Helen of Troy : And Other Poems 9780702240928, 9780702235856

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Dimitris Ts a l o u m a s

and Other Poems

Dimitris Tsaloumas was born on the Greek island of Leros in 1921. In 1952, persecuted for his political beliefs, he left Greece for Australia. After a decade and a half of silence he began publishing his poems again in Greek and then in 1988 brought out Falcon Drinking, his first of seven books of poems written in English. His many honours include the National Book Council Award and the prestigious Patrick White Award. He divides his time between Melbourne and Leros.

Other books by Dimitris Tsaloumas The Observatory The Book of Epigrams Contemporary Australian Poetry (Translator) Falcon Drinking Portrait of a Dog The Barge Six Improvisations of the River The Harbour Stoneland Harvest New and Selected Poems

First published 2007 by University of Queensland Press PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia www.uqp.uq.edu.au © Dimitris Tsaloumas 2007 This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. Typeset in 11/16pt Adobe Garamond by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane, Queensland Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

This project has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

Cataloguing in Publication Data National Library of Australia Tsaloumas, Dimitris, 1921-. Helen of Troy and other poems. ISBN 978 07022 3585 6 (pbk) ISBN 978 07022 4092 8 (pdf) I. Title. 889.134

Contents Nostalgia: A Diptych 1 1. The Advice 1 2. The Return of the Native 3 Notes Towards a Story of Love 5 Theatre Night 9 Come Before Dark 10 An April Night’s Progress 11 The Traveller and the Maiden 12 The Great Masters of Music 14 Washing-up 15 Helen of Troy 16 The Sponger 17 Solicitude 19 Encounter in the Park 20 Sarabande 21 A Song of Welcome 23 The Beautiful Lady of Merci 24 Betrayal 25 Gryphon 26 A Winter Journey 28 1. The call 28 2. Vigil 29 3. Wolves 30 4. Visits 31 5. Hallucination 32 6. Voices in the dark 33

7. Return of the wolves 34 8. Of sails and small fish 35 9. Temptation 36 10. A dream of summer 37 11. Orpheus’s lament 38 12. The law 39 13. The message 40 14. Songs of the woodworm 41

A Divertissement

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Apollo and Daphne 45 The English Hunchback King 47 On the Subject of Death in War 48 Revolution 50 The Parable of the Two Wise Angels 55 The Unrepentant Dead 57 Setting the Record Straight 59 Filling in the Entry Form 60

Towards a Conclusion A Paper Boat 65 Of Trees and Birds 66 Three Questions 67 A Message 68 Watching the Rain 69

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Incubus 71 Sniper 73 Insomnia 76 Hung-over 78 Three Sketches for an African Idyll 79 A Noonday Visit 80 Mob Boss Ponders Execution 81 A Mobster’s Gothic Night 82 The Inveterate Prankster 83 The Old Man and the Knight 84 Three Tankas for the Lady of the Garden of Weeds Restoration 87 In the Well 88 Variation 90 The Laughter 92 Old Man’s Last Pilgrimage 95 Objection 97 Acknowledgments

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Nostalgia: A Diptych

1. The Advice Go back to the village, I tell my brother; the air’s cleaner there, the water fresh from those springs in the rocks. Besides, on their doorstep at dusk the old folks will have one less to sorrow for. My brother’s eaten up with this nostalgia. Untouched by the shine and hustle of our great city and its whirl of profit and use, he moves as in a slow-motion dream unmindful of gravity, the way loose-haired maidens tread on waves of air selling shampoo, or like the souls of antiquity in the walks of everlasting dusk far in the land of asphodel fields. And yet nostalgia’s for the living,

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my brother says, feeds off the city’s greed, drinks from its thirst. And it goes far, travels beyond our village to a place of gardens and fruit that shines in a cascade of old light and rots in a splendour of setting suns. Nostalgia’s for the living, he says, drinks from the thirst of the dead.

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2. The Return of the Native This voice droned in my ear all afternoon in the vast plain against whipping rain and a tangle of winds. I’d been trudging along on the road to the village when through the wind-swept air came the sound of bells, vague as though muffled in cotton wraps, from somewhere far off. Yet I was there. The bells were ringing vespers up in the castle on the hill. Indeed you are, the voice said; the place is below, cowering in the mist. Cross yourself as you enter the castle. The guards are unforgiving, the knights forbidding in steel. You look to neither right nor left, pretend they are dead. They are, but be on your guard.

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So in the ruined old chapel I light a candle, pray for the old light to fall again over the haunts of memory. Pretend, the voice drones on, pretend there’s no place such as you dream of in our latitudes under the known sky. There isn’t, but stick to stubborn faith as you go down into the mist.

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Notes Towards a Story of Love

I I think of you now coming last spring, the courtyard fresh with Easter rain.

II Humble ground daisies, flushed maid-curious poppies, lined the homeward path.

III Roof tiles shining wet among the pines sweeping down to the foam-fringed blue.

IV Plump putti aloft blew trumpets of burnished brass installing blue skies.

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V Noon-tide seaweed breath from naked shores. I recall your laughter, my thirst.

VI The summer reigned far up to the blue horizons. Night lighted huge moons.

VII August swallow-sails cut through swift seas. Cicadas lulled long afternoons.

VIII Summer of burning woods and ghost sundowns beyond on blood horizons.

