A Drop of Blood

Three poems to complete this Tenth Ten (Poems – tenth ten), so the end is in sight for poetic posts and perhaps by then this bitter chill that we stubbornly call springtime will have abated and we’ll be getting called outdoors for worthier tasks at all hours of the day and night….

“A drop of blood….”, which my typescript copy indicates is number 35 of “A Year of Undoing” – though where the other thirty-four (or so) have got to I don’t know – belongs more with the last grouplet I  posted, but n’mind. It must date from about 1992 I think.

“My Country” is a lot more recent – written I guess following the disappointments of 2014 and thereafter. “My Country” qua love-poem puts me in mind of Paul’s dad Henry Kieniewicz, whose cousin-by-marriage (I think – though Paul says everyone in Poland is someone’s cousin) was Jan Rostworowski, a prominent poet of his time. “The trouble is”, Henry would say, his brow knitted in mystification, “I never know if his poems are about a girl, or a rose, or his native country, so I don’t really know what he’s saying”. It was only recently that it occurred to me that I had for years taken seriously what was actually a standard comedic line used by ordinary punters when describing poetry in general – and Henry was never one to miss the chance of a corny joke, the more well-used the better. So I’m still none the wiser about Jan’s poetry, which hasn’t been translated into English as far as I know, though I think he might have done some translations into Polish of Sylvia Plath, which may possibly give a clue as to his real poetic inclinations. Anyway My Country is about my country, as I don’t go in for metaphorical stuff – and there’s nothing that says you can’t write a love poem about your country.

The same issue applies in a sense to “Convenience Conveyance”, only here it’s more simile than metaphor (or the lack of it) – we used to get whipped at school if we forgot (as we generally did) that the little word “as” or “like” converted a metaphor into a simile.  Convenience is definitely the oldest of the three poems here, as I believe it refers to my daily four-mile walk to Davidston House where I was working as caretaker at the time, and to the mo-ped my dear boss eventually raked out of the back of his garage and bestowed on me. I reckon it must have been a less than perfect machine, as I remember venturing with it into one of the (two, I think) garages that at the time existed on Huntly’s Duke Street, this one specialising in two-wheeled conveyances. Duke Street was a street where a lot happened back then, being not only two-way but I think also the main A96 thoroughfare through the town – God knows how everything even fitted in, let alone got to move – the Inverness-Aberdeen bus used to pause briefly for the driver to hurl various parcels through the door of the shop that housed the parcels office down at one of the narrowest points (and a great arrangement that was, the parcels delivery that the buses used to do, it must have been before they invented those wildly expensive and barely reliable courier services with their generally bewildered foreign drivers)…. Anyway “I dinna have time for newsing, loon, just leave it there” was what I got when I tried to explain what was wrong with my coughing little mount (typical Huntly rudeness, thought I, being used to the politesse and general news-hungriness of Keith). I don’t recollect how I filled the hours (days?) while I waited for it to be fixed. Anyway my “motorbike” clearly wasn’t all the unalloyed joy depicted in the poem. The picture below represents a dead rabbit, why? because my collie bitch Peggy used to run alongside me as I rode, easily keeping up with me even when I reached my bike’s giddy 40 mph maximum, and on one sublime occasion leaped into the ditch and with barely a pause emerged with a newly-killed rabbit which she gulped down as she ran and then threw up again when we got to Davidston and re-enjoyed at her leisure. I think I might actually have included that episode in another poem after she died – another, when I think of it, in A Year of Undoing.

I was going to make it a photo of an actual dead rabbit, but this seemed more respectful and besides it reminded me a bit of the ditch from whence Peggy hauled her catch. I did also try to find a particular snap of Peggy being poserish with me many years ago in Studio Keith, but seemingly that one was another victim of the Fire, so just as well, I’d only have got all mawkish [picture “Day of the Dead Bunny” courtesy of Etsy & Pinterest]…..

