Collected Poems Page 7

  And silence God’s eternal shouting,

  Reign a prince in his new birth

  Over the outermost poles of the north.

  He swore to reach the cloudy peak

  And strut on it in God’s bright cloak.

  He’d speak like God and spout His name

  And wave his arms like wings of flame.

  He’d rule with cataracts of words,

  Keep order among lesser lords;

  A universe with rhyme and reason

  Would be a mayhem of confusion:

  Lucifer control by pride

  The gorgeous chaos he bestrode.

  But God was neither drunk nor blind

  To what Cosmogony had planned.

  In his Omnipotence he froze

  Restless Lucifer’s swirling eyes,

  Sent a hundred thousand stars

  Hornet-buzzing in vast rays

  To drive him mad who thought to try

  And take the place of the Most High.

  They pinioned him, then made him fall

  To the utter depths of Hell.

  They tangled him and brought him low.

  United Zodiac foresaw

  That Lucifer in peace or war

  Would be no blessing to their realm.

  Faces spurned his rending groan:

  Four-point body wheeled and spun

  Across the Wilderness of Sin

  And struck the cinder of the Sun:

  Eternity breeds evolution

  And drinks the blood of Revolution.

  Declaiming innocence of guile

  Yet burned clean of the martyr’s role

  Lucifer in haughty rancour –

  Spewing fire through milky groves –

  Condemned the heart of God to canker

  And all his satellites as slaves.

  Pleas and questions he ignored

  In order that the final word

  Should stay with him; and then he’d rove

  To search for burial and love.

  LUCIFER TURNED

  Lucifer turned to God and said:

  You want my heart, you want my head.

  In giving both I’d be your slave.

  If only one, I’d bleed to death.

  They are as inseparable as breath

  That, coming from my mouth, meets ice

  And on the stillest air makes smoke.

  God did not speak. He never spoke.

  Others had to work his throat

  And shape such words in their own voice

  That God, by silence, made his choice.

  But only Lucifer used verse

  To save his heart, to save his head –

  And still God did not speak or curse

  But, spewing cataclysmic gall

  Condemned grand Lucifer to fall.

  LUCIFER’S DECISION

  Lucifer slept but once

  On the journey south,

  For in the morning had to decide

  Whether, having crossed the river,

  And said goodbye to God

  When no more dogs were barking

  Nor hut smoke could be seen

  Nor any voices heard,

  Whether to take the left

  Or right arm of the road.

  Best not to stop, not think of warmth

  But lunge without thought to left or right.

  Either that, or broach the centre –

  A wilderness of granite-green –

  In which one lived as long

  And learned far more

  Than after the exhaustion of a quick decision

  Or the utter ruin of a right one.

  UNITY

  Memorials being sacred

  God made a star of Lucifer

  Launched the brilliant morning star

  That suited navigators best.

  God being what he is

  He made another star

  The first star of evening

  That all women blessed.

  They were the hinges of the sky

  And never met. One chased,

  The other followed. Who did what

  Was impossible to test.

  Neither wondered who began it,

  Trapped as they were, and are,

  In the same planet.

  NIMROD AND LUCIFER

  No one knew why Nimrod shot at the sky.

  Such emptiness worked his arms

  And sent each arrow whining

  Its steep incline at God’s power.

  Nimrod is a mighty hunter, said the Lord.

  Spring was gone. Adonis gored, already

  In his furrow, sorrow forgotten,

  Wheat whitening a plain too hot for dreams,

  The sky blue, God invisible, day vacant,

  Animals hiding from the sun.

  Lucifer steered each iron point,

  But Nimrod was a man, not God:

  No feral tip could reach its mark,

  Though Mighty Nimrod, wanting God to die,

  Wondered why God wasn’t dead

  And why the arrow fell back from the sky

  Anointed with red from notch to tip.

  Nimrod wept for shame on seeing

  Lucifer’s left foot was lame.

  THE ‘JOB’

  The three-decker wooden ship broke its ropes,

  Each impacted fibre torn by cobalt water

  Lifting its tall stern;

  Grating the granite quay

  The ship was loose in storm-fists

  And no safe harbour locked its arms.

  Refuge was in the fang-teeth of the gale

  The horizonless ocean

  Wood against water

  Sails in salty phosphorescence

  Mainmast an impaling spike.

  The merciless twisting left a hulk

  Which Lucifer could not drown:

  Not possible for him to know

  What made that scabby coffin stay afloat,

  Find an unending mirror of water

  And merit in God’s eye for its long fight.

  LUCIFER AND EMPEDOCLES

  Progress is an orphan:

  Throw a crust it starves to death.

  Give it a golden cloak,

  A hundred thousand people turn to ash.

