by Mundy, Simon
Here goes.
X
All islands are linked by the sea, Poseidon’s net,
His rape of twisted water. Is it really spume or the
Great god’s sperm that spots and crusts
The drying sand?
Within mountains you can trace
That ancient ejaculation
On the knickers of the land.
Will the seed respond
When we expire
Break open with birth delight?
Perhaps he will haul
A mate for my island
Through your Bosphorus
Emancipate the Blest Aegean.
Invocation
Seeking answers has led me nowhere all morning,
The petering lanes as haphazard as the gusting of the wind,
Brambles snagging the mind,
Rare ideas no sooner articulated than
Dropped into the ditch mud.
But flocks of questions fly deftly through the trees,
Laughing, flicking forked tails in disdain.
They are simple enough, part curiosity,
Part exasperated prayer, lines of identification
Scrawled on their shining flanks in garish profusion.
When did the clouds about Olympus turn to concrete?
Why is only one heaven open these days?
What good are altars without sacrifice,
Hymns without libation?
If all the virgins are reserved for martyrs
Who will breed new fools to die for a cause?
Can I opt out, offer other invocations?
Why cannot mortals become stars, merely celebrities,
Now that galaxies have replaced constellations?
When did nymphs become nuns and satyrs apologetic,
Neglecting Apollo, deserting Aphrodite?
Did we drive them to it?
Did you shrug us off as our wars became too nasty to be good sport,
Deciding that the destitution of our ignorance was small price for Elysium?
Why did you all retire, leaving men to fight alone
Craving the fictional attention of a despotic bully
With three religions all his own,
Each riven by disputatious cults that
Poseidon would never have let compete?
What invocation will lure you back?
Later
All that was left
Was slate grey
In the morning
Tingeing eyes
With the underside of cloud.
Anger subsided with the thunder
The dinge of streets
Exhausted by hot air
Resentful, the sky
Retained a sullen right
To spoil the summer
Unleash another charge.
Nothing happened
Eyes turned green
Old calm
Brought a familiar
Unconsidered smile
A touch
And then the sun.
Fifth Sense
A glance of perfume
Took you to Milan
By blonde hair,
All those rings,
A henge of stones across taut fingers,
A vocal rasp,
Sambucco with the liquorice.
On the blanched olive of your skin
There is no shard of scent,
No memory
Of yesterday or remnant of the night.
Until you reach for a bottle,
Its clear juices
Squeezed from figs,
That fecund fruit,
And fix the moment
For me, the street, the bench,
The grace of your neck at noon.
My Independence Day
My flag has a dozen planets,
Rings intertwined in a confusion of collided moons;
Its predominant colour is black but rimmed with silver,
The severity offset by a golden lion
Who lounges
In the corner, bottom right,
Licking his paws, too tired to bother with a mauling.
All my days are feast days and so it hangs
At half-mast in memory, accusing tribute,
Of all the girls who refused
To revel with me, of all the boys who died
Defending other flags, less amiable,
More demanding. Flags with silly stripes,
Brash primary colours,
On separate poles stuck in desiccated earth,
Trumpets to rouse the hungover before slaughter,
Flags promising the fiction of independence,
Their cloth endowed with injunctions
Against burning, a disrespectful rip.
My flag intertwines the planets with consummate braid.
Gently, of course
Gently, of course, is ideal
But often, how often
The rope, the shoe, the hand, the mouth
Slips
That crucial distance just before the ground.
The expected earth is tarmac,
The bed of feathers a gorse bush, words of comfort
Arrows that find the most vulnerable
To pierce and lodge, barbs forbidding retraction.
Nothing is ever enough
Or timed to matter less,
Money, love nor favour,
Only the letting down is without fail.
The End of the Exhibition
The morning after the masque at court
Ordered by the first Charles Stewart
To blaze the winter far away for one long night,
A traveller from Scotland, recusant,
Was so shattered by the transformation, light to dirt,
He renounced the world, turned monast.
So this room, denied these colours, will seem bereft,
A shadow space, its form unkempt,
The conversation that these pictures brought
Long ceased, mid-sentence, cut short.
In their reassembly, new but separate,
Their lasting fight will be to startle all that’s left.
Aspects of Sea
I
Beside
Fresh as sand castle
Friends met this morning as the moat was dug
And reinforced with pebble ramparts we ran free at last,
Never asked why we rampaged
From the tide-line to wave edge and back,
Our yelps and admonitions drowned in the rasp of shingle
The piled debris of a conflict the land always lost.
