Sweeney Jim
To Aisha
"There was a time when I thought sweeter than the voice of a lovely woman beside me, to hear at matins the cry of the heath-hen on the moor."
(Irish, 12th C.)
A curlew calls. Sweeney beguiled
Comes crawling, blinking in the light.
Another day. Another winter.
Overhead a wild-goose flight
Starts to call - call - call - call - and he flies with the wild geese,
Flies as he flies when he's spun by the moon,
When he's flung by the wind and whipped by the lightning
Across the bare hills to the Forest of Doune.
Sweeney bewildered, up on Ben Elpin,
Far above the babble and throng,
In sudden sunshine, sudden quiet,
Dreams he hears the Elpensong,
Starts to call - call - call - call - call, and whirls off retracing
The old giants' scatterway down from the shrine,
Torn at by thorns and taunted by chatter-jays
Down towards women and music and wine -
Then stops. Above, the rooks are laughing.
A fox slinks by. He hears a whir
Of woodcock feathers, chews a rams-root,
Falls asleep, and dreams of Her.
* * * * *
When they came for him in the padded van
he took to the woods, they said - "Just ran -
Don't know why - We've got him now -
Little bleeder, he'd soon die
if nobody bothered - do him good!"
They found him lying in a sty
crying on the dugs
of an old sow.
We all adjust as well as we can
to the life imposed on us by God
and Man.
The killer whale that turned and tore
the flank off the marauding shark
was sane - so was the shark - but are
the pig? The hen? The commuter? His kids?
Their horse, their dog, their budgerigar?
There's nothing braver,
nothing more
potentially sane than a calf in the dark
trying to find its feet on a slatted floor.
But to worry about a calf is unwise
say the wise in their wisdom and go on their way
to the bank. Around them, concrete, stark,
new buildings rise, forbidding, shuttered:
poems are muttered,
there's fear in the eyes
of fools who don't do what they do for pay,
and the wise have a contract with Mammon,
the Father of Lies.
My father was one of the fools, but the herd
meant nothing to him, he had never belonged:
he carried on jauntily, head unbowed,
unaffected by the bond
that binds the crowd - the fears and hates,
the pop and soap and opiates -
all deaf to the spirit,
blind to reality,
blind to the beauty they have wronged,
blind in the night to eternity, deaf
to the word.
He lived on Faith - and the belief
that he was something quite unique
kept him going when other men
would have faltered and stopped and turned with a cry
for help, or at least for reassurance -
he never once turned and whimpered "Why?"
or not to my knowledge
(I hardly knew him) ...
He lived on Faith, a healer, a freak,
the cause of his own - and many others' - griefs.
He had several women as well as three wives
and must have considered being at stud
compatible with his personal creed
for I don't know the names of half the buds
he sired as the sea does weed
in the spring-time of
a generation:
I was born upon that flood
and washed ashore to live
one of those lives.
Off with the mud and on with the uniform,
on with the motley and off with the dreams.
After the mornings and woods and streams
and rabbit hutches and cricket teams,
life comes upon us like a storm -
What do you want to be then, Norm,
when you grow up?
A poet?!
And you, boy? Me, sir? I don't know ...
I like the country more than the town,
I like being out when the rain's pouring down,
I like being dirty and wet and alone,
I'd like being mossy, I'm no rolling stone,
I love the moon,
love frost and snow -
Can I - oh can I - be a scarecrow?
*****
Since metamorphosis I have lost
and loved and married and lost again
and been a hero on the booze
and held a job since AD 10 -
I just couldn't afford to lose
that job though I lost
my prime and my pride -
I learnt the life of a battery-hen:
I had to keep laying eggs no matter what it cost.
A fool and his wife are soon parted.
A lovely white wedding, a little white lie,
a way of life no sooner started
than a smile, a sudden sigh
severs them like a surgeon's knife:
a smile, a sigh,
or less than that - nothing,
a slit in a skirt, a glimpse of thigh -
enough, enough, God knows, for some to end up
broken-hearted.
A fool does not grow old and wise,
he just grows older - (Goes on dreaming!
cries his wife, wise now, and strong,
Come back! Come back! I would I might -
You can! You're suffering! Come back!
I sing all day and sing all night
paraesthetised - You fool! Your song's
a song of youth, it's done! You need
your home and me!)
Like the sea
my heart seemed silent but was teeming:
you taught it how to sing with
your eyes.
"Like shit," says Barker, elegantly,
seeing the muck beneath the flower -
and so say I, who see the flower
picked and propped on golden heels
and seeing feel time that steals
from the now of him who kneels ...
Instress occupies
four dimensions,
is individual, hour by hour,
muck or a flower, a poem, or you,
and me.
The You I know is in my mind
and not out there for others to see.
The world around us we perceive
does not reflect reality,
our senses and emotions weave
dreams: I dream
and call it You
but others see you differently:
they do not know the You I love, and foolishly
say love is blind.
Will I visit your grave one day,
or will you one day visit mine?
I should kneel upon the grass
and you would be as now you are
would be as now you are to me
and time would pass, time would pass
and people pausing there would see
an old man, lonely,
smiling, mad -
"Are you all right?" "Yes, yes, I'm fine."
Fine, but tired. And, mumbling, wander away.
Will I visit your grave one day
or will you one day visit mine ... my
North Sea beach, my wind-scoured sky,
pale gold at dawn on grey wave after grey wave after grey wave,
and sitting there and feeling old
pull out a mirror and smile and sigh
for times that were? Ah, you would please
when pleased to do so,
shrug when not
or stare, so foreign and so cold:
a smile when I am in my grave, I pray.
