The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1928, 6*, arms, Atlantic City, beauty, being, black, blue, candle, cheek, city, colour, communication, daisies, dress, ears, eyes, fingers, glass, green, grey, hair, hands, hips, knuckles, lips, looking, matches, mirror, mouth, movement, open, orange, others, portrait, poverty, red, reflection, ring, ruby, sea, seagull, silence, skin, sound, speech, temptation, thinking, walking, waves, white, William Carlos Williams, windows, woman, wrists, writing

                            1. THE WAITRESS

                No wit (and none needed) but
    the silence of her ways, grey eyes in
    a depth of black lashes–
    The eyes look and the look falls.

    There is no way, no way. So close
    one may feel the warmth of the cheek and yet there is
    no way.

    The benefits of poverty are a roughened skin
    of the hands, the broken
    knuckles, the stained wrists.

                Serious. Not as the others.
    All the rest are liars, all but you.
                                        Wait on us.
    Wait on us, the hair held back practically
    by a net, close behind the ears, at the sides of
    the head. But the eyes–
                            but the mouth, lightly (quickly)
    touched with rouge.

    The black dress makes the hair dark, strangely
    enough, and the white dress makes it light.
    There is a mole under the jaw, low under
    thr right ear–

                And what arms!

                                        The glassruby ring
    on the fourth finger of the left hand.

                                        –and the movements
under the scant dress as the weight of the tray
    makes the hips shift forward slightly in lifting
    and beginning to walk–

    The Nominating Committee presents the following
    resolutions, etc. etc. etc. All those
    in favor signify by saying, Aye. Contrariminded,
    No.
      Carried.
                And aye, and aye, and aye!

    And the way the bell-hop runs downstairs:
          ta tuck a
                ta tuck a
                      ta tuck a
                            ta tuck a
                                  ta tuck a
    and the gulls in the open window screaming over the slow
    break of the cold waves–

                O unlit candle with the soft white
    plume, Sunbeam Finest Safety Matches all together in
    a little box–

                And the reflections of both in
    the mirror and the reflection of the hand, writing
    writing–
                Speak to me of her!-

                –and nobody else and nothing else
    in the whole city, not an electric sign of shifting
    colors, fourfoot daisies and acanthus fronds going from
    red to orange, green to blue–forty feet across–

                                        Wait on us, wait
    on us with your momentary beauty to be enjoyed by
    none of us. Neither by you, certainly,
                                                nor by me.

 

with love from Poems, 1928

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

beauty & speech wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
being wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
black wormhole: Impression of Winter: Carriage on a Country Road, 1872
blue & grey & writing wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
city & William Carlos Williams wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
communication wormhole: agreed termination without prejudice
eyes wormhole: between
glass & red wormhole: travelling / back
green & woman wormhole: on facing the Have
hair wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
hands wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
looking wormhole: waiting to be heard
mirror wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
mouth wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
open wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
orange & others & walking wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
reflection wormhole: I
sea & seagull & waves wormhole: Staffa Fingal’s Cave, 1832
silence & sound wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
thinking wormhole: there will be ovations
white wormhole: alabaster balustrade
windows wormhole: birth in the world

 

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Vue de Pontoise, 1873

Tags

1873, 2018, 6*, church, clatter, evening, hill, life, morning, passing, people, Pissarro, Pontoise, rooftops, silence, silhouette, sound, sun, talking, town, trees, work

                the chatter of rooftops
                scattered under low sun
                about the hill

                the single sustained note
                of the church – the
                passing clatter of

                silhouetting trees
                can’t hear all that is said
                while weary people

                approach the town
                and quit the town
                evening and morning

                silent under sometimes
                bright head-ware

 

approaching and leaving Vue de Pontoise, 1873 by Camille Pissarro

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

church wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
evening & life wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
morning wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
passing & sound wormhole: Batman: Oddysey
people wormhole: {reading right to left}
rooftops wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
silence wormhole: there will be ovations
silhouette wormhole: ‘streetsigns …’
sun wormhole: horizon
talking wormhole: travelling / back
trees wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
work wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay

