Author: James Lindesay

Autumn, and a strange labour
is harrowing our spent earth.
Done with bounty, now we must
cut back, dig in, build fences,
clear the perennial weeds.
Freed at last from common care,
we rally to a new flag:
smears on a frosted window,
two gutters for the flown blood.

No, wait: a flaw. Fallen perhaps
or simply made that way,
it sits among the mis-shapes
purely for display.

A chip, a crack, a stain, some frit:
through use and mismaking
value drops forever; it
amounts to nothing.

Unless of course the piece is rare.
Then we may overlook
the crap, call it character,
the vagary of luck.

The flinch, the recoil, our lips
bitten by their lack of words;
numbed by the stench of it all,
the tastelessness, the fever
and the rut, we find ourselves
aghast, re-reading history
with eyes the size of the dark.
Tear out this page. Start over.

We’re led to believe they are smart,
these modern clowns hurling abuse
over their spinning plates, red-faced
and falling down. We’re not amused.

How light it is! How the flesh
in love with its extremes of
innocence and atrophy

now honours itself; the two
wait, greet, praise and are nothing
if not blessed in this place

where, beyond the congress of
morning and eventide, there
meets a parliament of wombs.

This land. Hardscrabble. Good for little
save your bones and blood. So kneel,
dig deeper, make ready the pit
for your children. Own this as well.

One hell of a ride over plains
that were cities once, their dust
a home unpeopled, just remains.

Havoc in a heartbeat, slower
and colder now; in the throat,
plosives and gutturals of war,

Systole, diastole: blast
and its answering silence.
In such a moment are they blessed.

Once again, we are staring into the black
hole of our desire. We have been here before:
the stupid punishment-beatings of the heart,
and the pointless empty promises of love.
Look away and listen instead: to the earth,
to her solemn and necessary music.

If only we had the ear for such music.
Possente Spirto perhaps, or Back to Black:
torch songs for a funeral. Under the earth
we go, and across the water, all before
learning what we already know: that this love
will tear us to pieces if taken to heart.

Here is our map of the city, from its heart
to the outer ring. Just follow the music
down its grimier passages to where love
may be lying in wait. The cellars are black
and the bodies hard; something must die before
the sun returns, to lighten and warm the earth.

A spring flush: along the river walk the earth
is all grass and Greek dock. Roses and a heart
on virgin skin; wafts of piss and skunk before
the altar as youngsters move to their music.
In the underpass, writing on the wall: Black
Lives Matter PROUD JASON ROCKS IT fuck your love

Such, if memory serves, are the haunts of love,
her cults and congregations. Deep in the earth,
a priest hole, the bellowing of great black
bulls; cries from the wounded sacrificial heart.
This is an old and unfamiliar music;
inward, recusant, as never heard before.

Then we remember those who have gone before:
our avant-garde, the storm troopers, fools for love;
first to be lost on the floor, in her music,
and first to be gathered, scattered on the earth.
No burial so deep as that in the heart,
no shade so dark as this particular black.

Before we leave, let us kneel and turn the earth
in our search for love, a still unbeaten heart.
Cue the closing music. Finis. Fade to black.

Fovea: focus on the work
immaculate vanishing-point
of the pin, of the thread; the paint
a trickle, a shot in the dark.

Bobbin and brush: the lines of sight
drawn to a single strand of hair;
over and over, fingers are
sealing a bargain with the light.

Renowned, oracular, a given jot
of the rare earth, a promise held and worn,
a bind, a plight.

An oath of so many words, its hallmark
stamped and graven, hidden on the skin side,
its meaning clear.

Translated from the old tongue, much reworked,
the legend (fitting, onerous) now reads:
Be: wear this ring.

Tricky, this: to be in the world lightly,
the spell unbroken, wearing without wear
the niche, the eggshell, amniotic sac;
to be born unshod to the forest floor.

For we are laden; we are greedy guests,
our weight is all-consuming, and the horn
hangs heavily. Footfall is all we know,
is our avoirdupois. And so we burn.

as written by Geoffrey Hill

Hinc vagantur in tenebris misere

Stands of dead walnut; a sense
of assonance; a clipping
of tails. Emblems of ascent,
these Furries, their nails scraping
our polished wood. Here is one
single cry before nightfall:
We shall return as the sun
runs behind the harbour wall.

This pastiche won a competition in the Literary Review, and was published there in Issue 499.

i.m. Cupid Stunt

There I was, in bed
when suddenly all my clothes
fell off. It was done
as all gardeners will know
in the best possible taste.

: ; .

Binge as a balm, a trauma
sometimes, the laps and relapse
of memory. Fast-forwards,
re-mixes, loops, the flashbacks:
you, Charlie; you, Christopher;
you, Peter. All of you gone,
still close as ever you were.
Now, in the thick of a new
thinning, we watch: remember.

What must we offer now – lives? money?
to fill the sails, what will it cost
to return, to cross this bloody sea?

The altars are gaping, they require
an answer: who or what is our most
expendable choice, to feed the fire?

https://hekint.org/2021/01/29/the-girl-with-a-pearl-earring-a-vanitas/

Given the day (20/01/21), I thought I would republish this poem, written during the US Presidential campaign in 2016:

Orange, evidently, is the new black.
Pumpkins fatten for the knife, to be carved
and then discarded; the spray-tan is back,
ditto the pompadour. Who’d have believed
it could come to this: thin skins and bitter
pith, seething in a fit of saccharine?
Bottle it up forever, the utter
strangeness of it, or let the demon in.

Having given birth, he lies back
relaxing into his garden
vistas, a symmetry of stars

The light is failing her; she stares
at the ceiling as clots harden
in the due course of her life’s work

This autumn, its rituals
return in our heads mostly:
grinning pumpkins, the livid
memory in flaring reds
and yellows of the maples,
the fireworks, the sugary
doorstep hits. As the glass falls
we are looking out, windows
our new cinemas of grief.