In The Poetry

A Sunset of the City

Kathleen Eileen

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.
My daughters and sons have put me away with marbles and dolls,
Are gone from the house.
My husband and lovers are pleasant or somewhat polite
And night is night.

It is a real chill out,
The genuine thing.
I am not deceived, I do not think it is still summer
Because sun stays and birds continue to sing.

It is summer-gone that I see, it is summer-gone.
The sweet flowers indrying and dying down,
The grasses forgetting their blaze and consenting to brown.

It is a real chill out. The fall crisp comes.
I am aware there is winter to heed.
There is no warm house
That is fitted with my need.
I am cold in this cold house this house
Whose washed echoes are tremulous down lost halls.
I am a woman, and dusty, standing among new affairs.
I am a woman who hurries through her prayers.

Tin intimations of a quiet core to be my
Desert and my dear relief
Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.

Somebody muffed it? Somebody wanted to joke.

I wrote this poem for Stevie Wonder whose music saved me through a lot of desperate moments.

Upstream
(for Stevie)

one more flight of time
one more chime
of music
one more glimpse of dawn
one more walk
through open spaces

I heard a laughing river
streams of consciousness
saw your head thrown back in song

if you could hear the drumbeats on my mind

cries of earth
work through my feet
touching every nerve
some days I think of shooting
and settle into words

for one more picture of a child in tears
one more pair of sagging breasts
milk dried out for years
one more sight of hungry soil
breaking up for rain
one more flying bullet
where there should have been a song

give me
one more flight of time
one more chime of music
one more glimpse of dawn
one more walk
through open spaces

somedays we sing a sea song
somedays the wind blows clear
somedays the marching drumbeat
to wake the nuclear fears
in the eyes that reach beyond
a mere two thousand years
and so many others lost
vision trapped in tears

I heard a laughing river
streams of consciousness
saw your head thrown back in song

if you could hear the drumbeats on my mind

give me one more flight of time
one more chime of music
one more glimpse of dawn
one more walk
through open spaces

Could it be

When you leave
I smiling hold
this soft furry
bouncing
tingling
tickling
I don’t know what to call it
‘thing’

it moves round me
all day
moves me round
all day

tickling tingly ‘thing’

waiting to bounce out
my eyes
my mouth
my ears
my nose
my belly
my thighs
and all those other shy soft places
waiting to be named
in subtler tones

waiting to bounce out
soft funny
bouncy cuddly
tingling tickly
ah! so touchy tender ‘thing’
waiting to bounce out at you
when you get home

could it be.

Episode

I

Why do you follow?

I tread their shadow,
Stranger and woman,
Arranging the season
In her curious dream.
And best announced
From my alphabet home,
consume their echo,
Cancel the sun.

Why do you leave me?

Of three there are figures
Whose third is unechoed
Where two are alone.
And I, her follower,
Fall back to forest,
Cancel the sun.

That she carries a bowl
And selects the red stones,
That her third is unechoed,
And closebred, a stranger,
That the thunder has broken
about the round tower, I allow
Allowing, not following,
By the animal fire.

Why do you stay with me?

The crooks of my fingers
Distribute the ash.
She, widowed; her third,
Her third is her lover.
She, widowed, unsighted,
Her third is her stranger.

II

Come. Our two walking,
And shadows beginning,
Sauntering altered, and
The autumn bereaving.
That her third was unechoed
I could hardly allow.
By his bearing I knew him,
And our silence making,
We turned through the pillars
Of dust that enticed.

So we crouched to begin.
I counted the thunder
That leaned at my temples
And crouched to begin.
On his nail was her eyelash,
That lined the calm.

HE:

That you did barter
And consort with her.
That you did ash
The fire at her departure.
That you did enter
Where I was unechoed.
That you did venture
Where I was a stranger.
That you did cajole

When the pendulum hung.
That you interposed
In her curious dream.
That you did instruct
From your alphabet home.
That you did confusion
Her eyelid to stone.
That you so did render
The echo unheard
That you might divide
When the echo was gone.
That you did condition
Her widowhood on.
That you were the stranger
That strangered the calm.
That you did engender
The thunder to storm.
That yours was the practice.
You cancelled the sun.
I tell that you sundered
From forest, consumed
where I watched.
where though I stayed,
where though I left,
I cannot decipher;
Which scarecrow she lured,
Or which pleasure took.

I:

The plunder left to us
Is a similar eyelash.

III

Why did you leave me?

Gaining through the pillars
And the thunder at my temples
and her eyes that had altered
And the silence she was made of
And the dumb word ending.

Why did you follow?

Her third is unechoed.

And I am her stranger.

