Emporium Read online

  IAN PINDAR

  Emporium

  for Ali

  My awful seventies

  name, you sd

  (mine too) but

  no

  From alle wimmen my love is lent,

  And light on Alisoun

  Anonymous

  circa 1300

  Levedy, al for thine sake

  Armed with certain relics, I began to assemble an emporium where nothing in it would be for sale – a shop that would never open.

  MALCOLM MCLAREN

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author gratefully acknowledges the following publications in which poems in Emporium first appeared, sometimes in slightly different form: The London Magazine, Magma, New Poetries III (Carcanet Press), Oxford Poetry, PN Review, Poetry Review, Stand and the Times Literary Supplement. Thanks are also due to Michael Schmidt, Judith Willson and all at Carcanet for their support. Invaluable advice was offered by John Crowfoot regarding ‘Birds’, and Dana Pšenicová at the Czech Embassy in London helped me with ‘Mrs Beltinska in the Bath’, which won second prize in the 2009 National Poetry Competition and was shortlisted for the 2010 Forward Prize (Best Single Poem).

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Figure Study

  Mrs Beltinska in the Bath

  On the French Riviera

  Monsters of Philosophy

  A Dog One Afternoon

  Society of Blood

  Anecdote of the Car

  Marc Chagall: The Poet Reclining

  Parable

  Advice for Travellers

  Poem

  What is the Matter?

  Archaeologies

  Snow

  The King’s Evil

  Les Vacances de Monsieur P.

  Chain Letter

  Of Truth

  Suggestions for Further Reading

  Two Figs

  The Prophecies

  Casanova

  Cārvāka/Lokāyata

  Windows

  Gods of the Near Future

  After Birth

  Big Bumperton on the Sabbath

  Ashes

  Death of a Senator

  Birds

  Illustrated Evenings

  Parasite

  Joan Miró: Man and Woman in Front of a Pile of Excrement

  It Takes a Man

  Everybody’s Talking about Antonin Artaud

  The Wasp and the Orchid

  Armageddon

  Black Jelly Baby

  Kissing

  Dust

  Loon

  Silent Spectres

  The Rainy Day Murders

  An Accident in Soho

  Lost

  Insomnia

  Time Remaining

  Notes

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Emporium

  FIGURE STUDY

  Naked on a bed, the sex in shadow,

  not caring if man or woman.

  Something of the caged beast, captive, fallow,

  odour of unclean linen.

  Darkness beyond everything.

  Nothing visible except

  limbs turning, seeking rest,

  arms and legs bending, unbending

  like a puppet examining its joints.

  The head moving from side to side

  as if struck by invisible fists

  from different angles, from inside.

  MRS BELTINSKA IN THE BATH

  Pavel in profile

  his eye at the spyhole

  watches Mrs Beltinska in the bath.

  Steam from the spyhole

  rises and unravels in the dark

  cold apartment at his back,

  where a TV with the sound down

  shows the River Vltava

  bursting its banks.

  And as Prague’s metro floods

  and the Malá Strana floods

  and the Waldstein Palace floods

  and the National Theatre floods

  and the Kampa Modern Art Museum floods,

  Mrs Beltinska sinks her treasures in the suds.

  The first Czech bible (1488) is drowned

  in sewage water, but the warm orange glow

  from Mrs Beltinska’s bathroom

  coming through the spyhole

  gives an odd kind of halo

  to Pavel’s head seen from behind.

  ON THE FRENCH RIVIERA

  Youth and beauty have left me

  a full packet of cigarettes

  and this balcony. Time redecorates

  my home as a reliquary.

  The camera loved me once,

  as everyone loves a young woman

  of spirit who toys with men

  and uses her natural elegance

  to get what she wants. Siren

  or ingénue, whatever they asked of me

  I exuded ‘a carefree, naive sexuality’,

  the critics said. Dominique, is that Dorian

  at the door? My official biographer

  promised to swing by after church

  with more questions. He isn’t much

  to look at, but he’s my last admirer.

