds, while we are
here, dying with breakneck speed.

So, it’s bubbly
and what of it?

Drowning men
can tell you

that has nothing much to do
with taste

Full moon and out of whiskey,
almost out of money
and half out of my mind,

I scribble notes;
my thoughts are drawn
in black and Sartre.

I can almost touch
the lady of the lake,
the woman of all lonely dreams,

sitting next to me
on her pale pedestal,
ordering Daiquiris like so many ships.

And she couldn’t care less
about another soaking wreck,
drawn in prying, floating eyes,

burying his face in whiskey
and cheap rhyme – and yet,
I could touch her,

almost touch her,
like a Michelangelo -
or a Madonna poster.

There is no sword,
no naked angel at the gate.
So I could touch her – I could fly,

but for a little whiskey
and some wings.
Full moon.

He watches them from the room’s only window, late in the evening, or when he wakes up from a dream in the middle of the night.

The dreams are clear and show the past: a wife, children, a job, a house. When he wakes up the veil comes down again, quiet and intangible, unbeatable. Then the words disappear and then he walks through shadows. Sometimes there are faces, vague shapes within the mist. Mostly these are of the women, dressed in white, who do incomprehensible things. Things to do with food, or with needles, or the small, many-coloured round and oblong things that they hold in their hands.

(Now swallow.)

He swallows out of habit, not because he understands the command. Mostly, sleep follows, at times accompanied by dreams.

There are moments that the shadows open, when the veil lets the light through. Then there is a road or a house, the smell of flowers or the burning of autumn leaves in his parents’ garden. Sometimes it’s the face of a woman, who slowly ages and then doesn’t walk beside him anymore, doesn’t bring in his food any longer. At other times he hears a dog bark:

(“Toby?” he whispers.

The young nurse looks at her elder colleague, who has been taking care of the man for years.

“His dog, I think. Dead, of course.” the elder nurse explains.)

There are no stories attached to these images; no explanations or cohesion. They are mere shreds of a life – and then the shadows return, and the veil comes down again.

The days go by and leave no impression on the man. At night he dreams and almost recognizes things from the past – till he wakes up again and the dreams dissolve, unremembered. Sometimes, when he wakes up in the middle of the night, scared and confused, while the shadows are gathering again, he walks to the window, for no clear reason.

The man has no reasons, no answers, no words. Maybe it’s the light that falls through the window that calls him – like a newly born turtle claws itself out of the sand, towards the light, towards the smell of the waiting sea. He opens the curtains, more out of habit than impulse. He looks outside, and watches the moon uncomprehendingly. He sees the old oak tree that rules the garden and the small figures that walk beneath it: gathering leaves, putting up their tall, narrow ladders, climbing up and down, gathering acorns.

The man has no words to describe these activities, to understand what he sees. Yet from the shadows something rises to the surface. An old kitchen smelling of freshly baked bread; an old woman working the French beans at the rough, pine table; the cat looking out at the garden from the high window-sill.

The old woman sings. A boy listens. These images are clearer than his dreams. They are always the same: the kitchen, and the old woman, and the boy who is forever eight years’ old. The woman sings or tells stories, while she breaks the beans. The round, green pebbles drop into the pan that sits in her lap.

The old man looks through the window, sees the small figures hard at work, down in the garden. He smiles. He waves. He hears the old woman reading from an illustrated book. An old, tobacco-stained, trembling finger points at a drawing of a group of -

(“Goblins”, the boy says.)

“Goblins, goblins.” the old man repeats.

Days and nights go by. The man moves through shadows but sometimes there are things almost visible beyond the veil. And at times there is this hesitant, slow walk to the window, followed by a whispered:

“Goblins, goblins.”

****** ****** ******

“Have you heard?” the night porter asks a group of nurses who have arrived for the morning shift.

“Heard what?” one of the nurses asks.

“Yesterday evening.” the porter says; “That goblin guy. Heart attack.”

