The Annex

Behind the bookcase, in a precocious Tardis, eight
People hid.  Who were they? Beleaguered Jews,
Forbidden to ride the trams, helped at great
Risk, boosted by the BBC one o’clock news.
You escaped by delving deeper, gladly forsook
That mere space for a patch of blue sky.
Noting, Proust-like, every moment’s tic,
Now joyous, now tedious, fierce you would brook
Exactly zero lack of frankness, pry-
ing into yourself, never missing a trick.
Two years later, not yet sweet sixteen,
The SS entrained you eastwards, the wrong liberation.
A bald and scabified body then, you could have been
Old today but for time’s cruel annexation.

(15.2.26) v 1.2

On Stupidity

Why am I so demonstrably stupid? To wit:
Of the myriad Middle Welsh words I once
Learned, I remember only “arglwydd” – a pit-
iful reward for serried hours of study.  Dunc-
ified by time, I muddle now through new
Topics, build on dodgy cerebral sand,
And hope for amelioration – although a slew
Of disproven past optimisms stand
As merciless slapdown to that.  If only we
Could slip into wanted knowledge as a pelagic fish
Glides frictionlessly into the deepest sea;
Lordy – what a colossal mistake would be this wish.
Every “aargh” from stubbing your mental toe
On the rocks of incompetence brings wonders to re-know.

(1.2.26) v 1.1

Laika

Laika, three-year-old street dog, tough

And hardy from surviving Russian frosts, white,

Pretty-faced – chosen for propaganda and TV feeds –

Put through gruelling, cruel even, training, learned

To submit to a tiny cage, suffer rough

Shaking and centrifuge forces, was judged the right

Calm temperament for Sputnik’s untested speeds.

But innocent, trusting little Laika earned

A terrible place in history.  Not enough

To be first to circle and to log the first sight

Of earth: the first space death must needs

Be added – no more water, and rising heat turned

The cabin into hell.  In her three orbits, and slow

Immolation, did Laika bark for Moscow snow?

(25.1.26) v 1.3

Man, It’s Been A Laugh

At the end of the road of what was wont to be known
As a lifespan, I find myself still in a burgeon-
ing state of would, whose instantiations have grown
Since birth, encompassing: teddy-bear surgeon,
Tadpole breeder, epiphanic sum
Doer, about-to-burst appendix emergen-
cy survivor, 11+ scholarship plum
Getter, belated pianist, maths-besotted
Undergrad, Wrangler (Senior), dumb
Quantum mechanic, Grantchester scone, jam and clotted
Cream ingester, ham-strung karateka, horse-
Rider, journo, across-Central-Asia-spotted
Wanderer; these and myriad others, without remorse
I look back on.  And forward, now, of course.

(22.1.26) v 1.1

Bach, And Chopin’s Hands

Toying with extreme pieces by phthisic Fred

Chopin, wrapped in a shimmering sonic web,

– His “chromatic embroidery” –  showy salon-bred

Fastidiousness painfully sutured into steel

And rubato beyond romanticism, you feel

His slim, spidery hands on yours.  Seb

Bach, in absolute contrast, has no fingers:

Agility is coerced into mental hermeneutics.  But

Cancrizans or homespun, a beauty abides; it lingers,

Heavenly, bilocating among us, cut

Back to awe-striking cerebrality, heart

And mind still cleaving.  How his compostable brain’s

Cells concocted such a height of baroque art

Humbles.  Bafflingly, though adamantine, compassion remains.

(18.1.26) v 1.3

Pushkin’s “What If?”

On his journey to Arzrum (to hell with Tsarist

Bans) Pushkin left scorching Georgia, attained

Heavenly Armenia, and met on the road the bizarrest

Sight: a rough ox-cart that strained

Up a steep hill, grimly conveying

A body Tbilisi-ward, victim of a slaying

By an enraged mob in Tehran (the men said).

Turned out to be his friend, Griboyed-

ov – poet, playwright (“Woe from Wit”), minor

Composer, wounded duellist, and lastly late

Ambassador to the perfidious Persian court.  His fate-

Filled exit was “instant and beautiful” – none finer,

Pushkin wrote.  But their posthumous meeting was fake,

Just another “what if?” artists make.