  Progress either snivels or it kills:

  Who owns it holds a sun to limping Lucifer

  Who vowed God’s rebels harnessed his effulgence

  And made galactic storms.

  Progress will be the death of me, said God.

  Let me turn the notion on its head.

  God said: ‘Empedocles, say this:

  “Progress is the bitch of war;

  Love and discord suckle it.

  For once I’ll speak plain:

  War gets the world nearer to death,

  Does no one good.

  No sane man cares to die a king,

  Or idiot become a god.”’

  Empedocles simplified, and got it wrong:

  ‘War is the father of progress’ –

  Then simpered in his golden sandals

  To Etna’s hot volcanic rim

  Wondering whether God was right

  To give such force the name of war.

  Lucifer smiled. Empedocles stood close,

  Peered into the boiling din.

  ‘Your question has no answer,’ said Lucifer,

  And pushed him in.

  LUCIFER THE ARCHER

  Robin Hood’s light-hearted men

  In Sherwood Forest shot

  At silver pennies marked

  With a silver cross.

  Lucifer, toxophilite,

  Tipped the arrows true,

  Drew back every archer’s yew

  With fingers of Sherwood green.

  Thus, fletched missiles overseen

  Found numismatic tracks –

  God’s son or not, the cross was shot

  By Lucifer’s speeding sticks.

  When two lines met

  And, m
eeting, crossed,

  And closed themselves in a ring

  Lucifer felt a prison clang

  Around his brow and through his eyes –

  So made the outlaws’ arrows smash

  Against all silver pennies

  That bore a silver cross.

  LUCIFER AND COLUMBUS

  Lucifer became the sun:

  Drew Christopher Columbus on

  Into oceanic dusk.

  Under the basin of the night

  They followed stars

  He patterned in their track.

  By morning Lucifer arose

  And deigned to push them over

  The daily fortitudes of dawn.

  The navigator’s cross-stays

  Angled him

  To guess the distance of the day.

  When the fathom-line was flung

  Its lead-head hit the sea and burst

  In Lucifer’s fluorescent sparks.

  He steadied the flickering needle

  Through the Sargasso Sea,

  Goaded a meteor to perform

  A spectacular welcome,

  And lured the Sons of Adam

  Back to Paradise.

  LUCIFER THE SURVEYOR

  Lucifer the surveyor didn’t look

  He measured, hands performing

  A theodolite not prayer.

  A dot behind the eyes held cosmography

  In thrall, geometry intuition as he spanned

  Paced and taped a kingdom in a day

  Triangulated oceans in one night.

  God took the credit

  Every action in the world was His,

  All seas and continents. He led

  Footsteps on and filled all hearts

  A wind banging the canvas sails

  Of a ship whose crew was drunk

  On loot, lewdness and the Lord.

  Rejected Lucifer was bruised

  Since science followed him not God.

  He melted raw materials, lay rails, grew cities

  Rolled lightning in a drum and made it work.

  Adam’s sons ripped milk and honey from the earth

  And God was praised.

  But Lucifer saw his limp on every foot.

  LUCIFER THE MECHANIC

  Lucifer invented speed, taught

  That one slow pulley drives a fast,

  A sluggish stream revolves a mill

  How fire melts and wind shifts

  And iron floats and alloys fly.

  Lucifer’s willing scholars learned

  How one metal cuts another

  And steel spread on a spindle

  Is in its weakness flaked

  By a stilled blade set against it.

  A lubricated drill-tip

  Tempered to diamond strength

  Spins to steel clamped in a jig:

  By playing speed to altered speed

  Steel teeth in a circle

  Mill into a shank of steel.

  Lucifer in every lathe

  Manufactured objects beyond

  Man’s vulnerable version of himself;

  He unmade God, and at his most demonic

  Turned Man into an industrious mechanic.

  LUCIFER AND REVOLUTION

  When workers assembled at the station

  Lucifer had waited since the swamp was drained.

  Jutting chin and jaunty cap and posh Swiss overcoat,

  Finger stabbing the air to rights,

  He licked his Tartar lips and stroked

  His beard, nodding sharply

  At each injustice he would cure,

  Clipped decisive words in steam-train language

  Knit the crowd into carded fabric

  Any pattern could be printed on.

  He had waited long for such deep cheers

  And smoky mosaic of faces,

  Dimmed his eyes to just the right amount

  Of inability to see the future,

  When the mob would do such deeds

  As burned all sensibility to ash:

  ‘Oh boy, we did that fucking castle in!

  Splintered every lintel, broke every brick.

  Those Old Masters burned a treat.

  Forty years ago the duke raped my mother

  So I plugged his duchess-daughter.

  For the Revolution, of course –

  We should have one every day!’

