New Poetries VII Read online

  No nuance that I know

  Can capture all the subtleties of light.

  It is the most effusive show

  World-fabric has: sun’s dynamite,

  Which loves us. Is requited.

  As shadows pass and leave no sign

  Of passing, so I stand, delighted,

  And watch these borders of the borderline.

  The Puppet

  Some days I look above my head and see

  A hand that flexes, jumps, and, startled, vanishes.

  Its partings leave

  A sense of vacancy,

  As if to say, ‘The sort of mind that banishes

  Its puppeteer

  Begins to veer

  Too near

  The wind.’

  As if that hand,

  Now ravelled in unseeable blank sleeve,

  Had been the plotting force that pinned

  My life in place and made it go as planned.

  That’s what I guess but, soon enough, this goes

  When, glancing down, I spot organic links

  Clasping my feet

  And grass about my toes,

  Green Earth’s effusive countenance, which thinks

  It knows my mind

  And, sure, I find

  Its twined

  Support

  And givingness

  A gentle guidance, patterned and complete.

  I realise that the hand I thought

  Was besting me had only meant to bless.

  The Ladder

  It is the hour when come-and-go

  Carouse around the riverbank,

  Collect in wish and wing,

  And tickle blank

  Expanses of the woodland dank.

  Light descants on the fields I know

  And makes their outline sing

  An interplay

  Of night and day.

  Ivy and trellis, cloud-encumbered light

  Conglomerates, then mottles out of sight.

  Fierce solace. Loom. Release. Good loss.

  A mumble. Mellowness?

  No words. A luge within a larger way

  I thought I’d lost. Did not

  We all? It turns and is a stay,

  Convening marvels known and not.

  Loosed, these impressionistic phrases,

  Because, alone, I am at last

  Released from hectic talk,

  Resolved to cast

  The shaky scaffold of what’s past

  Outward, away, and watch the phases

  Of fascination walk

  Under the eaves

  Of stars and leaves

  As sunset’s ladder tumbles through the sky:

  Soleil couchant with rungs of purple dye.

  Despondency turns daring love.

  Reluctancy turns lift.

  Sight turns ekstasis. Stand-still turns to play.

  All thoughts are turning, and

  The turns themselves turn to a stay,

  Unplaceable but close at hand.

  Sand Grains

  Almost not anything at all, this particle

  Of disconnected shell,

  Yet squirrelling and shot

  Through with a chutzpah fit for Frank Lloyd Wright.

  Sheer angled mell,

  A plankton’s cot,

  It chuckles mischief, challenging the light.

  A miniature motel

  Where some detective plot

  Might stumble, after rambling, on an article

  Of lace, to solve its long-pursued conundrum.

  Eureka. Awe. A crux

  Hounded between the trees

  For donkey’s years, corroborated. Truly,

  Eternal flux

  (Whatever wheeze

  We try to pull), although it seem unruly,

  Yields reverence redux.

  As everybody sees

  Sooner or later, nothing here is humdrum.

  The Rowboat

  I’m in two minds about the whole affair.

  I like the forward-wading dip

  Of oar descending through expectant air.

  I like the way that wavelets tip

  Across the prow,

  Which rises now,

  Then drops before the rippling waterline

  Like pilgrims at a shrine.

  But then I catch the sky

  Meandering immeasurably over

  The windy land

  That trembles by

  While ecstasy, a supernova

  Discovered best when stumbled on unplanned,

  Electrifies it with a pang

  Of thrill and thought like an interrobang.

  Truly, there needn’t be a choice between

  The gentle boat and tingling sky.

  The one’s a stand from which the other’s seen,

  And yet this restive wish to fly

  Would have me sail

  Above the pale

  Well-gardened houses on the riverside

  To where the swallows glide.

  Impossible to break

  The up-and-downing nowness of the boat.

  Not on the cards

  To lose the wake

  That fans behind the place we float.

  Right here, right now, is life: for all its shards

  And jostling imperfections, who

  Would care to speed like flung neutrinos do?

  April Shower

  Rainforest day! Rain’s free for all.

  And here I’m getting drenched

  With everything the moody clouds had clenched

  But now let fall

  In plosive drops,

  Startling the land and pulling out the stops.

  Torrential fuel. A shapeless rush

  Of see-through resin beads

  That shatter into absence on the turf.

  It is a crush

  That nips and feeds

  The river where the waterboatmen surf.

  One day I guess my mind will slip

  Softly out of my head,

  And I’ll be left as some I’ve known, sat up

  At noon in bed

  With fragile grip

  Clutching a nearly-gone (or part-full) cup.

  The rolling shutter staggers all.

  A pigeon’s dappled wings

  Are more-dimensional seen through the rain

  It does not stall

  But as it flings

  Against the air it doubles round again.

  I can’t not stare. I’m overrun

  By smallnesses so grand.

  I think of when, a kid, my mother told

  Me how to hold

  The rain in hand

  And drink it as, she said, she once had done.

  This is an April shower and I

  Am caught off-guard by joy,

  Although I know that I, like it, must die.

  Let death deploy

  Its every trick.

  Delight, a deluge, cuts me to the quick.