(11.1.26) v 1.01

Happy Christmas

How I hate the trashy, tinselled, messed-up
Art-bereft display of total tat,
Putatively soul-warming, but actually a dressed-up
Pile of blatant commercialism, one that
Yields no joy or enduring happiness – indeed, 
Creates an unassuageable longing, fake
Heartache for hollow toys, only to feed
Remorse at wasted hard-earned dosh, to make
Iller the earth, heaping a rubbishy tomb,
Seeding the seas with a dust of microplastic
To blossom and scathe, in and beyond the womb,
Meting out a less of life: fantastic!
All this I scorn; and yet I love such time
Spent familial with you – despite this rhyme.

(18.12.25) v 1.0

The Third Eye

Whose is the calm, invisible hand that points,
Directs and controls the machine that frames us and detect-
s how I totter on stumpy pins with pudgy joints,
Some sudden instinct of losses to come reflect-
ed in my boxy, chubby face?  Who is behind
The engendering camera, secretly cradling my im-
age, as a man with a fine mane of hair kind-
ly assuages the cub’s fear that is obvious to him, 
His form and stamp, mirroring mine, wedge-
d squarely against the rocks?  Years later,
Despite quotidian negligence, the photo is still leg-
ible, and the simple truth embodied in its gaze yet greater.
For always, watching and waiting lovingly, there is another,
Selfless presence, a third eye: my mother.

(17.4.1999)

Missing And Meeting Jesus

I first met Jesus in the Scottish highlands.
I was sitting in my car, admiring the sheep-dotted moor,
When this bearded man-boy appeared.  In his hands
A sheaf of grubby paper; around his body a poor
Grimy raincoat.  He was shod with gym-shoes.
He wished to draw my portrait; I replied shirt-
ily.  Later, on the road, he thumbed a lift.  I refus-
ed, avoiding him for the second time.  Transfigured with hurt,
He turned up his hands and threw back his head.  Year-
s passed: another encounter, on the posh express-
Train to Vienna.  No picture, he was disguised with the biggest rump
I ever wedged against.  But as he re-appear-
ed from the bog, trouser-soiled and with a bloody finger, I guess-
ed at once, and humbly gave a plaster to this paschal lump.

(4.3.1999)

Defining Chandeliers

Those who have never stood under a real
Chandelier can hardly understand;
My own doleful, benighted state was reveal-
ed the moment I encountered one first-hand.
As I entered the near-perfect seven-metre
Cube of our living-room-to-be, I was gob-
Smacked by the spider-and-a-half of crystal teeter-
ing improbably above us.  Not by the vague cob-
Webs built out of the lamps’ self-cast
Shadows, which clung to the walls high up under
The rafters; in fact, it was only when I looked past
The superficial that I was filled with substantial wonder
— At how this confection gave out not just light,
But the whole space’s length, width and height.

(13.12.1998)

The Day I Connected

In the early hours, at the turning of the year (9
3 - 94), when all the tess-
ellated pieces of then high-technology had fin-
ally clicked into place — though I squirm now to confess
These were only a modest Windows 3.1, 
Tattam’s stack (as shareware — good on yer, Pete),
A complimentary Demon account, hellish but fun
(God bless the little devils), and, to complete
My toolset, the first graphical browser Mosa-
ic — I was jiggering around, and it happened.  Bits blurr-
ed across the Net, and a spinning globe proved
That at last I had joined — logged on to the NCSA
At the UIUC, with its mighty, mythical Ur-
URL.  That night, for me, the earth moved.

(12.12.1998)

In Grodno

Five o’clock in the morning.  First they took
My offending, visa-less passport, then they came
For me.  Hauled out, politely but in a manner that brook-
ed no discussion, I abandoned my Polish couchette shame-
facedly, as if already admitting to crook-
dom before the People and the comrades who in their name
Guarded the ultimate frontiers.  Perhaps I shook
As I left the Vilnius sleeper (though I blame
The cold spring air), and gave a vague look
At the concrete block which made up the place’s fame.
A city that, found in any book,
Would be deemed too unlikely, so starkly the same,
So bleak.  Except for a square of amber light
Where a man stood obliviously, and shaved away the night.

(18.7.1998)

Amazed In Mantua

The Ducal Palace.  Past countless halls filled
With broken busts, cold friezes, ghost-
s of frescoes on pitted plaster, inanimate chilled
Hearths and gorgeous, ragged tapestries, through foxy
Galleries, long and lost, snaking across flag-
s of hardest Carrara - and not forgetting the most
Odd picture I have ever beheld: a crag-,
gy isle, and round it a labyrinth cast craz-
ily into the sea - up a stepped, helical part, 
A ramp for Gonzaga steeds, there in that boxy
Camera is a staggering sight: the steady gaze
Of a petrified Mantegna, trapped in a fiction, in a fact,
Of his own making, the Artist married with Art
- As if that Gorgon called Genius had caught him in the act.

