Read Selected Poems for Free Online Page B

Co
.,
    and Neptune gazes at the Tyne’s flow
    seawards, where the sea-winds ‘boast
    and bluster’ at the North East coast,
    the sluggish Tyne meandering through
    the staithes and shipyards of Peru.
    Shadow girders faced with sun
    shimmer like heaped bullion.
    Commerce and contraceptives glide
    and circle on the turning tide;
    Plain, Gossamer
and
Fetherlite
    and US
Trojan
, knotted tight,
    ferry their unborn semen, free
    for ever from discovery.
    Discovery! Slaves, now trains,
    like
spirochetes
through dark brains,
    tunnel the Andes, spiralling for zinc
    and silver, gold and lead; drink
    still makes me giddy; my mind whirls
    through all my wanderings and girls
    to one last city, whose black crest
    shows all the universe at rest.
    At rest! That last red flash
    as life’s last ember turns to ash
    and riddled dusts drop through the grate
    around the heart. O celebrate,
    as panic screws up each charged nerve
    to cornering the next sharp swerve,
    Earth, people, planets as they move
    with all the gravity of love.
    First this Victorian terrace, where
    small scars of the last World War –
    those wrought iron railings made
    into shrapnel and grenade,
    acanthus leaf and fleur-de-lys,
    victorious artillery –
    are enough reminder that we brave
    harsh opposition when we love.
    This cluttered room, its chandelier
    still spinning from the evening’s beer,
    this poor, embattled fortress, this strong-
    hold of love, that can’t last long
    against the world’s bold cannonade
    of loveless warfare and cold trade,
    this bed, this fire, and lastly us,
    naked, bold, adventurous.
    Discovery! wart, mole, spot,
    like outcrops on a snowfield, dot
    these slopes of flesh my fingers ski
    with circular dexterity.
    This moment when my hand strays
    your body like an endless maze,
    returning and returning, you,
    O you; you also are Peru.
    And just as distant. Flashing stars
    drop to the ashpit through the bars.
    I’m back in Africa, at ease
    under the splashed shade of four trees,
    watching a muscled woman heave
    huge headloads of dead wood; one bare leaf
    for covering wilts in the heat,
    curls, then flutters to her flat, cracked feet.
    And round each complex of thatched huts
    is a man-high cactus hedge that shuts
    out intruders and the mortars thud
    like a migraine in the compound mud.
    Night comes, and as drunk as hell
    I watch the heavens and fireflies, and can’t tell,
    here at my Shangri-la, Pankshin,
    where insects end and stars begin.
    My fingerprints still lined with coal
    send cold shudders through my soul.
    Each whorl, my love-, my long life-line,
    mine, inalienably mine,
    lead off my body as they press
    onwards into nothingness.
    I see my grimy fingers smudge
    everything they feel or touch.
    The fire I laid and lit to draw
    you downstairs to the second floor,
    flickers and struts upon my bed.
    And I’m left gazing at a full-page spread
    of aggressively fine bosoms, nude
    and tanned almost to
négritude
,
    in the Colour Supplement’s
Test
    Yourself for Cancer of the Breast
.

Durham
    ‘St Cuthbert’s shrine,
    founded 999’
    (mnemonic)                        
    ANARCHY and GROW YOUR OWN
    whitewashed on to crumbling stone
    fade in the drizzle. There’s a man
    handcuffed to warders in a black sedan.
    A butcher dumps a sodden sack
    of sheep pelts off his bloodied back,
    then hangs the morning’s killings out,
    cup-cum-muzzle on each snout.
    I’ve watched where this ‘distinguished see’
    takes off into infinity,
    among transistor antennae,
    and student smokers getting high,
    and visiting Norwegian choirs
    in raptures over Durham’s spires,
    lifers, rapists, thieves, ant-size
    circle and circle at their exercise.
    And Quasimodo’s bird’s-eye view
    of big wigs and their retinue,
    a five car Rolls Royce motorcade
    of judgement draped in Town Hall braid,
    I’ve watched the golden maces sweep
    from courtrooms to the Castle keep
    through winding Durham, the elect
    before whom ids must genuflect.
    But some stay