90. In the Parental Voice

(Florence Walk, Bishops Stortford, August 4, 2014)

little noisy children here
                           hey stop that shouting!
you are all like bubbles
                         – right?
                                  OK?
then I’ll be back
                  OK then too?
monkey! monkey!
                you’re a monkey too
just
     a little one

 
here come more children
                        passing thru
have a good day tomorrow
                         & say goodbye to Charlie
was that Paulina?
                  or maybe a Sarah
the one
       we used to know?
the process
           falls quiet
                       now

 
well, that
           quick visit to the loo alright
this place
           needs noise now
I stress this
              it’s black
the little bag
               the little shop
bright jewels
              white bread
I’d better
           go the Jackson Square
Florence Walk
              is dead
hullo?
       are you alright?

 
it was
       the little boy’s phone
his brain rots
               rustle! rustle! squelch!
under a cold
             luminous dome
we just
        walk by

 
thank you
          this is a start again
turn out
         then scoff
that was
         love
              ly
pleasure drops
               greatly
                       & infrequently

 
so much
        I must use
thank you
          so much!
simple & sure
              uncomplicated alchemy
beautifully composed
                     on noblest bards
                     utopian princesses
I’d be happy
             I’d embrace
oh, tapirs then
                bring me one
bring me lots
              – they eat
all the kids’ phones
                     all at once
that’s what we use
                   doing the Florence Walk
only the world dreams
                      utopian
hope lurking
             in unrented shops
an insipid ghost
                 worthless &
unridiculous
             at best
schneugh! schneugh!
                    let the tapirs rummage
no place else today

85. 3 Poems Answering Possible Questions with Fresh Structures of Feeling & Sensation, and the Assistance of Mr Prynne

• oh – all these memories
                 debris after Lynmouth

                 that was a warning

                                    deliberate mistake?
                                    the Torridge
                                    pretty good, yeah
                                    pretty much
                                                proper country yet

     my father defending it
     during the War
     centre for landing craft
                amphibious assaults1
                entire craft
                lost on the bar
                                thank you
                yankee knowhow

hence we returned
then to Bideford Fair
fire eaters & boxing booths
tigers on posters
how do I know
except what I dream
              – sights
                shining like mackerel
                glorious to engage with
                (when you’re all grown up
                after the dark
                one day to return to

 
• all this
imperfect recall
                 you can’t
                 go there after

                 but perfect
                 conceptions:

                 ah, Jeremy
                 so the night-time:

                 with our eyes closed
                 things come together
                             then happen:

                             sparks & lights
                             veering wildly
                                            burst up

did I see fireworks?
                     do you?

                     a level of abstraction
                  is a level of deprivation

                     what you see
                  is what you are2

 
• lost on the sands at Westward Ho!
                                    again
                                    everyone called Peter
                                    smile and
                                    know nothing

what do you find?
                   dark & dirty
                   muddy depths
                   below it all
                   patches of oil
                   muck &
                   mingled decay

where do we go when we die?

                             can’t be Broadstairs anymore
                             too narrow a path up anyway
                             always traffic jams at the gate

                             just empty drifting
                             down depthward
                             minimal hold

                                           think how slow
                                                     it is
                                                     to be a bubble
                                                     burst

                             down depthward
                             what colour? 3

 

 

1 Remember the armoured ducks?

 

 

2 “natural language itself is generically conceptualised in relation to ‘what there is’, whether ‘real’ or not, elastic in upward dimensionality, almost indefinitely so; and this is especially true of poetic discourse constructions. Within such territory, often separated from lower levels by ascription as ‘in imagination’ or ‘sublime’, an arbitrary text-lexicon can be converted into a distinct vocabulary, and improvised rules for following a narrative or a performance can be formed by modification of lower-order practice, or can be newly invented in their own right.” J.H. Prynne, Concepts and Conception in Poetry (Critical Documents, 2014), p 15

 

 

3 Elastic in downward dimensionality? The poet, like most, wants to go upwards in a burst of light – her or his true path is darkness & destructive transformation. But, you, the reader? Let’s follow Mr Prynne a little further: “A reader may have a demanding task to interpret these ’rules’, but the process may be exhilarating enough to carry the reader forward with strenuous delight: ‘it must give pleasure’ (both Wordsworth and Stevens are agreed upon this).” Prynne, loc.cit. Yes?