(5.2.1998)

The Passage Of Isotropy

Physics assumes – more or less has to – that its great
And holy laws remain the same wherever
You go; and this, therefore, is the unstate-
d idea that informs all our lives (though never
Propounded as such).  But I have discovered a land,
Beyond an unsuspected frontier, where the rules
Are much different.  Now, the cup I once held in my hand
So firmly, squirms and evades the grasp; stools
And tables that yesterday stood so obedient have start-
ed to inch slyly forward, nudging me cheek-
ily; while previously rock-solid walls secretly part
To swallow up the very things I seek.
From this, I deduce a lemma of my own invention:
Isotropy breaks down for the fourth dimension.

(28.1.1998)

The Tragedy Of...

Since it brings ill-luck to name it, let’s
Say I am like the monarch of the Scottish Play:
No matter how fair (or foul) it gets,
I pace out my life from day to day,
Happily revelling in each present and motley delight.
I should be weaponed up on my battlements, scan-
ning for the wood that will come, the great might
That may prevail.  Yet I’d be more than a man
Had I the mettle and valour enough to see
Off the ultimate army – a fearsome, ancient en-
emy that affords us neither hope nor mercy – composed of three
Hateful witches called How, Where and When.
In the end, I can only wait, an impotent Macbeth
(Whoops, I said it), to be toppled by that varlet Death.

(17.8.1997)

Surabaya Johnny

Surabaya airport, Java.  The date
Doesn’t matter.  I first noticed the man
As he puckered and sucked his smouldering Havana with a great
To-do, sat back and proceeded to fan
Himself with an battered old copy of the thoughts of The Great
Helmsman.  He wore a linen suit and tan
Shoes, had hair en brosse and a face whose state
Flickered between weariness and wiliness.  But this is a sham.
What I saw was an Asian woman, aglow
With love as she dropped water with undiminish-
ed patience into the eyes of her stone-still child.  (And so,
- Ta-da! - the sonnet’s obligatory couplet to finish:)
In the light of that mother for whom her son was so bonny,
What am I, but some Surabaya Johnny?

(17.8.1997)

Herd And Scene

Did Herr Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schüssel really
Call the Bundesbank’s boss a “right old sow”?
The leading Austrian weekly magazine spent nearly
Ten pages going royally (and imperially) to tow
-n on the subject, as it weighed this, and pondered that,
In an orgy of Viennese navel-gazing.  Whether you
Know about the bores in question is simply a matt
-er of herd: ours (oh!) or theirs (who?).
This is yesterday’s News, nothing less
Than history – itself just grubby local tittle-
tattle where meaning is farrowed only later, when the mess
Has cut its cord to the past, and been cleaned up a little;
Then base “Did you hear?”s and “Did you see?”s
Become, behind the scenes, pigging Thucydides.

(17.8.1997)

Golden Oldies

It’s a sure-fire hit with the general pub-
lic when the bug-eyed monsters descend from their improbably rough-
looking flying saucers and proceed, not to rub
Out the primitive earthlings, but to take the very stuff
And essence of their minds and to convert it into a small,
Friable icosahedron to take back
Home as a witty souvenir.  And it isn’t at all
Far-fetched.  As a mundane routine I stack
Up every digital word I have written, and the data
And tools I need for those I one day may pen,
On a single, shining CD-ROM.  Greater
Compilations than mine galactically man-
y have made; but I’m over the moon that when dull and old
A young, alien me lives immortal in gold.

(17.8.1997)

In Mozart’s Garden

Act four, scene three: a rich,
Intricate landscape.  Figaro enters in a cloak,
Bearing a lantern.  Dark is the night in which
All find themselves, when, to the sound of a broke-
n chord, masks are dropped, hands touch
And hearts are mended.  After the torments of this Mad
Day, its folly and caprices, the confusion of much
Else besides identities, it is time we bade
Farewell and lit the fireworks.  Let us hasten 
Then, friends, to the dance, to the game, content
In our hard-won knowledge of the need for mutual pardon;
For thus we shall be cherished (if chasten-
ed), as we follow the beat of the march transcendent-
al, at eve, in Mozart’s evergreen, D major garden.

