Emporium
Page 1
IAN PINDAR
Emporium
for Ali
My awful seventies
name, you sd
(mine too) but
no
From alle wimmen my love is lent,
And light on Alisoun
Anonymous
circa 1300
Levedy, al for thine sake
Armed with certain relics, I began to assemble an emporium where nothing in it would be for sale – a shop that would never open.
MALCOLM MCLAREN
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author gratefully acknowledges the following publications in which poems in Emporium first appeared, sometimes in slightly different form: The London Magazine, Magma, New Poetries III (Carcanet Press), Oxford Poetry, PN Review, Poetry Review, Stand and the Times Literary Supplement. Thanks are also due to Michael Schmidt, Judith Willson and all at Carcanet for their support. Invaluable advice was offered by John Crowfoot regarding ‘Birds’, and Dana Pšenicová at the Czech Embassy in London helped me with ‘Mrs Beltinska in the Bath’, which won second prize in the 2009 National Poetry Competition and was shortlisted for the 2010 Forward Prize (Best Single Poem).
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Figure Study
Mrs Beltinska in the Bath
On the French Riviera
Monsters of Philosophy
A Dog One Afternoon
Society of Blood
Anecdote of the Car
Marc Chagall: The Poet Reclining
Parable
Advice for Travellers
Poem
What is the Matter?
Archaeologies
Snow
The King’s Evil
Les Vacances de Monsieur P.
Chain Letter
Of Truth
Suggestions for Further Reading
Two Figs
The Prophecies
Casanova
Cārvāka/Lokāyata
Windows
Gods of the Near Future
After Birth
Big Bumperton on the Sabbath
Ashes
Death of a Senator
Birds
Illustrated Evenings
Parasite
Joan Miró: Man and Woman in Front of a Pile of Excrement
It Takes a Man
Everybody’s Talking about Antonin Artaud
The Wasp and the Orchid
Armageddon
Black Jelly Baby
Kissing
Dust
Loon
Silent Spectres
The Rainy Day Murders
An Accident in Soho
Lost
Insomnia
Time Remaining
Notes
About the Author
Copyright
Emporium
FIGURE STUDY
Naked on a bed, the sex in shadow,
not caring if man or woman.
Something of the caged beast, captive, fallow,
odour of unclean linen.
Darkness beyond everything.
Nothing visible except
limbs turning, seeking rest,
arms and legs bending, unbending
like a puppet examining its joints.
The head moving from side to side
as if struck by invisible fists
from different angles, from inside.
MRS BELTINSKA IN THE BATH
Pavel in profile
his eye at the spyhole
watches Mrs Beltinska in the bath.
Steam from the spyhole
rises and unravels in the dark
cold apartment at his back,
where a TV with the sound down
shows the River Vltava
bursting its banks.
And as Prague’s metro floods
and the Malá Strana floods
and the Waldstein Palace floods
and the National Theatre floods
and the Kampa Modern Art Museum floods,
Mrs Beltinska sinks her treasures in the suds.
The first Czech bible (1488) is drowned
in sewage water, but the warm orange glow
from Mrs Beltinska’s bathroom
coming through the spyhole
gives an odd kind of halo
to Pavel’s head seen from behind.
ON THE FRENCH RIVIERA
Youth and beauty have left me
a full packet of cigarettes
and this balcony. Time redecorates
my home as a reliquary.
The camera loved me once,
as everyone loves a young woman
of spirit who toys with men
and uses her natural elegance
to get what she wants. Siren
or ingénue, whatever they asked of me
I exuded ‘a carefree, naive sexuality’,
the critics said. Dominique, is that Dorian
at the door? My official biographer
promised to swing by after church
with more questions. He isn’t much
to look at, but he’s my last admirer.
MONSTERS OF PHILOSOPHY
There are monsters on the prowl whose form changes with the history of knowledge.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Scepticism is insincere
If not maintained in daily life,
Professor Aromax concludes
While murdering his second wife.
Ideas, we are told by James,
Are true if they are profitable.
Professor Bidex keeps a shrunken
Head upon her coffee table.
Professor MacIntyre expounds
At length upon his idées fixes,
But hastily departs if any
Student wears a crucifix.
Professor Pyke is much the same
And has no tolerance for God.
His last dispute resulted in
A bloody carcass in the quad.
The students of Professor Stead
Know better than to mock his stammer.
The last to do so had his head
Caved in by someone with a hammer.
Professor Mallard has a coat
Of thick and matted body hair,
But only when the moon is full,
At other times it isn’t there.
Professor Gant, a revenant,
Who rarely ever takes the stairs,
Prefers to glide from room to room,
Catching students unawares.
And still the ghost of Francis Bacon
Haunts the winding stair below,
Doomed for a certain term to stuff
A chicken carcass full of snow.
A DOG ONE AFTERNOON
I
In a nearby exhibition hall
Mr Ponsonby-Smythe demonstrates his new machine
for winning back the Empire – there is blood
all over his doeskin pantaloons.
In a pagoda surrounded by bamboo
Miss Grace Laluah serves coconut milk,
bananas with honey and tropical fruits …
But who is that girl in the wicker chair,
her arm amputated at the elbow?
Her copper hair and small breasts delight me:
the standard lamp, the single bed, the curtained window.
She looks
sad
anaemic
telegenic.