  MONSTERS OF PHILOSOPHY

  There are monsters on the prowl whose form changes with the history of knowledge.

  MICHEL FOUCAULT

  Scepticism is insincere

  If not maintained in daily life,

  Professor Aromax concludes

  While murdering his second wife.

  Ideas, we are told by James,

  Are true if they are profitable.

  Professor Bidex keeps a shrunken

  Head upon her coffee table.

  Professor MacIntyre expounds

  At length upon his idées fixes,

  But hastily departs if any

  Student wears a crucifix.

  Professor Pyke is much the same

  And has no tolerance for God.

  His last dispute resulted in

  A bloody carcass in the quad.

  The students of Professor Stead

  Know better than to mock his stammer.

  The last to do so had his head

  Caved in by someone with a hammer.

  Professor Mallard has a coat

  Of thick and matted body hair,

  But only when the moon is full,

  At other times it isn’t there.

  Professor Gant, a revenant,

  Who rarely ever takes the stairs,

  Prefers to glide from room to room,

  Catching students unawares.

  And still the ghost of Francis Bacon

  Haunts the winding stair below,

  Doomed for a certain term to stuff

  A chicken carcass full of snow.

  A DOG ONE AFTERNOON

  I

  In a nearby exhibition hall

  Mr Ponsonby-Smythe demonstrates his new machine

  for winning back the Empire – there is blood

  all over his doeskin pantaloons.

  In a pagoda surrounded by bamboo

  Miss Grace Laluah serves coconut milk,

  bananas with honey and tropical fruits …

  But who is that girl in the wicker chair,

  her arm amputated at the elbow?

  Her copper hair and small breasts delight me:

  the standard lamp, the single bed, the curtained window.

  She looks

  sad

  anaemic

  telegenic.

  Her skin smells of pepper.

  II

  Alienated again.

  In the doghouse.

  I am a dog and I don’t even like dogs

  (I’m a dog and I don’t even like them).

 
; Skulking through the streets like a dog.

  Licking old wounds like a dog.

  Something’s missing.

  Have you forgotten

  anything?

  None of this was made for your

  entertainment.

  (So tired, so tired.

  Work tomorrow …)

  First there was sleep, then waking

  then making do, then sleep.

  And when night falls

  and the will fails,

  when the will fails

  and night falls,

  all the poisons within me,

  all the poisons in which I am mired

  accumulate in the marrow.

  SOCIETY OF BLOOD

  They will be smiling as they did of old,

  keeping tradition in the blood

  and blood in the soil.

  Men of action, irrational,

  suspicious of intellect: all dissent

  is betrayal and betrayal death.

  Fear difference: the enemy

  within. If you are weak

  you will die, as Nature intended.

  And the people perish,

  reeling, staggering towards

  a ring of light on the horizon.

  ANECDOTE OF THE CAR

  I drove a car to Chambourcy

  And left it there, without a thought.

  It hurt the owner of that car

  To think of it.

  The kindly Camboriciens

  Prayed for its soul at St Clothilde.

  The car was bound to play them false

  It was a wicked, wilful car.

  Its classic parts, so very rare,

  Were polished there with tender care.

  Its engine all of burnished gold

  It did not care for man or God.

  MARC CHAGALL

  THE POET RECLINING

  Time was when the poet lay in a green field.

  EZRA POUND

  O I once met a poet reclining

  For a pillow he had but a coat

  And I saw his green halo a-shining

  Green halo, green halo, he wrote.

  Green halo

  Green halo

  Alone at last in the country

  With a pig and a horse in a field

  With pine trees and woods all around me

  My heart at last shall be healed.

  Green halo

  Green halo

  Now I have no farmer’s wisdom

  And grow here nary a bean

  But the woodland makes me welcome

  And the grass my halo green.

