1 Opening the Gates
The extreme regions undergo sea-changes,
shrinking ice floes and the silent trek of
meadow flowers;
under cover of darkness tropical fauna and
flora colonise temperate places, dangerous
and beautiful;
Civilised people book dinner parties,
marquees, hotels, cruises to the
date-line, arrange
with lovers to spend the historic hours
celebrating in bed, and lay up stocks
of vintage wine;
But in the revered places, scorched ancient
rocks and deserts, sanctified caves, the
parched cities –
disaster! A plague out of Egypt; a catastrophe
out-plaguing the locusts, rain of blood or
pestilences:
Overrun. An eruption, of holy ones, of prophets,
saints, gurus, sages, of-whom-it-is-writtens,
in borrowed sheets
and uncombed hair, shouldering the local beggars,
haranguing the tourists, filling the streets,
the cheap hotels,
Coffee houses, places of worship, public gardens and
urinals to overflowing. Mystics importune
every place,
no escaping them. At night zoo animals maddened
by dreams howl, rock cages, while keepers
on treble-time
Beat back martyrs. Jails and mental hospitals
warehouse inmates where the lucky ones
time-share pallets;
and even the smallest souk has an inlaid table at which
spooning bitter coffee round and round and…..
a Jesus frowns
beating his head against what in the name of God must
he do this time to get noticed, what will finger
him amongst all
the more or less plausible others carpeting the land
like swarming ants his folks’ kitchen on
thunderous days?
What miracle of transformation, in this seen it all
fin-de-millennium, what huge gesture of creation,
destruction, might -
remembering past temptations, money changers,
weeks in the wilderness, the Temple roof – give
the lie to trick
photography, holograph, computer images? Then –
voices. Disturbance. Police. Is this the moment it
will all unravel,
momentum as a crowd build, unstoppably sweep
him to the barbaric, imponderable finality he
daily prays for?
2 The search
“That one.”, he says,
ground down with exhaustion,
‘Two tables along from Jesus:
Get a move on.’
3 Ferris wheel
Huger than a beached whale
heaved head and shoulders out of the broad river
running between art and commerce
onto the paved embankment
it is yet smaller, this circular reality
of struts and stressed cable,
than the millennial imagination fed by
artists’ impressions. They study it
make their our own, remark the
temporary cabins of the foreign mechanics
skilled in the arcane business
of monumental pleasure, new gypsies
gone into town to seek comfort,
letting their hair free, careless of the wheel;
and they, before turning their backs
on what surprised them only because
they had neglected to anticipate it,
look forward to the ceremony of birth,
the rising of the immense shaft,
the white axle to which, as a beetle
on its back, helpless, reaches its
many legs to the tissue held for it, spokes
will cling, the shaft rearing, lifting it
to exactly counterbalanced life,
spinning them higher than the tall
flagpole they crane up at, whose provenance –
gift of distant forests – they remark
before going, grateful for the wind
now at their backs, for dinner.
4 Error
He has aged a hundred years
Since yesterday, according to his computer
Which for all its faults has never
Lied to him before
And on that future day
His diary is blank.
5 nightmare
Eclipse and earthquake entered his sleep:
the explosion came as he knew it would,
shattering the tall building, the top floor
tilting impossibly, the military waiting
in the ruined space below, for them to fall.
He read, as if in a book, the bare facts:
his flight through the city to his mother’s house
where he was safe.
6 A miracle
Out for exercise he sees
Two cars collide, rub flanks gently
Then stop by the roadside. He waits
Warily, unsure of involvement, watches
The drivers emerge, one black, one white,
Grinning, to briefly almost embrace,
Eager in good natured assurance,
Then drive on. Astonished, he wonders:
Is there nevertheless hope?
7 Infinity
The fly inside the window
And he……
And always the desert, waiting.