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IX Now sunset fires gold of autumn in your soft hair. Birds riot in the plane.

X In your pelagic eyes float distances. Dusk blooms in my small garden.

XI Hawks wheeling above, rooks crossing. The goldfinch lands on our milder shores.

XII Wood-pigeon dialogue through acrid air. Smoke rises tall from clearing fires.

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XIII Your gaze on the sea through latticed jasmine. Your scent now lives in wardrobes.

XIV Dark wine fills my cup. Night-borne, forlorn, the call of cranes flying south.

XV I kindle the fire. Pear-blossom white of last spring, the snow fogs cold panes.

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Theatre Night

One rainy Sunday night a woman comes to this theatre. She’s very old but is denied admittance. Full house, says the stern man at the door. Besides, the show’s uncertain tonight. Oh, please, my good man, she pleads. I’ve come such a distance. At this, the man relents, ushers the woman in to a hush of breathless expectation.

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Come Before Dark

My nights forbid questioning, please come before dark and come clean. What is it makes you think of me across the waste plains of time? the lithesome limbs the chestnut fall of hair over the curving throat the cross between the breasts her laughter – all as it was Yet if I let you in, if I sing, it is but my due to your stubborn absence.

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An April Night’s Progress

Elegant night walks down the steps of her mansion into the garden where the Persian rose blooms and nightingales wait polishing their song. Jasmine and Easter lilac and draughts of Resurrection from deepest time follow close in her train with gleams of treasure in the dreaming mind and myriad diamond stars. Beyond, between two ancient rivers, she lends majesty to a righteous thunder of guns and vast illuminations where pyres consume a city of tale. Time long gone of phantasies and rampant hope, to your Thousand Nights and One add this, an old man’s tale of beauty trapped behind latticed balconies by raging flames. For I sit and hear again the rustle of silks like poplar leaves in spring across the floor, and sinuous music rise from flutes through frankincense of Lebanon and myrrh, attar and musk.

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The Traveller and the Maiden

He’d been searching for it on Ténaron, the southernmost tongue of the land that thrusts into a wild sea, when down the mountain slope in a place of stony terraced fields he saw her gathering poppies, wild-pea flowers and daisy stars among the ripening corn. He scrambled down to a soft, carelessly sung nostalgic song. How strangely beautiful, he thought, for she was luminous and fair, not by city standards perhaps, but tall, dark-tressed and country fresh and partridge-breast proud. Good day, fair maiden, well met. I hear the cave is hereabout – the shortest way to the Cimmerians’ land where my friends now live. Oh, that! she said. It is a long way and I have much to do. But come after the reaping and the sowing, after the vintage when you’ve set the must

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a-bubbling in the deep jars. Come in the season of plenty and gifts. So in the season of plenty he sets forth with gifts, eager to see again the lovely girl. But she’s not there in the desolate place. Instead, sudden, dark-throated in the light of day, the Cave gapes at him, and fear grips his soul. He turns, and putting down his gifts, sets out on the journey back humming the girl’s nostalgic tune.

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The Great Masters of Music a fanfare for Matt Simpson

With brass-resplendent instruments blazing forth when the sun breaks through the mists on the horizon; with lyric flutes, with violins and elegiac oboes when memory comes stalking night’s approach, the Great Masters of Music wield the mighty rhythms that channel joy and grief into the stream that waters mind and my brothers’ land. When they wander the denied regions and breathe an air not meant for man, swift thoughts of earthly sorrow temper the scale of bliss, and when they stray into the place of gloom they let light through cracks in the confining dome gladden the heart of darkness. For this, I give you thanks, Masters of Music and Lords where the soul of poetry lives.

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Washing-up

One late summer evening a young girl walked up to the poet where he was sitting in the park. Good evening, Mr Poet, she said; they tell me you make beautiful songs so I’ve come to beg you for one. Please, Sir, it’s my birthday tomorrow. He looked distant, sad. I’m blind, he said. Tell me how beautiful you are. So she spoke of her long shiny hair, her sky-blue eyes and slender throat, her white, long-fingered hands. I think I know you, he said; I think I’ve written songs for you in the rich glow of an older tongue that must have sunk beyond your memory. It was so long, so far ago. Whereupon he pulls the plug. The sink gulps down a note like a sob.

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Helen of Troy

It isn’t quite true that the Greeks sent ships and iron-crested men across the sea to avenge on Troy the wrong done to their nation and restore honour to the ill-starred House of Atreus. Besides, she lived in great luxury, content with her handsome Prince, if somewhat bored with all the fuss and death beneath the walls. But is was she, Zeus’s own daughter, who bade the Poet summon kings and muster heroes eager to die for her sake, and gods to plot the proud city’s immolation that beauty might be remembered sung to the conclusion of time.

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The Sponger

He seldom smiled but when he did it was sort of ambiguous, more like a grimace or a dog’s grin without that animal’s gladness in the eye. Spare and tall, hands by his side swinging loose like hooks, he haunted places where a man seeks pleasure – pubs, massage parlours, gambling dens. He’d sidle up to anyone at the bar, who’d buy him a beer as though from obligation. He was discreet, never the subject of gossip in his absence. He’d say with assurance ‘see you later’ and leave them looking for a while in their cups. Last night he came up and looked at me as I was pushing my glass for more and I felt his burning stare. I hastened to buy him a drink which he drained and left forgetting his usual promise.