 

there will be ovations

Tags

2018, 7*, acting, audience, betrayal, blood, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breathing, brother, children, circumstance, concentration, doors, emptiness, enemy, expectation, identity, life, light, machinations, music, naked, others, realisation, role, self-grasping, self-image, silence, sky, society, sound, stage, theatre, thinking, traffic

                ah, there’s the theatre and
                inside, the stage is set,
                the audience settled, the
                lights down, thank the fates,

                I almost didn’t make it –
                the traffic at this time of day! –
                the other is here, good,
                warming up, waving that

                stick all about, making whoosh
                noises, being all athletic and
                disciplined, I’d better get ready,
                torn robe on, oh, the blood

                smear it on, quick, and
                the hanging limb, OK,
                concentrate, breathe – be
                the character – I need

                to give the performance
                they are expecting – the
                circumstance, the machinations,
                the betrayal … no, not enough,

                what if it happened to my
                children, what if it were my
                brother with the stick, oh yes,
                it’s come to this, use the silence

                of the realisation, use the
                music – slamming doors
                in the sky! – no, this is more
                than my story, this is the

                history of my nation, quick,
                I’m ready now, I’m naked,
                I’m gutted and impaled, now
                for the finishing blow – how

                glorious this will be, I have
                so much invested in this,
                there will be ovations and
                encores, so worthwhile,

                I hope he has practised
                well – knows where the
                padding is; wait, is that
                a blade, tied to, the end

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI – verse 43-44: [43] Here is a brandished weapon, and here is my body ready and presented, both of them the causes of my eventual suffering. My attacker has laid hold of his stick (tena śastraṃ), and I both wear and brandish my body. With what should I get angry? [44] It is I who have obtained and hold on to this boil, this pressured blister of a human body – sack of suffering – which cannot even bear to be touched and, moreover, it is I who am blind-sided through my own attachment to it, so that when the pain comes and the ‘boil’ bursts, with whom should I get angry?

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

20th century wormhole: tram
breathing & society wormhole: the reach turned to love
doors wormhole: pursued
emptiness & life & others wormhole: the mantra of Maitreya
identity wormhole: I
light wormhole: travelling / back
music wormhole: and … // … sound
realisation wormhole: passing
silence wormhole: birth in the world
sky wormhole: horizon
sound wormhole: …zzh-vvttP*–… … …
thinking wormhole: ‘ouch’

 

birth in the world

Tags

2019, 7*, air, Arya Lalitavistara, Buddha, chords, crown, dawn, distance, glass, heather, lemon, light, Maitreya, mist, note, olive, rebirth, shade, silence, storm, windows

                the air refreshed
                and folded by several
                degrees as if to storm,
                the light became

                slightly shaded as if
                through olive glass
                but remained lemon
                in the distance, the

                silence dampened
                like mist as minute
                heather flowers turned
                to dawn, and all the

                abandoned instruments,
                their boxes taut to struts,
                their strings resigned
                to tonnage, discarded

                over couches, before
                windows, each creaked
                and let a single note that
                ne’er had pitched and

                held – chords
                o’er room and vale;
                it was time the
                effervescent crown

                were passed to the
                Regent and the
                Bodhisattva take
                birth in the world

 

bevelled up and out of the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra: before the Buddha was born a prince in a principality in India, he was residing in a heavenly realm (with the gods), but his vows and wishes over endless waves of previous lifetimes urged him to one final birth to consummate them all in Enlightenment; the Regent is Maitreya, the next Bodhisattva to take birth in this world and show Enlightenment … in future

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
Buddha wormhole: and … // … sound
dawn wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
glass wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
lemon wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
light wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
Maitreya wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
mist wormhole: to let be
olive wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
silence wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
windows wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing

 

