A Book of Lives Read online

  It’s wet but I can see you still

  Drops like snails on the window-sill

  Tracks of love nothing can kill.

  Knock at the Door

  Run – run – don’t wait –

  Who wants to be late

  If love is at the gate –

  An asteroid’s might

  Knocking on the door of night

  Could be the end, yes it might –

  But just be ready

  Steady or unsteady

  Step light or heavy

  Bang back the shutters

  Swish back the curtains

  Welcoming – utterly –

  The Good Years

  Wherever you are

  You shall be my star

  Flashing near or smouldering far

  I am happy when I bask

  In your light, all I ask

  Is that you may bask

  In mine and hear the sound

  Of every salty fount

  Fresh as fresh is found

  Singing without tears

  Clinging without fears

  These the good years

  Old Gorbals

  Old Gorbals in his long black coat

  muttered and stalked from room to room.

  He kicked up dust, dead flies, newspapers,

  a crumpled envelope or two.

  There was no news, there was no message

  in the stillness, no cat, no dog,

  no voice to his ‘Anybody there?’

  Of course not, they’ve all gone, gone where?

  He’ll never know, the thread is snapped

  that he held fiercely all these years.

  He shakes his head, crosses a window

  like a shadow. There was so much life!

  He can’t believe it has disappeared:

  he hears the children running, shrieking,

  sees the TVs glowing blue,

  marvels at the rows, the language,

  crash of bottles, slam of doors,

  car-doors too, oh yes, look down

  at taxi after taxi, all piled full

  with the raucous hopes of a Saturday.

  The lamplight in the street looked up

  at many windows bright at midnight,

  and even when curtains were snatched tight

  you felt hearts beating and lips meeting

  as private twenty storeys up

  as in any cottage by the sea.

  Old Gorbals flicked dust from his sleeve,

  sighed a bit and swore a bit,

  made for the stairs, out, looked back

  at the grand tower, gave a growl,

  and in a spirit of something or other

  sprayed a wall with DONT FORGET.

  1955 – A Recollection

  First there was one,

  then there were two,

  now there is one,

  when will there be none?

  Step down slowly,

  down into the cold,

  old cold, eternal cold,

  refrigerated cold,

  with grim stiff guards

  every few feet

  even in their greatcoats

  cold, cold –

  our shuffling queue

  silent, shivering,

  awed a little,

  believers and unbelievers

  circling a shrine,

  curious, peering,

  cameras forbidden,

  eyes and brain

  fixing images

  that startle, frighten,

  fascinate finally –

  the two undead

  laid side by side,

  Lenin yellowing,

  showing his years,

  Stalin still rosy

  as if lightly sleeping –

  the strangest tableau

  you are likely to see

  this side of the grave.

  I pour the amber

  of a poem over it.

  First there was one,

  then there were two,

  now there is one,

  when will there be none?

  My First Octopus

  ‘What’s good? What’s special?’ I asked the waiter

  swaying expertly along the corridor

  of the Istanbul-Ankara express.

  His black moustache and merry black eyes

  were voluble: ‘Oc’pus today, you try.

  Not Greek oc’pus like rubber,

  real Turkish, you see our wrestlers,

  they strong, they live on oc’pus.’

  ‘OK I’ll try it.’ And I must say

  the strips were soft and succulent,

  soused in herbs and butter, yes sir.

  A good tip, and back to my window-watching.

  Two hours later, I felt the octopus

  uncurling, sending me messages.

  The toilet was a hole in the floor.

  Squatting at sixty is not so easy

  but I got down, Moses, I got down.

  Would I ever get up again?

  I could see the headlines: FOREIGN POET

  FREED BY FIREMEN AFTER BEING STUCK

  IN TOILET-HOLE. Hilarious.

  But all was well. Will-power

  pushed me to my feet, and soon

  we were roaring down to Ankara,

  leaving a little oc’pus deposit

  for whatever birds and beasts come sniffing

  along the tracks to see what’s discarded

  by the majestic hunkers of humanity.

  Boethius

  ‘Even the thrush, garrulous among the trees,

  Caught and caged, and cosseted to please

  A room of folk, regaled with frisky seeds,

  Bells, mirrors, all the honey it needs,

  Twinkling fingers, voices cooing it to sing,

  If once through the windows the winds should bring

  Shifting shadows of leaves, O how it rages,

  It scatters the well-meant seeds, nothing assuages

  Its longing for the wild woods and the sky,

  Nothing can stop its cry,

  And yet the kindly jailers wonder why.’

  Silvas dulci voce susurrat. So wrote

  Boethius, caged in Pavia,

  how many years, in chains,

  ex-senator, ex-orator, ex-everything,

  dignities and dignity swiped off,

  tears not wiped off,

  groaning alone unheard

  by Theodoric on his throne.

