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from
CINEMA OF THE BLIND
by
Anthony Weir
Blackstaff Press,
1981
ICONOLOGIES
Club and cleft stick
Are man and woman
Seasoned by the sourness of centuries
Thickening to peat
Above them and below
Spring after ritual spring.
Bridget and the Barons stalk the land;
Private exhibitionists stand
In front of unappeasing mirrors;
Public exhibitionists squat
On church and castle walls
Emaciated, hideously lined,
Long since ignored
And no longer keeping sin at bay.
The Barons offerings are made each day.
Marble monuments to heroes,
Jesus and mortality
Survey a land of cattle,
Men and women
Clubbed and cloven into sickly
Icons of fertility.
Rhadamanthys rules
With Minos and the bishops.
Meat is the eternal master
Where stones were once
(or are still Aligned):
bulls in bottles, bleeding
Hearts in plaster:
No new stone circles
ward off old Disaster.
We operate
Hopelessly, and hopelessly expect
Our separate amputations to connect.
ROMANESQUE
In Aquitaine of ruined towers,
flat hedgeless fields of vines and wheat,
of wars and princes past and yet to come,
the public images of lust and ribaldry and sin
lurk now inscrutably
on honey-coloured limestone churches.
Among the strange complexities of beasts
and monsters, harpists, lobsters, hogsheads,
skulk the shameless damned.
Less than a hammer-blow away from
Christ in his mandorla-glory, mouths and vulvas
are pulled agape, toads and serpents
suck whores breasts, double-bodied
lion-headed birds peck at and bite
the groins of upturned mistresses and victims.
Men pull their beards. Snakes issue
from their mouths and bite their balls.
In the shadow of the stone strange figures flit:
carnivals of carnal daydreams.
O tormented monks!
Couples enact their couplings sadly, ritually,
fearful, with stony
resignation and enormous apparatus.
Ithyphallic acrobats, the King of Fools,
Host-guzzlers with Pantagruel parts
celebrate apocalyptic January festivals of
innocent lost innocence
to usher in the New Age with the year
Babilonia Magna Meretrix
.
And from roof to door, on capitals and blind
arcades, devouring beasts slouch
and rampage through vine-scrolls
in the pure dark poetry of stained
honeycoloured stone: elegantly-twisted
soul-secrets of a world thats past,
the cries of saints and longing,
images of Hell and Paradise
in Aquitaine of ruined towers,
flat, hedgeless fields of vines and wheat,
of wars and worlds and princes past
and yet to come.
PAID
A rent of flesh
Two tissues shot
One moments gather
The ravelling rush
The loosening of one knot
picks out the threads
to wind another.
CATASTROPHE
Flowers are flowering
Larks are larking
Badgers badgering
Pines are pining
Rushes rushing
Fish are fishing
Plants are planting
Swallows swallowing
Stars are starring
The moon is mooning
And man is manning
Everything.
THESE ALSO
Are the Rights of Man:
To wear no clothes
To be illiterate
To have no name.
EPIPHANY:
Eochu, Lord of the Underworld
Barrel
Slung between powerful thighs
Marvel
Fixing my humble and envious eyes
Slides out of its stock
Veins standing out, thick
As a mans arm:
Authority
Long and splendid and black
Extends towards the ground
Then with a masterful flick
Slaps a taut belly
Swings down again
And slowly slips back
Into thigh-portal
Leaving me trembling and awed
By unconscious display
Of superhumanity.
GOD
is love is a hoarding
behind which hide
desperate competitions.
MIND
is rind around desire
Passion:
ration of our fire
Soul:
a hole of consciousness
Life:
a knife to carve the emptiness
SIDELONGINGS,
BELFAST 1969
In dark courts and entries
between cold urinals
long since demolished
where men looked over and down
at each other (hopeful, peninsular)
little girls loitered.
Always in pairs
(for they were not lonely)
uncourted
unentered
they whispered to grim, sidelong men
How much will you give us to rub you off, Mister
?
Little girls with dirty
little-girl faces worked
stony-faced men with quick
and matter-of-fact
little-girl hands
to new-old
I-told-you-so
of soft flesh
when some men dont pay
near old, lost urinals
where other men
sidelong and wistfully
fingered each other
(bleak seas round peninsulas)
shifting from toilet to toilet
or paired off in the night
past old little girls
for brief, hopeless pleasures.
SIRIUS
Sirius shines
the dog star
low in the sky
the brightest star
revolving round
a small dark sun
which no man has ever seen
like a body
round a soul
or words
around a man
or a man
around his words
or a man
around a man
or words
around a soul
like a body
which no man has ever seen
a small dark sun
revolving round
the brightest star
low in the sky
the dog star
Sirius shines
SATURN REFLECTS
How wonderful
are spectacles -
obstacles
so magical
they let us see
other obstacles
(which may not be).
Spectacles
like testicles
are usually a pair.
But spectacles
are appendicles
you
can
choose
not
to wear.
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