La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872

Tags

1872, 2018, 6*, adulthood, afternoon, air, architecture, brown, childhood, chimney pots, cottage, flame, flight, future, grey, hill, horizon, life, lime, orange, Pontoise, red, rooks, silence, smoke, sunset, town, trees, walls

                over the roll of hill the town
                of Pontoise reared architecture

                of afternoon-future, grey and
                soupy air where I will try my

                life later, but here the sun
                has set, kindled treetops with

                lime air, blazed the tree
                across the road to brown and

                orange flame,
                until the rooks could take

                no more, split, singed and
                away in array before the

                silence of the cottage wall
                wide and orange with the

                lazy smoke, and modest
                from the blood-red pots

 

right there, from La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872 by Camille Pissarro (… actually, better if you could see the original)

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

afternoon & red wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
air wormhole: stuck
architecture wormhole: pediment to behold
brown wormhole: {reading right to left}
childhood wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
grey & trees & walls wormhole: on facing the Have
horizon wormhole: London, 1809
life wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams
lime wormhole: mauve
orange wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
silence wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
sunset wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees

Tags

5*, alder, almond, apple, ash, beech, blossom, breeze, cherry, clock, elm, eyes, fir, fire, flame, garden, gaze, green, ground, hazel, hedge, leaves, oak, orchard, pink, shadow, silence, sky, sound, Spring, step, thought, trees, white, wood, writing, yellow

                pageant of the trees

                spring’s tonic rising
                and hazel catkins swell
                to greet the first warm days

                elm and alder to follow
                heralding beech and oak
                and later the firs will show

                their new cones, dusting
                the ground with yellow;
                the gardens will fill with

                almond blossom and
                orchards will froth with
                cherry white and apple pink,

                aperitif to coming summer;
                hedgerows become en-veiled
                in diaphanous haze, a

                million leaves on the
                passing breeze; stop
                writing, now, step out

                beneath the cavernous sky,
                deep into the quiet of a glade
                to be silent within silence,

                eyes open like shadows
                in dancing leaves and thoughts
                greener to the underside

                                                                —–

                                                gazing between sentences
                                                into the fire

                                                the beam from the
                                                old house burns clear flame,

                                                tinsel murmurings between
                                                the ticking clock,

                                                until pure white ash
                                                falls without sound

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blossom & breeze & fir & garden & green & hedge & oak & shadow & silence & thought & writing & yellow wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
eyes wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
leaves & pink & sky & sound & trees & white & wood wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
spring wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees

Tags

1967, alder, almond, amethyst, apple, armchair, beech, blossom, branches, breeze, cattle, change, cherry, children, chimney stacks, church, clock, common, cottage, economics, elm, enclosure, Essex, evening, eyes, fields, fir, fire, flame, forest, garden, gate, grass, green, hedge, Henry VIII, history, knowledge, landscape, lanes, laughter, leaves, London, Michael J Redford, mind, noise, oak, orchard, passing, past, pink, pollen, poplars, progress, red, rust, shadow, ships, silence, sitting, sky, smoke, society, speech, Spring, summer, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, tiles, time, trees, village, walls, war, white, winter, woodland, writing, yellow

Trees

Spring’s tonic has risen within the trees and hazel catkins have swollen in greeting to the first warm days of the year.   Elm and alder are soon to follow heralding beech and oak and in a month or so the firs will show their new cones, green and full of juice, and their catkins will dust the ground yellow with pollen.   Throughout the villages cottage gardens will soon be filled with almond blossom and orchards will froth over with cherry white and apple pink spilling an aperitif to summer upon the living fields.   The hedgerows and woodlands become en-veiled by the diaphanous greenery of a million tiny leaves, an amethyst haze so tender and tenuous that I fear for its safety lest it be borne away upon the passing breeze.   I become aware of a restlessness within me that calls with increasing persistence to forego my writing and step out beneath the cavernous spring sky.   The pageant of the trees has begun.   Field and lane alike become heavy with leaf and only a section of red tile or a chimney stack, like flakes of old rust within the foliage, betray the presence of human habitation.   The blanket of summer affords us a privacy and seclusion that is unattainable in naked winter when one’s every move can be discerned by the neighbour’s critical eye, but here in the depths of summer, we can take our thoughts into the quiet of a woodland glade, we can be silent and be within silence for a little while and rest your eyes upon the shadows of the dancing leaves above.   And how restful the colour green, and how restful to the eye and through the eye to the mind that blossoms forth green thoughts.

