Rising Breath

In sunset Varanasi

where mother river

is oil of gold and slow-going

sluggish with the odour

of forgiven sins –

an old man’s face

comes right up close to talk.

 

“Now these here gods …” he says

“are just a clutch of pebbles –

a reliquary of broken bones –

dumped at the upper mouth of Hell.

don’t seek adoption here.”

 

His holy blasphemy up-breathes me

off those choking ghats …

beyond the sunset river,

to hover at the world’s white northern crown

where a midnight sun

bejewels the cold horizon.

 

… All dreams of course ….

One may suppose

That not much can be said of dreams?

drifting from deep forgotten…

a scented rumour

of some unremembered rose?

 

 

Reflection

I drove round the corner.

On the grass to my left

was a momentary crow,

still, in the sunlight.

 

Golden black sheen

and the head

and the beak

and the eye

- unperturbed - of a scavenger,

 

Really a moment of nothing

but light beyond words.

 

Speeding on …

seams on the twist

of the hornbeam and beech

yellow-greens urgent,

viridian – cool -

and the sunny black wing

of a memory

 

Crop Circle Mystery

Be aware of spirit

based in strangeness.

Picture-shows from Mercury

a skallywag God

with wings behind his toes –

… calligraffiti in the summer night

naughty and hermetic.

Basking next day

in the corn-gold afternoon –

with grins and pints of beer

a gnomic company … gnostic too …

the makers …

sacred geometricksters.

Seekers tumbling out of car doors

all agosh! agog, entranced;

ah! new-fangly, other-worldly, origins …

black helicopters!

Old knowledge – all forgotten –

of the human craft

,

of joinery and making tools,

of cutting furrows,

… stretching cords,

recognising knots by fingers

feeling in the dark,

… of toeing to the datum line …

… feet turning in a mower’s dance?

… of eyes attuned to moonless sight

… mouths keeping mum…

of choreograffiti

in the summer night.

©Malcolm Stewart 2001

Our Ancient Selves

Do you remember

the village stone?

Waxy from the hands of passers-by –

Constrained to some municipal task

marking a public point

stating utilitarian distances

but secretly …

thrilling to fairy fire

and glimmering evening presences,

forgotten but for the story tellers.

Do you remember how,

on holy ground,

north of our shrines

we planted yews

far from cattle

– unbreakable sentries.

Bows for the bowmen

and shadows for the dead.

In the Eye of the Empress

I once was told a tale

that my informant called

“the tale the masters tell

among themselves” :

That from the formal schools of Chan

Tu Chung Atu,

the pupil most acclaimed ,

was called on to present himself,

for the Emperor’s accolade.

But as neared the throne

the Emperor’s wife

whispered in her husband’s ear

“He is too ugly!”

“You are too ugly”

the Emperor said.

So Tu Chung Atu turned away

and leaped from a cliff

and arose

on the head of a dragon.

The story caught me by the throat –

already choked with earlier words

spoken in that sane bright room…

“He is to you” my friend had said

“closer than your jugular vein.”

For the first time in this life

I there remembered death

and my aorta quaked.

“Of course”

“When he has truly passed the test”

my friend confided lightly

“He does not present himself.”

In the Eye of the Empress

I once was told a tale

that my informant called

“the tale the masters tell

among themselves” :

That from the formal schools of Chan

Tu Chung Atu,

the pupil most acclaimed ,

was called on to present himself,

for the Emperor’s accolade.

But as neared the throne

the Emperor’s wife

whispered in her husband’s ear

“He is too ugly!”

“You are too ugly”

the Emperor said.

So Tu Chung Atu turned away

and leaped from a cliff

and arose

on the head of a dragon.

The story caught me by the throat –

already choked with earlier words

spoken in that sane bright room…

“He is to you” my friend had said

“closer than your jugular vein.”

For the first time in this life

I there remembered death

and my aorta quaked.

“Of course”

“When he has truly passed the test”

my friend confided lightly

“He does not present himself.”

Myth of Intent

A world stirs from its winter sleep.

The old and sun-forgotten Northern night

pales at last

Endra approaches … keeps a chosen line,

across the frozen shingle plain,

and sighting on a distant pinnacle,

selects a fallen stone,

the stone at last

of remembered intent.

