Author: James Lindesay

Stranger still, this means to
a means to an end:
the doubt, its denial,

the veiling and smearing,
the struggle for breath
in our smouldering war.

This neural assassin
is ghosting us, is
everything they wish for.

Weaved in my lone devout melancholy

I

This is what I am and the world I made.
Nothing to it really, merely a few
molecules telling a story: The dead
have won, and now we’re coming after you.
No reason, no motive, only the quick
expropriation of your flesh, then off
before you even knew you were sick;
the wreckage of your lungs is quite enough
to see us through. The merely chemical
has taken wing; we are birds of passage,
you the air in which we move. Irony
is futile, Make me infinite is all:
truly, the medium is the message
here in my codes and coils of RNA.

II

Here in my codes and coils of RNA
you may read your future: fright and hiding,
grounded forever by the tyrrany
of numbers. The past is now receding
almost beyond recall: the holding close,
the smells of strangers and the travelling.
The mantra now is distance, lack and loss,
the world you knew is now unravelling.
Frayed and half-remembered, screens and dreams
are all you now have left of life before
lockdown. Even these memories will fade
with alcohol and bleach, in the slipstreams
and the wash of this never-ending war;
eternal repetitions, a cascade.

III

Eternal repetitions, a cascade
of death, a hailstorm out of a blue sky.
With ragged breaths we huddle in the shade
of Perspex and masks, thwart the evil eye
with bin-bag aprons and repurposed scarves.
Such is our feeble mundane bravery
before this foe, our dwindling reserves
of courage in the face of its every
assault. Clap by all means, and wash your hands
but don’t forget the many reasons why
those hands are tied and we are on our knees,
struggling to comprehend the thousands
of our dead. Still we let the poison fly,
coursing down the paths of others’ journeys.

IV

Coursing down the paths of others’ journeys,
the cull continues. Thus far, you’ve been well.
Perhaps you’ve heard a signal in the noise,
been careful, followed their advice, done all
that was requested, beaten all the odds.
Or maybe you’re immune: too young, too fit,
too not-black, not-demented, one of God’s
chosen; whatever, you’ve avoided it.
Thus far, thus far. Listen: there’s no relief
or pardon for this vigilance. Your love
remains avoidance and a masquerade;
care is still caution, tenderness a thief.
Hold back, stay contactless; be watchful of
other lives. You must learn to be afraid.

V

Other lives: you must learn to be afraid
of all of them, for who knows what they’ve done
or where they’ve been? Nowadays the watchword
is: beware. Du musst dein Leben ändern,
and not in a good way; stay alert, don’t trust
the rumours or the snake-oil, keep offline.
Shields can be lowered, bubbles can be burst,
the human all too often inhumane.
Adopt the paranoid position, cock
your gun, and watch the others in the queue.
Keep well apart, be ready to defy
the super-spreader out to pick your lock.
When faced with simple kindness, what to do?
Recoil, don’t touch, wipe everything, deny.

VI

Recoil, don’t touch, wipe everything, deny
yourself the pleasures of an old routine;
the ancien régimes of bring-and-buy,
concerts and raves, the pub, the works canteen.
Now we are counted and spaced; the waspy tape
controls our every move, shopping a chore
that takes all morning. There is no escape;
the coffee bars are shut, brunch is no more.
Of course, it’s much better than being dead,
but when will it stop, this littling of life,
in which its happiness is null and void?
What will it take to clear the addled head
of this despair while we obsess and grieve,
over and over, every simple need?

VII

Over and over, every simple need
is out of bounds as instincts are denied.
The proffered hand – the kiss, for heaven’s sake –
is now taboo and must be driven back.
Noli me tangere: now we must love
in new and difficult ways, at one remove;
in cyberspace and down the line, we deal
with FaceTime deathbeds, YouTube funerals.
This is our modern shrouding of the dead:
farewells come sheathed in plastic, last words said
with our hands pressed tightly to the windows
sealed and spattered with fatuous rainbows.
This is where it hurts, this is the true pain:
never to touch our families again.

VIII

Never to touch our families again:
ay, there’s the rub; the memories unmade
are holes in history; we are ageing
with nothing to forget. Life as a void,
unending emptiness with horror at its heart.
We watch and wait; our days are all the same,
the atoms of our selves are held apart
in wastes of irrecoverable time.
We worry over fancy new desserts,
our sourdough starters, read a book, as though
this furlough were a blessing; we embark
on something, anything, that might divert
us from the ache of boredom, but we know
a curtain has been run down, the stage dark.