This spring evening upon which I write is a decidedly chilly one even though the day itself has been full of warmth.   Thus I am to be found sitting in an armchair, putting my thoughts on paper, gazing between sentences into the dusty red glow of a log fire.   It is a funeral pyre really, the cremation of the last remains of an old local cottage that has long died, having fallen prey through disuse, to the vagaries of our climate and the onslaught of the village urchins.   I gaze with half closed eyes at the sawn up piece of beam that was once part of the skeleton of the old house, and see it burn with clear flame and little smoke.   In accompaniment to the ticking of the clock upon the mantle shelf I hear the old log’s tinsel murmurings that sound like a piece of screwed up silver paper, tossed aside and left slowly to expand, and as the pure white ash falls without sound, I feel myself drawn into the distant past and fancy I hear the laughter of children as they play beneath the boughs of a tree which this dead piece of wood was once a living part.   Whose children are these?   From what age do they come?   Perhaps they are the offspring of Henry VIII’s generation, the irresponsible youth of the day who cared nothing about the great cultural and religious upheaval taking place about them as they played handball between the northernmost buttresses of the old church wall.

It was at about this time when the monasteries had just been dissolved that the first enlightening book on agriculture by Fitzherbert of Norbury had just been published.   Was this historic pioneer of fertility indirectly responsible for the downfall of this old tree?   For the seas of knowledge flooded the land and split the forests into arboreal islands and many fine examples of the medieval forests became the battered flotsam of progress.

Certainly this old piece of wood never witnessed an act of enclosure, for the open field system was predominant right up until the late eighteenth century, when round and about the great open fields sprawled the commons, the scrubland and marshes, creating through their wastefulness and their infertility, a barrier to agricultural and therefore economic progress.   Although enclosure was a costly business, required finances could be supplemented by felling timber which, during the Napoleonic wars commanded a high price.   Also, in order to fence off enclosures, what was more natural than to plant more timber which, unlike normal fencing that needed constant and costly repair, increased in value as time went by.   The first choice of timber was naturally that which was most valuable such as ash and oak.   But the oak was slow in maturing, and where the ash spread its roots, no crops or grass would grow and no cattle would graze.   It was thus that the stately elm made its appearance and stamped the English hedgerow with a character all its own.   Being able to grow, and grow quickly in all types of soil, made it a very desirable timber to grow.   Also, the elm allowed grazing beneath its boughs and, due to its durability in water, it was at this time much sought after by the Navy Board for its ships.   Water mills, lock gates and drain pipes were of elm, and at the turn of the century, London alone still had over four hundred miles of mains constructed from its timbers.

Caught upon the ebb flow of time, I see the trees’ ancestral giants, the calamites, that reared two hundred feet into the sky.   They heard no child’s laughter, neither did they hear the buzz of insects nor the songs of birds, for they existed in the dim distant dawn of the carboniferous age millions of years before the birth of man, when even the birth of the first blade of grass was aeons in the offing.

They grew long, long before man, mute sentinels surveying the changing landscape, witnessing scenes that no mortal has ever gazed upon.   Then when man came, they furnished him with food, shelter and fuel; they gave to him the means of traversing the oceans.   They have been instruments of both war and peace and have featured in mans’ writing, music and art.   They have been made gods and devils and have bought good luck and bad.   Man’s long and close association with trees is evident from his desire to wander beneath the green boughs when time and toil permit, and from picnic parties who would sooner travel an extra mile to spread their chequered cloths within their shadows.   Perhaps it is because a tree expresses continuity, a security that mankind through all the ages and searched and worked for.

Although not a native of Essex, this ancient county endears itself to me more and more as time rolls slowly by, and time does pass slowly in Essex, for to plumb its highways and byways is to plumb history itself.   It has been slow to change through the centuries and there are numerous back lane hamlets which, even to this day, have experienced virtually no change for many, many years.   One lively youngster or eighty five who lives on the borders of Chignal Smealy and Chignal St. James (what delightful names are these), told me that the only difference he could see in his village was the height of the poplars at the end of his garden which, when he was only “knee high to a goose-pimple” were only a “stack an’ ‘alf ‘igh”, even the cottage gate that was propped open on one rusty hinge was the very same one his grandfather had made.