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It had begun to rain before I left and the street was deserted, dark, when I thought I saw him standing in a pool of yellow light under a lamp at the crossroads, some distance ahead, as if unable to remember his way. Yet when I looked again he was gone and the obsessive tune returned that had been going round in my head all day, unable to jump the faulty groove. But maybe he’d never been there, maybe it was somebody else, though the street was lonely with rain and dark.

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Solicitude

My friends keep on advising me. Stop going down to the mine, they say; there’s no future in digging by hand in that blind dark. Move with the times, toil in daylight, get rich. On sand, today you can build more than castles. Sound advice no doubt, considering that they spend their days on the beach. But a new course is out of the question, though time compel and storm winds rise. For I think of me as of a boat that sails a Parallel as if on rails, or in a narrow moat to some destination that keeps me guessing in the dark.

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Encounter in the Park

Weary with this search in the wilds of his youth, the old poet sat on a stone bench next to a girl. Obviously cross at this intrusion, she made to go. Please stay, he said. It’s such a pleasure to see you again. She looked surprised, suspicious of the old man’s approach, her arms brown and thin as she was gathering the strands of silky hair that fell to frame her loveliness. I don’t remember you in my life, she said; can’t place you anywhere. Dream-struck, he paused, then said: an old man’s whim, dear girl, who knows he can’t bestow memory on things he gifts with life. Your random returns are not recorded in the chronicles of your time.

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Sarabande

Under the majesty of chandeliers burning a light of purest wax, crossing the floor from mirrored walls and gravely smiling, ladies in billowing silks that harbour thrills of rash-patched skin advance to advancing men of equal gravity with pest-tormented scalps under wigs that roll cascading waves down ruffles and thistledown frippery to loose suspension or discipline of silken knot. Imperial music haunts the night air above dark hovels in the lanes of filth, throb through the epic memories of beggar soldiers crippled in battle. Briefly, as if from carelessness, it slips by sombre chords, wanders off into landscapes of strange nostalgia where acrid draughts of sadness rise, maybe from burnt-out villages and rotting fields of armies slaughtered fighting to plant each one their own true cross.

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Gladness returns and brightness. The dancers bow and turn and meet again extending jewelled hands at each encounter, then turn and glide again in the thin haze of burning candles to the commanding beat of the musician’s staff upon the floor.

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A Song of Welcome

Despite his faltering first steps autumn looks like he’s back to stay, just as we thought he’d missed the signs in the tortuous byways of summer across the map of our frustrations. Meticulous observers now, censorious, we bear the brunt of it all – the sinful spread of flesh on the sands, the confluence of glamour under the stars twisting in ecstasy to seismic sound. So welcome to the season of mists, great restorer of faith in nature’s constant charms. Once more we’ll breathe the fragrant air of hills revived by the year’s first rains, and all along the country lanes redolent of dark fermenting musts, we’ll hear the chatter of new birds on the hedgerows, observe forgotten figs left to the crow, bunches of grapes to the wasp. And to the peaceful tune of bells from distant goats about the hills, we’ll watch refurbished sundown glories long dulled in memory’s vaults.

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The Beautiful Lady of Merci

I was praying on my knees in the vast gloom of the cathedral when she entered rustling in silks, profanely proud, beautiful. Madame, I said, Madame, imploringly, you have entered the heart of true geometry. Please let no sin transgress its rules. She stopped aghast, then walked to where I was in luminous compassion and coaxed me up on my feet and out onto a stark de Chirico square where my words in the cathedral were now bouncing from ghostly tower flying stiff pennons without a wind to shuttered house across long shadows of absent people under a threat of imminent dusk.

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Betrayal

Two men in dinner jackets with flute glasses in their hands pad in like stalking panthers, their faces obscured by the shade of the desk lamp. I hide cowering and watch through parting curtain folds. Laughter and music reach my ears from somewhere in the mansion. Efficient, supremely cool, they open secret recesses, steal what they are after and out into the deadly corridor. Grave danger stalks the land though night’s light lacks clarity. I’ll wait till dawn before I make any move. By the third cock’s crow I’d have drunk my tea. Sunrise may find guilt buried in the dark.

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Gryphon From a lecture on the monsters of antiquity

As to what had led the eagle-winged lion to leave its warm ancestral lands and build its nest of gold in the bleak regions of far-flung Scythia where the Arimaspians lived, remains a mystery; just as the fact that one of that one-eyed race should have been able to steal its gold. No record’s come to us from the dark side of history, except the memory of poets – an unreliable source. Some say the Gryphon’s mere invention meaning man’s purblind passion for gold that spells his doom. Others believe the creature’s monstrous beauty hatched in a craftsman’s mind for art’s sake to crouch by the throne of kings and on the steps of palaces, to adorn a knight’s breastplate or to support footstool and yielding couch in the love trysts of the rich.

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Indeed you find scholars now who think that in wrought iron, in brass or marble, the beauty of the beast endures to make man rich without its gold. Unlike the monsters of our time, they say, those of antiquity were in the pattern of a provident world.