Here lies a man who wasted time,
the time to stand like cows and sheep,
who wasted words, who wrote in rhyme
of He and She, the perfect rhyme,
of You and I - this stanza isn't
gonna work! Smile again!
He sang to one who
smiled and turned away from him
and would not hear what would not keep.
When the muse is deaf, should the poet perform in mime?
(I have tried to live your life
along with you and share your fate
but you go on too long and far
torn by love, worn down by hate,
tormented, in the nearest bar,
a self-inflicted
passion which
I will no longer tolerate:
Go your way but go without
your wife!)
In Kasbah Tadlah lives a witch
who when the moon is shining bright
walks the hilltops bathed in light
wearing not a stitch (they say):
Oh, were I rich (on rock or pop)
I'd hire a Rolls
and pick her up
and be a playboy for the night
though I found myself at dawn lying
in a ditch.
Out in the cold one takes one's love
where one can find it: in a glade
hushed of birdsong, on a beach
at midnight, in a man-made
heaven full of birds and song
blaring, dancing, each to each -
lips part,
clothes slip,
the nymph is tender, free or paid,
the plucked hag scrawny as a wild dove.
In the temple of Aïsis
censers swing and tambours throb
as the holy one, the priestess
enters in her moonlight robe,
then silence as she slips it off
and mounts the altar. Silly stuff.
My temples throb
the barmaid swings
as I approach and with a sob
reel and fall and give the floor
my kiss.
"Red eyes, red nose,
inability to cope ... "
In the ashes spirit flows
like a saltmarsh
bitter, stagnant
unreclaimed, without hope
we wear it on our faces where
it shows.
(If you promise me you'll try
to live as other people do
I'll have you back, you know I will - )
I'd rather hear police at midnight
on the Waterloo Embankment,
rather be hosed down at first light
by the Sanitary Department
keeping London clear of litter,
of fallen angels in Oxfam clothes who
flap their arms and - no, not fly ...
dry in summer,
cry in autumn,
and in winter, die.
Out in the cold we take love neat
and then pass on: we fear the block,
the hammer of the auctioneer,
the price, the ring, the chain, the lock -
but still are little boys who peer
into the eyes
we knew of old
at night, laid out upon a rock
with nails through our hands and through
our feet.
At the Marriage of Heaven and Hell
the Best (nay, only) Man was Blake
(apart from Prévert, who witnessed it all) -
he was very correct and completely nake-
ed except that he kept his hat on his head
because the spirit, the holy spirit
of contradiction was up there in it.
When anyone asked, Spirit, are you there?
the bird with a slow sweet smile said, No.
Je suis comme je suis,
je suis là pour vous plaire,
so don't try to change me, love me, take
the Golden Apple. Only Adam fell.
(But what's this palace that I see
raised up where once we had our life?
And who this queen revealed in silk
with diamond eyes and platinum nails
and skin as soft as ass's milk?
The goddess pales
in the sky
when you arise, my love, my wife -
and naturally I realise where I should be.)
(What? You alive and kicking still?
The callous bitch. I pity you,
but it's too late - this life I share
with my new husband, Mr Rich,
is my new life ... Just look at you -
stripped and shorn of all disguise
but mud and dung and blood and hair,
the animal shame that haunts your eyes
lays your eco-status bare -
no, stay out there!
Your bed's the ditch -
naturally there's a niche
for you as well as one for me
to fill.)
Man is so unspecialised
that he quite easily adapts
to niches ecological
that he has emptied or created:
sometimes minor surgical
adjustments are necessitated,
sometimes not:
wild jims
pursued by baying hounds collapse
quite softly, sobbing, trembling,
tenderised.
When I am mad, I mean madder than now,
and no longer care about clothes and money,
or teeth, or chances lost and gone,
or meaning in the verse I spout,
seeing the river as wholly one -
oh when my hair's all fallen out -
will they catch me
and take me in
and tame me a little but keep me funny?
Will they make me wait upon
the Great White Sow?
Mr and Mrs Rich took pity
and gave him some trousers and gave him a hat
and put a cross up in the garden
and put a jacket onto that
and put his arms
in the arms of the jacket
and birds came flying from everywhere and sat
on his arms and on his hat and made the lot
all shitty.
Well, it's only excrement.
Possibly it's good for one -
nature's economical -
and standing in the rain and sun
on Mother Earth, barefoot, undone,
replenishing, umbilical.
Biblical even: the eyes of one crying
in the vegetable plot gaze in, see the wine and the bread
being felt for and eaten while watching the telly,
the God of the Cross and the Road and the Vine
(the God with nowhere to lay his head)
being comfily tented in the belly
with far less thought
than swine at the trough:
Back to the woods and dung, O Man!
Repent!
*****
I have knelt with monks by candle-light
and watched the flickering light upon Christ's face,
have whispered "Eucharisto" in the night;
been tempted and, as in that desert place,
said, "You're offering nothing,
nothing of value," then
enjoyed the offer when the sun was bright;
have known that we were born to meet - oh yes,
to meet again once more - been right, perhaps ...
have wandered naked in that desert place
wanting for nothing,
wanting nobody, but
well, I have held a heath-hen, I
have heard the lapwing cry at dawn:
there's less.
* * * * *
Still in the high-tops the rooks are guffawing,
Still all around him things rustle with glee as
He shifts in his sleep and curses the universe,
Curses the goddess who won't let him be.
Sleeps and dreams and wakes up smiling,
Sees stars paling in the sky,
Hears a rock thrush sing the night out,
Hears a seagull call nearby -
Calling him, calling him - out of the bushes he
Runs down the dune, plunges into the sea and
Screams at the goddess who singled him out for this
Look! I'm alive! I am me! An - swer - me !
Tí théleis? Apothaneîn théleis?
Do you want to die? Do you?