Having been one of the most heavily afforested counties in England, Essex is rich of fine examples of man’s utilisation of wood.   It can be seen in his architecture, in his tools, farm implements and vehicles.   The men of Essex are very conscious of their affinity with trees, and go to great lengths to preserve the more eminent members of their arboreal population, and I find it hard to believe that there is another county in the whole of the British Isles that can boast a greater number of ancient trees that have been propped up and strung up to cast their humbling shadows upon the heads of men.   Most of these old trees are of course oak, for Essex was noted for its oak forests, but as farming spread, so the forests disappeared, and the elms lining the fields and lanes now outnumber to oaks and are a far more familiar sight.   It is these old isolated trees that afford us a tangible link with the past.   They disperse any feeling of isolation in time and give to us instead a much needed sense of continuity, of that which has no end.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blossom wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
branches & mind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
breeze wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
change wormhole: Bridgnorth
church wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
evening & sky & thpought wormhole: space for probing thought
eyes & passing & shadow & speech & walls wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
fir wormhole: Pilot 125 … // … being excursion in the interludes
garden wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
green & Spring wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
hedge wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
history wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
knowledge wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
leaves wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
London wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
oak wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
pink & time & white & yellow wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
red wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
silence wormhole: despite that
sitting wormhole: getting fat in me old age
smoke wormhole: cross-section
society wormhole: raised brow
trees & war & winter wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
writing wormhole: JANUARY by William Carlos Williams

 

despite that

Tags

1966, 2018, 6*, apartment, Batman, Batmobile, between, city, clouds, driving, falling, hats, horizontal, kerb, light, melodrama, moon, night, passing, realisation, silence, silhouette, society, speech, stairs, streets, thinking, vertical

                                despite that

                between the rear fins and
                raised front screen shield

                the case began to settle,
                and the horizontal clouds

                parted to allow the
                Vertical City silhouettes;

                ‘gee, that’s swell,’ said a
                bystander to a witness,

                ‘they have a reason to
                 drive somewhere’, vrrrmm;

                that bowler hats were off
                to work as the moon

                climbed the downpipe
                and, giantly sat over the

                steering wheel the blow
                of resolution struck, the

                apartment lights hung
                unstraight and some fell

                off silently, but really,
                and down the street –

                fin to kerb, kerb to
                bonnet – they were

                getting nowhere fast
                up the staircase

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Batman & society wormhole: moon- // washed
city wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
clouds wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
light & streets wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
moon wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
night & passing & silence & speech wormhole: only
realisation wormhole: you
silhouette wormhole: that
thinking wormhole: how to teach

 

only

Tags

2018, 7*, beauty, commentary, contrast, day, heat, land, landscape, language, lava, living, love, night, orange, passing, people, perspective, phone, profile, raspberry, sand, silence, sky, sound, speech, stone, sun, talking to myself, twilight, violet, voluptuous

                                only

                from the point of stand
                the dunes are sharp
                against speechless sky

                in passing they rise
                flatly up and up in
                broad brush of land

                blistering from a distant
                sun, in approach they
                are voluptuous cleft

                and hip – raspberry
                stone in orange – the
                Venusian ring-tone

                doesn’t interrupt the
                commentary skip
                across three languages

                                –O___

                OK, the contrast
                between the profiles
                of lifeless heads of lava
                and the twilight-violet sky
                of no day and no night
                is beautiful

                but I could
                have spent the day
                amid peoples’ peeks
                and primal landscapes
                open for to behold
                instead …

 

excursion to Timanfaya National Park on Lanzarote, Jan 2018

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

beauty wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
living & talking to myself wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
love wormhole: we held cold hands
night wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
orange wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
passing & people & speech wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
silence & sun wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
sky wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
sound wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
stone wormhole: `whappn’d!
twilight wormhole: letting them go

