Fifteen sonnets In memoriam Alan Ginsberg
1
Himself
1,000 days to th’
millennium &a
big hairy poet
dies (best of
our generation
20 yrs older &
always young
as me (howl
& say Kaddish
(or a cycle of
sonnets (many
as lines + 1 (
3 hands’ )))))
of cancer.
2
W H Auden
His Nemesis, is seemed, was always Form
and since it was his Nemesis he loved it,
checking its spoor to see it was still warm
then showing off the shapes in which he shoved it.
His greatest love was Truth, but then again
his greatest truth was Love; he was confused:
the Mores frowned on men who slept with men –
one or the other should have been abused
but wasn’t, somehow, just; his ‘You’ and ‘Dear
were never, in the end, gender-specific:
the Moral Guardians, when they drew near,
drew blanks, or fired them, while he was prolific;
for all the Homophobic Censors’ “Zero!”
they laid to rest a Literary Hero.
3
W B Yeats
Love? 0 indeed he had a huge amount
but she who was its proper object wouldn’t
let him possess her (though she let him mount
when she was minded) and because he couldn’t
he made romantic women with her features , ,
poeticised and loved them in her place.
and all his life loved insubstantial creatures
who had her voice, or smile, or hair or grace.
Though radio, stage, patriotic men
informed his work meanwhile, love’s darling flowers
had still his heart: almost threescore and ten
he paid a surgeon to prolong his powers,
and at the end looked back in simple fashion
to his and poetry’s enduring passion.
4
John Donne
We met when I was little more than child;
you knew my heart’s desire before I did;
and though the intervening years beguiled
with seeming pleasure or half-noticed slid
into forgetfulness,
it lacked but time that we again should meet
as it were preordained that scales should fall
from eyes which henceforth knew that what seemed sweet
was but compared to this as wormwood, gall
and bitterness.
So, come! true Friend in Love: let thou and I
claim the bright radiance that thou hast shown
is to be won
that I confess I always must have known,
but lacking courage, faith and honesty
denied the Sun.
5
Homer
They say that he was blind; perhaps he made
a bargain with the gods he knew so well
like old Tiresias, although his trade
was not to learn alone, but learn to tell.
And tell he did: his blank unseeing eyes
unnerving villagers while he unreeled
verse after verse of wine dark sea, black skies
heavy with portent, broad beamed, narrow keeled
ships, bellied sails, strong heroes skilled in war
and deeds of arms, and death….. and always death,
until those listeners he didn’t bore
saw their mortality in each last breath
of each expiring hero, and were glad
to pay and watch him led off by his lad.
6
J S Bach
What in the world to say about perfection –
a man whose faith stayed with him all his life;
who worshipped in exultant genuflection
his risen Lord in music and his wife?
who filled the five-fingered receptive stave
with daily wonders from his fecund quill;
who night and morning knelt, rejoiced and gave
his potent spirit to the Holy Will?
who fixed in notes the sound of jubilation
adding adornment to the voice of Grace;
who played upon the ground of replication
canons and fugues of his and Anna’s face;
whose Magdalene had never been a whore,
but mistress of his house and Terpsichore?
(which until corrected I thought rhymed)
7
Beethoven
“Another b-“, they said behind their hands;
but he, with his instructions, didn’t fear them
his eyes were fixed on undiscovered lands,
and mercifully soon he didn’t hear them,
but one by one cast off each mooring rope,
tore up the maps and threw them to the fishes,
unpinnacled the compass, steered by hope
and listened only to his inner wishes.
His eyes shut tight against knowledge of storm
he stood at last – on purpose? – wrong way round
(missed the too-late applause; by then all balm
irrelevant), abandoned hope of sound,
and clung to his belief that seas were calm
somewhere that music finds eternal form.
8
Milton
When he considers how he paid the rent
(alright: a mortgage; but he needs the rhyme)
and how much of his day has to be spent
administrating, and how little time
remains (his father, by his age, was dead:
instead of sugar, saturated fat,
it’s brown rice, fruit, vegetables, wholemeal bread
for him), and family – some time for that –
and politics and love, and therefore fears
he’ll never write a poem half as good
as any of the classics, then he hears
the voice of reason whisper: Though you could
to bank all on one winning stroke is folly:
by all means sit and serve, but wait to volley.
