NEW POEMS Trompe-l'oeil Laps of Honour Misanthrope Pipe of Peace NEW PROSE The Grace of God Can't Help it Axedent Vigil |
TROMPE L’ŒIL
Ceremony in the Rain When the Pyrenees are angry, and the clouds are down on the coast. I like to stand on the spot where Monsieur Jackie installed himself to regard the waves break over the lighthouse, and boulders rearrange themselves when the Spanish winds are up. I listen to the foghorn, blindly remembering my old friend. I’m a statue in this corner for unsung invalides, a spot on the belvedere overlooking the Port. There is nothing sacred about a stone-bench facing backwards that one must stand on, except it’s somebody else’s pedestal. Monsieur Jackie’s, a hero of an everyday life that’s past. A cigarette in his honour must be smoked even if it means coughing just like him, a hack I remember with affection. I don’t indulge in the habit, except on ceremonial occasions. Now I contemplate the sea shrouded by the mountains. I return with my respiration disrupted by the smoke to my pied-à-terre above his basement to watch on his behalf daytime television with the sound down. And lunch on a slice of pizza washed down by a bidon of wine. A feral cat purrs me to sleep. Le Coup de Grâce The black widow from the balcony is being hoisted down by the pompiers. And the neighbours watch for a sign of life. At least they’ve not laid a cloth on her face. Today was the day for feeding the flowers. But they’ve grown too much. She told me herself. I’ll give them instead a thorough cutting. Water would be wasted on those gluttons. So the street was strewn with cyclamen. And the binmen lodged an official complaint to the Pyrenees, who, in a bad mood, cut the power and she fell. But she’ll be back. The Gift from the Black Widow The black widow gave me a cutting which flourished in my jardin potager. Red flowers with the cup of hibiscus. The stamen is that of a lily. Cut it back, she said. I hadn’t the courage to interfere with nature, and so let it be to blossom at will. I know I risk being cursed. But it could not be seen from her balcony. As the heads fell off, the stems sprouted along the fence to invade my neighbour’s hedge. The honeysuckle chokes with it about it. The ligature is promiscuously wedged. Old Moge shouts out, ‘It’s the serpent in Eden’, for all the world to hear and that means you. My game is up and yet I sit there reading about The Fall of Man. What else can I do? Trompe-l’œil for a Sea Burial Pain is the undercoat that bleeds through, but clots black. Paint over it, the mot- if of choice is a crack, so when it seeps again the surface seems intact. You have suffered nothing much that is of note. Then overlay the pain with the colours you lack since burning your boats. Rote repainting will regain you the semblance of plain sailing. Wind at your back, you go with how it blows. If against you, you tack. Looking at the Stars For Marita The unthinkable is that the knowledge that terrifies us may not be as true as the details. Thus the larger picture is that what’s beyond the beyond’s nothing but a comparison. (with what I’m not sure). The idea takes time and space to sink in. It’s good to listen, ‘Where have you been all these years?’ ‘O, just being.’ |