 

What You Are by Roger McGough

Tags

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                What You Are

                you are the cat’s paw
                among the silence of midnight goldfish

                you are the waves
                which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns

                you are the teddybear (as good as new)
                found beside a road accident

                you are the lost day
                in the life of a child murderer

                you are the underwatertree
                around which fish swirl like leaves

                you are the green
                whose depths I cannot fathom

                you are the clean sword
                that slaughtered the first innocent

                you are the blind mirror
                before the curtains are drawn back

                you are the drop of dew on a petal
                before the clouds weep blood

                you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour
                and rots beneath children’s feet

                you are the rubber glove
                dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand

                you are the wind caught on barbed wire
                and crying out against war

                you are the moth
                entangled in a crown of thorns

                you are the apple for teacher
                left in a damp cloakroom

                you are the smallpox injection
                glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika

                you are the litmus leaves
                quivering on the suntan trees

                you are the ivy
                which muffles my walls

                you are the first footprints in the sand
                on bankholiday morning

                you are the suitcase full of limbs
                waiting in a leftluggage office
                to be collected like an orphan

                you are a derelict canal
                where the tincans whistle no tunes

                you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo
                catching its feathers on a thornbush
                heralding spring

                you are the stillness of Van Gogh
                before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun

                you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania
                before she tripped over the torpedo
                and laid a world war of american dead
                at the foot of the blarneystone

                you are the distance
                between Hiroshima and Calvary
                measured in mother’s kisses

                you are the distance
                between the accident and the telephone box
                measured in heartbeats

                you are the distance
                between power and politicians
                measured in half-masts

                you are the distance
                between advertising and neuroses
                measured in phallic symbols

                you are the distance
                between you and me
                measured in tears

                you are the moment
                before the noose clenched its fist
                and the innocent man cried: treason

                you are the moment
                before the warbooks in the public library
                turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities

                you are the moment
                before the buildings turned into flesh
                and windows closed their eyes

                you are the moment
                before the railwaystations burst into tears
                and the bookstalls picked their noses

                you are the moment
                before the buspeople turned into teeth
                and chewed the inspector
                for no other reason than he was doing his duty

                you are the moment
                before the flowers turned into plastic and melted
                in the heat of the burning cities

                you are the moment
                before the blindman puts on his dark glasses

                you are the moment
                before the subconscious begged to be left in peace

                you are the moment
                before the world was made flesh

                you are the moment
                before the clouds became locomotives
                and hurtled headlong into the sun

                you are the moment
                before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage
                like a crab finds the singer

                you are the moment
                before the seed nestles in the womb

                you are the moment
                before the clocks had nervous breakdowns
                and refused to keep pace with man’s madness

                you are the moment
                before the cattle were herded together like men

                you are the moment
                before God forgot His lines

                you are the moment of pride
                before the fiftieth bead

                you are the moment
                before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn
                like a monarch

 

from The Mersey Sound, 1967
when I first read this poem in 1978 I was too young to let go associations enough to get the metaphor; after a lifetime of being obligated to associations which stood idly by while I wildly floundered without ground, I can let them go with glee and relish and relish the metaphors to the portrait’s content (… still not sure about the ‘lost day of the child murderer’, however, and I’m still not sure why I’m not sure, but I’m not; but I can’t think McGough just slipped up over one couplet … (and I can’t find any discussion of this line in the pages-that-proliferate-like-spores-wafted-across-their-own-private-amphitheatres))

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

books & love wormhole: `whappn’d!
buildings wormhole: cowled
city & windows wormhole: moon- // washed
clouds & green & silence & time & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
curtains wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
dawn wormhole: between
death wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
feet wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
glasses wormhole: … the underleaves show
hands & water & world wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
leaves wormhole: sufficiently away
library wormhole: two profiles
mirror wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: granny
power wormhole: I
Spring & sun wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
trees & voices & yellow wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
walls wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
war wormhole: to arms, then;
waves wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
winter wormhole: where did the silence go