8.  A Year of Undoing Nr. 35

A drop of blood in a field of snow
a single hour of our lifetime
one crumb from the banquet

I grudge him even that:
by fire  ice and blood
a curse of lifelong ill

Is the only thing I wish him
that hour to be a plague-seed
eating into his cortex.

Eighty hours have passed since then
the one is already smaller –
eighty-one hours of ill

Whittle it down, and I suppose
the betrayal will be forgiven
The devastation looked on indulgently

The words of friendship he spoke with you
be unravelled into syllables, each
wriggling like maggots back into his flesh

And I will remember
Cursing is not my business
and perhaps the pin-prick

That’s left by the multiplying hours
will let me see how close
I am to him. Of course, it’s not so simple:

The single hour joins forces with
every shared intimacy –
the snow is bloodsoaked

And all our early love,
which time has made good, jumps
back in a new and sinister light.

_   _   _ 

9. My Country

My country
says she hates her face, I think
she hates herself, though she won’t admit it
she’s starved herself
of mercy and pity
thinks her hard edge will
do for positivity

My country
says she’s not creative, creativity
is for the toffs and ponces
she’d like to be like them
but it’s not for her, and anyway
someone has to sort the expenses

My country
says it’s better to stay in a pack
there’s laughter and strength in the herd
everyone keeping their head down
she’d kill a leader rather
than let him break cover

My country
says she’s the least important
of all countries
and if I say the opposite
she’ll hang me up
expose me to public ridicule

My country
says anyone who wants to stay in her
must be weak in the head
she’ll happily give passes out
to sunshine and ease of living

My country
does not take kindly to initiative
or authorship, that mug’s game
if initiative’s about
there’s some foreigner behind it –
she’ll always take kindly to him

My country
is empty except
where she’s knotted into conurbations
there the lights
keep out the stars, she never lies
now, contemplating the moon

My country
has thrown out all her mythologies
where she puts her feet down, that’s
where it’s all at
the only spirit she recognises
comes from a condensing worm

My Country
is a stubborn old goat
I’ve pictures that tell me
I liked her when we were young and fresh
but now I’m too weary to remember
if she was ever really dear to me –
and ever-dear is saying a lot

_   _   _ 




10. Convenience Conveyance

As if I’d once loved a girl, as if we’d gone that road
Sharing our intimacy and so come as
Far as quarrels and quarrelled often
Until the quarrel weighed more than the love
As if then with bitterness and some relief
We’d agreed to part – well, as if all that were done

Now I can pass her in the street, and though
I pick her out from others, it’s not from knowing
The heart welling up behind the face – and all
The indignation that once provoked – but sooner
For the random invitation in her graceful hips
For the abstract love in her devouring eyes.

As if I used to plod this road
Twice every day, grudgingly laying back
The heavy all-too-familiar miles, well
Now a motorbike whisks me off, and
Oh, the stones no longer gather in my boots
I never get hot or tired

The summer air goes floating by
As sweet as water, the hills no longer
Come crawling around my vision, but slide
Smoothly freshly out. All is well again. Only
I no longer taste the hidden yarrow’s pungence
I no longer hear the silver gean-tree singing.

Snakes, and co

A bit of a delay in posting up these next 4, not so much because of removal issues, nor even the many trips to the Skip entailed, but because of wrestling with my dear old Machine, or at least its relationship with the WordPress formatting mechanism, which remains fractious – and yes, I got a bit anal about it, being determined to have the (sub)-title of the second of the “two palinodes” indented, which it doggedly refused to be. Chill, man, I tell myself…. I don’t know if there’s actually such thing as a palinode, I may just have made it up: I think it refers to the rhyme-scheme, nothing very important, but I seem to remember I was playing about with the form quite a lot at the time (’83-ish, I suppose).