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A Winter Journey

1. The call I’ve come to this place against my will summoned by unknown spirits beyond the range of my tutelar gods point of static motion dead centre of the rose of winds the steppe is snowed under to infinity in the long nights the lamplight cracks with cold voices through the mist of years I wait cradle my head elbows on the boards of this rough table

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2. Vigil Been here for some time now though time’s irrelevant sleep is full of cracks of secret passages gate to unwelcome intrusions where night extends into day light must lose credibility this howl of whiteness vast shroud of ancient grief up to the four horizons no message from the spirits so far

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3. Wolves Last night the wolves came I could hear them padding through fitful sleep prowling around the hut they sound suspicious sniffing and pawing at the snow they’ll return to the spring the bodies will emerge then perhaps intact I should have pondered the call insisted on reasons I see no point in this vigil despite its eternity I see neither point nor future in hope nobody will ever find this door

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4. Visits After the wolves came mother though the door was barred she spoke no word of greeting went and sat in a corner impossibly far her eyes fixed on me sad questioning others too came from albums of yellowing years faces blurred though not unfamiliar huddled in the distant corner they began to talk a consultation obviously you could hear the whispering observe the play of hands mother’s eye steady burning through the hut’s murk

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5. Hallucination Hallucination in these parts is unambiguous comes without pleasure bitter smell of fresh seaweed left on the shore by the latest storm breeze silver-plating an ancient olive in the vines a woman pegging clothes in a whitewashed yard such clarity excludes deceit at times a woman’s scream a rooster’s crow the syncopated mallet rhythm calking a boat on the beach

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6. Voices in the dark Far autumns return claiming glories usurped by alien desolation the sun runs its diminished arc across the western sky comes to a pause he glares in fiery majesty over the glassy waters of the bay then spills his gold I lean against the doorjamb hear the murmur of voices well into the darkened day people on a courtyard stone bench talking among the basil assured of healing sleep.

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7. Return of the wolves Still no word from the spirits maybe I missed their meaning spring’s given up the struggle short of this place the wolves are back I put my ears to the door hear them sniff and scratch fooled by the season they go disappointed creatures of faith nonetheless moving to a purpose sure as destiny nothing will happen now without the spring thaws there might be peace yet between the dead and sleep.

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8. Of sails and small fish Long left without horizon the space between sky and sea looks crowded with sails driven by crazed winds it’s hard to say from this far it could be deception maybe it’s seagulls hovering above the clouds of small fish crossing a bay of grief sleep is no longer reprieve seabirds sails and notions of purpose direction the mind rebels returns to the vast emptiness of mother steppe

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9. Temptation Born in time’s wilderness long before memory when light was forged colour endures obstinate in this my darkest season birdsong or siren’s song the wine-dark sea et cetera a sundown sky against walls washed white among the pines far voices rustling in the wind or ripples of laughter from a festive day yet I know temptation is in the weave of sainthood the test by fire before the leap over the bounds of self this is no public gesture this voyage no trespassing on alien land

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10. A dream of summer The path from the old house cuts through a summer day down the hill face indistinct turned to the sun like the sun’s own flower her step a dragonfly’s on a still pond I peer through semidarkness I peer hard time erosion maybe youth’s thoughtless pledge suddenly alert I demand precision texture and touch of flesh shivers course down my spine it judders rippling air unsettling the pale flame of the lamp

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11. Orpheus’s lament Eurydice Eurydice not even love my love not life-restoring melody could lure you all the way from the far land of the dead. Back under the sun Orpheus blinks and sings again of love regained and lost never bestowed whole and therefore imperishable. Strange that Orpheus’s song should have made famous love’s impotence and its division beautiful beyond compare and reach of man-born time.

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12. The law It’s written no pleasure taken or given or pain taken and given will exceed its natural bounds the moat of fortress self beyond but imprecise regions confusion of treacherous paths voices like the whir in the air of locust-storm clouds vortex of leaves at sudden gusts over autumnal bitumen certainly door-crack whine of bitter wind the sob of mother steppe

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13. The message The longed-for message at last dim through the arched passages of secretive mind I wandered there all night despairing of confirmation until the candle sputtered where night’s corridors converge flicker of light in the draughts I saw it written the wolves won’t have the dead the spring shall fail for ever

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14. Songs of the woodworm Digging wasn’t hard in the brief summer of the land nor was the burial shoulders unburdened hands swinging free I entered virgin time sang loud future-songs in folly’s bosom a man grows boisterous songs of the woodworm really heard on still nights boring back to the heart of many-seasoned timber

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Apollo and Daphne An ancient tale retold for Kate Gowland

It was the age when the gods were still involved in the affairs of this world and shared in its passions to pass the tedium of endless time. The great splendour of their abode, the glamour of their womenfolk, lay beyond men’s dreams. Yet since too much perfection palls, their roving eye seldom missed a good thing that ventured abroad, be it a nymph or mortal beauty. And so it was that Apollo, God of poetry and greatest lover on Olympus, spied the lovely daughter of Earth and Ladon, the Arcadian river, as she was about the business of living through yet another happy day in the perennial idyll of that land. The god was smitten instantly by stormy passion, but the response was firmly cold. In vain he resorted to inducements, great and small. Some say

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he even stooped to that old soldier’s ploy, promising marriage. Despairing of persuasion and deceit he went at her, whereupon the Nymph, now panic-struck, ran for her life as fast as only creatures born of gods can run. She ran through Greece and Asia and the Syrian land where, overtaken by the panting god, she invoked her mother’s help, who turned her girl to a tree for him to embrace Ah the frustration of it, the bitter disappointment, the parched up mouth and throat! No doubt he found consolation elsewhere. But since a godly act is rarely quite in vain, the lovely Nymph was turned to a tree of shiny leaves which crown poets since and heroes, and flavour our pilaff, or lentil soup on days of fast, and our rabbit stews.

