Collected Poems
Page 7
And silence God’s eternal shouting,
Reign a prince in his new birth
Over the outermost poles of the north.
He swore to reach the cloudy peak
And strut on it in God’s bright cloak.
He’d speak like God and spout His name
And wave his arms like wings of flame.
He’d rule with cataracts of words,
Keep order among lesser lords;
A universe with rhyme and reason
Would be a mayhem of confusion:
Lucifer control by pride
The gorgeous chaos he bestrode.
But God was neither drunk nor blind
To what Cosmogony had planned.
In his Omnipotence he froze
Restless Lucifer’s swirling eyes,
Sent a hundred thousand stars
Hornet-buzzing in vast rays
To drive him mad who thought to try
And take the place of the Most High.
They pinioned him, then made him fall
To the utter depths of Hell.
They tangled him and brought him low.
United Zodiac foresaw
That Lucifer in peace or war
Would be no blessing to their realm.
Faces spurned his rending groan:
Four-point body wheeled and spun
Across the Wilderness of Sin
And struck the cinder of the Sun:
Eternity breeds evolution
And drinks the blood of Revolution.
Declaiming innocence of guile
Yet burned clean of the martyr’s role
Lucifer in haughty rancour –
Spewing fire through milky groves –
Condemned the heart of God to canker
And all his satellites as slaves.
Pleas and questions he ignored
In order that the final word
Should stay with him; and then he’d rove
To search for burial and love.
LUCIFER TURNED
Lucifer turned to God and said:
You want my heart, you want my head.
In giving both I’d be your slave.
If only one, I’d bleed to death.
They are as inseparable as breath
That, coming from my mouth, meets ice
And on the stillest air makes smoke.
God did not speak. He never spoke.
Others had to work his throat
And shape such words in their own voice
That God, by silence, made his choice.
But only Lucifer used verse
To save his heart, to save his head –
And still God did not speak or curse
But, spewing cataclysmic gall
Condemned grand Lucifer to fall.
LUCIFER’S DECISION
Lucifer slept but once
On the journey south,
For in the morning had to decide
Whether, having crossed the river,
And said goodbye to God
When no more dogs were barking
Nor hut smoke could be seen
Nor any voices heard,
Whether to take the left
Or right arm of the road.
Best not to stop, not think of warmth
But lunge without thought to left or right.
Either that, or broach the centre –
A wilderness of granite-green –
In which one lived as long
And learned far more
Than after the exhaustion of a quick decision
Or the utter ruin of a right one.
UNITY
Memorials being sacred
God made a star of Lucifer
Launched the brilliant morning star
That suited navigators best.
God being what he is
He made another star
The first star of evening
That all women blessed.
They were the hinges of the sky
And never met. One chased,
The other followed. Who did what
Was impossible to test.
Neither wondered who began it,
Trapped as they were, and are,
In the same planet.
NIMROD AND LUCIFER
No one knew why Nimrod shot at the sky.
Such emptiness worked his arms
And sent each arrow whining
Its steep incline at God’s power.
Nimrod is a mighty hunter, said the Lord.
Spring was gone. Adonis gored, already
In his furrow, sorrow forgotten,
Wheat whitening a plain too hot for dreams,
The sky blue, God invisible, day vacant,
Animals hiding from the sun.
Lucifer steered each iron point,
But Nimrod was a man, not God:
No feral tip could reach its mark,
Though Mighty Nimrod, wanting God to die,
Wondered why God wasn’t dead
And why the arrow fell back from the sky
Anointed with red from notch to tip.
Nimrod wept for shame on seeing
Lucifer’s left foot was lame.
THE ‘JOB’
The three-decker wooden ship broke its ropes,
Each impacted fibre torn by cobalt water
Lifting its tall stern;
Grating the granite quay
The ship was loose in storm-fists
And no safe harbour locked its arms.
Refuge was in the fang-teeth of the gale
The horizonless ocean
Wood against water
Sails in salty phosphorescence
Mainmast an impaling spike.
The merciless twisting left a hulk
Which Lucifer could not drown:
Not possible for him to know
What made that scabby coffin stay afloat,
Find an unending mirror of water
And merit in God’s eye for its long fight.
LUCIFER AND EMPEDOCLES
Progress is an orphan:
Throw a crust it starves to death.
Give it a golden cloak,
A hundred thousand people turn to ash.