As to the “love-poems” here, which continue the  theme of “difficulties”, I can say that “A New Arrival” belongs to a set of “Five Poems on the Birth of a Son”, for which I got a right slagging from the kids’ auntie on account of I’d never written “five poems on the birth of a daughter”, on either of the previous Happy Occasions. Well….not quite fair, I didn’t think: it’s not like I hadn’t written poems about, or reflecting on, my previous two. This particular set just happened to present  itself when I’d happened to become the father of a son. I don’t, of course, know if that’s completely ingenuous…. It may have been because the experience of the birth of a child had matured in my mind a bit by that time, whereas it was maybe too much of a shock or a novelty on the previous occasions. Besides, I would say it is different, having a child of the same sex as yourself: I don’t mean in the sense of hurrah, one for the football team or some such; but I will admit to a slight feeling that, as a man, a daughter seems to come into the world as a bit of an alien creature – fully borne out as she gets older! – whereas a son came along with more of the feeling, oh, another one like me – poor little bugger…. I would also adduce the testimony of our friend Sue, who when her second child was born a son, remarked, “oh my God, he really stinks!”

Otherwise….. I should say that I’ve always been fascinated by the Kundalini myth – far too distractible, not to say garrulous, to be any use at “spiritual exercises”, but that backbone mythical understanding of the – well, human backbone has always seemed to me highly significant, even when I’m being less than properly respectful of it, as in “Hearkening to the Serpent”. I got a picture which I’ll include because it’s bright and swirly, but otherwise doesn’t have much to do with the poems.

Yeah well …. of course, I’m in awe of it and of any who practise it, but – well, quite apart from its relationship to the staff of Hermes and other similarly loopy, staff-like symbols (not to mention the more analytical scientific approach of Jung and related psychologists) – this many-splendoured thing has become a bit, well – democratised, hasn’t it; despite the which I don’t know if the average spiritual tone of humanity has been raised much through the (apparently) growing awareness of the philosophy of the chakras in the West – but, really, what do I know, maybe we really are all heading for a Great Spiritual Awakening, in which case I’ ll be left looking pretty silly….

4. A New Arrival – sympathy for restless natives.

It is a landscape only newly tamed.
The pagan in them is overlaid, deeper now
It burrows away down out of the sun.
The walls have sprung erect smooth blank

Faces through the heat; nets of beams
Are slung between them, and over the wood the feet go;
And also the pavements, and the paths between
Cornfield and pasture. But here there is something

Other. It is in the Square between
The City-Hall the law-court and the bank:
And here the people cluster round, for here
Is the marvellous flower of the Desert, that blossoms

Once in a thousand years; stunningly
It thrusts aside the square-edged flags, as if
Earth’s torment had become echo.
But the tribes that were in the hills all wonder why

After these years of pain, as slowly
They were brought under and taught gentle ways, now
They are pushed back to the edges by a thing
Half human and half goat that bawls for its womenfolk and

Is served by great and small in the city.
Poor children, let me comfort you and take
The langour from your round eyes.  It is so sad
To see you sucking thumbs assiduously, as if to keep

Your lips from kissing him, like Jesus, kissing him
Dry, as if to keep your hands from handling him as if
A carpenter his living wood before
He makes his cross-cut.

_ _ _ _ _

5. Hearkening to the Serpent

I came calling by at the sweetie-shop
I had walked all day, I was tired and sour
 I asked to come in, you said trade’s at a stop
And you slammed the foot I wedged in the door.

I can scarcely believe what a niggard you are
Not to give six inches, when you’ll take six miles
Not to let two ounces in a ten-pound jar
While your mouth shapes no between beckoning smiles….

I’ve a green-golden snake, I keep her in a box
I’ve nourished her well, and I’ve given her wings
I’ll lay her in the hearth while the ashes are warm

Till she flies up through the can above the fields and flocks
And takes me too, to taste the higher things
While you’re left asking where you lost your charm

_ _ _ _ _

6. An Interruption – two palinodes

                i. A Little Under the Weather
You bring that air of unreason, the balm and the honey
I should be well past that; but the winter troughs pass through
Their battle-zone, and the lower air is filled
With giants frowning with their folded dun and black on

Strange one, I sit here under the weather, looking back on
A few hours of you. I don’t know what pressure might build
From having you near again…. I should plump to do
No more than sit tight until days when it’s sour and sunny.