We could be as careless as the surf of breakages,
Breaking ages, voices raised
In shrill tones as random as thunder.
We children were too busy to stare patiently across the water
Waiting for an incident at the horizon,
A three shift in green from turquoise via olive to forest
A sudden shock of grey – too excited
To mind the swift drench of a shower from an unexpected quarter
A cold rush before the golden sun took charge once more.
There’s so much, so much to be done before the tide wins;
Brothers to be buried in hummocks of sand
Ice cream to make drops so sisters cry
Crabs to chase until the years collect
And turn us into lovers too enthralled to turn back along the beach.
II
Under
There is no such thing as darkness.
Here only humans with their pathetic little eyes and fragile ears
Are sightless unless near the burning glare
The poisoned air untempered by healing water.
Sailing free of weight and wind the speed
Is always cruising whether dive or rise
Gulf stream warm or Antarctic chilled.
We glide round mountains
Navigate chasms without stars
/> Never need a cable or space spy to talk long distance.
We love to watch you sink
Laugh as you paddle home and thank you for giving us
So many ships to decorate with flowers in our garden toy collection.
III
On
On deck fear is loud
Never heard, force ten is louder,
Surround sound
Illegal power
Anarchic dissonance
No plan, no negotiation
With air propelled beyond fury
Water that sucks, spits,
Shoves like a rapist high on destruction
Loving the feel of the ship’s disintegration
Strewing debris in exultation
Some to be worn on waves’ crests
Some sent as trophies below
To be encrusted
Fondled on the seabed.
Prayer is drowned before the pray-er.
Shatter the amen, buckle ship’s buttress,
Flood and reflood
Send its nave to howling heaven
Render vestments rags.
For the fun of it,
The sheer spume-shot laughter
Let them live
These jellied men and salt-soaked women
Let morning bring calm and silent recrimination
Deliverance without trust.
IV
Above
White horses dance in the unexpected sun to spread the gold,
Flicking their manes in the wind that set them free to run all night,
Only spotted by the lights of an indifferent trawler
But they and their gale are soon
Exhausted in this golden dawn,
The taming sun whispers them to deep stable,
Closing a door of brilliant glass, and conjures haze
That joins air and water, uneasy twins told to kiss
And make up in public view.
Leave them to their surliness slowly, without giving offence,
Though they’ll never notice; rise from them, fly up
As though backing away from a king.
Sea king now, filling the vision even as distance increases,
Great islands reduced to pimples on the water’s majesty
That erupt, outstay their welcome and submerge forgotten.
Breaking free of the sea king’s gaze, rising through his myopia,
The divisions in his kingdom emerge, untidy,
Jagged, the pathology of earth.
Why call it Earth when so much is the Sea?
Why call us man when so many more
Are women and we are mostly water too?
Soon the sea can no longer hide his curves
But there his humility ends
For, as the feet become thousands and the miles mimic them,
Though the sky gathers its clouds to shroud him,
The majesty, the royal blue of his coat,
Enthrals the planets in the name of peace.
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following publications where some of these poems were first published: ‘An Incident of War’ first appeared in The Liberal, as did ‘A Vote for Absence’. ‘Translated Daughter’ and ‘A Prayer for a New Goddaughter’ were published by Poetry Wales. ‘Above’ (IV of Aspects of Sea) was in Orbis.
‘Presteigne Festival/Gwaithla 25 Years On’ was commissioned for the 2007 Presteigne Festival. The first of the Radnor Songs, ‘The Buzzard’, was commissioned for the 2004 Presteigne Festival, set by Cecilia McDowall and recorded as part of A Garland for Presteigne by soprano Gillian Keith and pianist Simon Lepper on the Metronome label. The full cycle was set by Cecilia McDowall and performed by Rachel Nichols and Paul Plummer for the 2005 festival. The orchestral version, with Orchestra Nova conducted by George Vass, was given its first London performance in St. John’s Smith Square on 9 October 2011 and is available on Dutton Epoch records and from Oxford University Press. Cecilia also asked for ‘Aspects of Sea’ to be written as text for a proposed sea symphony.
‘The New Senedd, Cardiff ’ was commissioned for it’s opening by Academi Cymreig/The Welsh Academy. ‘My Independence Day‘ was written for the 2005 Bay Lit Festival, Cardiff. ‘Citrus’ was published in English and Serbian as part of the 11 9/Web Streaming Poetry anthology by Auropolis, Belgrade. ‘Deceptive Beauty’ (IV of ‘More for Helen of Troy’) was ordered by the designer Ewgeniya Lyras who illustrates it in the cover photograph.