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The English Hunchback King

In the far clip-clopping years of the English hunchback King there was one neat, practical solution to all intractable problems. The King’s meditations on the subject make this clear. Logic and method were direct, the numbers manageable: some unwanted children, some lace-dish collared heads – sweet, gentle cousins all – that to the cheers of grateful mobs rolled off the block unstitched by the half-moon axe. O indeed for the romantic years of the English hunchback King when hypocrisy had not yet lost its innocence in the dark corridors of our lightened times, when the Devil counselled kings for free to the advantage of the nation’s purse and the delight of jobless crowds.

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On the Subject of Death in War from a Human Studies course for military schools

Some fall in battle looking surprised but free from transitional pain. others fall lingering on, calling to someone dear to help .

(like that English boy, for instance, who in a ditch beneath my window kept moaning ‘mother’ till dawn. An enemy voice maybe, but the word was clearly about a mother).1 Some die spectacularly, their bits fanning out with other debris and, depending on the time of day, in colour brighter than a peacock’s tail. Others perish in wild seas or by the creatures of the sea in gulps of ecstasy. Indeed they say that drowning is the sweetest death. Yet others die on wings in the blue sky trailing smoke and fire, or as they hang on ropes of silk above idyllic fields hirsute with guns. 1 Transcriber’s note

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Some die reduced to charcoal inside creeping iron hulls. There’s also the kind of death that’s suffered in secret chambers – unhealthy places though furnished with expensive equipment. But whatever the manner or style of death, whether suffered or dispensed, dying for King/Queen and country, or for King or Queen alone and country is generally thought of as a fit end, something worth striving for.

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Revolution for John Lucas

I Despite the enlistment of unemployed youths the rubbishmen can’t cope with the number of heads children are encouraged to make neat pyramids of them in the great city squares for easier picking prizes are announced for numbers and symmetry the noise is deafening bands play shots ring in the air explosions bare-breasted women brandishing angry flags march in the blood-sunset light hirsute with bayonets

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‘down with tyranny’ etc. ‘make love not war’ etc. et cetera the festive air’s alive with noble demands

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II Grave officials who managed to hang on to their heads sit in the cafés in disguise over espresso cups they appraise the mob’s exuberance masters of vision in the dark they perceive new possibilities make plans the tumbril rolls past below the crowded café windows the tumbril jerks its passengers some wigs come off exposing shiny heads dogs howl dogs bark children in motley rags trail behind banging cans singing spring songs hope rises from brimming pots in every city joint

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III Carnation-buttonholed the Leader stumbles forth to halt grimly advancing cars of war unarmed but for a bottle the crowd stops breathing rejoice fellow citizens bid fear farewell markets of plenty will liven up our lugubrious cities nights without shadows will follow sunny days just then this dove flies in it carries a twig in its beak it wheels three times overhead then dips and lands upon the great man’s head thereon the dove shits then flutters off to a burst of furious joy

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the Leader climbs down the charmed monster’s hump leaves it on heaving shoulders his sainted head beams hosannas rise more thunderous than at a Champions League goal

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The Parable of the Two Wise Angels

At the news of mob infiltration into the House of God, two senior angels, their wings no longer serviceable for age, were dispatched by ladder down to earth to carry out investigations. On landing, they were driven to the palace of the Chief Priest and to a dinner so sumptuous that by the time coffee was served they had lapsed into comparison, thinking of their own exalted diet, the somewhat monotonous bliss. They were feted day and night, the crowd under suspicion vying with each other in lavishing on them the best of earthly care. Indeed, amid exotic flavours and smells they all but lost their taste for abstract fair, incense and burning candle. It’s hard to tell, said one of them; things seem all right, but this seeming might require longer scrutiny. 55

Undoubtedly, said the other. Besides, this up and down, you know . . . . And then the air in these low regions, despite its reputation, is not too bad. So they submitted a report requesting time unlimited to carry out so difficult a task. The great extent of Church dominions was the main argument. Also, the fact that Earth is not so small as it appears from above, and finally, the devious nature of man which demands infinite tact. The request was granted with relief and polyphonic harmony established between the two kingdoms.

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The Unrepentant Dead 1

In and out of the house all day long, the crones in black. I avoid kissing and shaking hands but went nevertheless towards evening, soon as the bells had ceased to toll. A neighbour, you see, kind of difficult friend. Among the flowers and in his Sunday best he looked unrecognisable, cool, though somewhat pale, his nose unusually sharp. As I bent over him I thought I saw his lips move. Maybe some fly bothered him, but I left immediately lest he should say something to embarrass me in front of the black crones. He spoke to me later though, towards midnight, his voice as usual hoarse through the side of his mouth. ‘You feared that I might shame you’ he said, ‘as if we never shared together bread and salt. You bloody perisher, you, if only you knew what I have in store for you! But let you come first

1 Translated from the Greek, ‘Observations of a Hypochondriac II’

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with God’s help. And don’t forget, write it down, along with your myriad sins to bring a set of backgammon.’

