Ubi Sunt?

Where am I, then?  Pilies gat-
ve, Daukanto aikšte... broad, empty streets,
Delapidated rococo palaces, poor squat
houses (lop-sided and crumbling), feats
Of stucco-work hidden behind soaring white
Northern baroque facades.  Up on the Toom-
pea, down Kohtu and the long Pikk Jalg...tight
Cobbled alleys, walls of ochre, a dome,
Towers and turrets visible over gird-
ling battlements.  So where can I be?  In fact,
Vilnius and Tallinn, though in a way you’d not have erred
Much guessing Buda or Prague.  But, to be exact, 
These Baltic capitals lie centuries further back,
Offering all that the others – and we – sadly now lack.

(4.4.1997)

Clapham Uncommon

It seemed like any other autumn evening.
The foliage of the deciduous trees decorously glided
To earth: a gamut of fertile browns with a leavening
Of yellows and a tinge of russets.  The light, provided
By a superseded but fatherly sun, seeped
Away into the velvety, swaddling, five o’clock gloom.
Above us, Concorde’s silver beak peeped
Out from the curving, milky clouds, its boom
Like an Aztec god with colic.  Yes, it all
Looked exactly the same as we toddled off to tea,
(As any good child must at that hour).  Yet, small
Though it was, some tiny thing had changed — which we
Were well aware of, that mellow night-fall
In October, thinking of the spring to come, to be.

(4.4.1997)

A Classic

The problem, then, facing the Greek pol-
eis – those on the mainland, but excluding Sparta through its lack
Of appropriate traditions, on the islands, and among the col-
onies found to the far West and along the Black
Sea coast – was this.  Having created
The basic elements of the classical temple, it proved
Impossible to reconcile them completely.  Stated
Simply, either the extreme triglyphs were moved
Past the centre of the columns, or the latter stood
Proud of the former, leading to an ungain-
ly overhang.  Some said symmetry should never
Be sacrificed; others, though, held good
Design meant following function; all maintain-
ed the end-result should be a possession for ever.

(4.4.1997)

Fratelli d'Italia

An hour we’ve been at the airport.  “But how can you talk
Of Narrative?”  “ — The Narrator, then?”  “Here comes Proust,”
Says Jean-Claude, smiling indulgently.  “Walk
Into the kitchen — ” (majolica on the narrow shelves, roost-
ing like multi-coloured turkeys) “ — the champagne’s in the fridge,”
Antonio shouts.  “Reliable?  Don’t make me laugh....”
"Remember ‘Les Demoiselles’....”  “Or the Charles Bridge
Back in Prague.”  “Aber,” asks Klaus, “on whose behalf
Does the author speak?”  Silence, broken by the clink
Of yellowing table silver, and of sirens next
Door.  “ — Pure Varèse, don’t you think?”
Until, after a hundred such sallies, perplexed
And homesick, I whisper: “book, never end.”  For in truth
These were my brothers, once, in a land called Youth.

(4.4.1997)

The Greeks In The East

Nobody buys food in Venice: there are no
Corner shops or supermarkets in the city.
Nor do people live here: go
To a doorway and you find only hotels.  But pretty
Well the world is an artist, to judge at least
By the galleries and museums found at every turn.
Hardly moribund, each summer this carneval feast
Of non-physical nourishment must spurn
Its visitors for simple lack of space.  Could 
This be the sinking West’s future: to make
A glorious exhibition of itself?  If so, we should
Not talk of loser or coloniser, since this is a game of take
And mutual take.  Look at St Mark’s Square:
Half the Japanese nation is happy to be there.

(4.4.1997)

The Greeks In The West

Back to the Palazzo Grassi, this time
To see ‘The Greeks in the West’.  At first, I’d not
Intended to go: it hardly sounded prime
Viewing – some sandstone fragments, a pale pot
Or two.  But there, re-oriented, it dawned on me
And my muddled, senescent brain what a colossal show
This was.  It supplied, through a lucid exege-
sis in the best tradition, a sense of how what we know
As the Classical was forged – from the origin of the Doric
To the perfecting of the temple’s majestic hexastyle.
Moreover, each room directed my attention
To the inescapable fact that much of this historic
Achievement was the work of the margins: while
Athens fiddled, the colonies burned with invention.

(4.4.1997)

The Word In The Stone

A legend: two warrior-brothers put slaughter
Behind them; live (with their sister) in a rough hut
— and here the tale, passed from mother to daughter,
From father to child, moves into myth — where a rutt-
ing cervo arrives from the east, with a bough of golden
Fruit in its antlers.  At dusk a wolf carries wood:
The men burn great fires (“O remember the olden
Times of blood; let us pray as we once stood,
Together.”)  Its gist I do not comprehend,
But its truth I have literally seen, carved in granite,
At The Stones of the Gods show, in Bergamo.
The image of a stag, a man’s head blend-
ing with the disk of the rising sun — that story: can it
Not be from five thousand years ago?

(3.4.1997)

Echt Oder?

I linger in the Rosenkavalier restaurant,
Eat goulash soup and Wiener schnitzel, sip
Hundertwaßer’s mineral water.  Want-
ing are only the strains of the marvellous yet mindless trip-
le-time lilt of Johann Strauß’s Blue Danube waltz 
To make me feel rather too close to the heart
Of the unbearably kitsch in Österreich, of the cloying and false.
Yet just here really is the barycentre, the start
Of all the Gaßen in Mitteleuropa.  This place,
A mezzanine in the Südbahnhof, is station-
ed between the east and south platforms; deft
Migrations of peoples across this anonymous space
Route them back to every ex-nation
Of the Royal and Imperial.  Austria is what is left.

