Verifying plumb in Notre Dame

Master masons prized the rectilinear;

To reach for the sublime they verified plumb;

The plumb bobs are in the Lazarus window,

And in stain-glass panels of babel-building.

From a cornerstone, in vertical courses,

They mortared stone after shaped stone to meet

The imperative of mural rectitude:

No bulging rifts to deny consecration.

To build a wall straight was to live a straight life;

So the plummet sought pure planar perfection;

Raising the space aloft to heavenly heights,

They built a clerestory of coloured lights.

In the luminous, moral and mural order

Fused living no-longer-insensible stone;

Knowing how a stretching stone structure behaves,

They sought to stabilise by thickening walls:

Inside, by fixing responds and pilasters;

Outside, flying buttresses resist the thrust

Of the stone arches, the high strung ribbed vaults;

The inside and outside of the perfect walls,

They clothed in a mantle of badigeon.

The truth is there is no state of perfection;

The structure is not a simple mass at rest;

It is an interlacing of moving forces.

The cathedral wants to flip on its vaulted head;

To roll like the hailstones spilling down its roof;

Trying to fall out of the line of God’s gaze,

The piers and columns lean out in Notre Dame.

Balanchine

Balanchine

you go to the ballet to discover

not to be a show-off balletomane

who names the steps for you and slides backstage

you go to look and stare till the stage glows

with the beauty of the ballet goddess

who dances the music, blooms in the air,

don’t ask what  she means, you don’t read roses,

you enjoy her gestures in music time

music moves in muscles physically

you enjoy seeing what the sound looks like

the speed grace and motion of the moment
it disappears like the last butterfly

Water of Life

Water of Life

Heel-over in the sky the bent-bow moon

Rises from the crater of the fire goddess,

Where blows the ash of beseeching letters;

Water vapour caps the volcanic cone;

The sky is a deep question by Yves Klein;

The snow liquefies into white water,

Effervesces in the basalt rock grooves,

And runs like white virtue down the incline;

Now there are no rivers on the mountain;

The channels end in a trickling flow;

The water has filtered through the basalt layers,

A soakaway of lava and dark caves,

Frozen floors, ice stalagmites, deep channels,

To well up from the earth in the low lands

In fresh spring water that bursts from the rock;

Cascades with glee in the Shiraito Falls;

Bubbles in the joy of the Shiba River;

A kingfisher feeds a fish to his mate;

A Japanese tree frog rests on rice leaves;

A farmer washes sawa wasabi

In a channel of pure cool spring water;

Thanks the mountain for the water of life

And prays to the water god to protect

Its purity from the foul and filthy.

Kafka’s Outsiders

Kafka’s Outsiders

Kafka is still the rage in Prague,

the little mother with sharp claws;

Like a cockroach he is that refuses

to be driven from the bathroom.

The day Germany declared war,

Kafka went swimming after noon;

He could feel seasick on dry land;

But we must take him as he is.

But is it possible to know

a ghost who refuses to answer

directly and then certifies

his stories for oblivion?

He did have an eye for detail;

a climbing biplane dips darkly,

on descent glistens in the sun;

the death-machine harrow has teeth.

What do our flea-beard selves see there?

The am ha'aretz barred from law?

The george-samsa insect sense-stunned

before the spider’s dazzling web?

Or Joseph K slave to diktat?

He is in the predicament

of any person in detention

forced to prove their innocence.

Does K die like calm Socrates?

No: it is wie ein Hund he dies,

Robbed of dignity and value,

Slave to the law’s practised caprice.

Kafka wants things to be better,

for the outsiders to prevail;

In the hard anti-Judaic gaze

he knew well the outsider’s fate.

But the harrow that wounded him

Was his fear of love in bare flesh;

He never found an axe to crack

the frozen ocean within him.

Kavanagh

Kavanagh

The road is hard; morning to night;

Ploughing the hill field, we break stone and clay;

Little I see that gives; the brambled hedges are severe;

I can see no glory in a boor tree bush;

I use up my instincts in back-bending labour;

I was born owing it everything;

Debt to the cold-cramped land is my birthright;

My emotions are invested in this stone and clay;

I have given my soul away

The hills are the only breasts I know;

I give armfuls of dried hay flowers to cows;

The soil plays a harsh tune on my longing;

It is the only spending I do;

I might as well be a pagan;

I find demigod powers in a secret demijohn;

Although I have never glimpsed him,

I hope god is ashamed;

This slavery is a clear affront to nature.

Who cares if my forebears were chieftains;

I don’t want redemption in a paradise garden;

I have no taste left for god-made vines;

For I’m sick of scrabbing the sullen soil.

From the spasms of joy springs the bitter spurt;
Our most voluptuous groans are dyed with hurt.

Diana’s Girls

 Diana’s Girls

Pru and Eleanor Jane sat beside the sand-hole stream

Singing songs together gave their hearts some ease,

Dispersing cares into the green mown-hay breeze;

Pru brought scented flowers to Eleanor Jane

Who asked Pru to put them between her breasts,

Half-knowing that this was not an act of innocence,

Half-believing that time would now bring their feelings

To ripeness; this was also Pru’s dream;

Her kiss left Pru in a delectable state

Of outright nerve-end confusion;

They sat together, watched over

By Diana. 

Glass House

Glass House

The interior of the Crystal Palace

Has an arched central hall of glass;

The arches exist not because an architect

imagined a rolling light wave on walls,

but because a gardener did not wish

to see the great elm trees felled;

And so he got his giant glass house;

The shape is owed to plant life;

This is why the vertical

Outweighs the horizontal;

A sacral jubilate space

Extends in leaves of ecstasy;

Trees long for verticality.