Woe to those who are alone!
And when you had separated her, you seduced her,
then promised them both they should become
as Gods with God, judging and knowing.
With treason and treachery you deceived them both
and brought them to break obedience through false promises.
So you got them out of Eden, and brought them here at last.
It was deception, not fair getting.
God will not be mocked,’ said the Evil One.
‘Watch out if you try to make a fool of him.
Our title deeds to their souls are false.
My terror is that truth will come for them.
As you mocked God’s image in becoming snake
so God has deceived us in becoming man.
For God has gone about for thirty winters
in human flesh, travelling, preaching.
I sent sin to court him, and I asked him
if he were God, or God’s son. He gave me a short answer.
So he’s been out and about these thirty-two years.
When I saw what was happening, I plotted and planned
to stop those who hated him from martyring him.
I would have lengthened his life, for I believed
if he died, if his soul penetrated Hell
it would make an end of us all.
While his bones lived, he never rested
from his love lessons. ‘Love one another’ –
but the end of that love, and the aim of that law
is the end of us devils, and our downfall.
And now I see his soul come sailing towards us
in light and glory – I know this is God.
We must retreat, throw down our arms.
It would be better for us never to have been,
better to vanish from existence
than to endure the sight of this Christ.
Through your lies, Lucifer, we first lost heaven
and plunged to hell. You dragged us down.
We swallowed your lies and lost all happiness,
and now, because you had to lie again
and betray Eve, we have lost hell and earth
where we were lords and ruled everything.
Now shall the prince of this world be cast out.’
Again, that light bid the gates open. Lucifer answered
‘What Lord are you?’ A voice said aloud
‘The lord of power and might, that made all things.
Duke of this damned place, now undo these gates
that Christ may come in, heaven’s son.’
As he breathed these words, hell broke, and all Belial’s bars.
No guard could keep those gates. They opened wide.
Patriarchs and prophets, the people that dwelled in darkness
sung with Saint John, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’.
Lucifer blazed into blindness, and saw nothing
while those that our Lord loved flowed forth with that light.
‘Here I am,’ said our Lord, ‘body and soul,
to claim for all the rights of body and soul.
They were made by me, they were always mine.
My law and my justice promised them
that if they ate the apple they should die,
but I never condemned them to hell for ever.
Their deadly sin came by your deception,
you got them with trickery, trickery took them.
You crept into my Eden in the shape of an adder
to steal away what I loved and looked after,
you teased and tricked them and destroyed my Eden.
The Old Law teaches that tricks will catch tricksters,
and truss them up in a web of deception.
Those that take life must lose their own lives,
the Old Law teaches. A murderer’s life is exacted.
One soul must pay for another, the sin of my Crucifixion
wipes out Original Sin. For I am human,
and capable of making amends for human sin.
Through my own death, I undo death,
and I ransom all those crushed through sin,
and I trick the tricksters of hell through my grace.
So do not fool yourself, Lucifer, that I come against the law
to fetch any sinful soul by force,
but by justice and truth I ransom what is mine.
What was got with guile, is regained by grace.
As the human race died through a tree
so by a tree they shall come to life,
And your deception begins to turn
inwards, and stab your own flesh,
while my grace flourishes.
You have brewed bitterness, now swallow it.
Doctor of death, drink your own medicine.
I that am lord of life, love is my drink,
and for that drink I died today, as it seemed.
I do not drink from gold cups, or refined teaching,
only the common cup of all Christian souls.
But your drink shall be death, and deep hell your bowl.
After the great fight thirst grips me still,
my thirst for every human soul.
My thirst is so great that nothing can touch it –
all your spirits and rare vintages
will never slake it, till the grapes are ripe
and the dead wake. Ripe, and purple, and heavy-hanging
in the valley of the resurrection,
and then I shall come into my kingdom
and bring out of hell all human souls.
By right I will lead them out of this place,
all those I loved, all who believed in my coming,
but because you lied to Eve, Lucifer, you shall pay for it.’
