This poem is unfinished. The keen-eyed will spot it lacks a second section. I suspect I also planned a fourth. What the two missing sections were about I cannot recall. I doubt if I ever wrote the fourth but may have written the second. What happened to it, who knows? It may be just as well if only because, as often with my longer poems, I have had to cut a lot of windy apostrophizing.
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“Troy
is no more, and Ilium was a town!”
(The Aeneis, Book II)
I.
The Emperor
Dust
and distraction. Dust and distraction.
One
hand scratched an aching leg, its tangle
Of
sinew, the other clutched a mirror to his face –
It
laughed before him like a toothless mouth.
It
was an artist’s cancelled sketch, the charcoal
Smearing
his features, gone at the jaw, crumpled
Beneath
the eyes, into a terror of arrested
Striving.
His days were spent trying to laugh
Things
off, to put his arm around news of disasters
And
whisper it into a corner. He knew the sweat-bath
Of
the pore, stinging like salt in a wound.
Dust
Lounged
in the sunlight like hangers-on, slipping
Through
doors with a grin. The times gave birth
To
plausible men, their talk the inveigling
Of
a golden coin, their faces those of foxes.
The
palace sang with sibilant music of garments
On
marble as they hurried to a conference with grasping
Hands.
Power had put a crease in his forehead –
After
the meetings and deputations, after
The
backstairs struggles, the steely eye and firm
Decisions,
he was left to himself in a room,
Staring
at the winking lamp of night, surrounded
By
dead men’s eyes. There were piles of despatches
On
the table and an empire sleeping on expectations:
It
was like fighting the tentacles of a black cloud.
The
palace with its golden walls, its courtyards
And
quiet corners of stone, settled upon
Itself
a little more each day beneath
A
sky like cracked Euboean marble. Rome
Like
a stone on an old tin lid slipped slowly
Into
stagnant water. There was salt on his lips
From
the restless sea, and safety only in the swivelling
Eye
of the lizard.
He had thought of
his birthplace,
But
was already groping for what blood and brains
Could
finger but no longer understand –
It
was years since he had seen the dusty grapes
And
gritty corn taken by cart down the sky-warm
Lanes,
soaking up sun like syrup in a sponge;
And
earth, old blackface, flexing its cheeks
Beneath
a breeze like water trickling... Now
His
life was a careful phrase, shifting decisions
From
one pocket to another, with an eye
Down
corridors. He knew that he could cry out
In
the night with the one desperate note of travail,
But
be ignored like an ancient ghost, thinly
Flapping
its dishonoured way amongst the dust
In
corners. There would be no cheers if the Emperor’s
Barge
were to slip along the coast, past
Small
ports in the blue of the day: applause
Had
crackled out across the water, but that
Was
long ago, a different time...
“I sit
Here
with dirt under my nails, powerless
To
stop the pains in my leg, the frontiers stretched
Like
rope. There are hands in pockets, eyes on chances,
Everyone
is hungry and sated at once.
My
finest generals win their battles but only
For
themselves; my civil servants stand in small groups
Which
I can never get close to; and the people clamour
For
corn and more public holidays. Everyone
Cleaves
to the axle whilst the wheel’s rim
Batters
on rock. Those few who dare me to consider
Reports
are in danger from my temper and factional
Whims.
I cut them off and wander round
With
tears in my eyes, holding a wolf by the ears.”
Peachlight of the sun swept through the
room; it appeased
The
petulant mind. There were so many things
To
do, so many, they seemed so distant. Somewhere
The
wind was in the grass, the rustle of leaves
Was
like hurrying feet.
“I have tried to shape policy,
To
mould thought into edicts, hoping to put
A
handclasp on the hearts of men, to push
Aside
squabbles over the price of bread,
And
turn their eyes to the sun. From the blood-shot
Dawn
in the east to the evening foam of the British
Sea
is a dispensation as muddled as men
But
fertile as a cornfield, walled from the stony
Plains
without. Men ignore the horizons,
And
forget that the empire is a rich clasp
On
the cloak of the world. There are hands, leather-hard
With
needle-tooled envy, waiting to snatch it
For
themselves. The health of states does not depend
On
money on the table, but on the pulse in your heart
When
you take a handful of soil and look along
The
valley which glows like a woman’s cheek. A land
And
its people are one, owners of a great prize
To
be denied the shifting encampments.”
But why in moments
When
his blood should be steady, his hand extended
Without
trace of a tremor, did it sing
In
his ears – “What need had I to play the long pipes?”
The
manifold trickster Chance, muddling the affairs
Of
states, had thrust him to the fore, his cheeks gone hollow
Like
hands held to his face aghast. He sat there
Pulling
threads in his cloak, telling himself stories
About
tomorrow’s business, refusing to admit
There
was a ship in the harbour ready for escape.
If
only the signs or the Gods would be more explicit!
What
if a stone was always and only a stone?
And
death was always and only death – his death?
How
propitious was that for a gesture? Examining
His
gums he felt indescribably gone.