9
Shakespeare
He gave them what they wanted: kings and queens
democratised by common human passion
and while his actors acted, shifted scenes,
prompted and wheedled, managing to fashion
somehow the next instalment, stayed afloat,
got bums on seats despite the competition –
a ghost, a storm, a cliff, a sprite, a boat,
ail spiced with what he had of erudition
(thank God for printing and the modern stage)
his formula; stole plots from other men;
and when he found his formula the rage
gave them Part Two (almost the same again).
And language, in this incandescent flurry,
altered (he didn’t notice, in his hurry).
10
Bob Dylan
How many roads he didn’t know or care:
enough that he was free and there was choice;
he hitched a ride, the breeze blew through his hair
narrowed his eyes and didn’t doubt his voice.
With the astounding arrogance of youth
he took on chance: his metier to sing
the way it went, experience the truth,
adventure, boredom, every goddamn thing.
High in a crow’s nest where the land moved fast,
he heard the sirens, waved, sang back and grinned;
the Silkie didn’t hold him down for long;
a weather vane swung in the hard, cold wind
and litmus bruises glowed as he sped past
leaving a trail of sparks and shards of song.
11
Leonard Cohen
Only the scent of oranges remains
of what if anything might have been love,
the taste of tears, the sound of midnight trains
promises broken, a forgotten glove,
the nightmare of a knife against the sky
and someone who should be there to defend him
grabbing the clothes of every passer by
and asking why won’t anyone befriend him?
He lost his dignity as others lost
virginity or innocence; in bed
with lovers, strangers, on the streets, in bars:
the only stratagem that doesn’t cost
your soul, he thought, and looking at the stars
wondered who’d lie with him among the dead.
12
Seamus Heaney
I may perhaps in time come to admire
your other poems as much but until then
enough for me how you depict the mire
at Mycaenae and in the hearts of men
and women; for your aptly chosen words
spirit me up onto the city walls
where we look out for fires and omen birds,
and share a wrenching in our guts and balls
as home to roost come all: the swaggering King
with staggering, half-mad, camp-fucked Priam’s daughter
to still-wet Clytemnestra practising
(her stud sharpens a sword) net over water…..
The pity of it all: vide delicit
you say, and show us we are all complicit.
13
John Heath-Stubbs
Not being someone else – that ill-starred king
who loved too close to home and answered riddles -
he writes about e.g. the fifth gold ring,
classical monsters and a range of tiddles,
is visually challenged, yet this book,
his latest, has gratuitous depictions –
on which we know the poet cannot look –
of some of his extraordinary fictions.
We’ll share – if fortune smiles on us – a stage
where Saturday and Sunday poets meet;
I with my eye for marks upon the page,
he doing what I cannot, with his feet
determined by his own thematic schema –
one isn’t what one ain’t – without oedema.
14
Jane Duran and Mimi Khalvati
Mixed blessings, Muses; nonetheless, a blessing –
though they keep you awake until Today,
and fill your head with couplet while you’re dressing,
demand you rhyme with ‘Taxi’ while you pay,
and e-mail notes insist on witty stressing,
and almost-quatrains that won’t go away,
keep putting up their hands when you’re addressing
a conference, and colleagues think you fey.
But Muse knows, poets have to be impressing,
and daily sonnets keep the blues at bay,
and ego needs admiring and caressing:
“Thank God for Torriano Saturday,
peers, tea and biscuits; thank the Lord” says she/me,
“for teacher-poetesses Jane and Mimi.”
15
Himself Again
And so full cycle to you, newly dead,
who through your life sang truth and right and wrong,
that love is good, that hate and greed are bad,
that war is ugly, and adorned your song
with finger-cymbals and yourself with beads,
laughed with the Maharishis and grew wise,
revealed the desperation of your needs
with love and joy and laughter in your eyes.
O fleshy, hirsute Jew who made yourself
a dancing Buddha while the world went mad,
I hope you’ve found Nirvana, where the boys
are beautiful, the poets drunk, all joys
endlessly present: me, I’m simply glad
your silver disk is on my treasure shelf.