1951

Su Tung P’o is a figure who moves me deeply. In a few more years he’ll be a thousand years old. A great Chinese poet – he was a designer of gardens in Imperial China. Now the great thing about Su Tung P’o is he not only wrote these pastoral poems and loved to design gardens, but he wrote satires. That’s pretty rare that you get that tension of potentialities in one figure and here’s one of the poems from among his satirical offerings.

After Su Tung P’o

On the birth of a son

When a child is born the parents pray
it will be healthy and intelligent. But as for me –

I tell you vigor and intelligence have wrecked my life.

I pray this baby we are seeing

walloped, wiped and winningly anointed
turns out dumb as oakum, weak as wickerwork,

and sinister. In time

he’ll crown a tranquil life by being

appointed a cabinet minister.

You’re Beautiful

because you’re classically trained.
I’m ugly because I associate piano wire with strangulation.

You’re beautiful because you stop to read the cards in newsagents’ windows
about lost cats and missing dogs.
I’m ugly because of what I did to that jellyfish with a lolly-stick and a big stone.

You’re beautiful because for you, politeness is instinctive, not a marketing
campaign
I’m ugly because desperation is impossible to hide.

Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.

You’re beautiful because you believe in coincidence and the power of thought.
I’m ugly because I proved God to be a mathematical impossibility.

You’re beautiful because you prefer home-made soup to the packet stuff.
I’m ugly because once, at a dinner party,
I defended the aristocracy and wasn’t even drunk.

You’re beautiful because you can’t work the remote control.
I’m ugly because of satellite television and twenty-four hour rolling news.

Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.

You’re beautiful because you cry at weddings as well as funerals.
I’m ugly because I think of children as another species from a different world.

You’re beautiful because you look great in any colour including red.
I’m ugly because I think shopping is strictly for the acquisition of material goods.

You’re beautiful because when you were born, undiscovered planets
lined up to peep over the rim of your cradle and lay gifts of gravity and light
at your miniature feet.
I’m ugly for saying ‘love at first sight’ is another form of mistaken identity,
and that the most human of all responses is to gloat.

Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.

You’re beautiful because you’ve never seen the inside of a car-wash.
I’m ugly because I always ask for a receipt.

You’re beautiful for sending a box of shoes to the third world.
I’m ugly because I remember the telephone numbers of ex-girlfriends
and the year Schubert was born.

You’re beautiful because you sponsored a parrot in a zoo.
I’m ugly because when I sigh it’s like the slow collapse of a circus tent.

Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.

You’re beautiful because you can point at a man in a uniform and laugh.
I’m ugly because I was a police informer in a previous life.

You’re beautiful because you drink a litre of water and eat three pieces of fruit a
day.
I’m ugly for taking the line that a meal without meat is a beautiful woman with

one eye.

You’re beautiful because you don’t see love as a competition and you know how
to lose.
I’m ugly because I kissed the FA Cup then held it up to the crowd.

You’re beautiful because of a single buttercup in the top buttonhole of your

cardigan.
I’m ugly because I said the World’s Strongest Woman was a muscleman in a
dress.

You’re beautiful because you couldn’t live in a lighthouse.
I’m ugly for making hand-shadows in front of the giant bulb, so when they look
up,
the captains of vessels in distress see the ears of a rabbit, or the eye of a fox,
or the legs of a galloping black horse.

Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.

Ugly like he is,
Beautiful like hers,
Beautiful like Venus,
Ugly like his,
Beautiful like she is,
Ugly like Mars.

I once read that poem in Liverpool and a lady came up to me afterwards and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m ugly as well.’

Little Elegy

But now that I am used to pain,
Its knuckles in my mouth the same
Today as yesterday, the cause
As clear-obscure as who’s to blame,

A fascination with the flaws
Sets in – the plundered heart, the pause
Between those earnest, oversold
Liberties that took like laws.

What should have been I never told,
Afraid of outbursts you’d withhold.
Why are desires something to share?
I’m shivering, though it isn’t cold.

Beneath your window, I stand and stare.
The planets turn. The trees are bare.
I’ll toss a pebble at the pane,
But softly, knowing you are not there.

Corpse

This is my body, me, splayed
on the road’s crown like a shot bird.

Back street. No cars. Men step
over me, dogs and crows investigate.

My eyes gape. Circuitry of soul
is broken. I am in an odd shape

- twisted star – a pose I could never
strike in life. Gymnastic, almost.

This double-jointedness in death
soon tightens as the muscles lock.

My face cracks in the sun.
My hands point up and down the street,

as if to say “I came from here,
and there was where I headed…”

Pregnant with its own ferment,
my gut swells a blue uniform.

I do not recall the battle, army,
cause. I cannot see a bullet-hole.

There is a voice nearby – not loud.
The sky – not bright – is green with storms.

Apologia pro Vita Sua

One night in Paris I saw glowing in a small shopwindow a page of Ren