78. At Last – All the Wonder of Tapirs

that strangeness
yes, that strangeness
            then this

 
a paradise of sea & boats
– what do we know about this
   & why did it change?

 
circumstances do
come round again
stick w/ the seagulls
& do what you do
improve each day
& improvise
            near the end

 
this is all
such a long way
from where we
thought we’d be

 
all mammals together
why can’t we just
hold on to that?

 
like bubbles
tenderly
         & in wonder
no more

 
don’t you like watching people?
tenderly, tenderly
no gross expectation

 
A solution is seen as desirable and is actually anticipated
but it must come from the collective enterprise of the audience
Umberto Eco, The Open Work, translated Anna Canacogni, (Harvard U.P., 1989), p 11
 

tapire sind komplexe gesellen der sorgfalt.
wie sie so einhergehen auf niedrigen beinen
mit ihren viel zu zierlichen hufen –

Monika Rinck, “disembodiment”, from Verzückte Distanzen (zu Klampen Verlag, Lüneberg, 2004) (sourced from http://www.greatworks.org.uk/poems/awe4.html

 
hold on
when young
let go
when old

 
leave dispute
beyond question
bear us
like time

76. Sometimes Poets Just Wanna Have Fun!

for Martock,  and   everyone   I   knew  there
for Martock,  and   everyone   I   knew  there
up  Martock,  and   everyone   I   knew  there
up  Harlow,   and   everyone   I   knew  there
up  Harlow, though  everyone   I   knew  there
up  Harlow, though everything  I   knew  there
up  Harlow, though everything you  knew  there
up  Harlow, though everything you praise there
up  Harlow, though everything you praise  here
up  Harlow, though everything you praise  here
1

Yes, fish are  glittering &  slippery2
Yes, fish are  glittering &  slippery
But, fish are  glittering &  slippery
But, men  are  glittering &  slippery
But, men shine glittering &  slippery
But, men shine  actually  &  slippery
But, men shine  actually but slippery
But, men shine  actually but remedied
But, men shine  actually but remedied

Cooking  is  what cooking is3
Cooking  is  what cooking is
Peppered is  what cooking is
Peppered has what cooking is
Peppered has how  cooking is
Peppered has how  sloppy  is
Peppered has how  sloppy can
Peppered has how  sloppy can

Let    us  be  thankful for that which   is4
Let    us  be  thankful for that which   is
Leave  us  be  thankful for that which   is
Leave them be  thankful for that which   is
Leave them say thankful for that which   is
Leave them say  tender  for that which   is
Leave them say  tender  as  that which   is
Leave them say  tender  as  this which   is
Leave them say  tender  as  this there   is
Leave them say  tender  as  this there must
Leave them say  tender  as  this there must

So  here it  is  like the debris  of   a   former  world5
So  here it  is  like the  debris of   a   former  world
And here it  is  like the debris  of   a   former  world
And what it  is  like the debris  of   a   former  world
And what she is  like the debris  of   a   former  world
And what she ate like the debris  of   a   former  world
And what she ate was  the debris  of   a   former  world
And what she ate was  my  debris  of   a   former  world
And what she ate was  my migrants of   a   former  world
And what she ate was  my migrants off  a   former  world
And what she ate was  my migrants off your former  world
And what she ate was  my migrants off your fertile world
And what she ate was  my migrants off your fertile   mud
And what she ate was  my migrants off your fertile   mud

[Though eating mackerel  reminds me somehow of childhood
 Though eating mackerel  reminds me somehow of childhood
 For    eating mackerel  reminds me somehow of childhood
 For    ending mackerel  reminds me somehow of childhood
 For    ending congeries reminds me somehow of childhood
 For    ending congeries abased  me somehow of childhood
 For    ending congeries abased you somehow of childhood
 For    ending congeries abased you always  of childhood
 For    ending congeries abased you always  in childhood
 For    ending congeries abased you always  in    nutmeg
 For    ending congeries abased you always  in    nutmeg]
6

 

 

1 human intellect

 

 

2 Nothing

 

 

3 this supreme experience

 

 

4 the reality of his intellect

 

 

5 when he returns from such contemplation

 

 

6 full of divine and inflowing splendour

75. A Recipe for Smoked Mackerel on Cabbage

for Martock, and everyone I knew there (and at Yeovil Grammar School – though how I rejoice that institution has long been totally dismantled!)

Yes, fish are glittering & slippery
always leave me a little unsure
but here my imperfect grasp is remedied
through already processed product which
cook themselves up minimally problematically
& remind me always of the mackerel men
selling the catch off the backs of lorries
straight up from West Bay1
the nearest bit of coast due South to Martock
so holidays there meant a caravan by West Bay’s shingle2
& this isn’t how anyone ever ate in Martock anyway
grilled or fried with potatoes & peas or boiled cabbage
which you don’t need me to tell you how to make
but this dish much more full of divine & inflowing splendour