             ii. Touching Base
It was there, when I touched you…. What comes next?
A fire maybe you’ve kindled out of my grey
Embers, with that urgency you project –
And look, where a club-swinging giant stamps

Whose prey is correct thoughts, whose eyes are lamps;
And I am him – and you are satin-necked.
He’ll take us in his stride, he’ll have his day
Till our sap climbs, our friendship flowers, unsexed

_ _ _ _ _

7. Sir Thomas Peeps at the Dragon

All down the cave he sprawled
Your body sprawled in his keeping
Where my fingers would like to have buried
His claws buried more deeply

I know I should not have looked
When I looked, my look was captured
His claws were fine and long
His tongue was long and lapping

Love, if you were my love,
Those knots as, Love, he released them
They are no sight for words

He spoke, his words are teasing:
Peeping Tom, peeping Tom,
Sweat sweet, Tom, for our feasting!

Still a Bit Foggy

It kind of offends my sense of proper synchronicity that I didn’t get my last two groups of poems finished and posted up on their new pages before our move back to Coldhome was effected – but there it is: here we are, and still another twenty poems to organise before I give all that a rest, at least for a while.

 Ellie seems to be relishing our new quarters and is lighting fires and making meals all over the place (in case that sounds a bit wild she is only engaged in above activities where there are proper facilities ie wood-stoves or gas hobs); I’ve been slightly set back by a visitation from an old “friend” that has in the past accompanied personal upheavals, facial neuralgia – well, I don’t know if that’s what it is but it’s effing painful anyway and somewhat undermines my ability to have sensible thoughts, or silly ones for that matter. However it seems to be in remission now and I feel a bit more human and wonder if, despite its “old-friend” appearance it is in fact a Post-Covid phenomenon – if the likes of Philip McMillan, Geert Vanden Bossche and Shankara Jetty are correct (I’m a bit sceptical, as ever, but swayed by the mounting evidence), Post Covid is characterised by any one, or any combination, of a list of autoimmune disorders as long as the Magna Carta and ranging from the lethal to the merely inconvenient. Actually, I don’t know how long Magna Carta was, I just thought it sounded pretty long. If Drs McMillan and Vanden Bossche are correct, the phenomenon is going to develop into a wave of disease beside which Covid itself will look pretty Lilliputian, but I dare say whether we ordinary punters even hear about it will depend on who controls the airwaves (or are they space-waves now, I’m never sure). Most likely any concrete facts will float gently down into the great Information Silence which we are all busy relishing.

Anyway –

View from my “new” window, or: Articulation of Brain Fog. When I asked Ellie to snap this the roofs behind (those red-brown blurs) were white because gently covered with sleet, but clearly it was evanescent, and what you see here is almost colourful. The brain fog aspect is mainly a result of the window having sat out somewhere grubby for the past eight years and having not been cleaned yet. I can see (though most people wouldn’t be able to) a wiggly worm behind those honeysuckle tendrils wavering from the (palatial) toilet on left to the (leaky) kitchen porch on right which is our ethernet cable, and behind that a faint glimpse of the forest of buddleias which is now the main legacy of our Fire and which turns into a paradise of scented blossom and butterflies in late summer, and also the pokey-up tree that is one of several balsam aspens planted around the place for the refreshment of the spirit (lost on me, now that most of my sense of smell has gone). But – nuff said: at the moment the brain fog is the main thing….

back to the real world. This second group of “love” poems is characterised by the notion of “difficulties” – and I guess in the background is the notion, already mentioned,  of a “three-in-the-bed” scenario (not literally, of course, no no) but where a third “presence”, possibly another person but just as likely an idea, or a dissatisfaction, or a new occurrence, or just the plain difficulty of living intimately with someone else, is in some way involved. So it’s a pretty diverse bunch, some a bit scurrilous, or so it feels after so much time has passed; they’re mostly fairly short so I’ll post up a few at a time and – actually, I’ll put in a prefatory ditty here too, not one of the ten, just on the general topic of “difficulty”, because – well, just because I feel like it….

