A Book of Lives Read online

  Step by step, rocking from side to side,

  they reached their appointed places.

  Everyone knows that, I was told.

  It was evening now, evening of what some would call

  Easter Sunday. I climbed a hill near the coast,

  gazing across those vast waters not vaster

  than tracts of mind new-visited and glittering.

  On the horizon, the first ship from Europe:

  trinkets, missionaries, trousers, smallpox, guns.

  The Lisbon Earthquake

  (1755 AD)

  A continent’s western edge, high ships in harbour,

  huge harbour it was too, a haven for all,

  a hallowed circle for that All Saints’ Day

  of a still, half-gold, half-sombre November:

  the bells clashed and clamoured, the churches were packed,

  the candles were packed thick as forests, the voices

  packed themselves into trembling glades of praise.

  I watched it all, watched the end of it all.

  The earth dreams like a dog in a basket,

  twitching; it likes to show it is alive.

  At the first tremor, people look at each other,

  they are not fools, they know what is happening,

  but with no more warning than a crash

  the sculptured roofs fell on the worshippers,

  leaving a squirm of screams, blood, blazing wax.

  Those who could run, ran, ran to the sea

  to save them, but save them it could not:

  it rose in a wall of water, a wave of waves

  that roiled and howled and brought a great drowning,

  mantillas, black suits, copes of purple, swaddling-clothes.

  That was a fado

  singing, fading.

  I heard it in the wailing of the wounded.

  It rose like smoke from fires that would rage for days.

  It tore the Enlightenment to tatters.

  It made philosophers of men on stumps.

  I saw a small crowd and spoke to them.

  Throw away your candles, I said. It’s a new age.

  Study the earth. Listen to its plates grinding.

  Power is yours, not up there – I pointed –

  you have a long trek, and tears, but

  it is your own trek, your own tears,

  you must never freeze-frame your fears.

  Clear the rubble. Mourn the missing.

  Keep one ruin for remembrance sake.

  Tell old Tagus a new Troy is at stake!

  A woman nodded, took flowers, strode ahead.

  It was November First, the Day of the Dead.

  Darwin in the Galapagos

  (1835 AD)

  It was a cool day for the equator

  as I clambered whistling over the clinker.

  Clouds had brought a shower across the shore.

  Grey black scoured and pitted rocks

  glistened, and so did an iguana

  eyeing me lazily with its wet crest bristling.

  I saw the drag-marks of a giant tortoise –

  what a dogged message thrusting into the thicket!

  And the air was bright with birds, well, bright and dark –

  green, brown, yellow – little birds, finches

  flirting their few inches, drenching the freshness

  with a spray of chatter and chirm, with a charm

  peculiar to these islands, these Incantadas

  I met a young man in a floppy hat

  who stopped and smiled; he too had charm.

  ‘My finches,’ he said, ‘you are watching my finches.’

  We sat on an old stump, I cherish the moment.

  A man both ingenuous and ingenious,

  a genius indeed, enthusiastic, shy,

  well no, not really shy, but modest,

  that was a type I could talk to for ever.

  ‘These finches – all different,’ he said.

  ‘They have become separate species, and why is that?

  They had some ancestor in Ecuador

  but here their beaks have changed to match their food –

  small seeds, big seeds, nectar, and do you know

  there is one that makes a tool of cactus spines

  to ferret grubs from tree-cracks? Oh

  I can hardly sleep for excitement!

  Nothing is immutable, life changes, we evolve.

  Process is gorgeous, is it not!

  Process is progress, don’t you see!’

  He taps my arm, his eyes shine. I agree.

  Time breaks in great waves as we speak.

  And look, a finch on the back of a tortoise

  as if it had been listening

  lifts its beak and begins a singing

  so piercing it gives no end to that beginning.

  Rimbaud

  (1891 AD)

  A wheezing fan hardly disturbed the flies.

  A crutch stood in the corner. Hoots from the harbour

  brought Marseilles into a stifling hospital

  where the gaunt drugged gun-runner lay

  sweating and groaning with his bandaged stump

  staining the sheets as he muttered and turned.

  I listened. I knew who he was.

  This dying trader had once been a poet.

  Can you once be a poet, and live? Well, can you?

  I wanted to swim in his delirium.

  I did, I did swim in his delirium.