  Grim in iron or gold or in iron and gold

  Gothic kings will not be told

  how to rule Rome. Romans

  will not pack senates; Goths will.

  Boethius, you stub your toe on iron.

  You have stumbled into displeasure.

  Fate must fulfil.

  Take a cell, a shirt, a pen. Amen.

  Not quite amen.

  They gave him chains, they gave him pain.

  But in candled darkness he wrote a book

  to question fate, to challenge desolation.

  Spiteless, Christless, working through

  to a ‘Yes’ at last, in his late late Latin,

  it gave a god a labyrinthine chance

  to make a case for present suffering,

  eternal sufferance. We look askance

  at its title, The Consolation of Philosophy.

  That was a bravado to pique Theodoric.

  Theodoric the Great was out of patience.

  Theodoric had not heard of judicial murder

  but used it well, issued his order

  for a little torture, then execution.

  There is no such thing as philosophy.

  There is no such thing as consolation.

  Tyrants have lapis lazuli and porphyry.

  Prisoners, the iron and gold of indignation.

  Charles V

  Your roughest robe, your roughest rope,

  give me, invest me, gird me close.

  Shave my head, and give me bread,<
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  a little bread, a little water.

  Show me my cell and damp may it be.

  If there is sacking, I’ll sleep on that.

  If there is not, I’ll sleep on stone.

  Good monks, if I should sleep too long,

  beat me awake. Let truth be known,

  I am suppliant who had a throne,

  a thousand suppliants of my own.

  I blaze with emeralds in my belt,

  I strutted in an ermine stole,

  I flashed my crown in Bologna town.

  The Holy Roman Empire was mine,

  Loyola up and Luther down.

  I had all Europe at my feet

  a while, a while.

  All’s gone, all’s done.

  Cold slabs are at my feet. Bolts clang.

  Empire of universal dreams,

  Austria to America,

  you are no more than the mirage

  I saw in Africa, when Tunis shimmered

  into Rome, and both into the dark.

  Oscar Wilde

  Up with their skirts, pointing, hooting,

  oh yes, and one or two were spitting,

  triumphalism of the whores,

  rival of the flesh seen safely off

  into the blue arms of the law –

  that was not my favourite pavement.

  Some saw it only as fair payment,

  settling of accounts with decency.

  Decent, indecent, who knows what that is?

  A tin slittering the floor of the cell

  with a whole night’s pish from five to five?

  A cold plank bed, a bowl of skilly?

  How about a day’s treadmilling,

  a decent six hours to crack the muscles?

  Decently dressed in the broad arrows

  of humiliation, you cannot go wrong,

  can you? go far, go back, can you?

  Insomnia? Think about your sins.

  Diarrhoea? You are full of shit.

  I am thin, I am melancholy.

  What is that light? I am squirming

  like a pinned butterfly, still alive.

  A visitor from France? I’m here,

  humilié et anéanti. I am here.

  Hirohito

  Face? Lost face? What face? What loss?

  Divine wind cannot kamikaze

  emperors. Our face is in the stars.

  If I am not divine, I am nothing.

  I acted rightly, lord of these islands,

  chastened China, pounded Pearl Harbor,

  took all prisoners to be cowards, treated them

  accordingly. To fear me was correct,

  oppose impossible. I see no honour

  except in Japan. I and honour rule.

  What honour’s in a mushroom cloud?

  Honourable atom men, no thank you.

  They, not we, are the yellow ones.

  Safe in their droning planes they go

  to hell.

  What’s in that document?

  Surrender? Never. Barbarians

  east and west, clumsy white ones,

  lords of nothing. What is that voice?

  Kowtow? Fools, I am not Chinese.

  – Kowtow! – Never! – It is the end of the line.

  It is the end of the divine. Hear this.

  You have knees, use them. Go down.

  Forget your honour, save your life.

  Kowtow. Sign! – Give me the pen.

  New Times

  Wave back, but they miss the mark.

  Bended knee and corgi’s bark

  Peering north through churning dark

  Will never cut it, now or finally.

  So give us leave to build our highway

  Which you may think is but a byway

  But it is not. The general will

  Is patient but asks us to fulfil

  A fate that like a rugged hill

  Is there for all to see; is seen;

  Is acted on; we’re raw, we’re green,

  But what’s to come, not what has been,

  Drives us charged and tingling-new,

  To score our story on the blue,

  Or if it’s dark – still speak true.

  Gorgo and Beau

  GORGO, a cancer cell

  BEAU, a normal cell

  GORGO My old friend Beau, we meet again. How goes it?

