Recent online manifestations

The last few days have seen a little flurry of online appearances -  in Two Rivers Press's ongoing Poet of the Week series and in two international online readings.
The Two Rivers Press piece includes two poems of mine plus some thoughts on writing and a video of me reading the poem 'Portishead' from my TRP collection 'Recreation Ground' in our living room in Sofia. You can link to that here.
On Sunday I was one of more than 30 poets who took part in the United World of Poetry event online. Poets from Japan to the USA, India to Brazil and many a European country took part, reading their work in English, their native language (with translation into English) or both. You can watch the whole thing or dip in and out of the recording here.
And on Saturday I joined another international reading, Prozor u svijet (Window on the World), this time mostly with poets from SE Europe, as well as Italy (and SE European poets living elsewhere in the world), so most of the readings are in one of the Slavic languages, with some English readings. Again, you can watch the whole thing or dip in and out of the recording by following this link.

Swifts

In the absence of the right temperament,

I’m astonished by the arrival

of a pair of black swifts,

screeching towards early evening,

disappearing, appearing again,

heralds of summer, of change,

here in a world that’s already changed.

The path from fear to irritation and from

irritation to longing’s unknown to them,

just the route between suns,

one over Africa, one over here.

Faced with their clean energy,

I’m ashamed: my inertia

on another long slow afternoon.

It can’t be the beginning

because nothing has ended.

Time passes unpredictably

and attempts to understand events

are like attempts to sew

clothing without needles and pattern.

And right here on the abandoned pavement

between home and the non-stop shop,

it’s as if the only things

which might make sense

aren’t ordinary human sounds,

but the sweet shrieks of these birds

that are winding through the sky

like signs of an alternative future.

Archaeological dig

Boots thud cobbles, march time, match day; things best not to be messed with. Received lack of wisdom. Xeroxed polemics. Keep it simple - the message. Let actions emerge with no instruction. Tactical denial possibilities, strategic rebuttal. Frayed denim, tattooed skull, fixed grimace, sweat: what, us, your honour?

And thus the aforementioned does hereby and justly request an occasion for the restitution of honour in accordance with the constitution, deeds, articles and clauses of our respective guilds and societies, namely …

Cul-de-sac lock-ups. Concrete chipped on girders, rust patches, sheened puddle, dog crap, grass sprouts. Arrays of warriors, improvised weaponry. The stand-off, reiteration of causes and entitlements, the shout, alarums, the charge. Imagined as Agincourt.

Attestations in annals in the form of: witness statements, police reports, hospital records, personal medical records, police statements, news-in-brief articles, legal affidavits. A notable absence of: eulogies, elegies, odes, battle hymns, epic poetry. Graffiti citation found with scuff marks, skid marks, stains, splinters, shards, bone fragments: Ere we do em (erased).

The Populists

And now: rousing music.

A cadre of recruits sing

‘Oh, to be in England!’

as if not already there.

Tiresome rhetorics

speak on our behalf,

sustained by violins –

cadenzas swell to embrace

dawn over the shires

with audible relief tones –

though something always

keeping out of reach.

"And so let us receive blame,

each according to our tribe,

and may those exonerated

forever receive beatitude

each according to their preferences:

mown lawns, canal banks, lupins,

share dividends, King Edwards,

warm dark ale.

"But let those be cursed

who substitute

stern oaks,

lakes, lochs,

thatch, ketch,

for that which

fetches us now

(carpark,

hypermarket,

slip road,

universal

consumer

experience).

"Out, damn’d modernisers, globalists.

Let there be no illusion.

Let there be no allusion –

least of all to

philology,

philosophy,

foreign accents …"

Allow us our own miseries

in bleak, windswept patches.

Definitions of a crisis

Swim out now into that blue/azure sea,

you're either a tourist or a refugee –

where you were born is everything

or nothing if you happened to be born

in places where such things don’t matter.

I have a passport: it’s changing colour

even as we speak. And the headlines bark

like stray dogs, like rabid warnings

of what we’re expected to believe –

and the easy allocations of blame.

Somewhere over the city clouds form,

but the mountain adopts autumnal promise –

completely out of season –

which is what this man crossing the road dismisses.

March 2020

In passing

The first sight of dry patchwork rolling out beneath us

or unfamiliar words murmured at zinc bar counters;

peeling skin on my back like an unfolding map

or yellow acres of sunflowers facing up to the sky;

sporadic glimpses of a slow-moving river

through slits set into the curves of a staircase;

terracotta pigeons on terracotta tiles

or icons glinting through incense and gloom;

a late tram rattling through lamplit suburbs

or an early plane flying over low city rooftops;

those spiralling conversations lasting all night

or the plangent musk of newly poured wine;

the passing last whistle of a passing last train –

those days we needed nobody’s leave to remain.

31 Jan 2020

The End of 2019

Where else to begin

but with the burning bush

in a street-side bin?

Its warmth is welcome

on this winter’s coldest day

and no one pays any attention.