Her skin smells of pepper.
II
Alienated again.
In the doghouse.
I am a dog and I don’t even like dogs
(I’m a dog and I don’t even like them).
; Skulking through the streets like a dog.
Licking old wounds like a dog.
Something’s missing.
Have you forgotten
anything?
None of this was made for your
entertainment.
(So tired, so tired.
Work tomorrow …)
First there was sleep, then waking
then making do, then sleep.
And when night falls
and the will fails,
when the will fails
and night falls,
all the poisons within me,
all the poisons in which I am mired
accumulate in the marrow.
SOCIETY OF BLOOD
They will be smiling as they did of old,
keeping tradition in the blood
and blood in the soil.
Men of action, irrational,
suspicious of intellect: all dissent
is betrayal and betrayal death.
Fear difference: the enemy
within. If you are weak
you will die, as Nature intended.
And the people perish,
reeling, staggering towards
a ring of light on the horizon.
ANECDOTE OF THE CAR
I drove a car to Chambourcy
And left it there, without a thought.
It hurt the owner of that car
To think of it.
The kindly Camboriciens
Prayed for its soul at St Clothilde.
The car was bound to play them false
It was a wicked, wilful car.
Its classic parts, so very rare,
Were polished there with tender care.
Its engine all of burnished gold
It did not care for man or God.
MARC CHAGALL
THE POET RECLINING
Time was when the poet lay in a green field.
EZRA POUND
O I once met a poet reclining
For a pillow he had but a coat
And I saw his green halo a-shining
Green halo, green halo, he wrote.
Green halo
Green halo
Alone at last in the country
With a pig and a horse in a field
With pine trees and woods all around me
My heart at last shall be healed.
Green halo
Green halo
Now I have no farmer’s wisdom
And grow here nary a bean
But the woodland makes me welcome
And the grass my halo green.
Green halo
Green halo
PARABLE
I
Here they come, judging
my parable,
the one about the highway and
the blackbird
The distance
between them
always already
expanding.
II
(You can see the whole thing as
a ceaseless, dynamic
movement.)
III
It is not solitude or the last
physical delight that
troubles you but night and its quick
arrows – the
fearful, the
threatened, the
miserable – but
you are your own
purpose,
at ease with a life
incomparable.
IV
(So much leads to thinking otherwise.)
V
The rubble of sundown is
more than a way of commenting on
the disease
of civilisation.
In those long
shadows I lost my voice. I
lost the argument. My fingers slipped
You lowered so that
The touch was
and it excited us
VI
Rooms and passageways.
We need to find somewhere
they cannot search –
the provocation of
a fire escape takes us
down
across town and
away from the losses of the day
the loosened thought of heat and
nothing to say.
ADVICE FOR TRAVELLERS
So she was left to dissolve under a starless
heaven, reduced by perspective to something like
a stick,
no ordinary suffering.
The machinery of mud is good at living
with dead things. Bog angel with borrowed teeth and stones
for eyes,
which close and listen for a voice
that doesn’t cry out. I don’t know how she got there.
Did she even visit the nearby city,
each street
arranged according to the movements
of celestial bodies, where twin pyramids
keep twin volcanoes company? The sun rises
every day
behind the temple, rain falls on
the ancient mud gods and the locals hunt or make
fire or love, depending on their fancy. It’s a
great place
to shop for traditional items –
necklaces of human teeth, the sacrificial
harvest – and it’s fun to people-watch. Those people,
for instance,
being led in procession:
at noon
their blood will run in the streets.
POEM
When one god
claimed to be
the only god
the other gods died
laughing
WHAT IS THE MATTER?
What is the
matter?
To speak of
matter
To speak in
matter
matter-word
word-matter
in matter
matter speaks
the Word
ARCHAEOLOGIES
Shell holes and standing water
Brown metal open to
the elements
Empty barrels broken pails
Corrugated iron weeds and silence
The silhouette of a man
hangs from a telegraph pole against a sky
the colour of bile
Silent electric wires lead
nowhere
and in the distance
Rusted armaments puddles
Train tracks
Mud sucks on raw heels
The distant waterfall calls us
The constant sound of running water
drips
echoes
Everything sweats
with moisture
In a clear stream
a pocket watch among pebbles …
‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’
Warming ourselves by this brazier
Rolling cigarettes under the ruins drinking
rosehip brandy
Gold has no meaning any more than
Charity
We don’t drink
the water
Goldenhair crawling with lice
This leech on the back of my hand
woke me I need a piss
A woman cries out in the night …
‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’
White stones worn smooth
Smooth humps of vegetable matter
steaming from afar
Weak sun of celebration
Late flowers among nettles
Pulling potatoes out of the peat
Salted herring at noon
This awful coffee
Yesterday the heat
The light receded the shadows tapered into long rays …
‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’
How comforting a light in the darkness
Any light
Every fire is a
woman – remembered desire
We got the headlights working again but
Nothing else then the headlights died …
At dawn above the trees a
Helicopter
Doesn’t land
Nor do we hail it
Not knowing
Where we stand
SNOW
on a metal contraption of some kind
erected in the woods, the height of a man,
can be knocked off with a black branch,
revealing tiny rivets, a bolt or two,
but nothing more of the machine’s purpose
than can be guessed at from its peculiar shape
and solitary position
out here where nobody lives or works or ever comes