STRINDBERG IN BERLIN
All the wrong turnings
that have brought me here —
debts, divorce, a court trial, and now
a forced exile in this city and this drinking cell,
Zum schwarzen Ferkel,The Black Piglet:
neither home nor hiding-place, just
another indignity,
just a different make of hell.
Outside, a world of people queuing
to stand in my light, and that sound
far in the distance, of my life
labouring to catch up.
I've now pulled out
every good tooth
in search of the one that was making me mad.
I squint at the flasks and alembics,
head like a wasps' nest,
and pour myself
three fingers and a fresh start.
A glass ofaqua vitae, a straightener,
stiffener, a universal tincture — same again —
the great purifier, clarifier,
a steadying hand on the dancing hand,
— one more, if you wouldn't mind —
bringer of spirit and the spirit of love;
the cleansing fire, turning lead
to gold, the dead back into life.
The Pole at the piano, of course;
Munch opposite me, his face
like a shirt done up wrong.
My fiancée in one corner, my lover in another,
merging, turning, as all women turn,
back into my daughters,
and I am swimming naked at night,
off the island, in the witch-fire ofmareld light,
listening to the silence of the stars,
with my children beside me,
my beautiful lost children, in the swell
of the night, swimming beside me.
And back, to the bright salts and acids,
the spill and clamour of the bar,
the elixirs, the women:
my wife-to-be, my young lover —
one banked hearth, one unattended fire.
Christ. The hot accelerant of drink.
The rot of desire.
And out, out into the swinging dark,
a moon of mercury, lines of vitriol trees
and the loose earth that rises up,
drops on me, burying me,
night after night after night.
VENERY
What is he to think now,
the white scut
of her bottom
disappearing
down the half-flight
carpet stair
to the bathroom?
What is he to do
with this masted image?
He put all his doubt
to the mouth of her long body,
let her draw the night
out of him like a thorn.
She touched it, and it moved: that's all.
MY GIRLS
How many times
have I lain alongside them
willing them to sleep
after the same old stories;
face to face, hand in hand,
till they smooth into dream and I can
slip these fingers free
and drift downstairs:
my face a blank,
hands full of deceit.
TINSEL
Tune to the frequency of the wood and you'll hear
the deer, breathing; a muscle, tensing; the sigh
of a fieldmouse under an owl. Now
listen to yourself — that friction — the push-and-drag,
the double pulse, the drum. You can hear it, clearly.
You can hear the sound of your body, breaking down.
If you're very quiet, you might pick up loss: or rather
the thin noise that losing makes —perdition.
If you're absolutely silent
and still, you can hear nothing
but the sound of nothing: this voice
and its wasting, the soul's tinsel. Listen ... Listen...
LEAVING ST KILDA
Cloudsstream over the edge of Mullach Mòor, pouring
into the valley as we sail against the sun from Village Bay,
rounding the Point, and the Point of the Water,
north under Oiseval and the Hill of the Wind, and round
past the Skerry of the Cormorants, the Cleft
of the Sea-Shepherd, and out around the Yellow Headland
to The Hoof, and the Cleft of the Hoof, to The Gap
where the fulmars nest in their sorrel and chickweed;
and on to Stac a'Langa, the Long Stack
also called the Stack of the Guillemot, and Sgeir Dhomnuill,
place of shags, who are drying their wings like a line
of blackened tree-stumps, to Mina Stac and Bradastac
under the deep gaze of Conachair the Roarer
and Mullach Mor the Great Summit,
and the White Summit and the Bare Summit beyond;
from there to the Cleft of the Leap, of the Ruinous Fall,
and round the promontory, and its tunnels and arches
to Geó nan Plaidean, the Cleft of the Blankets,
and Geó nan Rón, the Cleft of the Seals, to rest
by Hardship Cave and the deep doorways in the cliffs
of wide Glen Bay; the air still, the Atlantic flat as steel.
Southwards lies Gleann Mor, the Great Glen, which holds
the Brae of Weepings, the House of the Trinity
and The Amazon's House, The Well of Many Virtues,
and also, it's said, above The Milking Stone, among
the shielings, a place they call The Plain of Spells.
Here also, the home of the great skua,
the bonxie, the harasser: pirate, fish-stealer,
brown buzzard of the sea who kills for the sake of it.
And on past the Cleft of the Lame and the Beach of the Cairn
of the Green Sword and the Chasm of the Steep Skerry
to the crest of The Cambir, and round its ridge to Soay.