And the lord bound Lucifer in chains.
Ashtaroth and the others hid in hell’s crannies:
They did not dare even look on the lord
but let him lead forth whomever he chose
and leave behind him in hell whomever he chose.
The angels sang and swept their harps,
hundreds of angels poured out their music:
The flesh sins, the flesh atones for sin,
the flesh of God reigns as God.
Then Peace played these verses on her pipes:
‘Glittering sun after rain,’ sang Peace
The warmth of sun after rain-loaded clouds,
no love is sweeter, no friends dearer
than when peace comes after war.
Peace, armed with patience, puts an end to danger,
stills violence, destroys terror.’
‘Truly,’ said Truth, ‘Here is the heart of truth.
Let us offer one another the kiss of peace.’
‘And let no one say that we argue among ourselves,
for nothing is impossible to God,’ said Peace.
‘You speak the truth,’ said Righteousness,
and she took Peace in her arms tenderly.
Mercy and Truth have met together
Justice and Peace have kissed one another.
They sang together in my dream until the day dawned
when the church-bells rang for the Resurrection,
and with that sound I awoke
and called Kit my wife and Colette my daughter,
‘Get up, and honour God’s resurrection,
creep to the cross, venerate it, kiss it
like the most precious jewel there is,
most worthy relic, richest on earth.
It bore our Lord’s body to do us good,
and in the shadow of the cross
no ghosts can gather, no evil can live.’
Smoke
Old warriors and women
cough their glots of winter-thick phlegm
while a dog hackles for the bone
that the boy on the floor has stolen.
Whining, mithering children
in swaddles of uri
ne-damp wool, prickling
with lice, impetigo and scabies, again
the toothache, the earache, the scabies, the glands
battling. Hush by the fire again
sing him a song, rock him again,
again, till he sleeps, still whining and wizening.
On the earth floor rocks his squat cradle
on the squat earth he has come to,
while one of the obsolete warriors
wheezes away at an instrument
made of sheep’s innards.
He is a man of skills
learned painfully, not much of a singer
wheezing for the second time that evening
of the boar he killed with a dagger
of the bear with razor claws
that scooped out the face of his brother
then fell to his spear.
In song he remakes his brother
and their small play on the earth floor.
The baby cries. Smoke fills the hall,
the eyes of warriors and old women,
and nobody listens.
There’s the skin of the bear on the floor
and a hearth gaping with flame
red-mouthed, then smoke hides it again.
By thirty everyone’s teeth are broken –
look at that kid worrying his bone.
Bristol Docks
Ships on brown water
wings unruffling
masts steep and clean,
There goes the dredger,
there the steam crane
downcast, never used.
Tide goes wherever
tide goes,
forty foot rise
forty foot fall,
ship waiting
to clear Hotwells.
Time rises
time falls.
Two hundred years
shrink to nothing,
huge tides
shrunk to a drop
caught in a cup
where the men sip
tea, coffee
laced with rum,
talk venturing
westward, moneyward.
This is the slaver
money funded,
good money
from tradesmen’s pockets,
guinea by guinea
fed into it.
Double it, treble it,
build on it.
Don’t stare –
you’ll cross them:
William Miller,
Isaac Elton,
Merchant Trader,
Merchant Venturer,
powerful men.
Edward Colston’s
almshouses
(slaver panelled)
still standing.
Sugar houses
(easy burning)
all gone,
brown water
brown rum.
Custom House
African House
bonded warehouse
almshouse
sugar house.
Mud slack
licking its chops,
bright water
fighting to rise.
Look in their eyes.
They’ll stare you down
for it takes guts
to get returns.
Investor,
speculator,
accumulator,
benefactor.
See their white wings
fledge on the Avon.
They speak of cargo,
profit-margins,
schools they’ve founded,
almshouses.
If you stare
at the brown water
you will see nothing,
every reflection
sucked and gone.
Slaver’s gone
on savage wings,
beak preying.
