Disinformation

by Frances Leviston

  frozen in space,

  dressed like a wrist with jade and jet;

  or Bobo – as I named him –

  his heavy puss

  pursed like a clown’s,

  like a freshly-sprung mushroom

  observing silence . . .

  I miss being part of the known

  quantifiable index,

  the massive mouths of children

  smearing the glass case –

  sometimes shocked

  and crying, more often

  delighted to learn of my fate,

  sneaking pictures

  for school reports. Their flashes

  filled me up with light

  like water

  would a calabash

  or cauterizing beams from night-

  security did the displays.

  For hours after

  I’d see patterns that couldn’t be real,

  shadow plays,

  huge birds fighting each other

  up the loaded walls;

  I’d imagine

  hands to rub my eyelids with,

  lift them and feel

  the cross-stitches holding me in,

  my vengeful breath

  trapped beneath their seals,

  wanting for the first

  time in lifetimes to exhale,

  to spit red berries

  or the prattle of a curse . . .

  then that would fail

  in the force of my several injuries

  and I’d seem to drop

  towards a far ocean,

  armless, footless, a seed-head blown

  without will or hope

  or wishing-upon

  through the middle of a crown

  to land on my shelf

  under rows of wooden masks

  and blown birds’ eggs,

  smelling the open jar of myself –

  salt-sweet as tamarisk,

  mild as figs.

  Story

  Under what tree, in what part of the forest, beside which branch of the leaf-obstructed stream, in sun or in rain,

  concreted into what foundation, supporting whose house, deaf to how many dinner parties, subjected to how many holding-forths,

  compacted along with what model of car, with what registration, wearing which perfume and what sort of pearls,

  in the back-of-beyond of what country, adjoining whose underdevelopment land, masked by which strain of animal fodder’s

  pollen blown from the next field along, belonging to whom, missed by whom, questioned by which particular method, scarred where,

  repaired where, reopened how, broken how,

  how taken care of, transported how, buried

  how, in what manner and from what platform disclaimed

  during which international crisis, during which electoral year,

  under whose watch, under whose watch

  and why will it surface, why will it then be permitted to surface,

  the end of the story, the body we need?

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Poems from this book were first published in Dear World & Everyone In It, Edinburgh Review, the Guardian, London Review of Books, Manchester Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, the Nation, Oxford Poets 2013, Poetry, Poetry London, Silk Road Review and the Times Literary Supplement, and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. ‘Woodland Burial’ was commissioned by the National Gallery for Metamorphosis: Titian 2012. My thanks to Arts Council England and the Authors’ Foundation for their support. And thanks to Paul Batchelor most of all.

  Disinformation

  FRANCES LEVISTON was born in Edinburgh in 1982. She grew up in Sheffield and read English at St Hilda’s College, Oxford. In 2006 she received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. Public Dream, her first collection, was published in 2007 by Picador and shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, the London Review of Books, the Guardian, The Times, the TLS, and various anthologies.

  Also by Frances Leviston

  Public Dream

  First published 2015 by Picador

  This electronic edition published 2015 by Picador

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-7115-4

  Copyright © Frances Leviston 2015

  The cover shows Love in the Morning by Wayne Sleeth, 2006, www.waynesleeth.com. Private Collection.

  www.picador.com/poetry

  The right of Frances Leviston to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  George Seferis. George Seferis: Collected Poems.

  Translated and edited by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard.

  © 1995 Princeton University Press.

  Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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