IX

A curtain has been run down, the stage dark;
from symphony to solo, the music
has tailed away, the silent Meisterwerk
of Covid. We have the sound of mucus
to regale us now, the wretched face-down
gargling of the nearly-dead wheezing their
last behind screens. We listen as they drown,
try not to cough or fidget in our chairs.
No comment or critique is needed here;
the doors have closed for good without a word
of comfort or concern: we are too late.
The programme notes are absolutely clear:
there’s nothing on and no-one to be heard.
Virtue is an empty house, a long wait.

X

Virtue is an empty house, a long wait
for the blow to fall. With nowhere to run
she cowers as our blood runs cold and hot
under a steady unremitting rain
of stress. We want to be good and we try
to do our best, but it’s so fucking hard
when the bitch is in your face. Such sophistry
aside, it seems that boundaries are blurred
in the charged crucible of confinement.
We’re hopeless: no wonder we go berserk
from time to time, worried about our debt,
our futures, food, and how to pay the rent.
A new disease is coming as we squat
indoors: the steady withering of work.

XI

Indoors, the steady withering of work
chafes at the soul; there’s nothing left to do.
We’ve washed the walls and swept the patio,
decluttered, polished, whistled in the dark
as, back and forth, we pace within this cage
of our own making. This is our ennui,
our hollow time, a blanked eternity
that yawns between futility and rage.
Our idleness consumes us, eats away
at pride and purpose as we run to fat;
nothing is now too much, and so we sit
and stare, exhausted, blinded by the light,
and poleaxed by the fear of knowing that,
ready or not, the shadows multiply.

XII

Ready or not, the shadows multiply;
the game’s afoot, the hide-and-seek begins.
Test, Track ‘n’ Trace, our world-class hue and cry,
ramps up, rolls out, hits targets, saves our skins.
As if. We don’t believe them now; we’re tired
and spoiling for a fight. The sugar-rush
of grievance has possessed us; we are wired
and itch to feel the blessings of the cosh.
Outdoors, together, marching for a cause;
this is how it used to be, a world
of comrades and opponents, loves and hates.
The diktat now is politics-on-pause;
don’t rock the boat or say an angry word.
Under the sun our enemy mutates.

XIII

Under the sun, our enemy mutates.
Hidden in plain sight, moving through the crowd,
the killer finds his mark, proliferates
and passes on, leaving his toxic cloud
to suffocate and strangle. He has found
the places where we like to park our old
unwanted stock, our surplus; hangs around,
and when our backs are turned he takes his hold.
We euphemise: we call it harvesting,
brought-forward, excess or untimely death,
Do Not Resuscitate our chosen lie
to pacify the monster, draw its sting.
He knows this, as he smuggles out our breath;
silent and watching for the light to die.

XIV

Silent and watching for the light to die,
complexity has met its match; a mute
unfeeling particle of dust has put
two fingers up to our modernity.
It has us by the throat, will not let go,
has new designs upon us, further waves
of misery and mayhem up its sleeve;
perhaps our children will be next to show
the scars from isolation and abuse.
Clear-felled, slashed and burned, at last we know
the price of progress, numbered by the dead,
the cost and consequence of plunder as
the planet gasps: who is the virus now?
This is what we are and the world we made.

XV

This is what I am and the world I made,
Here in my codes and coils of RNA:
Eternal repetitions, a cascade
Coursing down the paths of others’ journeys,
Other lives. You must learn to be afraid;
Recoil, don’t touch, wipe everything, deny
Over and over every simple need,
Never to touch your families again.
A curtain has been run down, the stage dark;
Virtue is an empty house, a long wait
Indoors, the steady withering of work.
Ready or not, the shadows multiply
Under the sun; your enemies mutate,
Silent and watching for the light to die.

Here they are again, and here
we are, with our desperate
intent. Roomfuls of poison
on all floors: spray cans, foggers
and smoke bombs, and the lure of
sticky traps for taking out
the boys. Nothing seems to work.

Come nightfall, the eye is caught
by a flutter of new life,
slowish and oblivious
to our angry hands. Too late
we grab and slap; the flicker
defies us and has designs
on our clothes, our peace of mind.

His body
falling unfolding
as a knife
as a handkerchief
pulled from its pocket
off the board
in its shard
of the infinite
before the water
spiralling
a moment and then done
the god
in us gone
one of us once more.

