iROBOT

This morning on the TV I watched

an intelligent machine the size of a curling stone.

It vacuumed hands-free, sensing where it was,

on the floor, reversing on collision,

diving under beds and lounges in search

of roach bodies, desiccated cat piss,

toast crusts and babies’ lost single socks.

The device, the salesman said, was an iRobot

selling at a low price for Christmas,

the season when gravity is especially strong,

and the need for machines that will suck up

what the dogs leave is at its peak

as families meet amidst repulsive dynamics

and spilled food, drink, urine, dribble

of old farts and the puke of young.

This was the ideal gift, the salesman sang,

for the woman or man

who has everything.

Imagine a nano-version of iRobot

stronger than Satan

that I could inject

that would vacuum up the stinking sludge

and slop that I slip in on the floor of my brain,

remove my need to seize a semi-automatic gun,

search out a classroom full of little children.

CALL FAILED

Damn it, we were like gorillas,

vision reduced, tripping on tangled vines,

shouting and cursing in the mist;

gorillas, hulks, arms hanging,

dull brains firing off

random instructions to limbs

that did not connect.

Gorillas in the mist:

we missed as though miles apart

for all the good our shouting did.

Instead, let’s shed this fur,

enough of these make-believe uniforms –

remodel our jaws,

let human talk begin

and textured skin shine.

Be mysterious if you will,

but speak your mind! 

THE LIGHTENING

Among the pleasures provided

by my father, Suddhodana,

to keep me captive and distracted

in his palace in Kapilavastu,

in the foothills of the Himalayas,

in winter he lit fires

of the finest aromatic

sandalwood from Benares

and in summer

sent me concubines who

danced and taunted

through nights of music

beside pools

of white lotuses

and of blue.

My father sought to spare me

from the realities

of suffering, age and death

but drove me to escape.

My journeys over years

were as a common man.

I was drawn to Benares,

a colosseum of steps

flanking the arena of the Ganges,

smoke of sandalwood pyres,

smell not as in my father’s palace

but of roasting ghee and flesh.

Each day I saw the ashes and bones of

one hundred men and women

scattered on the river

and each evening

souls set afloat

on leaves with candles

as the river drifted towards morning.

So I chose Benares

as the place

to preach my sermon.

THE PASSING

By about eleven it was clear

that another day was improbable.

On Friday he appreciated

the huge moon rising

and likewise the sun

on Saturday morning.

Being on the fourth floor

heightened his perception

of these natural things

and of course

the clearly recognised end.

Under the plastic mask

bubbling oxygen by-passes

his closed eyes. He mumbles,

coughs, automatically readjusts

with his right hand

the IV line:

She responds,

plays a little

coaxes him –

cat with

captured sparrow.

We’ll all

feel differently

tomorrow.

SALVE MATER MISERICORDIAE

The final kiss:

the tearing viscera -

he never fully

left my womb:

it came to this.

His generous smile was

his and only his:

nineteen years:

gorgeous teeth and lips:

his company’s been my bliss.

Well, he went away

with guys like him

a sporting team

to fight in Afghanistan

God knows why.

Stabs me to picture his face

torn to splat and gore

last week by a roadside bomb.

Two mates died beside him

in that lunar landscape.

I knew that there was trouble

when a car pulled up

and an army chaplain stepped out.

My womb bleeds to death:

I choke under rubble.

THE STROKE OF ONE

2011 Nobel Laureate Tomas Tranströmer - 1990

I woke that spring morning

happy to hear birdsong

but disconcerted:

the long shadow of a headache

stretched as far as I could see.

Beyond the woods

beyond words

a wintry sun was setting.

These dissonant things –

spring and winter,

sunrise and sunset,

song and pain –

were omens of cold chaos.

In a flash my spirit

was caught like a fish in a net,

my flesh pulled and spun

through an unfamiliar deep.

.

I awoke three days later –

Jonah on an alien shore –

unable to speak:

half my body was an exhausted traveller

heaving the other half,

an inert brother,

over one shoulder

searching for a door

among splintered forests

polluted streams and rivers

in the war-torn country

of my mind.

In weeks scarce words

returned in a haiku, thus:

So my thoughts struggle.

My ideas suffocate

my Hiroshima.

Then, sufficient for a short paragraph of prose,

after months, staccato conversation,

two years and the piano,

left hand only.

Sonatinas, ostinati.

My dear, dear Fibich and Mompou…

I fear this resurrection of the body:

raised in the image

of a left-sided hemi-god.

‘For in the twinkling of an eye

we shall all be changed…’

and I was.

                  ………………

Three weeks after my event

Sravanthi, a young poet

studying with me,

brought me a stone

the size of a pigeon’s egg –

polished, heavy, ferrous –

a fragment of a meteorite:

uncurling my fingers

she nestled it in my palm.

‘As your hand warms it,’ Sravanthi said,

‘at the stroke of one each day

for two hours its power will flow

along your meridians to your soul.’

A word was inscribed

upon it in Sanskrit:

Akhanda – whole.

When later I could feel

and roll Sravanthi’s gift

images came to me –

of summer sunlight filtered

through tall trees,

green pastures,

Manhattan sky-scapes

and grand canyons of its avenues:

I hesitated beside still waters.

With time I learned the lavish comfort

of the soul for mind and body.

As my soul healed I found

it shared its strength

to urge me back

and haltingly I followed.

HAPPINESS HAPPENS MONTH

                                      I

Sextilis was the name of the sixth child

in Romulus’ family of ten months

then Popilius produced two more month-babies –

January and February – in 700BC.

Popilius decreed that Sextilis had 29 days

to do its business but out of kindness

Julius Caesar added two in 45BC.

