A Fire in My Head Read online

  Had the courage to make their lands

  Happy, away from war, spreading justice,

  Fostering health,

  The most precious of the arts

  Of governance.

  But we live in times that have lost

  This tough art of dreaming

  The best for the people,

  Or so we are told by cynics

  And doomsayers who see the end

  Of time in blood-red moons.

  Always when it is least expected

  An unexpected figure

  Rises when dreams here have

  Become like ash. But when the light

  Is woken in our hearts after the long

  Sleep, they wonder if it’s a fable.

  Can we still seek the lost angels

  Of our better natures?

  Can we still wish and will

  For poverty’s death and a newer way

  To undo war, and find peace in the labyrinth

  Of the Middle East, create prosperity

  In Africa, and reverse climate change

  As true ways to end fear

  And the feared tide of immigration

  And bring greater harmony to our world?

  We are dreaming a new politics

  That will renew the world

  Under their weary and suspicious gaze.

  There’s always a new way,

  A better way that’s not been tried before.

  A way that becomes a fable.

  CLOSED, STILL OPEN

  For Anda Winters

  how do we improvise in these difficult times?

  how to keep our art and spirit alive?

  we have to find a new way into the future

  that is better than the way of the past.

  perhaps now like children who have

  woken the kraken from the deep

  we’ll learn which laws

  of life to keep.

  no more can we blame god

  or the gods. we are the evil

  that keeps on coming back to us.

  it’s time to re-examine our histories.

  find a new road to the future.

  get back to the balance we’ve lost

  or we are on the path to dust.

  our past has led us here.

  but to have a radiant future

  a new consciousness is needed.

  something brave, beyond fear.

  this must be the time of awakening.

  the kraken’s here.

  can we in these times improvise?

  upwards our dreams must we revise.

  THE UNKNOWN HOUR

  It is often the question in life

  Whether to stay or leave.

  It’s a fundamental thing we believe.

  History began with staying or leaving.

  We stayed in the garden long

  Enough for celestial history

  To ripen, the slow completion

  Of that cosmic task. There was no time

  In the garden. Neither clocks, nor necessity,

  Nor referendums presided over

  Our ancestors’ temporal stay.

  There was no need to leave;

  Only a deed obscured behind a deed

  Forced the angel to send us out.

  History, some say, is the secret

  Effort to get back there.

  Some say there would be no

  Evolution without being cast out.

  But being thrown out is different

  To leaving. For leaving is a voluntary

  Act. A severing. Disowning. A cutting off.

  No one who knew the war, misery,

  Untold and untellable suffering

  Of life outside the garden would have left

  Voluntarily. This is of course a metaphor.

  Not to be taken on a razor’s edge.

  To want to leave Europe is not the same

  As leaving Eden. For Eden was perfection,

  And nothing afterwards can ever be. Only

  Degrees of imperfection, degrees of beauty,

  Degrees of agreeable possibility, scope for

  Growth and mutual growth, the space in which

  To help one another on the difficult journey

  Back to the rose garden, is maybe the best

  That we can hope for. Those who sell some thing

  As the perfect dream always sell a lie.

  2

  I think we grow best through mutuality.

  The world grows more complex. Outside

  The windows of our nations, great forces

  Swell and array their ranks in finance and in arms.

  As they grow bigger, we grow smaller.

  It was the unwise fate of African nations

  To huddle vulnerably under isolated

  Flags. Easily picked off by the plunging eagles.

  Easy prey. Justice on this earth demands

  A new balance of forces against the secret

  Armies gathering in the night. Weapons

  Of evil shuttle across borders in the dark.

  Terrorism has become the ordinary language

  Of our broken speech, the shout of those who

  Want to compel others to bow to their book or creed.

  3

  An invisible line connects us all and everything

  Is now linked in tears and pain. No longer

  Is there a place in which we can hide our head

  From the bombs and the curses and the violence

  That is the air of our times. A problem here scuttles

  Across seas and borders and no high walls or policed

  Boundaries can return the prestige of nations

  To innocence ever again. We have entered

  The age of migrations, mass migrations,

  Of breaking across borders and of wars that send

  Whole populations shifting the fragile

  Geography of the globe into something unrecognisable.

  The vengeance of the lost garden is ours at last.

  There’s no other way than back to what

  The garden meant, which we have forgotten.