Progress either snivels or it kills:
Who owns it holds a sun to limping Lucifer
Who vowed God’s rebels harnessed his effulgence
And made galactic storms.
Progress will be the death of me, said God.
Let me turn the notion on its head.
God said: ‘Empedocles, say this:
“Progress is the bitch of war;
Love and discord suckle it.
For once I’ll speak plain:
War gets the world nearer to death,
Does no one good.
No sane man cares to die a king,
Or idiot become a god.”’
Empedocles simplified, and got it wrong:
‘War is the father of progress’ –
Then simpered in his golden sandals
To Etna’s hot volcanic rim
Wondering whether God was right
To give such force the name of war.
Lucifer smiled. Empedocles stood close,
Peered into the boiling din.
‘Your question has no answer,’ said Lucifer,
And pushed him in.
LUCIFER THE ARCHER
Robin Hood’s light-hearted men
In Sherwood Forest shot
At silver pennies marked
With a silver cross.
Lucifer, toxophilite,
Tipped the arrows true,
Drew back every archer’s yew
With fingers of Sherwood green.
Thus, fletched missiles overseen
Found numismatic tracks –
God’s son or not, the cross was shot
By Lucifer’s speeding sticks.
When two lines met
And, m
eeting, crossed,
And closed themselves in a ring
Lucifer felt a prison clang
Around his brow and through his eyes –
So made the outlaws’ arrows smash
Against all silver pennies
That bore a silver cross.
LUCIFER AND COLUMBUS
Lucifer became the sun:
Drew Christopher Columbus on
Into oceanic dusk.
Under the basin of the night
They followed stars
He patterned in their track.
By morning Lucifer arose
And deigned to push them over
The daily fortitudes of dawn.
The navigator’s cross-stays
Angled him
To guess the distance of the day.
When the fathom-line was flung
Its lead-head hit the sea and burst
In Lucifer’s fluorescent sparks.
He steadied the flickering needle
Through the Sargasso Sea,
Goaded a meteor to perform
A spectacular welcome,
And lured the Sons of Adam
Back to Paradise.
LUCIFER THE SURVEYOR
Lucifer the surveyor didn’t look
He measured, hands performing
A theodolite not prayer.
A dot behind the eyes held cosmography
In thrall, geometry intuition as he spanned
Paced and taped a kingdom in a day
Triangulated oceans in one night.
God took the credit
Every action in the world was His,
All seas and continents. He led
Footsteps on and filled all hearts
A wind banging the canvas sails
Of a ship whose crew was drunk
On loot, lewdness and the Lord.
Rejected Lucifer was bruised
Since science followed him not God.
He melted raw materials, lay rails, grew cities
Rolled lightning in a drum and made it work.
Adam’s sons ripped milk and honey from the earth
And God was praised.
But Lucifer saw his limp on every foot.
LUCIFER THE MECHANIC
Lucifer invented speed, taught
That one slow pulley drives a fast,
A sluggish stream revolves a mill
How fire melts and wind shifts
And iron floats and alloys fly.
Lucifer’s willing scholars learned
How one metal cuts another
And steel spread on a spindle
Is in its weakness flaked
By a stilled blade set against it.
A lubricated drill-tip
Tempered to diamond strength
Spins to steel clamped in a jig:
By playing speed to altered speed
Steel teeth in a circle
Mill into a shank of steel.
Lucifer in every lathe
Manufactured objects beyond
Man’s vulnerable version of himself;
He unmade God, and at his most demonic
Turned Man into an industrious mechanic.
LUCIFER AND REVOLUTION
When workers assembled at the station
Lucifer had waited since the swamp was drained.
Jutting chin and jaunty cap and posh Swiss overcoat,
Finger stabbing the air to rights,
He licked his Tartar lips and stroked
His beard, nodding sharply
At each injustice he would cure,
Clipped decisive words in steam-train language
Knit the crowd into carded fabric
Any pattern could be printed on.
He had waited long for such deep cheers
And smoky mosaic of faces,
Dimmed his eyes to just the right amount
Of inability to see the future,
When the mob would do such deeds
As burned all sensibility to ash:
‘Oh boy, we did that fucking castle in!
Splintered every lintel, broke every brick.
Those Old Masters burned a treat.
Forty years ago the duke raped my mother
So I plugged his duchess-daughter.
