Fog

Fog
For George Szirtes.

On the coast of Northumberland the fingers
Of a promontory test the sea fog that descends
Upon the North Sea, doubting the unreality
Then they too disappear as the shroud lingers
The fishing boats and cobles are universally
Covered , the voices carried by the mystery
At times, for the religious it is of the Eucharist
Though for the kid with fishing rod this screen
Natural and beautiful covered also the liturgy
The fish can be heard to move in the stillness
Of the millpond sea, the greyness at times
Impacted by the hovering light of a helicopter
This fog a pretext for Nature to assert itself
In a manifestation that the unbeliever claims
To be Dickensian in its extent of uncanniness
To be abroad when the colours are monochrome
Like when the television electron guns go awry
To have one’s faith tested like one’s vision
Here is the fog, a fiction covered in facts.

Lex talionis II

Deliver us from the original sin which placed women
In a category of secondness and evil, the knowledge
Of bodies sacrament in nature then turned to sin
The snake that phallus curled around the revenge
Of gendered difference, the apple the gift of Venus
From the ball of Zeus, spermed the myth of moral
Superiority that taught men to seek the society of boys
The ritual of mystery is a screen for the fear of mortality
Women and children suffered to take the pledge
Of turning the body to the government of men
Then such matters become encoded in the practice
Of power, then mitre and habit cloth this sin.

Lex Talionis

certain as the tide that water marks the beach
with seaweed and a ring of rotten fish, then retracts
its influence by lunar action, sure as the cycle
of nature; the physics of hatred begins in hateful
dominance over the populace, in secret rooms
where souls are stretched, cracked and broken
by waves of incessant torture like the tremendous
force of clamorous streams that find weakness
between the rocks, in the reign of limpet stubborness
the dictator who in the face of numerous agonies
refuses to leave the office of state, clear his desk,
then the country of the multitude founded upon
freedom so to speak, in this hopeless situation
they are daily pounded by all manner of inequality
brought to bear upon their bodies and minds
then the storm with almighty anger dislodged
the now aged mollusk, the relic of previous
hatred to the relentless gratitude of tides.

Vox clamantis in deserto

With the single index finger you extinguish the chattering
community of demands and desire, you with the might of Nero
reduce all worlds to Ground Zero, as you click or touch a button
their very existence, their being caught in the light of the ceiling
is vanquished by the thunder that worries you to switch off,
the act of bravado of the last of the line of the Romanoff
before the Techno-Revolution when we will forever be turned on.

La nuit donne conseil

The pillow inflated with thought feels soft
and cool as the lake in twilight in Summer
painted by a Czech artist at the peak
of symbolism - if you follow my drift

The blanket thin wrapped around
the argument embodied by the Me
this lack of subtlety emblazoned on the
label
"high-browism" takes a while to digest.

Yet if you check the poem the arrows
fly into Sans Sebestian - a single digit
number takes over the Amazon
accompanied by the handmaidens
of Life and Death, Oxygen and Carbon,

You too breath in the fresh repetition
in your sleep - an oxymoron given
the lines above and now below:

The pillow inflated with thought feels soft
and cool as the lake in twilight in Summer
painted by a Czech artist at the peak
of symbolism - if you follow my drift.

Often

Often I feel the chance like the floret from
a dandelion clock, blown, through the vortice
of doubt and tribulation, to seed the flower
of opportunity elsewhere in some future place
a garden in a run-down quarter where by the hour
one can rent life and sex, or where a dog with three
legs hops a joint, and a newborn is aborted into service
of the state, the thin green blade of the choice
is mown down by acid rain and pollution,
and that little floral shuttlecock goes on its way
over an imagined neighbourhood of down town
life, to the middle-class meadow of high-rise money

Romsey Watts Fine-Turns the Universe

Romsey Watts Fine-Turns the Universe
Romsey Watts could fine-tune any vehicle
From a Ford transit van to nearly dead Vauxhall Viva
Didn’t matter the condition, he’d get them to start
By tinkling with the engine, adding some oil,
Tapping the starter, changing the old battery,
Adjusting the alternator, they would in the end
Always move in a most mysterious way.
He had the knack, and it seemed he did the same
For the Universe, getting from an incredibly
Large number of atoms down to the present
August arrangent of Life, which seems to be
Rather clever, eminent physicists called in
Think so, but they do not like the comparison
Between the Vauxhall Viva and the Universe.
Nor the Christians care for the binary Watts
And God, however you see R.G. Collingwood
Got it right – what we are dealing with is
An absolute presupposition
Namely that outside the ken of humanity
I know that both the Vauxhall Viva and all
The known permutations in the Universe
Are fine-tuned by the human mind – which
Though Resourceful, has its limits
Ones that even a grasshopper can leave
Behind.