  The garden wasn’t many. It was always one.

  Now we are millions. Our ways are legion;

  Our dreams fragmented. The garden was one.

  Only in the return to the one can there be

  Any peace in the fury of history. Broken

  And divided we’re all doomed and merely

  Awaiting the unknown forms of destruction

  Which time and the grim consequences

  Of our deeds and dreams will perfect.

  Everywhere nations breaking away from larger

  Nations. Fragmentation. Fragmentation.

  Is there a future in fragmentation upon fragmentation?

  Perhaps those who remain together as one, uniting

  Their diverse gifts, making beauty out of chaos,

  Begin to reverse the entropic trend of life

  Beyond the first garden. To fall is not to fall

  From space or height. It is to fall from unity,

  From oneness. But it’s easier to walk out

  Than to work it out. Easier to fall apart

  Than to stay together. The romance of independence,

  Of freedom, seems stronger than the truth of unity.

  That’s why it took no time to fall

  And all of history and future history

  To return. Sometimes one thing speaks

  For another. Its resonance sounds a warning bell.

  4

  It seems wars are about separation

  Not unity. The compulsion

  Of force, the forced unity, is not unity

  But an improbable army whose designs

  We recognise in the canon fire,

  The drones and the nuclear threat.

  But what the toxic air whispers

  In the children’s poisoned milk,

  What the clouds know and the
seas mutter

  And the mercury-laden fish threaten

  And the murders in the name of religion

  Or in the perversion of the many names of God

  Or the cyclical battles of the eagle and the snake

  Or the hyper growth of poverty

  While the multinationals and corporations

  Rule subterranean realities

  Of land and sea and sky, calls us to a choice.

  5

  Ah, but the wisdom of neti neti.

  Neither this nor that, neither that nor this.

  Ancient Greece believed we must choose.

  But you touch one end of the scale

  And in time it swings to the other side.

  Peace swings to war,

  War swings to peace.

  Ah but the wisdom of neti neti.

  Which of our choices are absolute in the good

  They bring? How often has good brought

  Evil through an unknown door, how often

  Has evil brought good from a secret path?

  Some shout for an independence never lost.

  Others sing for a union never truly found.

  One shout, and a gun is fired;

  A knife is stabbed into the flesh.

  Who knows the destiny of our insistence?

  Sometimes it takes an innocent

  Death to wake the confused conscience

  Of a nation. Sometimes it takes a bad decision

  To make clear the truth that wasn’t seen

  In the screen of our contingent quarrels and fears

  Awoken by demagogues with secret

  Ambitions. We never really appreciate

  The transforming effects of our good decisions.

  Our inspired ignorance.

  6

  Sometimes it’s best not to choose but to wait.

  Often we hurry to choose before we know what

  We are choosing. Lost is the wisdom of waiting.

  Neti neti. Neither this nor that. Neither that nor this.

  Waiting the way destiny does, the way trees do,

  Spending all winter and spring to decide about summer.

  Meanwhile all that’s true within them always

  Growing, lifting the antinomy of life and of death.

  They grow when they can, they die when they can’t.

  Given half a chance they always grow back,

  On concrete or stone or the side of a hill.

  It seems to me this is a great law: be

  Impenetrable to death, tenacious of life,

  Open to its subtleties, paradoxes, and not

  Incapacitated by the complex dance of stone and sea,

  Rock and wind, sunlight and cloud, night and stars.

  It is never clear what things really are till long

  After the ashes have nourished the pear

  The apple, the rose and the vine.

  7

  And long after, when the planter cannot remember

  What was planted, whether it was crocodile or stone,

  A blood-red flag, a nuclear fist, a blue flower

  As big as the sea, a fear-fruit vast

  As a yellow mountain, or even a stream

  That wanders over hidden lodes of gold and myths,

  Long after, when the tares and the wheat

  Are mingled in forgotten fires,

  An inevitable fate, whose mathematics

  We cannot disentangle, will stand inside us,

  A half-begotten tree of darkness and of hope

  That we might not recognise as our own,

  In the garden we didn’t harvest

  In the garden in which we did not invest

  In a time which is in a momentary arrest,

  Frozen between the before and after,

  When the before was not what we thought

  And the after is not what we know,

  As time mixes intentions and outcomes

  The way the earth mixes the dead

  And the living into enigma harvests.

  What did we plant, what does time reap?