“He’s dead?”

“Before his head hit the mashed potatoes. And guess what his last words were.”

The porter winks. The nurses laugh. They are used to death here. Death is not the enemy. The true enemies are the bodies that slowly decay but keep breathing, and the thoughts that slowly leak away into the shadows.

“That’s easy.” one of the nurses says.

Another nurse adds, in a trembling, falsetto voice:

“Goblins, goblins.”

The night porter lights a cigarette.

“Of course.” he says; “Those damned goblins.”

“Jesus!” one nurse says, “The goblin man, dead. He’s been here for… How long was he here?”

“Fifteen years.” an elder colleague tells her; “He came when he was seventy. When he got Alzheimer.”

“Eighty-five.” the night porter says. “That would do me.”

“Not like that.” another nurse says; “Not like that, surely.”

“No,” the porter says; “You’re right. Not like that.”

****** ****** ******

The funeral didnâ’t take long. There were two surviving sons and five grandchildren. That was all in terms of living relatives, and the old man had outlived all his friends.

One of the old man’s sons lived in Canada and had not been able to come to the funeral on such short notice. Beside the grave, the other son was talking to the director of the old people’s home. His wife and two children had already left and were waiting in the car. All of them just wanted things to be over with, and to go home.

The man shook the director’s hand, and thanked her one more time for all the years of excellent care they’d given to his father. She smiled, said her goodbyes and then remembered something she decided to share with him.

When she had finished, he smiled ruefully. He shook his head and started to walk back to his car. Then he turned round, made one final remark and then quickly left. Shaking her head, the director laughed – a short bark, before she remembered that she was standing next to an open grave.

The man got into the car and muttered something.

“What was that?” his wife asked him.

The man sighed. The small anecdote the director had shared with him and his almost callous response now didn’t seem to be all that funny anymore.

“What do you think?” he asked. “More goblin stories, of course.”

His wife closed her eyes and sighed.

In the back of the car the children started to sing a song they had made up years ago. The song had undergone many changes and now had many, many stanzas. Only the refrain hadn’t changed over the years:

“Our granddad is a gobliner, a gobliner, a gobliner;
our granddad is insane.

Our granddad is a gobliner, a gobliner, a gobliner;
and that’s what he remains.”

Husband and wife looked at each other and smiled ruefully.

“At least it’s finally over.” she said.

“Thank God for that.” he replied.

The car drove off. It was a two hours’ drive back home. The children sang the gobliner song all the way. Their parents remained silent.

****** ****** ******

The next day the caretaker visited the newly dug grave. It was his custom to visit each recently filled grave, to see if everything had been done properly. When he came to the grave he nodded, well-satisfied. A good job; modest but dignified. Then he frowned and bent over.

Four minuscule wreaths had been placed on top of the mound. They were beautifully woven and clearly hand-made – but who could possibly have such nimble or such tiny fingers, and why were these wreaths so small, to the point of being invisible?

The caretaker smiled, then shook his head. In the back of his mind, where a child still hid, an image appeared and a word formed, which remained unspoken and was soon forgotten again. The caretaker had many other things to do that morning. He walked on.

The dragon slept in the heart of the mountain. It dreamt of rivers of fire and molten flesh, that transformed the valley below into a lake of blood-red flames. It dreamt that the moon caught fire and broke into pieces, which came down in a red rain that wrapped the earth in a burning veil. The huge, yellow claws of the beast opened and closed, opened and closed. Whole worlds cracked in that grip: in the fury, and the power, and the boundless hunger of the dragon.

Down in the valley silence ruled. A few lost birds flew over and sped away. Nothing much larger than ants and small spiders moved about, always hunting for food that was becoming ever more scarce. A handful of trees, which hadn’t burnt down to their roots, stood black and charred – dead and waiting for a touch of wind, which would free these ghosts of once proud trees, and deliver them in a cloud of ash. There was no wind though. There was only silence; only the shadow of the dragon that slept in the heart of the mountain, high above the valley, where it dreamt of eternal desolation.