  Green halo

  Green halo

  PARABLE

  I

  Here they come, judging

  my parable,

  the one about the highway and

  the blackbird

  The distance

  between them

  always already

  expanding.

  II

  (You can see the whole thing as

  a ceaseless, dynamic

  movement.)

  III

  It is not solitude or the last

  physical delight that

  troubles you but night and its quick

  arrows – the

  fearful, the

  threatened, the

  miserable – but

  you are your own

  purpose,

  at ease with a life

  incomparable.

  IV

  (So much leads to thinking otherwise.)

  V

  The rubble of sundown is

  more than a way of commenting on

  the disease

  of civilisation.

  In those long

  shadows I lost my voice. I

  lost the argument. My fingers slipped

  You lowered so that

  The touch was

  and it excited us

  VI

  Rooms and passageways.

  We need to find somewhere

  they cannot search –

  the provocation of

  a fire escape takes us

  down

  across town and

  away from the losses of the day

  the loosened thought of heat and

  nothing to say.

  ADVICE FOR TRAVELLERS

  So she was left to dissolve under a starless

  heaven, reduced by perspective to something like

  a stick,

  no ordinary suffering.

  The machinery of mud is good at living

  with dead things. Bog angel with borrowed teeth and stones

  for eyes,

  which close and listen for a voice

  that doesn’t cry out. I don’t know how she got there.

  Did she even visit the nearby city,

  each street

  arranged according to the movements

  of celestial bodies, where twin pyramids

  keep twin volcanoes company? The sun rises

  every day

  behind the temple, rain falls on

  the ancient mud gods and the locals hunt or make

  fire or love, depending on their fancy. It’s a

  great place

  to shop for traditional items –

  necklaces of human teeth, the sacrificial

  harvest – and it’s fun to people-watch. Those people,

  for instance,

  being led in procession:

  at noon

  their blood will run in the streets.

  POEM

  When one god

  claimed to be

  the only god

  the other gods died

  laughing

  WHAT IS THE MATTER?

  What is the

  matter?

  To speak of

  matter

  To speak in

  matter

  matter-word

  word-matter

  in matter

  matter speaks

  the Word

  ARCHAEOLOGIES

  Shell holes and standing water

  Brown metal open to

  the elements

  Empty barrels broken pails

  Corrugated iron weeds and silence

  The silhouette of a man

  hangs from a telegraph pole against a sky

  the colour of bile

  Silent electric wires lead

  nowhere

  and in the distance

  Rusted armaments puddles

  Train tracks

  Mud sucks on raw heels

  The distant waterfall calls us

  The constant sound of running water

  drips

  echoes

  Everything sweats

  with moisture

  In a clear stream

  a pocket watch among pebbles …

  ‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’

  Warming ourselves by this brazier

  Rolling cigarettes under the ruins drinking

  rosehip brandy

  Gold has no meaning any more than

  Charity

  We don’t drink

  the water

  Goldenhair crawling with lice

  This leech on the back of my hand

  woke me I need a piss

  A woman cries out in the night …

  ‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’

  White stones worn smooth

  Smooth humps of vegetable matter

  steaming from afar

  Weak sun of celebration

  Late flowers among nettles

  Pulling potatoes out of the peat

  Salted herring at noon

  This awful coffee

  Yesterday the heat

  The light receded the shadows tapered into long rays …

  ‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’

  How comforting a light in the darkness

  Any light

  Every fire is a
woman – remembered desire

  We got the headlights working again but

  Nothing else then the headlights died …

  At dawn above the trees a

  Helicopter

  Doesn’t land

  Nor do we hail it

  Not knowing

  Where we stand

  SNOW

  on a metal contraption of some kind

  erected in the woods, the height of a man,

  can be knocked off with a black branch,

  revealing tiny rivets, a bolt or two,

  but nothing more of the machine’s purpose

  than can be guessed at from its peculiar shape

  and solitary position

  out here where nobody lives or works or ever comes