Three great sea-stacks guard the gateway to the Isle of Sheep:
the first, Soay Stac, the second, Stac Dona — also called
The Stack of Doom — where nothing lives. The third — kingdom
of the fulmar, and tester of men who would climb
her sheer sides — the Pointed Stack, Stac Biorach.
Out on the ocean, they ride the curve of the wave; but here
in the air above their nests, in their thousands, they are ash
blown round a bonfire, until you see them closer, heeling
and banking. The grey keel
and slant of them: shearing,
planing the rock, as if their endless
turning of it might shape the stone —
as the sea has fashioned the overhangs
and arches, pillars, clefts and caves, through
centuries of close attention, of making its presence known.
Under the stacks, the shingle beach at Mol Shoay,
filled with puffins, petrels, shearwaters, and on the slopes
up to The Altar, the brown sheep of Soay graze.
Above the cliffs, and round again past the Red Cleft
to the rocks of Creagan, Am Plaistir, the Place of Splashing,
under the grey hill of Cnoc Glas, to the Point of the Strangers,
the Point of the Promontory, Flame Point, and beyond that
the Skerry of the Son of the King of Norway.
Back to Hirta and The Cambir to the Mouth of the Cleft
and The Cauldron Pool and down through the skerries
to the western heights of Mullach Bi — the Pillar Summit —
and Claigeann Mòr, Skull Rock.
Between them, the boulder field of Carn Mòor — sanctuary
of storm petrels, Leach's petrels, Manx shearwaters —
and up on the ridge, the L
over's Stone.
Past The Beak of the Wailer, Cleft of the Grey Cow,
the Landing Place of the Strangers, to An Tore, The Boar,
rising from the sea under Mullach Sgar and Clash na Bearnaich,
and The Notches that sit under Ruaival
the Red Fell, pink with thrift — past the white churning
at the mouth of the kyle, and on through the mists
of kittiwakes to the serrated fastness of Dun:
The Doorpost, The Fank, the Lobster Precipice, Hamalan
the Anvil Rock, The Pig's Snout,
The Fissures, and The Beak of Dùun.
And then north-east, four miles, to the fortress of Boreray,
rising a thousand feet out of the black-finned sea.
To the northern stack: Stac an Armin, Stack of the Warrior,
highest sea-stack in these islands of Britain, where the last
great auk was killed as a witch
a hundred and seventy years ago. On its southern edge,
The Spike, Am Biran, and Broken Point — long loomery
of the guillemot — and across to The Heel,
split vertically in two, and the Cleft of Thunder.
Round, then, the heights of Boreray,
clockwise this time, round
to high Sunadal the swimmy-headed, home of puffins,
and the village of cleits
like turf-roofed chambered cairns
looking down on the Rock of the Little White Headland,
the Bay of a Woman, the Point of the Dale of the Breast,
and round the southern tip of Boreray, Gob Scapanish
—Headland of the Sheaths, Point of the Point of Caves —
and Cormorant Rock and The Cave of Ruin and then
Clagan na Rúsgachan, Skull Rock of the Fleeces,
wreathed in banner-clouds,
the Chasm of the Warrior and the great rift of Clesgor
—to reach, in the west, the Grey Stack, the Hoary Rock,
the gannetry of St Kilda: Stac Lee.
From one side a bishop's piece, from another, a shark;
all sides inches deep with guano you can smell for miles.
A stone hive of gannets, thrumming and ticking
with the machinery of sixty thousand squalling birds.
Off the rock, they open out in perfect cruciform and glide
high over the deep swell to track the shadows
of the mackerel or the herring shoal and then,
from a hundred feet, hundreds of them drop:
folding their wings
to become white javelins —
the dagger bill,
the pointed yellow head,
white body,
white wings tipped black —
they crash
white
into their own white water.
***
All eyes stay fixed
on the great sea-citadel, this
mountain range returning to the waves,
all eyes hold the gaze of the rocks
as the boat turns east — as if
to look away would break the spell —
until a shawl of mist
goes round its shoulders,
the cloud-wreaths
close over it, and it's gone.
At last we turn away, and see them
leading us: bow-riding dolphins,
our grey familiars,
and thirty gannets in a line
drawing straight from Boreray:
a gannet guard
for this far passage,
for the leaving of St Kilda.
II. BROKEN WATER
LAW OF THE ISLAND
They lashed him to old timbers
that would barely float,
with weights at the feet so
only his face was out of the water.
Over his mouth and eyes
they tied two live mackerel
with twine, and pushed him
out from the rocks.
