by Edwin Morgan
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