For the Revolution, of course –
We should have one every day!’
The shock-detachment of the Revolution came
Behind a glistening array of guns:
‘All right, chaps, fun’s over.
You work for us now, what?
So build that castle up again.
And who was that swine raped the duchess?
His trial starts tomorrow.’
‘The purity of Revolution shines
Bright for all to see,
A moral force that cleanses
Cleaner than the sea.’
‘You’ll be sorry you spoke,’
Comrade Lucifer retorted
When everything got out of hand.
‘You helped to make the Revolution,
Now you’ll be voted to the wall
Or destitution unimaginable.
I’m not Hamlet lost for a yes or no.
I’ll make an omelette any day
And break as many eggs as there are heads.
Chickens lay all the time!’
His grin was geological – under the moustache.
The assassin’s bullet didn’t kill
But scared him. He vanished.
Only One could play that game and win.
LUCIFER TELEGRAPHIST
Lucifer, God’s listener,
Took telegrams in any code
Or language, heard
the blissful separation
of those who would never touch again
the marriage of a thousand needles
knitting both victims till death
the assault of a new mouth
soon to connive at the smash of nations
the frantic beggary of save-our-souls
when a ship’s parts separate in revenge
on those who ripped wood and iron
from the generous soil
communiqués that order war
when other greeds have failed.
Happiness and agony went through his heart,
God’s ears not enough.
He wanted power to end all suffering
And call it peace.
Rebellion failed. Robbed of God’s favour
Lucifer sat in universal grief
So that his Fall was liberation.
HYMN TO LUCIFER
Lucifer is the True God:
Not the God of Man
Or the God of God
But the God of Light.
Luminous of eyes
Limitless of sight
A thousand million miles
Are his to roam.
Ice is no prison
Fire no opposite,
The sun a cool exit
To spaces beyond.
The earth’s inferno-centre
Cannot hold him,
Nor galactic spaces
Lose him.
LUCIFER’S REPORT
Newton did not go to church;
He hardly ever went to chapel:
He read Maimonides in bed
And pondered on the fallen apple.
The Board of Admirals agreed
That the first chronometer of Harrison
Was in spite of its complexity and size
Accurate beyond comparison.
Enigmatic Einstein vowed
He’d see the hardy atom burst:
The world would shrivel to a cell
If Germany achieved it first.
God concurred, yet did not know
What the first flash would do to Him.
Lucifer hoped that God might die
When that smoke-hill hit the sky.
THE LAST CHANCE
Lucifer’s simple scheme was to
kill God
And create another
And after mutual annihilation
Crow the victor from their ashes –
Once they cooled.
Every plotter is naive, every planner blind:
On a calm and August morning
The boil burst.
The sea was in it and the sky
The centre of the earth took part
The sun and moon looked on
And thus participated. A particle
Of every man woman child
And other creature
That had been on earth since earth began
Will be remembered for connivance –
Lucifer made sure of that.
The sun went cool to let
This fiery flood of Lucifer-vomit
Like a cauliflower fist
Deal a belly-blow to God.
Scorched and broken
Lucifer fell back,
And wept.
LUCIFER AND JOB
Lucifer met Job.
He saw flame
He touched fire
But could not get close.
Endurance is a herb
The flame protects.
The sun comes
The sun goes –
Job spoke:
A flame lives on
In darkness.
Nor is it extinguished
By the sun.
LUCIFER AND NOAH
Noah believed,
Built his boat
Called his creatures
Two by two;
Lucifer watched
The floating city
On the flood,
Could not help
Hands whose fingers
Spread before they sank.
The void world
Was life for Lucifer.
He ruled a sea of corpses –
Yet welcomed Noah
Ashore at Ararat.
LUCIFER AND DANIEL
Seven famished lions
Circled Daniel
In Babylon’s oblivion-hole;
Eyes in darkness
Were the king’s prisoners
And only Daniel’s
Emitted light.
Your eyes hunger
Daniel spoke
But my hunger
Is greater.
The lions paced, bewildered,
As if Daniel’s flesh was bitter
And God his fearlessness.
Since his Fall
Lucifer had never been so close.
LUCIFER IN SINAI – 1
Lucifer tramped from sea to sea,
Burning grit pained every step
An island moving through the land
From Carmel to the Mount of Moses.
Lucifer paid his forty days,