His Black Hand

A nursery rhyme boy
Leaving for a strange land
But what I’m trying to glimpse
Is his black hand.

A girl at the window
Peering Into the gloom:
Too much dust and shadows
In that room

He trips and stumbles
On the plain track:
He can’t get on forwards
For glancing back.

He puts his hand
In a stream he found:
The water bubbles
And passes round.

He comes to a dam
Made of fifty blocks of stone
And the weak water
Moves not one.

For many hours
He squats on the sand
Trying to wash clean
His black hand

TENTH TEN Poems – tenth ten

1. Learning Gravity

If I blamed myself, you’d all too readily agree:
My weight’s too much on top of you, we’d be back where we started –
If you just knew how I’m searching, searching night and day
For one strong, simple, liberating word to say to you!

Hoelderlin tells me I must love the gods when they’re fled,
Lewis that if I loved God first I would love you better,
MacDonald that no-one can live who has not first died –
My Masters have this endless wisdom to say to me.

Elizabethans climbed love’s tree and called it death:
It’s true you climb, snakelike, flowerlike, and burst
Then your limbs drag you down with a weight like lead –

But help me, Love, to release you with that greatest of words –
I know how to live, my gods fly in their strength:
I see them, feel them, but must flee them to say it first!

2. His Golden Hand

When I was touched, feeling his golden hand
When I was touched, how I was touched, I felt
The whole world spinning, burst, making me blind
With light, I thought my very bones would melt.

Now I’m more used to it, I understand
It was all in me, all in me, the light,
The heat like axle’s friction – I could wind
Brown lagging round me now, and still stay bright.

His hand’s engrained with dirt, it’s been in places
To make you gag near, rough from howking weeds
It does for putting virgins through their paces….

I’ve read those Islands women steeped their tweeds
In piss, and smelled of fish, and washed their faces
In the salt sea….  Well, these are things one reads.

3. I Met a Girl over Westward

I met a girl over westward, where the old language is heard
She was light, she was seductive, as the Gulfstream breeze
I’d called this my own country, but I understood not a word
I spoke, she spoke – it was like the washing of seas

We learned to converse, learned universal names
Names of sun, moon, star and weather, water, man and wife
We courted with gifts and riddles, played children’s games
Nothing darkened our days – we had not the words for strife!

Our language has grown shabby and perfunctory, lost its polish
Its silken subtlety, our tongues lack zest and relish
Our love snores; only words of the old language can wake it.

The young lovers dream forwards, we reflect on what’s passed
They live for the next time, we mull over the last
The young lovers are made by love, we must learn to make it.

Two Gored

“Pamplona” (Poems – ninth ten) is a bit of a beast, and I nearly felt I was cheating calling it one and not five poems. But it is, in fact, a single unitary poem in five sections. The up-side of its length is that it’s fairly easy reading  and anyway I feel it’s only appropriate to post it in celebration of our move back to Coldhome (yes, one night passed there though tonight I’ve scuttled back to Cottarton for entirely sensible reasons), and Pamplona, written 1985-ish, was the product of another major move. It was originally titled “The Shining White Unicorn”, for reasons I can’t entirely remember – probably the one brief reference in the fourth section, but I think “Pamplona” is more apt, for obvious reasons.

The siege of Pamplona happened round about 1540 probably – I can never remember when one war supposedly stops and the next supposedly begins – and was what caused Ignatius of Loyola’s retiral from military involvement (due to a shattered leg) and his subsequent founding, along with some others, of the Society of Jesus (ie “the Jesuits”) whose mission was to kick the butts of the newly-emerged Protestants, though it subtly morphed into the CIA that we know and love. I don’t give a rats-tail about this religious (so-called) politicking, I just like the story of Ignatius’ remarkable healing from a nearly impossible wound and the fact that, after many trials, The Boy Done Good, according to his lights anyway. Here’s a picture of him – pretty much indistinguishable from all the other 16^th century geezers, if you ask me, like pieces of polished wood.