(17.8.1997)

Montezuma’s Head-dress

As I wandered idly through some ex-Hapsburg eth-
nological museum heaped up with the lumber of emp-
ire – odd foreign objects acquired through the death
Of tedious mad uncles, the marriage of unkem-
pt and idiot sons, and the bribery of oleaginous court-
iers – I came to a dark room.  There, mounted
On the blackest of velvets, I found what I had sought
For years.  The history books have always recounted
That a few score marauding Spaniards conqu-
ered a million war-like Aztecs.  Now I saw
How a bunch of good-for-nothing, greasy hidalgos, pong-
ing of garlic and sweat, could seize a nation through poor
Montezuma: to view them as gods was just natural for a king
Whose head bore this delicate, iridescent thing.

(12.8.1997)

Penelokan

Out of Ubud the long straight road
To Penelokan is a good fifty miles of up,
Until the town itself, precariously stowed
On the lip of the huge crater’s deep cup.
In the centre, the still-smouldering cone
Of the live volcano; to the right, a blue cres-
cent moon-shaped lake, and to the left, black stone-
cold lava in a sheet.  A site of paradise, no less.
I gazed; and could have gawped more, had
A local boy not tried (“Only look...”) to eke
Out a life by selling me his gew-gaws.  I cussed
Him away, rude and imperious.  This was a bad
Move: clouds fell over the valley and peak
Like a circular shroud.  The Balinese gods are just.

(29.7.1997)

Maths, Murgatroyd And Murder

A Saturday.  Maths (of course) the first class
For VIc.  Multiplying the times he has done
So, Mr Kerman checks the roll-call, pass-
ing down the exiguous set of unknowns.  Only one 
Name has to be subtracted: Alan Mur-
gatroyd.  Off sick is the number he
And his mates have hashed together.  But with too-per-
fect rigour, as if a step axiomatic to the nth degree, 
I add: “Up at the Albert Hall, sir, queu-
ing for the Proms.” Decades after, I gather he’s died
In an easily avoided car smash.  I calculate if those few
Seconds and their centimetres had counted, if I was the divide.
For at root, however well or badly we behave,
The sums of our actions are those we will kill or save.

(9.7.1997)

The Chasm

Some have held (regretfully) that when our god
(Or gods) turns his/her or their face
From the world, horror occurs.  Innocence is sod-
den with the blood of massacres, as fledgling nations are efface-
d and cast into that sudden, inexplicable chasm of aban-
donment.  Then, confronted by this negative theoph-
any, all the saintliest impetrations on earth
Or in heaven – even from a Jesus, an Isis, a Gan-
esh, a Prometheus or a Mohammed the Proph-
et – are (or so these exegetes maintain) worth
Not a jot.  I wouldn't presume to judge; but
I can say that when a nugatory father is lax
For a second, his child can be hurt – bruised or cut – 
That quotidian tragedy does happen behind our backs.

(19.6.1997)

“to proto alouminocarto”

“You will already know 1002
Other uses for Sanitas...” the wily
Hellenic marketing exec softly coo-
s.  And it is true: it did indeed prove highly
Handy in our London kitchen, that roll we brought
Back from the hillside flat in Kioni, and which cost
860 drachmas when it was bought
From the village shop.  But never will it have crossed
The mind of that modern teller of tales
The 1003rd: as synecdoche, reminding
Us how, at dusk, at the end of his toil,
Helios bent over Levkas towards the mainland vales
Of night, and turned the Ionian Sea into a blinding
Sheet, a fiery surface of shook foil.

(18.6.1997)

Centre Point

We sat, passive world-watchers, in the Touch-
down Café at the top of a litter-filled Tottenham Court
Road.  Opposite reared up the much-
bruited “modernist masterpiece” – thought 
By many to be devoid of inhabitants bar
A haughty CBI and a gaggle of homeless deep
In its unlovely bowels.  Between us, on the pavements, as far
As the falcon’s eye can see, teem the peop-
le: a blue-skinned African with passionate eyes;
A girl (half-Japanese), translucent in the sun;
A shaggy derelict, with a scab on his head like a prize;
A Latvian punk slouching around for fun.
Here is a turning-point, where the centre cannot hold;
But this time, it’s good, for we are so weary and old.

(16.6.1997)