  The shock-detachment of the Revolution came

  Behind a glistening array of guns:

  ‘All right, chaps, fun’s over.

  You work for us now, what?

  So build that castle up again.

  And who was that swine raped the duchess?

  His trial starts tomorrow.’

  ‘The purity of Revolution shines

  Bright for all to see,

  A moral force that cleanses

  Cleaner than the sea.’

  ‘You’ll be sorry you spoke,’

  Comrade Lucifer retorted

  When everything got out of hand.

  ‘You helped to make the Revolution,

  Now you’ll be voted to the wall

  Or destitution unimaginable.

  I’m not Hamlet lost for a yes or no.

  I’ll make an omelette any day

  And break as many eggs as there are heads.

  Chickens lay all the time!’

  His grin was geological – under the moustache.

  The assassin’s bullet didn’t kill

  But scared him. He vanished.

  Only One could play that game and win.

  LUCIFER TELEGRAPHIST

  Lucifer, God’s listener,

  Took telegrams in any code

  Or language, heard

  the blissful separation

  of those who would never touch again

  the marriage of a thousand needles

  knitting both victims till death

  the assault of a new mouth

  soon to connive at the smash of nations

  the frantic beggary of save-our-souls

  when a ship’s parts separate in revenge

  on those who ripped wood and iron

  from the generous soil

  communiqués that order war

  when other greeds have failed.

  Happiness and agony went through his heart,

  God’s ears not enough.

  He wanted power to end all suffering

  And call it peace.

  Rebellion failed. Robbed of God’s favour

  Lucifer sat in universal grief

  So that his Fall was liberation.

  HYMN TO LUCIFER

  Lucifer is the True God:

  Not the God of Man

  Or the God of God

  But the God of Light.

  Luminous of eyes

  Limitless of sight

  A thousand million miles

  Are his to roam.

  Ice is no prison

  Fire no opposite,

  The sun a cool exit

  To spaces beyond.

  The earth’s inferno-centre

  Cannot hold him,

  Nor galactic spaces

  Lose him.

  LUCIFER’S REPORT

  Newton did not go to church;

  He hardly ever went to chapel:

  He read Maimonides in bed

  And pondered on the fallen apple.

  The Board of Admirals agreed

  That the first chronometer of Harrison

  Was in spite of its complexity and size

  Accurate beyond comparison.

  Enigmatic Einstein vowed

  He’d see the hardy atom burst:

  The world would shrivel to a cell

  If Germany achieved it first.

  God concurred, yet did not know

  What the first flash would do to Him.

  Lucifer hoped that God might die

  When that smoke-hill hit the sky.

  THE LAST CHANCE

  Lucifer’s simple scheme was to
kill God

  And create another

  And after mutual annihilation

  Crow the victor from their ashes –

  Once they cooled.

  Every plotter is naive, every planner blind:

  On a calm and August morning

  The boil burst.

  The sea was in it and the sky

  The centre of the earth took part

  The sun and moon looked on

  And thus participated. A particle

  Of every man woman child

  And other creature

  That had been on earth since earth began

  Will be remembered for connivance –

  Lucifer made sure of that.

  The sun went cool to let

  This fiery flood of Lucifer-vomit

  Like a cauliflower fist

  Deal a belly-blow to God.

  Scorched and broken

  Lucifer fell back,

  And wept.

  LUCIFER AND JOB

  Lucifer met Job.

  He saw flame

  He touched fire

  But could not get close.

  Endurance is a herb

  The flame protects.

  The sun comes

  The sun goes –

  Job spoke:

  A flame lives on

  In darkness.

  Nor is it extinguished

  By the sun.

  LUCIFER AND NOAH

  Noah believed,

  Built his boat

  Called his creatures

  Two by two;

  Lucifer watched

  The floating city

  On the flood,

  Could not help

  Hands whose fingers

  Spread before they sank.

  The void world

  Was life for Lucifer.

  He ruled a sea of corpses –

  Yet welcomed Noah

  Ashore at Ararat.

  LUCIFER AND DANIEL

  Seven famished lions

  Circled Daniel

  In Babylon’s oblivion-hole;

  Eyes in darkness

  Were the king’s prisoners

  And only Daniel’s

  Emitted light.

  Your eyes hunger

  Daniel spoke

  But my hunger

  Is greater.

  The lions paced, bewildered,

  As if Daniel’s flesh was bitter

  And God his fearlessness.

  Since his Fall

  Lucifer had never been so close.

  LUCIFER IN SINAI – 1

  Lucifer tramped from sea to sea,

  Burning grit pained every step

  An island moving through the land

  From Carmel to the Mount of Moses.

  Lucifer paid his forty days,