Cooking is what cooking is
and what food is has everything
to do with the infilling of imaginary’s belly3
as pragmatic a reason as possible please
so make whatever approximation you would like
it’ll be true as anything else: 4 or so smoked mackerel fillets
                                – peppered is great
                                an onion (or half)
                                a carrot (or half)
                                some mushrooms
                                white cabbage
                                              a fair amount
                                              all split into shards
                                (or you can veer from
                                the type & bastard mix
                                always good – nice
                                pointed spring cabbage yes
                                and some greens
                                                even kale
                                                not any savoy
                                – misguided & a fault I find)4
                                a little marrow
                                                or courgette5
                                a pepper green & shiny
                                maybe some peas
                                and some things lighter also
                                                        watercress
                                                        broccoli sprouts
                                                        or chard
                                                        even lettuce
                                plus added to all these
                                                        ground pepper
                                maybe some chillies
                                or your favourite chilli sauce
                                important the fish sauce of Vietnam
                                & a little soy a must

Let us be thankful for that which is
& whatever congeries of vegetables have come through
reverberating endlessly
sliced finely to hand
                      – except those you’ll use softly
                        as a bed above the rest
then fry up the onions, carrots
                                & the chillies
                                (if you like
& add in the cut up vegetables
all within a large & heavy pan
let them begin to work & season now
w/ a bit of pepper & a little soy & added too
a useful splash of fishy sauce
then cover for a little
say 10 minutes or more
& like a melting glacier rich juices begin to form beneath
drop on your soft bed of more tender leaves or shoots
& add the mackerel after them
                              then cover again
you can leave it be on a lower heat
for half an hour or less – no
                              fashionably wilted greens but
a thick & mixed up British mud of vegetable & liquor
serve this lovely stodginess with rice
                                       – it’s nice!
                                       (still we are children in some kind

So here it is like the debris of a former world
recast as something newer, dark & nutritious
food like compost to nourish up your belly
leaving you heavy but full of fertile vigour

[Though eating mackerel reminds me somehow of childhood, we actually rarely ate them – I think my mother, East London middle-class, was a little uneasy about fish sold off of lorries on the village street. But, she’d approve the nourishment & all the vegetables. The recipe was suggested to me again by Ginie (& it’s like a Chinese hotpot dish6), but ending up usually played out this way (depending on what material there is). It is a matter of inhabiting, in the food, and in the writing, what actually you do inhabit, and inhabiting it fully, even down to the dark rich lower depths that are what we spring from & must return to. Not Dorset shingle, but Somerset mud. Not purified origins, but that appalling multitextual sea we drift on.]

 

 

1 now chichi incomer artisanal Dorset – Café Surf at last

 

 

2 the alternative was Burnham mud

 

 

3 thus making it constant & real. And, yes, Keston, we are what we ate – are you not a materialist, then?

 

 

4 steam it & it’s delicious – serve buttered (w/ a little nutmeg & lemon juice also, plus pepper)

 

 

5 a mock-heroic marrow – either adds a little added substance like sweet stodginess

 

 

6 hmm – might work well with glass noodles included? – & preserved radish, yes

71. A Poetry That Allows the Broadcast Now

Our lives here a disordered commonplace
                         – so let it be
what we must do unapparent & compulsive
                         – these are the cunningest things

but need met mud then something grew
                         – look, keeping moving balance with
the wider world, those relics of that green one
                         – once mutually sustaining

yes we are born with its memories still
                         – even here, the 3rd millennium
oh what a hopeless mess, a buzzy smog
                         – so let it all go

sometimes overwhelmed by nostalgia for birthrights
                         – we grow new things
constant creation our means of transformation
                         – so I here miswrite

we & all of us inside the fading of our failure
                         – live out each slow day
light playing no matter how greyly
                         – never halting what must be

70. Enochian Translation #2

Enochian Translation #2

for Holly Pester1

Our lives are all lived out in this city now
everything here where we have made it thus be
what we must do is work together making it so much better
not richer nor fuller of the cunningest things

but need met for everyone truly &
with this city in quick moving balance with
the wider world it is all set within and
intercommensal with, now mutually sustains us

yes, welcome all my dear friends now
here our anthropocene third millennium
oh what a dream it was, some half-mad fantasy
in fact if anything’s different we all go

sometimes it tells us & sometimes demonstrates process
how life held in balance depends always on new things
constant creation recreation, fresh meaning dropping
sometimes springing as we misread, else here miswrite

we & this are all fragments or bubbles
inside we are empty & vanishing thru every slow day
light playing across & within us most beautiful
inside intermeshing contingency against what must be

 

 

1 “A poetry that allows for the noise of the system, or the scruff, to be the instigator of a work is surely intermedial – even if, in its eventual transmission, it is just voice and paper: systems that broadcast the voice and voice the broadcast.” Holly Pester, “New Definitions for Intermedia”, Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry Vol 3, No 2 (September 2011): Special Issue; The Greenwich Cross-Genre Festival (14-16 July 2010), p 94. Cf “As I worked through the text [Claude E. Shannon & Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Univ of Illinois Press, 1949)], I began to realise that ‘noise’ in a communications channel, whatever the intention of the originator, is something very like the artwork itself, introducing a high level of uncertainty and thus an extraordinary amount of information into the perception or reception of the work. Information is, of course, different from meaning (gibberish has a high information content), but it is the possibility that meaning(s) arrive in the clutter of uncertainties that makes things interesting.” Richard Deacon, “How I Learnt to See”, Tate Etc. 30 (Spring 2014), p 36