They stood, then,
smoking cigarettes
and watching the sky,
waiting for a gannet
to read that flex of silver
from a hundred feet up,
close its wings
and plummet-dive.
KALIGHAT
Only a blue string tethers him to the present.
The small black goat; the stone enclosure;
the forked wooden altar washed in coconut
milk, hung with orange and yellow marigolds;
the heap of sodden sand.
With a single bleat
he folds himself into a shadow in the corner,
nosing a red hibiscus flower onto its back
and nibbling the petals.
The temple bells; the drum. It is nearly time.
A litre of Ganges holy water
up-ended over him. He's dragged
shivering to centre-stage and
slotted, white-eyed, into place. On the last
drumbeat, the blade separates
his head from his body. The blood
comes out of his neck
in little gulps.
The tongue and eyes are still
moving in the head
as the rest of him
is thrown down next to it.
Neither of his two parts can quite take this in.
The legs go on trembling,
pedalling at the dirt — slowly trying to drag
the body back to its loss: the head
on its side, dulling eyes fixed
on this black, familiar ghost;
its limbs flagging now,
the machinery running down.
There's some progress, but not enough, then
after a couple of minutes, none at all.
The last thing I notice is a red petal
still in his mouth, and another,
six inches away, in his throat.
RELIGION
after Bonfire Night
I find christ in the fields:
the burst canister
its incense heavy
in the coloured cardboard tube:
asperged, bright with dew
PENTHEUS AND DIONYSUS
After Ovid
Pentheus — man of sorrows, king
of Thebes — despised the gods, and had no time
for blind old men or their prophecies.
'You're a fool, Tiresias, and you belong
in the darkness. Now, leave me be!'
'You might wish, sire, for my afflictixon soon enough,
if only to save you from witnessing
the rites of Dionysus.
He is near at hand, I feel it now,
and if you fail to honour him — your cousin
the god — you will be torn to a thousand ribbons
left hanging in the trees, your blood
fouling your mother and her sisters.
Your eyes have sight but you are blind.
My eyes are blind but I see the truth
But before Tiresias had finished with his warning,
even as the king pushed him away,
it had already begun.
He was walking on the earth,
and you could hear the shrieks
of the dancers in the fields, see the people
streaming out of the city, men and women,
young and old, nobles and commoners, climbing
to Cithaeron and the god
who was now made manifest.
Pentheus stared out in disbelief.
'What lunacy is this? You people
bewitched by cymbals, pipes and trickery —
you who have stood with swords drawn
in the din of battle on the field of war —
now dance with a gaggle of wailing women
waving tambourines? You wear garlands
instead of helmets, hold fennel wands
instead of spears
— and all for some boy!
If the walls of Thebes were to fall
—which they will not — it would be
at the hands of soldiers and their engines of war,
not by the flowers, the embroidered robes
and scented hair of this weaponless pretty-boy.
Find him! Bring him here, where he'll
confess that he's no son of Zeus and these
sacred rites are just a shaman's lie.
Bring him here to me now, in chains!'
His counsellors gathered, muttering restraint,
which just inflamed the king
who, like a river in spate,
boiled and foamed
at any hindrance in the way.
His men returned, stained in blood,
claiming they saw no sign
of Dionysus, just this priest of his
—a comrade and an acolyte — and they
pushed forward the man, a foreigner,
hands tied behind his back.
Eyes bright with rage, Pentheus
spoke slowly:
'Before you die, I want your name,
your country, and why you came here with this
fraud and his filthy cult.'
Unblinking, the prisoner replied:
'I am Acoetes, from Lydia,
son of a humble fisherman,
now a fisherman myself.
I learnt how to steer, to set a course,
to read the wind and stars,
so I left the rocks of home and went to sea.
I'd raised a crew, and on our way to Delos
a storm forced a landfall
on the shores of Chios. The next morning
I sent the men to fetch fresh water
and they came back with a child.
The bosun pulled him up on board, saying
they'd found him in a field, this prize,
this boy as beautiful as a girl, stumbling
slightly from sleep, or wine.
I knew, by the face, by every movement,
that this was no mortal,
that I was looking at a god.
"Honour this child," I said to the crew,
"for he is not of us." And to the boy:
"Show us grace and bless our labours
and grant these men forgiveness,
for they know not what they do."
The lookout slid down the rigging, calling
"Don't you bother with prayers on our account,"
and the others circled, nodding and shouting,
their voices fat with greed.
"I am the captain, and I'll have no
sacrilege aboard this ship, and no
harm to our fellow traveller."
"Our plunder," said the worst of them