Cracking roots of ice.

Endra sweats …

uprights the pillar

here where ancient streams

once crossed.

Arctic night has stripped the soul

to bare endurance

Endra waits now …

under circumpolar wheels

measuring the inevitable.

Dawn unlids her furnace eye

and from the melting ridges

crumbling in the light

fireshots gold the pillar’s crown.

Home here

where long-dry watercourses meet,

the stone-will chimes silently,

the lattice activates –

its pulses bulleting amid the escarpments.

Bone marrow sprung with fire,

Endra dances,

animate and utterly emblazed

within the compass of God’s geometry.

Flame and water …

stone and dawn…

name and bone …

remembered purpose

– destined in a present union –

singing

as it nourishes the land.

Rider

Once a hero rode his stories, he was armed with old adventures,

Finding treasures in the ocean, bent on measuring a mountain,

He was hunting long-dead dragons for a maiden’s sentences.

But the castle in his keeping knew the maiden was a robber,

Who made a theft and left a gift

While his fortress fell in wonder.

And he heard her whisper:

“All your songs are only stories

There are few who’ll ever listen

And the paths that tell of magic spells

May often not be taken.”

Then, returning from his story, he was really not a hero,

He was really just a rider in the clumsiness of armour.

For the robber gave him weakness and the gift was more than knowledge,

For the river flowed like freedom

To the danger of the giver.

But still he heard her whisper:

“There’s no need to open oceans,

There’s no need to measure mountains.

All your songs are only stories,

There are few who’ll ever listen

And the words that tell of magic spells

May often be mistaken.”

So now he’s reached her hiding place

And stands there with his burden.

Feeling clumsy in his movements,

As he leans to lift the curtain,

To bestow a blue and shining pebble

From the ruins of his castle.

Still he hears her whisper:

“All your songs are only stories,

There are few who’ll ever listen

And those that tell of magic spells

May sometimes be forsaken.”

Surely songs will live forever

and there’s many who will listen

all can hear that harmony

and everything is spoken

and all … is just a token.

The strange parenthood of God

God colludes with wickedness

against the just

We’ve long suspected it;

for Abel and for Jesus’s sake.

And so it’s proved –

Lincoln, Gandhi, Luther King

Saddat , Rabin …

God sent them blessings

and bullets

for their peace.

A parent moving

things of fascination

from their infant’s reach.

Perhaps.

Is the longed-for

inadmissable as yet –

too precious and too vulnerable

until all ancient curses

run full course?

Vendetta and

his haunted doppelganger

pick their ways across

the desolation of abominated lives.

stumbling on

to meet their self-same

selves

no different from the adversary,

on great flat fields

as wide as history

blood-filthy and with no high ground

just rutted with the slain.

Still they exhaust a paradox

– blow for exhausted blow –

within the prophets’

mitochondrial truth –

one motherhood of Eve …

one brotherhood of Cain.

From a Dream Millennium

‘Travellers on the edge of time!’

The redhaired woman shouts.

We skid and scuffle on the rough red sand

across a stony dry red field

impossibly outrunning

a big and box-red double decker bus.

I dream the world.

We had emerged from crowded streets –

plateglass and highlit galleries -. ­

And right there solid at the kerbside,

shadow-eyed and facing me

out of a private realm of time,

a stranger stood

unmoving in the throng,

intimate and confidential as eternity.

He gazed and sang –

his song entrancing only me,

across the clamour of the street:

‘Vide’o mare quante bello

Spira tantu sentimento …

Turn your gaze upon the sea

How beautiful it is –

Only the breath can sense so much emotion;

May its sweet voice cause you to dream.’

Yes earlier still,

we’d stood by a quayside wall,

some friend and I –

and hesitated –

half about to board an ocean liner

soon to leave.

I hadbeen bound for Amsterdam

but what with all the rubbish in my pockets,

and recalling other destinations

I couldn’t find my ticket . . . .

Lost in the precariousness of dreams.

Awake and writing this I hear

the neighbour’s radio.

It plays that Neapolitan song.

Can dreams be magic?

Travellers on the edge of time

beyond the moon’s white door each night –

and …still uncertain

at the brink of void and vision;

thank God

for giving us impartiality.