52. A Recipe for I Don’t Know What

for someone close to me

Can I really give you this advice
everything hanging in frozen air
great stillness and profound arranging
all this emptiness within
we know one moment it will switch
a full plenary of rain
or the dingy mush when heaven is obscured
but today bright, delicious

OK, well, how can I
except as an other
in a world where what the gods wrote
is a phrase for laughter
& quite rightly not honour
for what the gods are is familiar
as ourselves
             their huge absoluteness
like vast capital letters
to say: this is more than troubled optics
dismal banality of entoptic flux
oh let them then be counters or relics
we shuffle to work out the final sums
our lives suddenly ending up as here

So, they’re contained & quivering
vibrating within this flawed blue bowl
heaped then in holiness
                        children &
                        parents &
                        partners &
                        families &
                        houses &
                        distances &
                        money &
                        its lack and
                        the decay of things
                        their inadequacy
                        & besides
                        the whole nature
                        of rule & control
                        & the point at which
                        what we’ve got is still better
                        than the guys w/ hatchets & big hammers
                        & then too
                        that absolute
                        sense of difference
                        to the world
                        & people
                        we are variously
                        born into

                        I can’t see
                        really
                        your collection
                        I expect
                        I’ve put
                        the ingredients here
                        & then
                        what processes
                        of lives & aging
                        of saying & not saying
                        of meaning & projecting
                        of hoping & of fantasising
                        carried on or rejected
                        the rules are rigorous
                        & I don’t understand them either
                        I think it needs
                        negotiating tenderly
                        as if a dark room
                        approaching the little one
                        & I know
                        you can do this
                        & do it so often
                        that all can be well
                        as the room’s vacuity
                        will surely decay
                        within hazes of nothingness
                        into human love acting

Then, like
it’s starting to bake
let it cohere
around what there is
& who there is
that runs around
laughing with life
believe in this
as your gods
hidden within
this sorry world
to redeem us yourself

[I got this from nowhere but here, and having stood here, all my life.1 I don’t really know what can help you; here is where “hope” and “faith”, like brown and red sauce in an unreconstructed cafe, make the whole mess better is the plan. Somehow & nevertheless these things may work – tenderly, not splurging, never to gain, but to live within & give. Yes?

But nothing is really from nowhere & I did get some of this recipe from Kenneth Rexroth’s poem “A Sword in a Cloud of Light”, from the sequence “The Lights in the Sky Are Stars” (dedicated to his daughter, Mary), The Collected Shorter Poems (New Directions, 1966), p 239 – tho first encountered by me with surprised delight on an A-level English “unseen poem” paper I was teaching.]

 

 

1 To lead on further, through the pressure of the maintaining of the reality of powerfully projected mental forms I’m exploring, as you know, through Dion Fortune, Stortford’s greatest student. Thank you here then too, Dr Theodore Moriarty, and all at The Grange.

5. A Recipe for a Seed Cake

for the memory of my father

Whose favourite cake this was, cuing
yet more stories of army life – just
2 types of cake allowed them, fly & sand
trapped in a real utopian dream
peaceably defending this island from excesses
corrosive & absolute, unlike pleasures
like just baking beautiful cake
an act of trust unfrantic as
what? the coming of blossoms – do it well
for here is what will help:
                            125 g self-raising flour
                            125 g caster sugar
                            125 g butter
                            3 medium eggs
                            1 tsp baking powder
                            2-3 tbsps ground almonds
                            ½-¾ tbsp caraway seeds

Hopeful to begin, cook it in a small loaf tin
buttered & floured (like some inconspicuous blossom here
with a length of greaseproof paper across the long axis
its ends 2 handles to grasp onto
put on then the oven at mark 4 (180º)
and suddenly mix!
                  cream the butter & the sugar
add the eggs, and the flour with all the rest
then beat into a homogeneous batter – yeah, yeah
it’s just that simple
                      (I don’t know my father’s recipe
but I guess this as what he learnt
from his grandmother who brought him up
some basic & memorable recipe
                              spoon it
into the tin & set in the oven for about 40 minutes
use your head & check carefully its progress
protect its tawny head from burning too much
& poke into it the oracular skewer
– you want it warm, moist & crumby
                                   not soggy
and then when it is blossoming – take it out
let it cool as it stands for, oh, 10-15 minutes
& lift out finally with the paper, exposed
like a sudden found piece of poetry
                                    trapped on the wire rack

A good cake for drinking with it good beer
or I thought so at the Oto
                          – tho’ not popular there
I make it now in due & inescapable filial piety
let it go on & be made by whoever so wishes
my grandson baby Neirin if so he decides
something is opened
                    let it carry on
                    if & thus it does

[The recipe is the typical Pound Cake1, using here Jane Grigson’s writing of it down. Another recipe gives more flour & more egg – but this cake seems fine, and fits with my father’s two types of army cake – fly cake, of course, made with dried fruit. And as I said, nothing is as good as this seed cake with a good English beer.]

 
 
 
 

 1 Old Ezra the Baker Poet, that’s a good myth