  ‘ – ten thousand rifles, they were all stacked

  but I was swindled, Abyssinia swindled me,

  is it slaves next, or stick to tusks and spices,

  I can still ride the sands, trafficking trafficking,

  get to the gulf, the sea, the green, oh my thirst,

  I cannot drink, Venus with her green eyes

  is rising from a green copper bath,

  she is bald, larded, ulcered, she is dripping

  with verdigris and I am thirsty I want I want

  absinth, absomphe, my green, my demon, my dear,

  and I am hungry but all I scrunch is coal and iron,

  I even scrunch walls I am such a monster,

  Djami, Djami, what sort of boy are you,

  bring me my pipe, where is my white shirt,

  you must not laugh at my grey hairs,

  Paul, come back, I shall be good,

  do you really believe you can ever

  find anyone better to live with,

  I shall jump on you, we shall roll together,

  Paul, I need you, I love you,

  the pain, this pain, someone is crunching my leg

  in an iron boot, I expect it is God,

  what are we born for, write poetry, nah – ’

  A wave of traffic broke loudly outside.

  I wanted a wave of the sea, real air, gulls.

  I left the sick smell and the old young man.

  Poetry burned in him like radium.

  The Siege of Leningrad

  (1941–1944 AD)

  Enormous icy Ladoga, lake for giants,

  cracked quietly in the fog and under the cracks

  artillery threw across a whistling darkness.

  I hunched into my furs, made for the city.

  On the outskirts, black figures crouched

  to scoop up water from broken pipes

  below the snow. Over the snow

  sledges loaded with the dead

  were dragged by the half-dead.

  A gaunt dog slunk near. Bury them quick!

  Hunger is in his ribs and he cannot howl

  but he can eat! The millions besieged

  can eat, five ounces of bread a day,

  two glasses of hot water, a rat if caught,

  then gnaw some leather, wrap in rugs,

  wait for the droning overhead.

  Music: what was that! I passed a hall,

  peered in: huddled crowd, breath, baton,

  dim flash of brass. Crashes of Sho
stakovich

  crushed the frost and raced through the blood.

  How could those hearts ever surrender?

  Pinched noses and grey flesh, all right; they starved;

  starved, thousands; but kept schools open,

  hospitals, factories, pipeline under Ladoga,

  Peter the Great’s children, yes, Lenin’s children,

  say what you will, they held the line. They live

  in the memory of poets and of those far ones

  like myself who visit everything

  but do not always stand in awe like this

  as shells shriek through the innocent flakes

  and print the north in blood.

  I watched

  wave after wave of bombers darken the sky.

  That night the great observatory was hit.

  The eye of Pulkovo searching for Barnard’s Star

  went blind as the lake its frozen companion

  that guarded it and was guarded by it –

  until the pain should be melted and the people

  sing in the harmless moon of their white nights.

  The Sputnik’s Tale

  (1957 AD)

  One day, as I was idling above the earth,

  an unexpected glint caught my eye,

  whizzing silver, a perky sphere with prongs.

  I knew it was time for such things to appear

  but this was the first: man-made, well-made,

  artificial but a satellite for all that:

  a who-goes-there for the universe!

  I came closer: the gleaming aluminium

  sparkled, hummed, vibrated, its four

  spidery antennas had the spring of the newly created.

  It seemed a merry creature, even cocky.

  It had a voice. I said hello to it.

  ‘Can’t stop,’ it cried. ‘I am in orbit.

  Join me if you want to talk. Beep.

  Travel with me, be the sputnik’s sputnik.’

  I flew alongside. ‘What have you seen?’ I asked.

  ‘Wall of China, useless object that.

  Continents. Tankers. Deltas like pony-tails.

  Collective beep farms everywhere. Oh and

  the earth like a ball, mustn’t forget that,

  proof positive. And a blue glow

  all round it if you like such beep things.’

  ‘You haven’t always been bound in a bit of metal?’

  I asked. ‘Damn sure I beep haven’t,’ he replied,

  colour chasing colour across his surface.

  ‘I was a bard in the barbarous times,

  Widsith the far-traveller. The world was my mead-hall.

  Goths gave me gold. I blossomed in Burgundy.

  I watched Picts prick beep patterns on themselves.

  I sang to Saracens for a sweet supper.

  I shared the floor with a shaman in Finland.

  Good is the giver who helps the harper!’

  ‘I have nothing to give you,’ I said,

  ‘but truth. You have three months to live

  in this orbit, and then you are a cinder.’

  He darkened. ‘You may well be right.’

  But remembering Widsith he flushed into tremulous light.

  ‘We’ll see. Beep. We’ll see. Beep. We’ll see.’

  Woodstock

  (1969 AD)

  How many people can be happy?

  How many people can be peaceful?

  Half a million in that field full of folk

  I counted as I wandered through the morning.

  This was the Catskills, not the Malvern hills,

  but something good was breathing there.

  Was music the magic? A million eyes

  lifted young faces to gantries and amplifiers

  banked like some gigantic stage-set –

  well, a stage-set it was, a self-written play

  rocked in waves of rhythmic clapping,

  whistles, announcements, cheers, planes passing.

