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He speaks the night. He speaks the night. Unsettled wind on settled ice outside. A brandy inside me in bed with him who speaks the night. Take a breath. He looks. He laughs to sleep. He talks, monosyllables spinning into minutes. He speaks my life and all my deafness will not make him cease for he speaks the minutes to the last. the night, the sleep, the end, monosyllables measuring the limits. At the moment you are down At the moment you are down at your lowest you get kicked even more, pathetic beast. At that very moment with short penny in your pocket, with your contract job exhausted, with your failing love still stinging, with your bed like ice in winter, with your small bar heater breaking, at that very second you'll be caught by that official without ticket on the railway and the clock that you expected would awake you for your job search will be left unheard and ticking. At this very time some fine, self-righteous voice will come over on the radio and everything it says you'd have heard it all before and you'll wonder if the speaker ever knew the other side. At this very time you'll find they've filled in all the cracks and the glory-holes with plaster to deprive you of the Peter Pan peep-sex that does no harm and you'll see in the tabloids photographs of coppers smashing into sisters banging into heads of people on the streets, their horses being terrified by noise. Then, suddenly, unwanted, your memory turns stronger and your gut cries out for hatchets to remove the crass distortion and you question every reason, all your logic, purpose, sense, to resolve this moment and return to sunrise. What is this kicking power, this unleashed rage, this piss? Is this the magic moment? Yes I believe it is. Piccadilly Piccadilly gathers, eros-warm, breathes and is a yawn: strays in the early dawn stretch now and lie. Scab-beard people, time-worn on pavements, solo on the railing, scattering move and shift. They fall away like stems, deciduous, meandering wisteria-like, philandering, and Babylonic eyes dispel no tears for memory is dead and Babylon does not remember wailing. Wisteria droops; spring substance dries strengthening into summer. Goblin. Opposite me, suited, is a man. He may be an informer. There are hundreds of this breed who peer at me on Oxford Street, Hampstead Heath, railway stations, tea canteens hospitals and banks. He has that odd conspiratorial look which they adopt, reporting on us curtly to the Board in little books they have to keep on every passing fool who looks as if he never took a bath. His fat mouth shows him generous but his piglike eyes require references for everything one has or may desire, birth, sex, schooling, colour - politics and skin - length and breadth of glandular developments within, every part-time pastime, the odour of one's breath, where one might just break one's wind and requisite mode of death. In Aberystwyth It is the first autumn in these isles that feels to me like spring. Aber's castle walls divorce me from the age in which I see the signs of death, contaminated culture. Flying once again. By the edge of Dyffed the sky and bay together with an ancient conscience tell the face of Cymru, almost Sanskrit in her sound - what though Hell be near - sitting in her Celtic nature contemplating here at Aber seven hundred years; and I am climbing Aber's walls, windswept, carefree, seven hundred years within these stones. Gale winds fly; I hover. The grass, the steps, the hills the gulls fly over, the circled stones of ancient prayer, the farm at Innis Capel where we stay, all stretch a canvas over blending in this moment yesterday. Two men in army approach, commandingly make me move along; but a way down the hill an old man and his dog dare the gale six wind across the sea. ‘Bore da!' he shouts toward the sky and turning, somewhat smiling, speaks to me: ‘You look like a Russian ballerina and a Serbian peasant crossed together strangely, that you do !' My eyes with kohl, my well-worn fur, and bright green wellies from the farm - I look - I guess it's true. His eyes betraying tiredness still sparkled, wrinkled grey: ‘Raise a few eyebrows in these parts?' He gestured that I stay and by the grave of Thomas Jones, (eighty years, Ropemaker, died in this town), this man, this dog and I sat down and spoke as friends not strangers. Milly ‘n' Liam have come at last. Milly ‘n' Liam have come at last on another bicycle ride through the past, another ten hundreds of kith and kin in plastic bags like banana skins... My cigarette has fallen in the car of this strange train - I cannot see it on the floor or seating - disappeared within the bag filled with clothes to change in. I listen and await the demon choir... Look how the fires come as