  Howzit gaun? Wie geht’s? Ça va? Eh?

  BEAU Same old Gorgo, flashing your credentials:

  Any time, any place, any tongue, any race, you are there.

  It is bad enough doing what you do,

  But to boast about it – why do I talk to you?

  GORGO You talk to me because you find it interesting.

  I am different. I stimulate the brain matter,

  Your mates are virtual clones –

  BEAU – Oh rubbish –

  GORGO You know what I mean. Your paths are laid down.

  Your functions are clear. Your moves are gentlemanly.

  You even know when to die gracefully.

  Nothing is more boring than a well-made body.

  Why should this be? That’s what you don’t know.

  And that is why you want to talk to me.

  BEAU You will never get me to abhor

  A body billions of us have laboured to build up

  Into a fortress of interlocking harmonies.

  GORGO Oh what a high horse! I never said

  ‘Abhorrent’, I said ‘boring’, not the same.

  Take a dinosaur. Go on, take a dinosaur,

  Tons of muscle, rampant killing-machine,

  Lord of the savannahs, roars, roars

  To make all tremble, but no, not anger,

  Not hunger fuels the blast, but pain –

  Look closer, watch that hirpling hip

  That billions of my ancestors have made cancerous,

  Deliciously, maddeningly, eye-catchingly cancerous.

  Not the end of the dinosaurs, I don’t claim that,

  But a tiny intimation of the end

  Of power, function, movement, and the beauty

  That you would say attends such things.

  Dinosaurs on crutches, how about that?

  BEAU You think you can overturn pain with a cartoon?

  GORGO Pain, what is pain? I have never felt it,

  Though I have watched our human hosts give signs –

  A gasp, a groan, a scream – whatever it is,

  They do not like it, and it must be our mission

  To give them more, if we are to prevail.

  But in any case what is so special about pain?

  Your goody-goody human beings, your heroes

  Plunge lobsters into boiling water – whoosh –

  Skin living snakes in eastern restaurants –

  Make flailing blood-baths for whales in the Faroes –

  What nonsense to think it a human prerogative,

  That pain, whatever it is. Not that I myself

  Or my many minions would refuse

  To make a camel cancerous, or a crab

  For that matter! First things first.

  Our empire spreads, with or without pain.

  BEAU Shall I tell you something about suffering?

  Imagine a male cancer ward; morning;

  Curtains are swished back, urine bottles emptied,

  Medications laid out. ‘Another day, another dollar’

  A voice comes between farts. Then a dance:

  Chemo man gathers up his jingling stand

  Of tubes and chemicals, embraces it, jigs with it,

  ‘Do you come here often?’, unplug, plug in,

  Unplug, plug in, bed to toilet and back,

  Hoping to be safe again with unblocked drip.

  Afternoon: chemo man hunched on bed

  Vomiting into his cardboard bowl, and I mean vomiting,

  Retching and retching until he feels in his exhaustion

  His very insides are coming out. Well,

  That�
��s normal. Rest, get some sleep.

  It’s midnight now: out of the silent darkness

  A woman’s sobs and cries, so many sobs,

  Such terrible cries; for her dying husband

  She arrived too late, she held a cold hand.

  The nurses stroked her, whispered to her,

  Hugged her tight, in their practised arms.

  But they could not console her,

  She was not to be consoled,

  She was inconsolable.

  The ward lay awake, listening, fearful, impotent,

  Thinking of death, that death, their own death to come

  The sobbing ended; time for sleep, and nightmares.

  GORGO Well now that’s very touching I’m sure,

  But let me open up this discussion.

  I was flying over Africa recently

  To see how my cells were doing, and while you

  Were mooning over the death of one sick man

  Lying well cared for in a hospital bed,

  I saw thousands, hundreds of thousands

  Massacred or mutilated, hands cut off,

  Noses, ears, and not a cancer cell in sight.

  Oh you bleeding hearts are such hypocrites!

  BEAU Gorgo, you cannot multiply suffering in that way.

  Each one of us is a world, and when its light goes out

  It is right to mourn. And if the cause is known,

  That you and your claws were scuttling through the flesh,

  I call you to account. What are you up to?

  Don’t tell me you care about Africa.

  Don’t you want more wards, more weeping widows?

  GORGO I want to knock you out, you and your miserable cohorts.

  I want power. I am power-mad. No I’m not.

  That’s a figure of speech. I am not repeat not

  Mad, but calculating and manipulative.

  I am not at the mercy of blind forces.

  You may think I am, but it is not so.

  Consider: a tidy clump of my cells,

  A millimetre long, a stupid mini-tumour,

  Is stuck because it cannot reach its food,

  It’s lazy, dormant, useless and I can’t stand