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Setting the Record Straight

They say he’s scant of hair and flesh, which is true, and that his brains hiss when trying hard to think, which is less than true, although to fools seems rather fair. I know the man. They call him Dim because he thinks discreetly, when alone, and if his brains hiss it’s only uphill from too much strain, not intellectual steam. To be precise, he thinks that skin and bone is preferable to skins of wind, men blown up hard beyond their proper size who power their words by the gas of beans.

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Filling in the Entry Form

Date and country of birth, colour, state of mental health, last country of residence etc. There’s no box for occupation: you are expected to be rich. Plain sailing so far until you get to sections C and D. In section C they want to know your preferred country of residence, with reasons, so be on your guard. Beauty of nature won’t do: they know it lies about debauched no matter where you go. Therefore you must come up with valid reasons. Section D deals with religion. Sound credentials are demanded. A masculine Bishop’s or Cardinal’s certificate is best. The turban (terry material only) has been confined to the bathroom for use by steaming ladies.

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It also deals with things imponderable. For instance, you have to tell them (roughly, it’s true) your intended place and, if at all practical, manner of death. A box for time is also provided but you may leave that blank. All this means politics of course so, I repeat, caution’s the word. The spaces for sex lie close together. Make sure your wife places the tick in the right box: irregularities in this respect are frowned upon. This country’s bound to Law and Order. Even poverty here is governed by the law and fiercely protected: its annual growth’s kept well above the rate of inflation.

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A Paper Boat

In childhood’s long-drawn days I conceived ambitious schemes soon lost, meshed with the night’s general dreaming. Only the paper boat endures launched one summer day in the wake of continent-seeking tall ships, in oceans no vaster than our goat’s drinking trough. Becalmed in years of prosperity, I kept a secret eye on its course, watched it toss in a wildness of crosswinds, ride up maniacal seas and down their dizzying slopes, secure in its lightness, doggedly on towards a hoped-for virgin land.

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Of Trees and Birds

Three are the hardy trees that haunt the space of my obsessions: the cypress, pointed sharp in starlight gathering shadows of friends long gone, piercing the song of nightingales, the break-of-day exuberance of larks; the poplar, tremulous of yellowing leaf in a far island’s marshy cove where September cranes land on their flight from the oncoming snows of desolation; the gum, its vastness of land horizons and sun-struck screeching birds that mock the stubborn traveller who staggers on trusting the certainties of maps.

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Three Questions

Who bade the Sirens hush as I sailed expectantly along the magic shore? Who then revived their song to thwart the will and bar the thorny road to Bethlehem? And who put out the polar star as I set out to seek a way through the encroaching sands? I ask but they look suspicious, then snort and leave me alone to curse and wash my hands.

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A Message

Maybe my voice comes to your ears like a lone cricket’s from the dark of some remote spent hearth, or multitudinous from the assembly of sparrows at dusk in the great plane that shades our village square. No matter, Sir; it’s meant for you. It’s not a plea, for it is written that my quarrel be with the deaf and the blind. Nevertheless, in case it fails to make it to your abode, I’m leaving this message for you in the cave of the winds. Blown over the lands and the oceans on either side of the median belt it tells of my gratitude for everything I love and hate in your creation before they’ve done turning it to a valley of tears.

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Watching the Rain

Swaying drunkenly in water-haze like stormy cypress shadows over a country churchyard’s flags on wintry full-moon nights, they came. They climbed the terrace steps and sat at our summer table mindless of the rain, which slanted through them like rods of lead. Nose flat against the pane, I watch, eyes big with wonder. For now a sadness swells through me and I must call them in, I must, seat them by the blazing fire. I tap on the glass, listen for sound. Five or six of them, maybe just five, one very young, their faces averted, gazing out to a drowning sea. I tap again. But they rise and go, not as they came, but shaped, bodied in recognition. And I see our lemon tree now shine with golden fruit by the steps as they go, the vine with grapes.

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Playful screams and words struggle to my ears from the shore through a cicada noonday storm – the hiss of rain on our terrace flags, on the waterlogged garden.

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Incubus

‘This endless longing, Mother, these fathomless regrets among the wrecks of memory, the tenuous bridge between you and the living. I’ll try to cross in the spring soon as the storms subside.’ He tried to shift the weight that held him down helpless invoking the solid truth of objects dimly seen along the chink in his quivering sight. ‘I thank you, son, but our time this side of the dark river has no divisions. Yet if you come in the spring bring me a spray of honeysuckle a sprig of Easter lilac from where they bloom along the western wall of our garden. I was young there before you.’

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a spray of honeysuckle of Passion lilac a breath from my worm-eaten chest of antique scents ‘Oh Mother please don’t go please shake me awake lift the stone off my chest I beg you more than a sprig of honeysuckle if I come in the spring armfuls of all that blooms in our garden.’ I know the place summer’s perennial there though the light is dim with age a pewter light and all the air shifting through shutters and leaves the beat of wings the air

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Sniper

In the shadows of the room away from the window I sit by the gun my eyes relax aimless on a patch of chimney-tasselled sky below among the litter in the grey pit of the courtyard the winter-blown rose its sentimental scent a myriad of weeping birds soar into the saddened sky still nylon-sheets through iridescent waterdust pour into crystal pools cascading hair covers the maiden shivering among the deer the knights all gone never heard of again all that green pall of sorrow