Tradesmen’s guineas
got their return:
coffee, cotton,
cocoa, indigo,
sugar, rum,
church windows,
fine houses,
fine tombstone
for Edward Colston,
the cry of gulls
goes after them
always lamenting,
always fresh
beaks stabbing
at their soul-flesh.
The spill
Those words like oil, loose in the world,
spilling from fingertip to fingertip
besmirching lip after lip,
the burn; the spillage of harm.
Those words like ash, mouth-warm.
Without remission
Because she told a lie, he says,
because she lied
about the hands not washed before shopping,
she had to learn,
because he wanted her to learn
the law that what he said, went,
and that was the end,
and because she was slow
she had to learn
over and over.
He was an old-fashioned teacher,
he taught her hair to lie straight,
he taught her back to bend,
he taught silence
but for the chink of coathangers
stirring in the wardrobe.
He kicked the voice out of her.
There were no words left to go
with the seven-year-old girl
soiled and bleeding,
marched along the corridor
by this man, rampant
with all he had learned.
Later, locked up once more
she called through the door to her mother
‘It’s all right, Mum, I’m fine.’
But she was lying.
The rain’s coming in
Say we’re in a compartment at night
with a yellow label on the window
and a wine bottle between your knees,
jolting as fast as the sparks
torn from night by the wheels.
Inside, the sleeping-berth is a hammock
and there I swing like a gymnast
in a cradle of jute diamonds.
Outside, the malicious hills,
where to stop is to be borne away
in the arms of a different destiny,
unprotesting. Too sleepy to do anything
but let it be. So, that oak, lightning-cracked,
shakes where the flame slashes
and kills its heart. Swooshing up air
in armfuls its branches unload
toppling beyond the rails’
hard-working parallels. Say you join me,
say your eyes are drowsy,
say you murmur, The rain’s coming in,
pull up the strap on the window,
the rain’s coming in.
As good as it gets
She comes close to perfection,
taking the man on her thigh,
sweeping him home
in a caress of glitter, that way and this,
that, this, each muscle stripped
to bulge and give. See how her hair
streams in the firmament,
see how the tent
jutting with spotlights
puts one over her, then another,
another, a spurt of white
that slicks to her thighs
while the crowd claps time,
faster and faster, wishing she’ll fall
wishing she’ll plunge for ever
licked all over with glitter
love-juices, spittle.
Back she comes on herself,
her bird costume flaring.
As she lets him down
you see the detail: the rosin,
the sweat that follows her spine,
the sly, deliberate spin
with which he steps onto land.
But the crowd won’t stop clapping.
They want her again,
they’ve been translated
, they’re Greek,
shouting Die now! This is as good as it gets!
If only
If only I’d stayed up till four in the morning
and run through the dawn to watch the balloons
at the Festival ground,
and seen you as your balloon rose high
on a huff of flame, and you’d waved,
and a paper aeroplane had swooped to the ground
with your mobile number scrawled on the wings.
If only I’d known that you were crying
when you stood with your back to me
saying that it didn’t matter
you’d be fine on your own.
If only I’d trusted your voice
instead of believing your words.
If only I hadn’t been too late, too early,
too quick, too slow, too jealous and angry,
too eager to win
when it wasn’t a game.
If only we could go back to then
and I could pick up your paper aeroplane
and call you for the very first time.
Mr Lear’s Ring
Mr Lear has left a ring in his room.
Is it of value, is it an heirloom?
Should we pack it with brown paper and string
And post it after him?
He hasn’t the air of a marrying man
He hasn’t a husbandly air.
No, his gait is startled and sudden,
And is he quite all there?
Poor Mr Lear has left a ring in his room
And it’s not of value, it’s never an heirloom,
But we’ll pack it with brown paper and string
And we’ll send it wherever he’s gone.
Fortune-teller on Church Road
Two of us on the tired pavement
with the present pushing past
into the pungent smoke of the coffee-shop,