And for good measure, at least in the Facebook link (can’t seem to copy it otherwise) a scene from the “Running of the Bulls” which I think is still an event in post-enlightened Pamplona. You can see that some bits of my description are erroneous (no denim, for example), but I didn’t have the internet in those days and had to use imagination. There’s a pronoun in the third section which I wouldn’t use in this context if I was writing it nowadays, ie nowadays I’d feel happy enough to use “their”, as this sense of “his or her” (sex undisclosed) feels more or less logical to me (not like that old “‘can we pick them up from the station, Dad?’ – ‘well, it depends, how many are there?’….’no, idiot father!….'” trope, which still enrages me). However I thought, what the hell, it was a convention, it’s of its (yes probably unenlightened) time – I’ll just leave it unedited.

10. Pamplona.

I.

No-one on that first day
Could have told how things would turn out
And it was likely to be
The same for many years –
So he thought, with his eyes on the distance.

Up in the hills the colours were muted
The first snow had come and passed
Grey and dun and dull green abounded
Soft as oil, but a spiked breeze
Went sifting through the thorns

And through his varied head
A dozen conversations went
With people who were no longer there
And what he had done came and went
Through him, like quarrelling sparrows.

There among the bushes
A scrap of paper shifted
Sodden, it had torn on the haw spikes
It had swollen, the breeze had dried it
It shifted brittly:

It was to put him in mind
Of a day in the heat above Pamplona
How the clear morning air
Grew hazy as the sun beat off
The dense cobbles in the narrow street

And dreamlike, like water
The young men eddied in the high walls
Between fear and courage, at
The Running of the Bulls, while
The hot beast threatened and lunged

And they were running for their lives while he
Ran to his death, with the vivid
Lash of sky above, and doors in pastel shades and
The shining cobbles, with the shouts of the people
Taunting him, all seemed

Distant then, but more distant still
On that dim northern day
As he leaned through the thorns
And touched the stiff white paper
And read, incuriously.

II.
Each one, like the one before him, stained the dust brown
On the well-swept dancing-floor
Each one was of a stock like his
The best and each one light and sinewy
Gore-happy with his moon-like horns

But of each four-score of calvings only one bull
Was counted fit to carry the stock, and his lot would be
To serve and serve till the season had emptied him
And he must pick grass and bellow
Through nine full months of idleness;

But for the others there was the penning-up
Of rage, the jostling and the buggering
Then at last a red mist at dawn, and at
The rising of the sun the running of the bulls
In the one-way street, the crowds and the open ring.

Among the gold-and-black professionals
Like marionettes there, among the bull-men with
Their harlequin-horned bonnets, she did not stand out
Her hair was pinned up into the dome
Her breasts pressed tightly in the manly brocade.

Perhaps one or two might have noted her
Slighter than the rest, more fluid-moving
And wondered if she was fulfilling
Some secret ambition, or if it was a ploy
To earn bread for her hungry children

Or perhaps it was both, and as the bull and she
Took the floor together, and the deadly illogic of her barbs
Matched the slashing of his troubled crescent
Macho-mother, and he in full belief
Of a solution, then both circled balanced

And at the centre the image
Of the wholly dispensable male
Seemed to grow tangible, till down he sank
On his knees in front of her, and the cheering
Broke out afresh from everyone, ignorant

Of the secret of their hero, while she smiled
A thin elfin smile, counting her viciousness strength
And how though her children went hungry
All was well, while his blood like rubies
Spotted the gloves on her fine wrists.