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and all those summer afternoons preparing sundown blood behind each day’s last boat but this is pointless I’ve scored nothing today so far are we running out of enemies I wonder but that I can’t believe a stratagem surely a ruse the lull after the storm so to speak panic has broken out among the pigeons in the square where crows have landed cooing like doves the pigeons are settling now on the vast city parapets keeping an eye on things and she and she walking recklessly the streets of rebellion crossing my sights every time

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night is falling fast can’t read the omens maybe tomorrow good night for now maybe tomorrow

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Insomnia

Tonight the wolves have entered the city howling at the white moon that rages in the sky jumping the city canyons, pushing through banks of cloud. I cock up my ears, listen for my city’s loneliness, the dark in the windows, the sorrow in the howl. I borrow from the mad moon that’s broken loose tonight from past enchantments and glares with spite. There’s secret shivering abroad, gnashing of teeth. I know, but must await the day’s version. Night is a boastful clown, a fool of subtle deception. When this vigil ends I’ll walk the bustling streets among the crowds and spy.

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Must test my suspicions against their feverish buying, their loud songs.

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Hung-over

Walking gingerly like a girl barefoot along the stony path of vaulting withies and rank weeds, I saw from my kitchen window Hope coming. Pretty, vaguely haloed, I saw her linger by the gate and rushed to comb my hair and open the door. But she’d gone on getting shin-scratched, a beggar girl out of bygone times. My head throbbed fit to burst. Hope indeed and haloes, I thought, and thorn-scratched legs!, as i got up rubbing my eyes to boil the kettle. Buttering toast, I scanned the day’s black-banner news and spread the purple plum jam.

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Three Sketches for an African Idyll

1. The woman’s eyes big with wonder, beyond sorrow. The tumid child sucks leather purse, arms thin as reeds. Strange birds beat croaking above.

2. Child scratching in dust, eyes hugely luminous, rimmed with stubborn flies. Bleached skeleton trees, and father feeding newsprint to the cow.

3. Tall women erect proceed in grave dignity supporting pitchers on their heads – black Caryatides up from drying pools of mud.

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A Noonday Visit

Leaning on his rustic, knotty stick and trailing a breath of sage and thyme, he came from the cottage on the hill down to our place, to seek father’s advice about a quarrel with his neighbour, a known goat thief. Up from the beach and hungry, I found them sipping coffee and rolling cigarettes under the vine. Poor old Nicolas, the olive-harvester, the grape-gatherer and minder of the house in winter. Both being long dead, I spoke no greeting, stood looking on till they grew vague as through a mist. I rubbed my eyes. Sharp dust of salt maybe, dried out in the fierce noonday sun.

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Mob Boss Ponders Execution

Two birds land on the window sill, garrulous. Melodic chatter melting to infinity in the dawn glory of the new sun. It’s not too late maybe, though doubts linger. Yet if he must die to give me peace let it be done before dark, as I, pinned by gravity to a cripple’s chair, trace the birdsong to infinity. Night mustn’t rob me of this satisfaction. Though the spirit soars like a lark, it swoops on snake or stray chick like a hawk in the haze of high noon. Orders will go out before siesta time.

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A Mobster’s Gothic Night

The steps, remote so far, approach under the Gothic dark of the place. A dungeon, maybe the cavernous cellars from the time of dead kings. The steps advance then fade again to a patter of mice, a flutter of bats. He now crouches, now stands alert, his weapon in both hands winding in sudden jerks the cobwebs spun between the great pillars of night. Now the steps come circling, distinct, until the gun explodes like thunder and sleeping creatures wake and scurry panic-stuck, and mumbling crows rise and crash against the blind walls. Slow blood drips on the floorboards.

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The Inveterate Prankster

Sometimes, like a jester, he comes dwarfish and sinister, but bold with grim jokes for the court whose king’s too old to understand. Often where children play, he comes loud with bells and motley sparks and red-bulb nose but fails to make the children laugh. On rare occasions purposeful, grim-faced, tough, he comes and sits waiting, only to leave as in response to an urgent call. Fond of publicity, he often mounts thunder-and-fire shows no Hall could stage, then sits and teaches grinning in the rubble, in the waste of riches.

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The Old Man and the Knight

Rattling along on his lean horse, a knight thirsting and bleary from sleeplessness, comes through the forest to a spring where by the stone trough a man sits dreaming. Old as the sough of the wind in the oak above, a fixture in the flow of time, he sits oblivious to the jangle of history among the props of his dreaming. Hawks dot the sickened sky, flurries of sudden wings stir in the plague – darkened mind of the knight. ‘I’ve been fighting in distant lands, old man, her beauty my driving meaning. Yet I return to a city of dead and dying, hear she’s fled into the wilds, roams in the woods. Has she been here to drink?’ The old man’s words are gestures in the dark seeking direction. ‘Maybe she has, Sir Knight, maybe she hasn’t. I hear the splash of feet, the water drips as if from cupped hands. No voices carrying words break through the blind walls of my dreaming.’

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The knight remounts his horse and goes sighing the sough of wind in the dark oak, turning to a shadow’s vagueness among the shadows cast by the rising moon.

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Three Tankas for the Lady of the Garden of Weeds 1 In your leafy street the after-rain sun drips gems. A blackbird singing on the fence. I think of you in your rank, weed-choked garden

2 The moon beside us calm on the river waters – a walk of far years. My coffee grows cold. Watching three mynahs scratching for grubs.