The dragon’s hunger was all-embracing: big enough to reduce the whole earth to ashes, if the power of the fire-born beast could equal its rage. And maybe, with all the time it had at its disposal to grow stronger and stronger, one day the earth would be torn apart into fiery shreds. The dragon dreamt of such an inferno, and the dead valley below was a testament to its awesome and still growing power.

******   ******   ******

It is night. It is raining. The night reeks of petrol, of hunger and all the dreams that never come true. The clouds lie low. The stars have been hung inaccessibly high and are no more than a desperate supposition: something dreamt up in a children’s tale. Sometimes, there is the sound of hurried footsteps but it always fades away in mere seconds. Everything that moves makes haste and knows itself to be prey. The occasional car speeds by, with hungry yellow eyes that tear the night apart, for the briefest of moments. The rain caught in the headlights looks poisonous. Hold out your hand in this yellowish mist and your skin will burn, and the flesh will turn red, before it blackens and glides from the bone like burnt paper.

The man lies in a porch. The two men who put him there earlier have long gone and are now looking for other prey, in another part of town. If the man ever did possess a watch, a mobile phone, a wallet or jewellery: no more. Even his shoes and his coat are no longer his. The hunters are good at their job. Blood trickles down from a corner of his mouth. His left hand opens and closes, opens and closes. He doesn’t hear the cars anymore. He doesn’t feel the rain. All colours are lost to him. Everything flows away, into something that might have been a door, or a vortex, or the true heart of night.

The last thing the man sees is the cheap and fading tattoo on his lower left arm, that he acquired, years ago, in a foreign land. The dragon moves and breathes, whenever the muscles in the man’s arm move and his hand opens and closes, opens and closes. Then, in those last moments of confusion that resemble the purest light, the man opens his mouth one last time. He starts to say something – and then everything dissolves.

Everything is dark now. The dragon moves no more. All what remains is the night.

There was road rage and road kill
on each slippery stone
of the highway to Heaven -

and bumper to bumper,
drive-by hysterics
of mad, gridlocked souls.

Oh, the pushing and shoving
on the stairway to Heaven;
terrible cursing,

when soles stepped on fingers;
horrible screaming,
when the dearly departed fell off.

So, my love,
we won’t go there.
We’ll go deep down and dirty;

sniffing the sulphur, so close
to the pit, that our shadows
will fuck with the flames.

 

For R. 

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
Pablo Neruda

1) I love the way your colours run through me

I love the way your colours run through me;
the way your dreams like landscapes grow
(like road maps, towers, rivers, trees
mushrooming like crazy)
inside me,
till I lie – so full,
so blissfully aware that I might burst
if I would take one sip,
yes, one more taste of you -
my head in your lap,
my eyes and ears and nose,
my skin and hair
so full of you

(and still my hands,
my lips,
my heart reach out for more.)

I love the way you weave
through worlds and words,
to come and lie with me:
to talk to me of love
and lust and duty:
of the smells and sounds of children
and the weight of poems
on your naked skin.
The way you love,
and make love to the earth,
the sky,
to everything that’s named by you,
everything you touched
and everything you taught
to be and breathe with love.

I love the way I lie in bed
and think and dream of you:
my body and my soul,
now named,
my dreams possessed:
my life, again, draped in blossom,
and renewed;
all of me now born to you,
and wanting to be worn by you.

My Lady,
like an unknown season,
full of scented storms
and soft fire rains,
held like breathing fur
through silk dark night,
you’ve come to me.

And I am touched,
awake – and dreaming,
filled by you and full of you
and wanting more
of all the gifts and blessings
you might care to give.

2) I have to speak to you in fiery tongues

I have to speak to you
in many different, fiery tongues -

the tongue of Pablo,
old Neruda, yes:
that most natural of poets,
talking to his lady:

Me falta tiempo para celebrar tus cabellos.
Uno por uno debo contarlos y alabarlos:
otros amantes quieren vivir con ciertos ojos,
yo sólo quiero ser tu peluquero.