  Between the planting and reaping

  A world of karmic fruitions,

  Future necessities, the unspeakable progeny

  Of the past. Time doesn’t reap what we sow,

  But something altogether more strange.

  Do not speak to me about the direct relation

  Between past and present, or present and future.

  Life yields what we never expect.

  Each moment of our being deserves respect.

  8

  Consequences attend our secret deeds

  And our public acts like figures taking form

  In a dream. Only the dream is real.

  The world is the dream we’ve made.

  That’s why history and history’s fruits

  Are so unreal. So unreal are the fruits

  Our lives eat. Unreal before and after.

  Ongoing unreality in the reality of time.

  Each day’s events like dreams in a billboard.

  Sunflower nightmares. Creeping vines of fear.

  The maternal earth absorbing storm and sunlight.

  But shaken by whether we stay or leave.

  The earth too feels our staying or leaving

  Like flowers do, or pictures on a wall

  When the dead return and find

  That no one’s home. Only the wind

  Rattling windowpanes of history.

  Or they return and find that we’ve

  Forgotten them, and they resume

  Their old habits in our living spaces

  While the fingers of evening climb

  High on the white walls, and the clock

  Strikes an hour no one knows.

  Convergence

  LINES ON A DRAWING

  For Rosemary Clunie

  they found a way

  through four

  dimensions of the door

  to raise my play.

  this is the game

  where love’s the name

  for every music heard

  there are tears unheard

  when one can’t sing

  when one can’t sing

  there is a bird

  that dies

  as it flies

  love these drawings

  of our tender evenings

  every line

  is a note

  from the heart

  to the divine

  be joyful,

  spartacus.

  OUTSIDE THE WEDDING

  the pen moves with

  the power of eros;

  but the graves hold

  back my desire.

  it’s hard for dreams to rise

  above the speech

  and yet transcend the fire.

  graves make me think

  of how our loves and hopes

  with time and weight do sink.

  and yet eros rises higher.

  outside the wedding feast

  the road runs past

  the field of fine roses

  and stone crosses

  and black birds on

  the black telegraph wire.

  then the graves make me drink.

  they stop the gaze.

  it can go no further.

  but the pen moves

  to the power of eros,

  and eros just rises higher.

  EVEREST

  some visions draw

  us to impossible places.

  visions that live

  in the heart

  of our mythologies.

  they pull us like ants, up

  into white clouds

  at the edge of dream.

  how many have perished

  in the storm or snow?

  their tracks vanished.

  whiteness obliterates

  the centuries.

  but some visions

  demand only

  snow-eaten feet,


  ice-broken hands.

  that white stony

  visage disdains history.

  into the abyss of its mouth

  pale generations go

  like sleepwalkers.

  sometimes a single storm

  blots out our elaborate plans.

  civilisation climbs its face

  and with a breath is erased again.

  all dreams lead here.

  from this lunar elevation

  everything seems clear:

  we must either sit still

  or overcome ourselves.

  we’re the mountains

  we need to climb;

  we’re our own impossible peak.

  everything that we seek

  is dissolved by success;

  only the trackless path

  is worth travelling on.

  some dreams do draw us up,

  not towards any particular eminence,

  but to something of which

  this mountain is but a mysterious

  symbol, whose meaning eludes us

  and ever drives us on, drives us

  up, with the blinding sun in our eyes.

  it holds up a mirror

  to our fevers, our delirium,

  our hopes and our need to conquer.

  and there we are shattered

  there we are made.

  it is one of the forms

  of the divine, perplexing

  the riddle of distance.

  is it a call to heroism

  or a dream of oblivion?

  everyone who ascends

  descends into a polar space,

  where the far is near

  and the near farther

  than valhalla.

  some visions draw us to

  impossible places

  where breathing’s a new

  language in the wind

  where we can climb

  higher into the flame of the days

  the flowering of the streets

  the dim ritual of work

  the initiation of sleep

  and the clarity of home.

  because one person did something

  vaguely unthinkable,

  perhaps impossible,

  because one person did,

  others can till their fields

  or leap to the moon

  dance in a ring of fire

  or walk treadmill incarnations

  towards the centre of that vast

  invisible red rose.

  *

  you who climb up

  and you who sit beneath a tree

  and you who at your desk

  await a vision, perhaps an annunciation

  you who scratch at your thoughts