Sextilis’ name was changed to August in honour

of Octavian who conquered Alexandria

in that month in 30BC. Octavian went on  

to change his own name to Augustus

pursuing propinquity and pride.

His conquest of Alexandria

gave Augustus such joy

that August is now the month

we celebrate how happiness happens:

no one is certain, it’s true,  

but for various reasons

we presume the creative method  

has to do with the moon and in 2012

August began with a full

and ended with a blue,

so happiness may be

doubly abundant this year.

                             II

How happiness happens

is a peculiarly American industry.

There are questionnaires about sex,

happiness-enhancement classes,

positive thinking courses,

biblical quotes to memorise,

smiles to learn alone or with

Norman Vincent Peel in the mirror,

hand-clasps to practise in company and

many happy-making things to buy.

For those itching to know

things that explain

how happiness happens

comes to be celebrated in August

include August being

Psoriasis Awareness Month

and Goats Cheese Month.

Its first week is World Breastfeeding Week

so a choice of dairy is available:

August is also

Get Ready for Kindergarten Month

for those who have finished with the breast

and whose psoriasis is no longer contagious.

If you feel you are failing

in your pursuit of happiness

and your brain is disintegrating

here’s your last hope:

August is also Neurosurgery Outreach Month.

DOG

Was it the Bishop of Barking

who announced that Dog is dead?

Was that really what he said

or was he just skylarking?

The dog had strayed into my school

and I made friends with him, or he with me.

I was seven and too enamoured to see

we were each in our way a fool.

He followed me the mile to my home

where I lived with my dad and mad mother.

I thought of him as a possible brother

though I could see he was likely to roam.

Each day I fed him, hugged, had a chat.

I grew much attached to Dog:

a friend to hold in the fog.

I should have left it at that.

He followed me back to the schoolyard.

The principal called the cops who rather

with pleasure shot him, I gathered,

and thus my new-love died.

I watched from afar as they wheeled him

in a barrow, with kids shouting with fun

and buried him in Judd's Paddock. The gun

intrigued the kids and the cop showed it to them.

Later I looked in the tall grass

for his grave with a mouthful of dread.

After three days I saw him in the distance - risen from the dead!

A secret, secret thing that I kept from the class.

SINISTRA

When I and my symmetric brother

were born it could not be said

who would dominate

or be preferred though custom

meant that he would be

the one to shake

and with time we learned

that he would write

open doors

hold the bow

play the major note.

I had an alien role:

clumsy, I had no right

to take the lead

or cut the steak,

or make the model boats

or brush the teeth.

The best that I could do

was squeeze the paste

hold the fork

lift the case

perhaps share

a wash with him together

and then with face.

I had my place

at the piano, true,

to add the bass

to his excursive treble

to help with typing

but not with pleasuring

either the body of my owner

or that of another –

well, sometimes perhaps

but with a lot of trouble …

But when the right was damaged

my lack of education

was reformed. 

Suddenly I was taught

to shave,

to guide the penis as it peed,

cut as well as hold the steak

scribble crumpled messages

with pens,

compute.

Once over, I took back

my old dysgraphic role

a slave to all that’s right.

No voice,

today I have no choice

but to live on handouts

and the occasional leftover.

AIR

The God of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps,

he learned as part of his youthful catechism

but now at eighty, breathlessly awaiting cataclysm,

he wonders if He also weeps

as he does, in the early hours awake,

scorned by the darkness, choked by panic,

impotent in a dream of drowning, frantic,

gasping, ‘What step, O God, to take’?

He was an engineer and knew what ticked,

worked on tall buildings, watched his wife

as her motor neurones lost their life

thirty years ago, saw her slacken, food stick.

The irony was not lost on him that both

she, no muscles, and he, no lungs or air,

were united in a book of common prayer.

A unifying recitation, welcome death.

Clouds of incense smoke at his funeral mass

embrace the word and prayers.

“He was never one to give himself airs,”

the priest says, and Freud lets the moment pass.

MAKING MUSIC

The cobbles of Arezzo,

their order and community,

were sermons for the pious

monk named Guido Monaco

as he walked along the road.

While wondering what God

may be saying to him

Guido’s mind strayed to ways

whereby he might follow

the example of the stones, their fit,

permanence and community,

to create order and stability

for the music in his church.

Music had no written record,

was passed from generation

to generation in Christendom

for a thousand years

by laborious recitation,

endless repetition.

It travelled from one place to another

by father’s voice to son

who journeyed with it,

its glories shackled by

the boredom of rote learning

its accuracy blunted

while the liturgy and the chanted words

were written, unchanging yet open to exegesis

but not to the distorting caprice

of imperfect memory.

From the sermon in stones Guido took away

a vision in which the music of the chants

was secured like the cobbles

in the ordered pavement

as were the words written

in the chants, a dream of system,

permanence and metalanguage

where notes and cadences

high and low and in between

were written down as were the prayers.

His contemplations

led Guido to write basic notes

above the lines of chants

He assigned letters

to the syllables of music,

each for a different pitch,

tracing their passage

on four horizontal lines.

The sequence of neumes

hung like small black birds along the lines.

Guido then used his antipher

of lines and neumes

in his church in Arezzo

praising God for its wonder and order.

At the pope’s request,

Guido took his music to Rome in 1020,

winning John XIX’s endorsement.

Although Guido’s music was not popular

Rudolf of Moustier-sur-Sambre

brought it to choristers in Belgium:

though they did not know Italian

they learned to sing

as from Arezzo

using Guido’s system

of annotation.

Asked why he wept so often

Rudolf replied it was from joy

as, he said, he had found a ladder into heaven.