Lyric Poems
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BED
The moment the light goes out,
He sleeps: a gift from the dark.
There is the small chime
Of the moon on the wall,
The deep freeze digesting
In the kitchen. He floats
From head to toe on the buzz
Of his snore, dreaming the calm
Glide of a Jasper ski-lift,
The summer elk that trotted
Out of forest beneath our
Dangling feet. His arm
Crooks the violin of my head.
I elbow him away intent on
Sleep but suddenly unpegged
By a gust of dreams we roll
Together in the hot hole
Of his mum's old bed,
Dribbling on the pillows.
Waking, he has me in an
Arm-lock, our legs a single
Rope of flesh, my ear-lobe
Tickled by his breath. I reach
Behind me and shove my hand
Between his thighs. He stretches,
Opening briefly like a centre-
Fold, a light smile of welcome
On his lips. But more than this
Is the scrape of the two-o'clock
Beetle, the nip of a dust-mite,
My scratch: my love disturbed
By me, awake but patient
In the dark.
from Un Tour d'Ecosse (Carcanet, 2001)
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La Tour de Ganne
(for Bernadette Plissart)
Light never leaves the Tour de Ganne:
sun or moon infused, its stones
are ruined by their blanching.
Blanche de Castille and Jean le Bon,
Louis le Gros, Philippe le Bel,
the lovely names, the leading lights
who sired this tower in casual tyranny,
first touched the candlewicks in windows
and made the sandstone beacon-like
to harrows and dry clods.
Light still turned upon the Tour de Ganne
when painters of the light first lit
on Grez-sur-Loing with RLS in tow.
Fresh from the Land of Counterpane
you gazed from Chevillon's hotel
at peasant fathers bent for furrows
disappearing through the slight sfumato
that wreathed the village bridge in mist.
Reflections from sheets flyped
by washerwomen beneath their canopied 'lavoirs'
caught your glance which flickered
up the tower of lichen greys,
rustling with the river's glitter,
and lights played round the Tour de Ganne.
They beamed back down and warmed the one
stone step that grounded Chevillon's tight
wooden stair. And as you stepped with her,
talking small, just met and not yet loved,
upon its uneven mottled dip then suddenly,
all shuddered, tipped like a gangway as the stone
turned in its wake, a small white ship
caught in the Old High Lights your fathers
wrecked their lives on, revolving round the earth
to South Sea Islands and light the Tour de Ganne
could never hold a candle to. Yet Skerryvore,
Muckle Flugga, Fidra, Stroma, Dhu Heartach
were nothing compared to her, so unsuitable,
so much older, from so far away, a transgression
by Dad's lights, hard for him to bear and so you pressed
harder on the stone step's deep lit-up hardness,
a threshold 'somewhere between whispered speech
and singing': pierres perdues in sunlight on the Tour de Ganne.
from In My Father's House, (Carcanet, 2005)
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Ode tae Borborygmusses
eftir Valery Larbaud
Rift n' pump! Rift n' pump!
Deep curmurrin uv yer tummy an yer trollie-bags,
Girnin, fidgety flesh,
Voices, unstoppable whispery organs,
Wee yelps, the only patter 'at doesny lee,
An which persists even a bit eftir ye've popped yer veritable
clogs...
Doll, time n' again wi huv taen a wee brek fae oor
rumpy-pumpy
Tae listen tae the sang o oor ain intimmers;
Ach but it said it all -interminably sometimes-
While we tried oor level best no tae get thi kinks!
Up it cam fae deep doon,
Daft an ringin,
Louder an aw oor houghmagandy,
Mair unexpectit, mair inexorable, mair sairious -
Och the inevitable sang o thi oesophagus!
- stifled glug glug o a wee refreshment
the plop gloop plop o thi oary boats
plyin the pond i Queen's Park-
Christ but if it isny thi maist mysterious hingmygig
Ah'll niver again be able tae deny;
Sweet Mary an Joseph if it isny thi verra last wurd ah'll utter
When, still warm, ah'll be thi puir soul at soils the soil: a final
"Gardez-lou!"
Glossary
curmurrin - a rumbling noise
trollie-bags - entrails
pop yer clogs - die
rumpy-pumpy - sex
intimmers - insides
get thi kinks - giggle uncontolably
ringin - imperious
houghmagandy - sex
hingmygig - thingumygig
from Un Tour d'Ecosse (Carcanet, 2001)
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BRAVEHEART
O Mel! Mel of the hair extenders! Braveheart!
O Mad Mac Mel! It is I,
Walt, Walt Whitman, who salutes you.
When I heard at the close of the day
That your heroic film of the Wallace
Would premiere in Stirling, I floated
From Mount Florida, high above Glasgow, floated
From the residence of my comrade Kinloch, a brave heart
Like you, I crossed the hummock-land of Shotts as Wallace
Did on leaving Elderslie , I
Sped through that dun-coloured upland (beside the great M8) that day
To celebrate your epic but most of all to be with you
O Mel! But also to petition you,
Dark singer of Democracy, you who floated
Like a Moses through Scottish bogs, waiting for the day
To release your noble, simple people, their brave brave heart
Clasped in an English vice. O Mel, I
Confuse you, mix you in my mind with Wallace.
And who could blame me? For you and Wallace
Commingle in my scented breast, you
Two and I, comrades all, shooting the film of liberty I
Crave above all else, I crave and lost as my successors floated
Back up stream to a land of villanelles and sonnets. Bravehearts!
Brave Walt! a bearded Ariel imprisoned in a bad sestina who would this
day
Be free again by your example, free today
To live today, to sing the love of comrades as Wallace
Did. He could not rhyme, his only beat the braveheart
Quad-pumping the eclectic plaid about his knees (What knees!). You
Saw him Mel, as clearly as I see you who floated
From Australia via Hollywood to this premiere. I
Name the perfumed guests as they arrive, I
Shake the manly hand of Jodie Foster, day
Dream as Christian Slater -he of the slow doe-eyes- floats
In. We sit transfixed as the credits of your Wallace
Roll but I have eyes alone for you,
Peach of a biceps -your musk white thighs- muncher of power-breakfasts,
Braveheart!
Mel Wallace, Will Gibson, this day
Your barbaric yawp injects its braveheart
Into me. You and I floating and free.
from Un Tour d'Ecosse, (Carcanet, 2001)
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