(3.4.1997)

Lake Look-alikes

In the depths of the summer doldrums, when the atmosphere
Hangs heavy like an old, bedouin blanket, then
It is skin-still.  Often, its waters appear
To seep upwards, infinite diffuse ten-
tacles that suck down air and soak in light
Until the other shore is quite smeared away,
And what was a lake, to the too-credulous sight
Seems a boundless sea.  Sometimes, on a day
Of clouds and wind and rain, its back rucks
To jagged-edged waves, as if, in jest,
A thousand weather gods a million tucks
Had made, tugging tiny wires with nary a rest.
These are among the faces of the Lago di Garda;
As varied – and unsubtle – as a neophyte actor at RADA.

(3.4.1997)

Motorini Di Roma

The composer Respighi detected it in a city
Of pines and fountains.  The Fontana di Trevi’s thunder
And Piazza Navona’s High Baroque rivers are pretty
Familiar; as for the trees, well, no wonder
If, in the original urban landscape, they’re
More of a rarity (some fine specimens round
By the Forum).  But it’s not in wood or stone, where
All is classical nobility, or in the lush sound
Of a tone-poem representing these,
That the whiff of La Dolce Vita is caught most fresh.
Its essence is found in the petrol-polluted breeze
That winds its mad-cap way through the tangled mesh
Of side-streets, marking out the giddy track
Of a langorous Roman borne off on a moped’s back.

(3.4.1997)

Javan Batik

“Batik?” “Tidak.”  Snootily we fanned the pitch
Away in the thick hot sponge of air
That was Jalan Malioboro: a steaming, rich
Soup of Asia, Yogya’s thoroughfare — 
And the very heart of Java.  Not that we weren’t led
By the nose.  We went to see the ‘closing days’
Of the ‘government students’ show; naïvely said
Which were the pick of the lot, gave our praise,
And only smelt a rat when our choices were hung
Barring the door.  A trap, with sickly-sweet tea
As part of the bait.  We parried, finally, with a tongue-
in-cheek offer, an insult of a price.  He
Then it was who was forced to say: “Tidak — no.”
Outside, we savoured the crowds’ jumbled flow.

(3.4.1997)

The Legacy Of Odysseus

The famous ‘Cave of the Nymphs’, where Ulysses hid
His accumulated wealth on waking in Ithaca, we did
Not see.  Nor, in Stavros, could we locate
The remains of his palace (not that great,
By all accounts).  Laertes’ Farm we saw;
Basically olive trees, some stones and nothing more.
Polis, too, we found – a glorious place.
But of ancient sunken cities, not a trace.
And yet this was his isle.  Rocky,
And double-humped, every inch of this land
Is his, while a glance to sea always gives
The feeling he has just, at last, arrived.  His stocky,
Unmistakeable frame, and his crafty hand
Are manifest in every village.  Odysseus lives.

(3.4.1997)

Watching Water Wrackets

Fat lads with sea-shrivelled willies, a turtle,
Rivers of curious numbers, the usual dog
Latin (postea vero quisque) — all hurtle
Out of a picture drowning in memories, a huge log-
Jam of obsessions: welcome to a Greenaway flaunt
Entitled ‘Watching Water’.  And where should he hold
Such an acqueous orgy but in my most-belovèd haunt,
The Palazzo Fortuny?  Venice and its tourism, bold
Young ladies pert amidst tempests, lapidary men
Called George flung lagoon- and sky-ward: they flow
Through that house as if a secret tap were open,
Perhaps the one in a room they never show.
An encounter, then, I just really could not miss;
But, for Pete’s sake, is somebody taking the piss...?

(3.4.1997)

Odyssey

The saga began at an unspeakable hour of the day
When we left London and took a taxi-cab
Down to Gatwick.  From there, half-way
Across Europe to Cephalonia airport, to grab
An oven-hot coach and begin a journey straight
Out of fable.  First, the city of Argostoli,
And its impossibly narrow streets.  Undulat-
ing like an eel, our bus moved on to worse folly,
Negotiating the goat-track roads that cling
To the curves of the unsayably beautiful head-
lands and turquoise bays delimiting the isle, to bring
Us to Fiscardo.  From the quay, we gingerly thread-
ed our way along the ship’s gang-plank to embark
On the short last leg of our voyage.  But hark....

(3.4.1997)

Future Past

It could be a face from a distant year N
Thousand: some scathing Schwarzenegger clone,
A super-cool, super-steel android hulk with a yen
For plastic violence.  OK, say this is erron-
eous: perhaps some abstract construct — planes
Of anger scything hurled volumes.  In any 
Case, it is faux Fascist, colonising domains
Stamped ‘Force’, ‘Tomorrow’, ‘World’ and two-a-penny
Slogans of that ilk.  But it’s a toy out of gear, 
The lines limp, the colours dull-drab hues
Of blue-black and mud-red on a ground
Of soiled yellow.  The failure is in the year:
1958.  It’s old news,
Hankering after a Futurism never very profound.

(3.4.1997)