III.
Come, she said, and lay your head in my lap
But he was thrawn and gauche, and his young man’s charm
Invisible to himself, but she said come
And again come, I’ve waited for you and you’ll be the one
Counting the rose-petals she pulled so lovingly

And he was gauche and knew he’d done something wrong
When her face was stony-set away from him, and he must appease her
And up and down he strode, while she sat there dour
But the sharp breeze shifted and suddenly she smiled
Offering his mouth a plum from the bowl he’d given her

A deer danced out before him, and with a shot he downed it
And carried it jerking home and emptied it out
But the head he cut and cleaned, and crowned her
And she grimaced stagily as the first snow whirled down
Dealing the cards by lamplight to each alternately

Blow followed blow, and each drew blood
Each held a trump and each gave the game away
The clouds drew down on the bald trees while children shouted
Their echoes like gunshots and the blank echoes
Rang down the murderous wind unrestrainedly

Dawn grew on apace but the bout went on
Each one making his point with force and thundering the counter
Ash had covered the coals in the grate and the door rattled
And red-rimmed eyes glared with the effort of focussing
But drink for drink they brought each other religiously

A deer danced out before him and with a blow he downed it
And carried it jerking home and called the dogs round
But the head he brought in and set up with its snow-wreathed branches
And called her a whore, shoving forward his frost-chapped stubble
As quietly she dealt cards for her morning game of solitaire

And he was gauche and knew he’d done something wrong
When her face was stony-set away from him, and he must abuse her
And up and down he strode while she sat there pursed
While the sharp breeze whistled in the branches, and suddenly she smiled
Touching the out-of-season fruit from Spain in the bowl before her

He danced out before her and, come, she said hoarsely
I’ve waited the long night through and his hunting and slaying
Have wounded me to the quick, and his austere ranting
I want a soft bed and sun and trees full of honey
As she tore off the rose-petals and smoothed them out absorbedly.

IV.
As Ignatiuis lay bleeding
My son, said the priest, who’d fasted
Seven weeks of the siege, what you call
Your strength is brutishness, my son he said
You’ve never knelt to God, now God

Himself has brought you to your knees
And Ignatiuis lay bleeding from his shattered leg
While the noise of cannon rolled around
At Pamplona and the smell of gunsmoke
Tingled in his nostrils for the last time

Now you’re at bay, said the fine-boned priest
But still he writhed and still he hummed
  For the girls from Spain they a-take it up the bum
  To be virgins when they-a marry-o
But though he writhed and louder boasted

His exploits with harlot and lady
Now you lie still, the priest said calmly
For you must open yourself to Him
Before whom we are all as women
And Ignatius lay bleeding, and cursed the long habit

He must lose his body in like a woman
And how his cronies would wonder
If he were fulfilling a secret ambition
Or look askance at his efforts
To beg his way and feed his hungry soul

  And the girls from Spain they a-take it up the bum
  To be virgins when they-a marry-o
And little by little, as his will pieced together
The fragments of his shins, he plotted out the way
That would take him up by mule-track and thorn

And while the blood of others roared
For him came the penning-up of desires
And Ignatius lay bleeding his soldier’s life
Away, while in his mind grew the one true Light
Like a spear, and shone on his forehead

As painfully he picked his way, transcending pain
On the moon-like horns of the Pyrenees
Open to the destiny that was coming to him
  For the girls from Spain they a-take it up the bum
  To be virgins when they-a marry-o

V.
On the stiff white paper he read the words
Two Gored At Pamplona
On that dim northern day
And pieced together the picture
Full of vivid lights

Of young men getting what came to them
Of stumbling and torn soaked denim
And tattered muscle at the ankle
And they with all their lives before them
While he ran to his death

At first it had seemed to him
The solution was solitude, as he took to the hills
But soon the very hills ringed round
And he was in a pen there, at bay
As the high walls threatened and plunged

At last, around sunset
On a day at the end of the moon’s waning
His cheek touched the damp earth
He noticed how many-coloured the world was
And wanted to open his mouth and speak

The wet crept into his clothes
He thought how much heat and blood
Had gone in to make
That bleak newspaper heading
Found tangled in the thicket.

A rabbit ran past his ear
And a robin hopped over to watch him
It was strange behaviour for wintertime
But he smiled, as the spiked cold crept into him
And above, in the violet dome

As though rescuers were driving picks
Through landslipped rock
A few stars pricked out
While like dust a few flakes
Of new snow whirled down.

Alone, and his eyes distant
He was thinking kindly of the people
Trapped, as he was and how
Under pressure, finding a chink –
Nothing could be predicted.