GLASS

only
her red purse
returns

Inside it a sweet
some small change &
blood besprinkled glass.

it alone
survives
the crash

Death is only
a newspaper headline.
still...this grief

I weep tears
that don't show up
on my face

I push my fingers
deep in the purse
cut my fingertips to bits

the held glass
(all I have of you)
scarring my face

blind
to the pain
blind to the pain

the old blood
and the new mingles
and once more

if only for a second
we are together
for as long as the pain lasts

PER NOCTEM IN NIHILO VEHI
( TO VANISH BY NIGHT INTO NOTHING )

my death approached me
but: went on by without
recognising it was I...

i hid in the filthy alley
of a passing hour
Death now furiously searching for me

no...Here: here
no...There: there - either
this tiny piece of time

the once and once
only

but Mr. Death had missed the moment
had to return empty handed
I finding myself madly in love with

the next second. . .

**

Mr. Death elects to speak in Latin...thinks it gives him a certain je ne sais quoi...

It's always great to cheat Mr. Death and his henchman Mr. Heartattack. I swore to myself that I would love the next second with all my heart!

In addition to its inclusion among the many translations of Catullus' collected poems, Catullus 101 is featured in Nox (2010), a book by Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson that comes in an accordion format within a box. Nox concerns the death of Carson's own brother, to which the poem of Catullus offers a parallel. Carson provides the Latin text of 101, word-by-word annotations, and "a close and almost awkward translation".

Multās per gentēs et multa per aequora vectus
adveniō hās miserās, frāter, ad īnferiās,
ut tē postrēmō dōnārem mūnere mortis
et mūtam nēquīquam alloquerer cinerem
quandoquidem fortūna mihī tētē abstulit ipsum
heu miser indignē frāter adēmpte mihī
nunc tamen intereā haec, prīscō quae mōre parentum
trādita sunt trīstī mūnere ad īnferiās,
accipe frāternō multum mānantia flētū.
Atque in perpetuum, frāter, avē atque valē.

Having been carried through many nations and over many seas,
I arrive, brother, at these wretched funeral rites
so that I might present you with the last tribute of death
and speak in vain to silent ash,
since Fortune has taken you, yourself, away from me.1
Alas, poor brother, unfairly taken away from me,
now in the meantime, nevertheless, these things which in the ancient custom of ancestors
are handed over as a sad tribute to the rites,
receive, dripping much with brotherly weeping.
And forever, brother, hail and farewell.

Catullus 101

'SWEETNESSE READIE PENN'D'

The room is
flooded with time

like sunlight that has
gotten old

our faces...fishes
swimming in the shiny table.

I am totally absorbed
drawing intensely

Mandrake the Magician
Mighty Solver of Mysteries

gesturing hypnotically at
his evil twin brother Derek.

Lost in The Sinister World of
"8".

The nice lady
talks funny

like people do
in American movies.

I am told she is
my aunt from Chi-ga-go.

Well, whatya know?

She watches the lines
flow from my pen

to make the Magician
happen to the page.

"Now...that's magic!"
she says.

Her backlit hair
glows like a halo

holy as an angel
glimpsed on a Sunday.

"You're my little superhero!"
she confides in me.

She takes the first ever
colour photos of

...unbelievably us!

She even lets me
take her and the horse.

My pulse going click-
-click-click.

She can't get used to
the fact that

"...there are no toilets
either inside or out..."

The table is a brown pool
we fishing for thoughts.

We live in this
timeless mirrored moment

as if it is
all the time

that will ever
be.

We listen to the grass
growing.

After this I will never
ever see her again.

Now I stand
in the ruin of this house

as if time has
broken down

her voice all sunlight
and birds

"Gee, you
got curls

...just like a girl's!"

stroking my hair
over and over.

I wear her touch
even to this day

like a glorious
flower in my hair

her smile forever
turning into

a kiss.  

*

I was dumbfounded to stand in that room where I drew and talked with Aunt Peggy. Nothing but a ruin now that nature is reclaiming and time is clawing back from the humans. I have very few moments of her but this was the one I remember so well and she was so kind and loving to me. I remember her trying to remember a line of poetry about love and sweetness. Of course now I know it is from George Herbert. So I wrote a poem about that( for me)timeless moment. She had brought me a treasure trove of comics and I was in comic heaven! My favourites MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN...DOCTOR STRANGE...THE PHANTOM.
She came in whilst I was drawing and just talked to me about everything and anything and watched as the drawings emerged. She was so gentle and kind and she smiled and smiled and her smile always turned into a kiss! She wore lovely dresses and talked funny and the lack of toilets was very disturbing to her as it was to me! We were both mortified!