3 It’s always evening when you come to my far shores: tall pencil cypress under a pale quarter-moon. The lonely ping of night birds.

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Restoration

Daughter of Attica in the vast Hall among the dreaming wrecks of time, I saw the absence in your eyes and filled them with light; I felt the stiffness in your sleep and combed the marble from your hair, restored to you the grace of gesture and lightness of step. Tonight I’ll make a song for you to heal your breathing, and if the sun breaks through the fog, maybe tomorrow, I’ll come and take you out for a walk to the best fashion store our splendid city can afford.

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In the Well

His voice remote through the bliss of my summer siesta, the voice unseen but like a father’s, grumbling across a wilderness of misty years. ‘There’s no point in reaching out for a horizon that shifts with you. Nor is it profitable to sit under the vine in the cicada’s noon and wait for the breeze to stir, up from the sea below. Go down and clean the well. It’s cool down there and not so dark.’ So I went down but found myself wandering in strange nocturnal places with stars dull as lead. The other day, maybe long ago, I heard a lute there, a tune sprung like a rose from fat soil – the death fields of holy wars, 88

and a sob rises in my throat as I grope seeking the plucking hand, the old nostalgic tune sunk since in the story dimness of the mind.

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Variation

‘It must have been long ago,’ he said, ‘for how I got in, I can’t remember. Nor do I recall any reasons. Love of adventure maybe. Refuge from persecution or from the dream of her, the Immortal Beloved.’ ‘But surely,’ I said, ‘surely all dimension sets limits in space, and the way in is the way out?’ ‘This is no level structure,’ he said, ‘there’s no hand to guide tiny marble or mouse trapped in maze-corridors to open gate and celebration. Like the whorls of a gigantic conch this maze bores down in dizzy spirals to a place of vespertine hours forever fading towards night.’ He stopped, his voice now a drone in a deep jar, the fitful buzz of a wasp caught in a spider’s net. The plain is hollow, extends beyond the four horizons. Therefore,

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upon this stone, I sort out hollow thoughts, reckon my shadow’s lengthening in our own daily dream-land.

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The Laughter

for it was then this laughter rippled the stillness in the air skipped like a flock of frisky goats down a perilous track in a tinkle of fitful bells and rolled over the tops of pinewoods polishing the crocodile mail of the sea filling the sails of high-pooped ships eager to cross the oceans to plunder rich unknown lands sudden illuminations revealed in corners splendid gifts that might fetch high prices the markets burst to sudden bloom cash registers rang madly in a swirl of myriad people the Stock Exchange roared with bulls so scrubbed to a shine and garlanded like sacred bulls of old on the way to some idyllic shrine the poor paraded in their Sunday best along the City’s glass-bound streets where on decked-out platforms

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in thunderous Halls the politicians promised times still brighter like bougainvillea from balconies virginal maiden song cascaded crimson yellow purple and flowed down the streets sweeping the wrack of drought the dust of cemeteries long settled on our budding gardens the desert sands of war but come to think of it whose laughter might this be a woman’s overflow of happiness perhaps from memory’s dim store of time past God’s change of disposition and plans the Devil’s own glee at such prospects of new perfection it’s hard to tell but angels smaller than blossom flakes in the spring fluttered about blindly in the sonorous spaces of the heart setting off vibrations in the flesh and paralytic dancing in the squares hands waving loose aloft belly gyrations and navel vertigo young goats turning on long spits corks all around popping froth

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oh what a day some spread the news that Peace incredibly was seen to wave from the grand float of Beauty Queens others that Hope bestowed a smile upon the gloomy crowd of bards who normally see things it’s hard to tell to pin down origins to bridge the no-man’s-land between the dreaming and the quick to

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Old Man’s Last Pilgrimage

On this my last pilgrimage I travel by what light and signs the sky affords. I do no penance seek no remission of sins. Majestic highways and safe roads took me to famous places of worship in the far country of youth, where I prayed and saw my dreams come true. Yet old magician time turned all those gifts to tracts of waste and thirst, where I wielded number and calculation to reckon the worth of friend and foe. This I regret, though my riches grew and glowed, yielding a measure of satisfaction. Now new lands born of the lifting mists beckon to the nomadic soul, uncharted streams and mountain paths lead it to shrines long strayed from memory, mentioned in parchments long decayed

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where I now hear music not heard before, smell scents from alabaster jars and phials buried in vaulted tombs to make sweet the sleep of queens, visit old crimes that strange faith has turned to things of veneration. On this my last pilgrimage I seek no evidence of fact but firmer certainties, not hope but truth of nobler substance where, in secret folds, the mind still dreams of wings.

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Objection

Let him advise me on how to live who in the dead of night hears on the moon-polished village cobbles the tramp of enemy boots approach his door, and turns against the wall holding on to some hopeful clue to a glad conclusion of the yarn spun in his disrupted dreaming. And let him teach me how to die who knew no excess of happiness when on the crest of fortune nor bitter grief in its deep troughs; who from the crow’s-nest spied the last meridian and tacked about lest he should rob of its dark fire the truth of his living.

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Acknowledgments I am grateful to the editors of the publications in which some of these poems first appeared: Eureka Street, Island, Meanjin, Paris Review, Modern Poetry in Translation (UK), Southerly and Westerly.

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