He’s singing about your hair, you know -
and he’s foreshadowing me:
as patient and as desperate as he,
loving the woman, loving her hair,

En Italia te bautizaron Medusa
por la encrespada y alta luz de tu cabellera.
Yo te llamo chascona mía y enmarañada:
mi corazón conoce las puertas de tu pelo.

jealous of the simple comb
that moves through you,
like stars
move through the night.

Cuando tú te extravíes en tus propios cabellos,
no me olvides, acuérdate que te amo,
no me dejes perdido ir sin tu cabellera

To be the scarf,
to be the fingers of your lover,
whispering through these flames,
half-covering your thoughts,
your dreams.

por el mundo sombrío de todos los caminos
que sólo tiene sombra, transitorios dolores,
hasta que el sol sube a la torre de tu pelo.

I’d like to be some woodland creature
hidden in the branches
of your sleeping, dark-clad hair,
touched by you and fed by you,
soothed by the movements
of your lips and trembling nostrils,
your breath and breasts now rising
to the rhythm of night’s dreaming.

Each particle of me now wants
to be remade and be like all
your hair: grown close to you,
make love to you
with every whispered word,
the lightest touch of breath and wind,
caressing you and holding you
with all the softest bonds of
simple lust and longing.

3) Good morning, Lady Fire

Good morning, my sweet Fire.
Now, what towers shall we raise today?
What ships, what oceans will be
at our beck and call?

I can see you move (still slowly)
through your house,
a cup of morning coffee in your hand,
perhaps the morning paper

(in former times there would have been
a sleek and sexy cigarette,
something dark and almost quite forbidden,
a Gitane, or a Gauloise,
held loosely between thumb and middle finger;
slow smoke now curling up,
like a lover’s prayer rising slowly from the lips,
half-opened in surrender -
an offering, a smoky dart or tendril,
rising to the Heavens)

and you count the rooms you pass,
on the way to the verandah
and the morning chair,
creaky, loving, waiting to
embrace you,
to be filled
and then to welcome all your thoughts
and murmured lists:

which mountains to grow,
which rivers to feed,
which roads to bless,
which dreams to wear…

while your thoughts have touched each door
you passed and greeted:
to guard the dreams and sleeping forms
of all the ones you love -
all of your children
and your lover,

(who, yet still asleep
must turn to where your body was
these Godlike hours of the night;
his nose and skin still full of you:
your body and
your skin and hair and eyes -
your touch,
your opening up to all your senses,
and all the sounds you make:
your sighs and growls and laughter,
rising like the sweetest offerings,
like ghostly, silver tendrils
to the waiting, greedy Gods,
that need to know and watch and taste
all of your golden, moving, lovely, love-soaked skin)

and then you open up
to yet another perfect day.
You murmur a soft prayer -
or some lines of a now half-remembered poem

and you turn your head
to the softest breeze
that came so far to be with you,
sailing oceans, passing ships
and dolphins, whales and sharks,

to be with you
(a ghostlike sigh)
to be with you
(like autumn light)
to be with you
(like silver rain)
to be with you,
(like lace on skin)
to be with you,
to be with you,
to be with you, for now.

PS: Here’s is the translation of Neruda’s sonnet XlV, that I used in the second part of my poem:

I don’t have time enough to celebrate your hair.
One by one I should detail your hairs and praise them.
Other lovers want to live with particular eyes;
I only want to be your stylist.

In Italy they called you Medusa,
because of the high bristling light of your hair.
I call you curly, my tangler;
my heart knows the doorways of your hair.

When you lose your way through your own hair,
do not forget me, remember that I love you.
Don’t let me wander lost — without your hair –

through the dark world, webbed by empty
roads with their shadows, their roving sorrows,
till the sun rises, lighting the high tower of your hair.)