Strange to conceive of now
a hammerhead shark
on the Tudor radar

Drawn from that stable
of fabulous, possibly
unbelievable beasts:

Delphin and cordile
phenix, an unicorne
rhinocerote of the sea

That rich menagerie
of the mind’s eye pulling
at a thread of reason

One stitched in confinement
work of so many needles
in the shadow of the axe

Stories of theft and return,
of ruin and rebuilding;
inkwash and watercolour,
slow dissolves and slower-still
blue-brackish tidelines, inch by
inch across the paling strand.

GOD: This is all true.
You’d better believe it: read
My Apocolypse.

Motionless beaten a heart
with nobody left to support
or an old man pouring out
water with no ice in it

above all else chaos is
the science of no surprises

For David Winzer

Eyes in winter: through a surface
of vainly-branching imagery
(dead leaves, three trees in effigy)
their vision now returns our gaze.

Without hunger, to our surprise,
it is the future, close at hand
untouchable and with no sound
that hovers, daring us to rise.

Skim over shining marbles, face to face
with your too-perfect partner; stand before
the crystalline reflection, their embrace
as near and necessary as the floor.

Within the muscle-theatre, its walls
white, windowless and unforgiving, peers
the eye of Euclid, from which radiant ball
the serve returns to o such raqueteers.

This is the mirror’s kingdom; nimble planes
here catch and multiply, engage our glance
and goings. Hard the silver, cold the panes
where (double, double) all the senses dance.

Enough: roll back the galleries of glass.
As, frame on frame, the images retire
from this and every stage, what darknesses
collect beyond the sightlines, holding fire.

Born to it: no being
without its hunger
and delight

no music without flesh:
alone he saw this
coming, knew

the sweetness of our pain:
his is the idyll
and the pit

O caro, o bello, o fortunate nastro! Io non tel renderò che con la vita.

That voice inhabits your surprise
like yet another change of dress;
the day your cupboard calls, think twice
when answering its loud Unless.

Unaired, the softer fabrics hide
in chambers where the heart wears gloves;
come nightfall, insects, hundred-eyed
and sightless, hunt appointed loves.

When I was twelve I first heard Mozart play
On my crystal set. It was with fear and
Lust beneath my eiderdown that I lay
Feasting with Don Giovanni and his band.
Growing up, I thought I knew it all
About seduction; roses, the big song,
No messing about with feelings; a small
Goat who got just about everything wrong.

Middle-aged, and older now than he was
On his death-bed, at last I know better.
Zerlina has it right; her song of wars
And healing is the truest love-letter:
Rest in peace, your music has found me out,
Taken my hand, and left me room to doubt.

The range runs from contralto to
a thin annihilating shriek;
the sensibilities, though true,
are too extravagant, too Greek.

Her breast (for holding daggers) heaves,
her falling double-trochee sighs;
no matter nobody believes
in La Stupenda’s sacrifice,

And probably they’d not approve
her horror of maternity,
but stamping audiences love
her high-paid, highly strung high C.

Such histrionics always win
the day, as everybody knows;
this silver-rinsed Feld-Marschellin
will somewhere, somehow, get her rose.

If not, then once the curtains fall
and the applauding pittites stand,
she’ll come in spotlights to the hall
the blood of Tristan on her hands.

Good Lord, preserve us from these raging
raucous flower-surrounded queens
who throw their hearts up on the stage
and drive away in limousines.

Ill-met by thunder in the horny air
he used her cab and didn’t pay the fare

He came and went; no mirror
(he was unreflective) but the light itself,
a childish glare unscattered by the beast conscience

bread into stone
the sweet slow flesh
so quickly drawn
beyond all reach
a public bone
a secret dish

Our future awaits:
a Brexitrumpocalypse
or more of the same

Previously published in the Financial Times, 7.01.2018 (Winner of the New Year Haiku Competition)

A suffering plaster Christ
borne again and again, trussed

and bleeding, dead in the road;
a local saint in her shroud

wearing scars of a lost love;
what would it take to remove

this prison of dust, to fly
this coop, this reliquary?

After Stanley Kubrick

The Steadicam is closing
in on shades, the money men
in their long and shining hall

the rivers of blood, the twin
citadels, the regimens
of slaughter. Above it all

the all-seeing eye, keeping
us in check; we are dreaming
of being, and are in hell.