  Smokes were smoked and backs were stroked.

  A man died and a child was born.

  Adam and Eve stood naked in a brook.

  I should put this in a book.

  Rain game, oh did it, thunder and mud.

  Put on ponchos, caps, capes!

  Bless and exorcise the flood!

  Navajo rain-chant sweeps the crowd.

  Weather was not the climax though.

  What were we all waiting for?

  When the clouds had passed and the bands

  and songs were ready to be packed away,

  in the unspoken expectation, electric,

  an instrument rose like a dragon,

  a guitar spoke like a dragon.

  Starry and scary was the jangled spangle,

  not blazing with blandishments that banjaxed banner,

  a banshee brandished it in the vanguard.

  When Hendrix plucked, it was the mane of a lion.

  His fingers did the work of several hands.

  But through the growling and through the whining,

  through the slurring and through the piping,

  through the grovelling and through the soaring,

  the tune kept surfacing

  almost heartbreaking,

  bright and fighting.

  The Twin Towers

  (2001 AD)

  For the Mercantile Exchange and the Commodity Exchange,

  for the Cotton Exchange and the Coffee Exchange,

  for the Market Bar and the Sky Dive,

  for the Windows on the World at the 107th floor,

  for the Miró three-ton tapestry and the Calder stable mobile,

  there was suddenly no more time, my friends,

  there was suddenly no more space.

  For those therein, my dears, for those therein

  it was twisted metal, scalding jet fuel,

  smoke, fire, fear, baffled frenzy.

  I saw it, but you must imagine it.

  Think of those who escaped stumbling down stairwells,

  think of the ones who escaped only into the air,

  leaping hand in hand from highest windows

  to be broken rather than burned: the pity of that.

  Can you think of the pilots too, in the last moments

  of that accurate blaze of impact as the towers loomed –

  were they praying, crying, shouting, silent, counting –

  can you place that final union of flesh, steel, glass

  in the scale of sublimity proper to terror –

  high, is it not high? You must say so!

  The shock-waves were a tocsin for the overweening imperium;

  let them take note, let them think how others live.

  But tall towers may be arrogant, or they may not.

  I shall become very cross – oh yes, I can be –

  if I hear the word Babel. Advocates of lowliness,

  keep off, creep off! There is a soaring thing

  you will never stunt or stamp into the earth.

  Like the broken comb of a geisha girl

  which she has angrily thrown onto the road,

  the ruined shell of half a tower

  stood rakish against the sky

  as if it was the monument it should become,

  to let cascades of fine black hair unbound,

  cascades of unbound weeping, fall

  onto that deadly desolate ground

  for two thousand heads and more

  that never will be found.

  On the Way to Barnard’s Star

  (2300 AD)

  I heard of a stramash in Ophiuchus.

  The constellation, the spreadeagled hero

  clutching his serpent, was pulsing and blushing

  like a giant squid. What was going on?

  I will tell you what was going on.

  Worlds were being lost, were being born.

  I tingled at news of an expedition.

  We were a band bound for Barnard’s Star, />
  the smouldering ruby, second nearest to earth,

  cool, slow-burning, oh it will be around

  long after this sun has run out of helium.

  It had, or was about to have, a planet.

  (Who can say what time is at such distances?)

  We travelled not far off the speed of light –

  six years in our lusty photon-rider

  would take us to the coasts of the red one.

  What did we talk of? What did we not?

  Destiny and will, great darkness and great light,

  the fiery train of knowledge, the pearl of hope.

  Meteors swept past us like battle-shot.

  Clouds of gas were almost forms – almost –

  but there were no gods, and we had good

  blood in our veins, in our good brains,

  and in black places too, in memory,

  it stiffened there, where there was no grace,

  blood, spilt, never to be effaced.

  We drank to the dead. We blessed the unborn.

  The computer blew its extraordinary horn

  to tell us we were arriving, had arrived,

  in bursts, were slowing, were slewing

  past the dull red glow of Barnard’s Star

  down to its planet, slowly, in blurts,

  landing at last on waves of grass.

  Like glass

  the green blades never waved, a river

  in the distance shone but never ran,

  laburnum – it was not laburnum –

  dropped hard gold. The powerless stillness

  was waiting. Help it. ‘Open the hatch,’ I said.

  Valentine Weather

  Kiss me with rain on your eyelashes,

  come on, let us sway together,

  under the trees, and to hell with thunder.

  Three Songs

  The Red Coat

  Cross the river in the rain

  Can things ever be the same

  Get the heart to tell the brain

  Take your red coat like a lantern

  Fly in front to damn the phantom

  White not black your only magic

  Sing out when you reach the wood

  Is this where the angel stood?

  Is there a word, is there a mood?