I tiptoe through you
like some tourist lost in wonder in the Hermitage:
shy, in awe and undeserving
of this wealth of beauty and appraisal.

My worlds enfolded in your hair,
that drapes my thoughts like curtains;
the way your eyes, now closed, still find me,
like the rainbow binds the flood.

I tiptoe through you,
like a shadow lost in prayer to the flame:
bending, shivering, yearning -
tied like stars to the night.

And like the orchard tells the wind
to move its blossom towards a different season,
I bind my breath to the salt of your skin
and my dreams to the warmth of your waiting.

It was ten o’ clock in the morning and I was sitting in my local, at the bar, a bottle of beer in front of me. Next to me sat a man who was drinking coffee and cognac. I had just finished another night’s work and was not in the mood for conversation. So, when my neighbour offered me a beer I was half-tempted to say no, to avoid any kind of small talk.

My bottle was almost empty though, so against my better judgement I said I could indeed do with another beer. To my surprise the man didn’t use the arrival of our new drinks as an excuse to start a conversation. Instead, we drank in a suddenly companionable silence.

When my neighbour’s glass of cognac was finished I offered him another one. The bottle of Hennessey was empty though and the barman had to go to the cellar, to try and find a new one. In the meantime, in a slightly more sociable mood, I asked the man what kind of work he did that made it possible for him to be here in the pub at this early hour.

I had him down as some kind of salesman. He had the suit, the vaguely optimistic mien and the obvious chink in the armour: cognac at ten in the morning.

“I collect dreams.” the man said.

“Ah.”

The barman had finally located and brought up a new bottle of Hennessey and now poured my neighbour a new drink. I waited till the man had taken a few, obviously most welcome sips and then asked:

“So, you collect dreams?”

“Another beer?” my neighbour asked in turn.

I held my bottle to the light: about two or three sips left.

“Yes, please.”

The man also ordered one of those pathetic, small cigars. I nodded. Definitely a salesman. When my neighbour had lit his dubious cigar, he said:

“Yes, I collect dreams.”

“You’re some kind of therapist?”

The man shook his head and smiled.

“It’s more of a life’s work.” he said; “A calling, if you like.”

A salesman with a Freud fixation?

“So, you write them down and then try to explain them?”

The man laughed.

“Me, explain dreams? No. Dreams don’t explain much anyway, don’t you think?”

My neighbour put his cigar in the ash-tray, took another sip of his cognac, closed his eyes appreciatively and then said:

“People tell me their dreams and I listen. I don’t write them down; I take them in.”

That reminded me of an old Irish legend.

“Like a sin-eater.” I said and took another sip of my beer.

The man smiled and picked up his cigar again.

“A cousin of mine.” he said.

I grinned back at him. For all I knew the guy sold cheap plastic key rings for a living but he was quite pleasantly weird. I raised my bottle to him and drank the last of my beer.

“Another one?” the man asked.

“My shout.”

He ignored me and ordered another round of drinks. When those were placed before us I said:

“That’s the deal? You buy me beer and I tell you my dreams?”

My neighbour gave a polite, little chuckle.

“Most people volunteer,” he said. “but if you want to be paid in beer: why not?”

I shrugged and took another sip.

“I don’t dream all that often.”

The man smiled.

“Okay,” I continued, a bit defensively, “I know everyone’s supposed to dream, every night. It’s just that I don’t remember much of it.”

“I want that one special dream. ” the man said, ignoring my protests. “Everybody has one – one that is uniquely theirs.”

A special dream, me…? I shook my head and then took another sip of my beer. I was about to tell my neighbour that I couldn’t help him, that I really had no dream to share, special or mundane, when out of nowhere something, some memory rose to the surface: a dream I’d had when I was a child.

That whole dream came back to me, just like that, complete and in full colours, like a video-clip with the sound almost turned down completely
.
“So you do remember.” my neighbour said.

“Yes, that is – I remember this one dream…”

“Tell me.”