She was amazed I could recite all of THE CREMATION OF SAM MAGEE and Hood's I REMEMBER I REMEMBER without breaking my stride in drawing. This was of course due to my Dad telling me them over and over again...he was my best book!

The quote she was trying to remember was from the last verse of Herbert's second JORDAN POEM from 1633. She made me discover George Herbert just like Nelly turned me on to Aldous Huxley's ISLAND. I just soaked them up like the process of osmosis and there they stay to this very day. I was always weaving "...myself into the sense" of who and why and what things were.

As flames do work and wind when they ascend,
So did I weave myself into the sense.
But while I bustled, I might hear a friend
Whisper, 'How wide is all this long pretence!
There is in love a sweetness ready penned:
Copy out only that, and save expense.'

Flew over to Cork for three days to catch her daughter which was quite wonderful...a river of faces flowing through people. Saw cousins I hadn't seen for over 30 years! And there I was standing in the ruin of this cottage and the room where this tiny moment happened...it all came flooding back...I was drowning in time.

UP IN THE SKY( for W. W. )

Daddy was a pilotman
went to work in the sky
where bombs came from

he went  to bash the bad men
who mashed all the houses up
made big holes in the road

he told me not to be
frightened but I was and
so was teddy

I didn't like the war
it was too noisy and
kept on too long

the world shook
like an invisible giant
stomping on the ground

Mummy always said
never mind
it will be over soon

but it never was
I prayed it was
God wasn't listening

the black out
ate all the light]
teddy kept his eyes shut tight

next door went away
one morning it was
just not there

a milk bottle
stood on a doorstep
that has no house

Daddy went to work
high above the clouds
one day he never came back

Daddy had to stay
up in the sky
Mummy said he lost his way

I still think of him
living up in the sky dead
not able to come home

being dead means
you can't see someone
and they can't see you

the sky was too high
the ground was too low
so he is always up in the air

I was five
when the bombs fell
breaking the world

now I am 65
but the war still lives
on inside my head

I am older than
my daddy
could ever be

I still don't cry because
Daddy said I mustn't
I tell myself I mustn't

teddy doesn't cry because
he lost both his eyes
so he couldn't

that world now
only lives in photographs
Daddy always smiling

"ÇA  PLANE POUR MOI!

You
all that Paris is!

The myth...the magic
the music of being.

Sunlight sifting
through summer leaves.

The dazzled waters
of a morning.

A forgotten orange
on a cobbled street.

Chitter-chatter of
passing Parisians.

A flock of
human birds.

A look-alike Plastic Bertrand
busks Ça Plane Pour Moi!

A crumbling wall shouts
in a strong graffiti voice

"Laisse tomber
c'est pas grave!"

Et dans
Jardin les Tuileries

Madame's tone
scolds and cajoles

"Flick-flac...flick-flac
en dedans en dehors!

Suzanne..sous-sus
sous-sus Suzanne!"

Little children
the puppets of her voice

balance on
their too spindly legs.

Old man lost
in his Tai Chi

grasps sparrow's tail
smiles to his secret self.

These and so much more
grace notes to our loving.

We the present lovers
of lovers gone before

stretching back into time
the ghosts of kisses.

We embody all
that love has been.

I kiss you
in best Bogey style

"At least
we'ill always have

'Ça plane pour moi,
moi, moi, moi, moi,

ça plane pour moi
(Hou-hou-oou-oou!)'

. . .Paris!"

*

The title comes of course from the Plastic Bertrand faux punk hit back in the days of '77 and full of crazy lyrics and mad energy. it is a French idiomatic expression which is best translated as "everything's going well for me" (literally: "it is gliding/sliding for me") or indeed " I like it!".

"That's fine by me "/"Ça plane pour moi"

"AND WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?"

you exist in the space
between breath
and breath

the space between
second
and second

thought
and thought
the interstices of being

this is where
you live
since your dying

between time
and timelessness
between forever and now

hiding you
when Death
comes knocking

"And when did you
last see your father?"
Death demands

I hold my breath
like living underwater
I deny any sight of you

Death leaves as
it arrives
in a rage

claiming
that it
owns you

and so again
I breath you
back to life

live here father
between one second
and the next

between one thought
and the next
the interstices of being

I will not let
Death
own you

THE REVENANT  

"Ha ha!" laughed the photo
in a black and white voice
with the very ghost of me


gazing at the future
I had
now become


it was hard to accept
that this young scallywag was
someone I used to be


indeed
he is a stranger
to the me of now


finding it difficult
to get back
into his head


he was eager
to talk but I wasn't
returning him to the book

he had fallen
out of after
he had been lost for years