Something
wandered through his mind like a head-pain –
‘I
found Rome built of brick and I left it
Built
of marble’ – “Whose words were those?
And
what of me, a seedy landlord, shrivelled
In
his clothes, grinning in a back-room?”
Outside,
the empire crumbled like a dead log
In
the sun. Only the cricket sang continuously.
III.
The Artist
All
day the moments settled as tangible
As
dust. Books and classical music lay
About
the study whilst the artist sat out
On
the lawn with headphones and an extension lead.
His
dozing mind beamed on the world; letters
Lay
unanswered in the grass. The tired afternoon
Sun
sagged towards dusk – old gold,
Faded
bronze, the tawny time of silence
And
defeat, when a man might start awake to find
Death
groping among his bones.
He had received
An
invitation to join all the right people
At
a grand celebration to be held in the museum.
He
stood at the buffet with the slight uneasiness
Which
a man in a crowd without a ticket feels.
About
the noisy room sherry in glasses
Held
at the chest was like weights finely placed
In
the scales of image. Voices, echo of voices,
Beneath
the dome filled it with importance.
They
waited for the showing of certain things, recently
Taken
from a tomb in Greece. Last night he had dreamt –
Silence of darkness, stillness of time; a
stool
Collapsed
in a mushroom of dust, settling like a cloth
On
a windless day. Hades abducted Persephone,
Leaving
the outraged sky and shivering grass
To
shine unseen in the intimate darkness.
Agamemnon
lay beneath his death-mask,
Becoming
rock encrusted with gold. His dust
Bowed
in reverence to the bones from which
It
had fallen. Acetylene of the assassin’s knife –
Light
sliced into the tomb. Time
Fell
into gear in the bustling, shifty activity.
Voices
grunted and dirt-stained hands fingered
The
treasure before lifting it away. Newsmen
Gathered
outside to wave microphones at the dark.
The
Director announced himself satisfied – the remains
Would
be studied by a chosen few. The living
Would
wave their fingers in the guts of the dead. He had woken
And
thought: “O world-eyed Agamemnon!
I
had rather an earthquake ground you to shards than that
A
National Institute should display your bones.”
And
here he was, preparing to applaud the sanitised
Plunder,
to lave it with a voice refreshed
By
white wine. (What are those vacuous shufflers
Led
by a muffled figure to the crossroads?
They
are going into the dark.) The voices bubbled
And
he thought to himself –
“What of those early days
In
the studded Aegean? Islands simmering like meat
In
broth; the cave beneath the cliffs where emerald
Water
teased the milky depths, and the Gods
Slept
wrapped in its twangy echoes. Sunlight
At
dawn stretched into sky like Archimedes’
Lever,
its beauty expanding your lungs as if
A
God had breathed in your nostrils. The sky, laced
In
that breath, tied you to itself with skeins of silk,
Such
was the glory of the glory of life. I remember
I
fingered an earthenware pot, its useful and modest
Surfaces,
and my mind was empty of thought
And
full of being; I could have created hugely
And
it would have been no more than the work of the world.
I
have known nothing like it in thirty years since.
Now
there is a misty barrier between myself
And
the past; I can see it through the corner of my eye.
My
words on the page are shallow. I sit at my desk
Through
the working day and the world passes me by.
I
write a letter to The Times and its
publication
Is
a flatness marked by silence. The perpetual flash
Of
blood on the frontier and my queasy suspicion
That
the centre has gone, collapsed like shopping in a bag,
Are
a trouble, but to whom should I talk?
What
string should I pull? I have never thought of myself
As
a statesman; it is all I can do to fling out instructions
To
my agent. But I think that for us
The
only proper museum is a sun-soaked hillside
Where
the plough turns up the past every day,
Returning
it to the soil in the generous wave
Of
the ploughshare.
Puzzling and
unruly columns of dust
Wander
the plains of the east; traveller’s tales
Are
derided. Collapse of empires and national woe
Occur
only between pages of a book.
And
how much blood will it take to wash the stone
Of
preparedness clean? But what does it signify
When
oblivious in a steamy office men
Are
squabbling over paperwork or mindlessly
Snapping
their fingers?
Our lives fall from us, we return
To
the dust and our woes and happiness go with us.
What
do the bones say in the deepest strata?
They
are picked clean of motives like sticks. But written
On
the wind is a silent phrase, prodding the unawares
Traveller
– the mounds and broken earth on which
He
stands are altars of the bones’ attempts
To
parley with the silence. For over the wall,
Over
the frontier, beyond the bad lands, the shifting
Hordes,
is a magnificent simplicity of light,
To
know which their lives were made rituals,
Their
deaths a voyaging into silence around.
Back
in the suburbs which await me, through the long
Parole
of days, by day or by night, there is a mumbled
Sigh
which may only be traffic on arterial
Roads.
As an indication that all is well
The
weekly washing has been hung out to dry.
Death
will come as a great stirrer of all this.
In
my garden the long grasses are wanly so-soing
Their
heads. I think I shall not sleep tonight.”
====================
© circa 1978 (Unfinished). Revised October 2012