I took a deep breath and heard the sound of a cheap, plastic football, hitting the fence behind the house, under my bedroom window. I was eight years’ old and I was lying in bed. The boy next door was still up and about and he kept kicking the ball at the fence, again and again and again. I was almost asleep though and the whole world now slowly disappeared on me.

Light from a lamp post fell through a gap in the curtains. I tried to think (Not closed, not closed!) but the words moved too slowly for the panic I felt.

I knew the witch was outside, waiting for her chance. I wanted to get up and close the curtains properly (one gap is enough, one gap, one gap is enough) but I couldn’t move. There was no hand but I saw the hand: a claw with sharp, long nails. The gap became a door. The curtains wrinkled like water and opened wide enough to show the hungry face of the witch.

I finished my beer.

“It was the face of my mother.” I said.

“Thank you.” my neighbour said.

I stood up, reeled, walked to the toilet. I stared into the mirror. I looked like shit. Time to go home. I splashed my face with water from the tiny basin, dried myself with a paper towel and walked back to the bar.

“Where’s your friend?” the barman asked.

“Sorry?”

“The coffee and cognac guy. He left without paying. I had to go to the cellar for a moment…”

I shrugged, too tired to think straight.

“Sorry.” I said, “I was in the toilet.”

The barman muttered something very unfriendly about salesmen. I tried to follow what he was saying but the day had suddenly turned to shreds. I felt wrung out. I was also more than a bit drunk. Time to go home. Time to sleep.

My friend? Coffee and cognac? For the life of me, I had no idea what the barman was going on about. So, I asked for the bill and paid up.

Outside, the sun was shining. I felt like a shadow, robbed of substance. I closed my eyes for a moment, not able to cope with the light. Then I shook my head slowly, unlocked my bike and rode home.

We move. We move, almost as fast as light, faster than anything manmade ever went before. We move; we move

(Frío, frío, como el agua del río.)

through this vastness, past planets, past comets, past yellow suns, red suns, giants and dwarfs. We move past black holes and nebulae and stars turned cinders. We move so fast

(Verde viento. Verdes ramas)

yet no faster than dreams, or memory – or mourning. The words, these lines I once whispered, drip slowly: just a handful per century – a few words, a fragment, half an image. Then again the darkness, the silence, while we move – almost as fast as light.

I sleep. While the ship moves through endless silence, endless darkness, I sleep. The part of me that dreams moves back, through space, through time: faster than anything man could ever hope to forge, my dreams go back – instantly. They inform me, they tell my sleeping form that nothing has changed, that all’s the same, without hope, without

(El barco sobre la mar)

her.

The words of Lorca drive the dreams back into hiding. For a moment I’m awake but without thoughts, without memories; without loss and without hope. For a moment I am those whispered words: beyond meaning, beyond reason – just a sound. Then the avalanche, then the onslaught. Then I know myself, my past, my dreams, my loss.

“Ahasverus…!”

The ship’s mind envelops me. Its question marks move over me. I am read. I am understood. The ship obeys: I sleep. I dream.

First there’s a planet, a green-blue planet rushing through space, coming at us at great speed. It grows larger and larger, till it darkens the stars, replacing space itself. Then the planet explodes, scatters like a flock of birds – and from its centre, its red and bleeding core, a statue rises like a splendid wave, like slow stone lightning,

(her, it’s)

a statue of smoke and longing. She takes the ship in her hand, cracks it open like a robin’s egg. She breathes upon my sleeping form. She grows me like a hyacinth – and then we dance. She holds me like she did before. She smiles at me and whispers my blood into her flesh. We love. We lie among the stars. It’s almost like before – before

(Y el caballo en la montaña.)

she died.

I made so many enemies. I made even more money. Enough to buy a small country, enough to bribe whom I needed to own. Enough to keep my family happy, and fat and greedy for more of the same. Enough to build this ship. When we left, I left behind all my money, all my assets and a pack of very well-paid lawyers. What I left was enough to leave no awkward questions.