the pens of yesterday foretold- if such foretelling ever held the sway. My cigarette has fallen in the plastic bag, was lit but now is lost within the play. Look how the times becoming pour upon the places sending gurus, songs, rebellions, teeming round the masts. Whatever stays of yesterday will vanish like the raindrops and theatres will be filled with other casts. There are ancient faces that meditate on dolmens, oaktrees, spirals, circles, wheels and such. The end of autumn trees poke their shapes into the drama. However, nothing alters very much. There have been women wailing ever since the day they saw great monsters entering their cots and the neon signs surrounding them through all the years that passed remind them only now to wail again... Look how the angry Sekhmet comes, her lion head rejoicing, leaping over shattered concrete clay, her feline roars announcing her godhead to the people, laughing at the closing of the play. Is it with fire that the drama then will end ? Or a twisted-buddha self-destroyer built into the train ? We are the wailing women, the meditating sage, the one-week's-wages gurus, the lion-headed rage, Milly ‘n' Liam's bicycle ride, the drama's penultimate page. Together with the cigarette within the plastic bag we are burning with the clothes we brought to change. The Water of Ulay Ms Leonora Loveless loves the lustrous Lakes but Pontypridd, perhaps, is where she's going for Leonora looking at the blandness of her bank account sees only Capricornian cuts. California Kate (so-called because her green complexion suffered at the mercy of the Water of Ulay for many years) lets her tears soften up the cornflake crumble crunching in her barnacle-shaped bowl. O, Cucumber Essence! O, Green Cucumber Essence! Come and make her young again! O, Green Cucumber Essence! O come,O come to California Kate! Like Leonora Loveless she loves the lustrous Lakes, but she's been sitting in the kitchen crunching cornflake crumble in a barnacled shaped bowl with the Water of Ulay for many years Owen with the one eye which once a world war widowed is walking over Wandsworth where his boots go - clomp!- and in his left hand pocket is a long leather ribbon and an old tube ticket from Ongar to Olympia But he never saw Olympia. He never saw Olympia for Owen with the one eye never travels on the tube. He walks over Wandsworth wherever he may wish to while California Kate is crunching cornflake crumble with the Water of Ulay and Leonora, looking at the blandness of her bank account, is contemplating only Capricornian cuts. O, Cucumber Essence, come and let them see Olympia! Let them see Olympia for they never saw Olympia. They never saw Olympia; they only saw Capricornian cuts. Overlooking numerous Gulmohr trees on an Indian island hill Sweet September evening carpeted with cloudless autumn sky the blue of which denies the red below its brilliance; fragrant smells of rubbish burning, someone's rubber tyres in a Bombay bonfire gleaming and ablaze; someone's ancient fiddle strings used to rouse the memories of melancholy. Blues - they get a soul to chase itself round and round the bonfire to find the glow. I see merry old Monday's moon with madness in her eyes; her golden mask has now been flung into the deep dark foamless sea and in a pensive mood she sings ‘Ollay! ' as the red brilliance of the forest flames descend to night with me. On my twentieth birthday morning/Siva's hair Twenty summers gone the first vibration left the light, a drop of semen peering through the earthly gate of living and non-living. Down through Siva's silver hair the drop of semen flowing to the moon-lit mother's womb a patterned dream releasing; down through Siva's silver hair a shining body glowing feels the woman's mango breast by fondling and refondling; and twenty summers on and oh! the sound of O, in Siva's hair a sound remains. The Weaver. Nadirshir of Isfahan, a weaver, wove a rug, high-fashioned with exquisite, glorious web set in a natural shade of peacock green; ran his knuckled fingers stained with henna from his head, berringed in jaspar, gold and jade, through the richest pile he ever laid and traced long, meditative hours shaping perfect flowers of rosaniline and jessamine in braid. He sat in his old ‘jibbah' soiled by juicy jargonelles - a testament to his superior taste - and, cracking Jordan almonds by the crate, he savoured heavy sherbet as he smiled, now eighty years as he fondled amber rosewood by his plate. The ‘jinnee' of his perfect art accomplished well and spent brought quietus and attar oil - the final compliment - for the weaver, clutching carpet, in the richest pile was laid, wrapped in peacock green and gold and jade. He slept into eternal hours tracing his own perfect flowers of rosaniline and jessamine in braid. |