“Ahasverus!”

The ship obeys: I sleep. We move. We move, almost as fast as light, faster than anything man-made ever went.

We move; we move. One century passes us by

(Verde carne)

and another

(pelo verde)
and another

(con ojos de fría plata.)

The words of Federico Garcia Lorca bleed through time, as I remember or dream a hill, a tree – and you in a peasant dress, your face half-hidden under an old straw hat you’d found in the attic. You pour the chilled, white wine. I read you one of Lorca’s poems, your favourite:

“Green, I want you green…”

You smile at me; you start to say something and then

(Ahasverus…!)

the car turns the corner and you look over your shoulder as you

(Ahasverus…)

cross the street

(Ahas…)

and you

(…verus)

die again. Again, you die on me.

The ship obeys: I sleep.

The search goes on. So many galaxies, so many stars, so many planets – and so much time. Time for new stars to be moulded, new planets to be born. The search goes on for that one blue-green planet. Not a planet like earth but an exact same planet earth, where there is this poet – not a poet like Lorca but an other Lorca. Where there are those same hills and straw hats and chilled wine. Where you won’t look back over your shoulder, when you cross the road. Where you will live again. Where you will be with me again, forever.

We move. We move, almost as fast as light, faster than anything manmade ever went before. We move; we move. One century passes us by

(La sangre de tus venas en mi boca)

and another

(tu boca ya sin luz para mi muerte.)

and another

(Verde que te quiero verde…)

The search goes on, through space, through time. There is enough of both to last us forever.

They do not look at you – not really.
You know their eyes won’t stop
for signs of skin and bone

and we are lost.
We love that soft skin mystery:
the purring alien and the delicate stranger within

We do not question that they live forever.
Their paws of baby skin and razor-blades
tell us they will live forever.

But they do not – and even cats must die.
Bring out your dead: Puss died.
Puss is not in Heaven or in hell.

Eternity is such a boring concept:
such an insult to the moments that we left behind -
but Puss is dead.

Claws and fluorescent eyes are always now -
a raised and fiercely furry back,
like an electric storm:

momentous and forbidden -
and so pleasing now.
Like hurricanes and dreams,

taste and memory,
foresight and convictions:
cats must die.

(Your fur is my lining;
your breath is my worth.
Your casual cruelty is my surrender -

make me remember your dictionary of greed,
your sensual surrender to your needs.
I loved you and I love you still.)

At times I wished that I could live by feline greed
and feline need, by feline creed.
At times I did forget that nothing last forever.

Cats don’t like to die a winter death.
They’d rather set their teeth in an unsuspecting Valkyrie,
carrying the heroes to that heathen paradise cats know so well.

Cats must die – but most of all they live:
a winter morning, blinding white outside
and peeping through the curtains,

Puss will take you through a curfew
of heavy blankets, burning logs and Dickens.
Puss has literary tastes.

Lazy tongue and fur and cleaning;
dreaming – and then suddenly:
her Scylla and Charybdis eyes.

So many memories, but Puss is dead.
No stone, no flowers: Puss is dead.
No stone, no flowers: death.

I remember the kitten and the feeble claws.
I remember the cat,
who cushioned mountains in her paws.

(But most of all: I loved you.
Puss, I loved you.
Most of all I loved you and you died on me.

No fair, you died on me.)

Head perched, like a little bird:

her shoulders slightly up.
If she could have taken to the sky,
she would be gone by now.

What is it she is waiting for?
What is her part in this machine,
she plays, unwittingly, so well?

Does she dream?

(She rubs her hands in glue
and even looks surprised
at how she slowly gets confused:

she rubs it in her eyes).

Head perched, like a little bird,
fearful of the sky; waiting for the hand
that holds all comfort and all hurt.

Forget the past and fly, little bird.
Forget the present: fly.
Forget the future – try, little bird.

Head perched.