  The Multiverse

  In one world, it’s all slides and tinkling laughter:

  A monkey rolls you tangerines

  And sunshine shows you what you’re after,

  With not a flicker. Solar-powered machines

  Propel new towns

  Above the hills of Martian moons

  While, back on Earth, dull frowns

  Transmute to sheer elation in hot air balloons.

  But it’s a different story in this other world:

  Impulsive rocks

  Splat pioneers. The hasty flocks

  Of herons push an aeroplane off course,

  And in the navel of volcanoes what is curled

  But imminent destruction,

  Eruptive force

  And, diametric, slow, some distant plate’s subduction?

  Still, in that former world, the life is lucky.

  The lovers? They are always true.

  The heroes are sincere and plucky.

  Your footsteps know, by ins
tinct, what to do.

  For now at least,

  Warmongers reach a compromise

  And shares of land are pieced

  Between free shepherds who rejoice below clear skies.

  But elsewhere God or restless mathematics meant

  To fix it so

  That days are short and passions go.

  We can’t imagine what the reason is.

  It chances that, for all our intricate intent,

  We stall where we begin.

  To notice this

  Can change one’s spin on life, if not the quantum spin.

  Ants, Spiders, Bees

  The ants are those who seek the bric-a-brac

  Of evidence

  And run it through the ringer, forth and back,

  In search of sense.

  Ants like to gather reams of information

  And neatly fence

  These finds in careful graphs of their creation.

  With scatter plots,

  Venn diagrams, and Power Point presentation,

  They call the shots

  On showing solid things that are the case,

  And also what’s

  Improbable, or would be out of place

  Amidst their stack

  Of knowledge, which they work so hard to trace.

  Contrariwise, the spiders spin their minds

  In planned designs,

  Inventing miracles of many kinds

  With tiny twines

  Which gradually accumulate to make

  A land of lines.

  They never tire, or ever take a break

  From making maps.

  It seems a thankless task they undertake

  And yet perhaps

  Sunlight on morning dew may lure some klutz

  To try their traps

  And thereby wriggle from the usual ruts.

  Yes, yes, it binds,

  But it releases! And that must take guts.

  The bees elect to forge a middle course.

  Fierce wanderlust

  Wings them to anthers, pollen towers: the source

  Of precious dust,

  Which they convert to deck their citadels

  With waxy crust.

  Hexagonal, their labyrinth of cells

  Encloses sweet

  Effusions, while sheer industry impels

  A moving feat:

  The manufacture of topography,

  On which they meet,

  Enjoy their lives and, daily, by degree,

  Must reinforce.

  It is a brilliant thing to be, a bee.

  Till Next Time

  How could it end in any other way?

  Pastels above and tangled grass about our feet,

  Tangential streaks of iridescent grey,

  Highrise conjectures on invention’s scope, and wheat

  Accumulating, hushed,

  By B-roads where a rushed

  Commuter hurtles to another day.

  Remote, flamingo-gawky, cranes release

  Piratic hooks like pensive anglers at a river,

  Expecting, wordless, some disrupted peace

  To sanction free-for-all: their moment to deliver

  Mechanic justice. Who

  Could function as they do?

  Who grips the nettle, grasps the golden fleece?

  Time past lies like a hogshead on a tray.

  Fresh salmon surge upstream. Downstream young lions leap.

  Time’s yes-man has relinquished yesterday.

  All doubts disintegrate. Enthusiasms seep

  And gather. Where they flow,

  Life flourishes. Trees grow.

  How could it end in any other way?

  ZOHAR ATKINS

  I wrote these poems over a seven-year period, while pursuing a doctorate in Theology at Oxford and rabbinic ordination in New York and Jerusalem. For me, poetry is the discipline of subverting discipline; it is theory in reverse. Or as Heidegger put it, ‘the thinker says what being is; the poet names what is holy’. As a scholar, my task is to analyse, demystify, explain. As a poet, however, I am summoned to confront what courts analysis only to flout it. My task is to let the mysteries I encounter in daily life reveal themselves as yet more mysterious than I could have presumed.

  Poetry is my argument with myself. But it is also my argument with argument. In following its leads, I hope to arrive at a clearing where the words that brought me there seem both trivial and providential, utterly contingent and omnisignificant.

  Protest

  No sooner do I say

  ‘Let there be light’

  Then a horde of angels arrives

  With their signs.

  ‘No more oppression of darkness!’

  ‘Stop occupying our empty wild.’

  ‘Down with the visible!’

  ‘God Should Know Better Than to Speak.’

  Even the walls of my hotel lobby seem

  To sing out against me.

  But then I remember, I’m God.

  Soon the angels will want to go home.

  In the end, nobody will remember how they

  Held hands, soaring together, like a school

  Into the tear-dusk firmament.

  How they laid their celestial torsos down in a row

  To prove my world a desecration.

  Nobody will hear their words of lament,

  ‘Holy, holy, holy,’ as anything

  But praise.

  System Baby

  I was six when I first filed for moral bankruptcy

  I was ten when they told me language is inherently classist.

  At thirteen, I started defining kindness

  as ‘making nice to those who like your favourite teams’.

  At twenty, I hired a ghost to write my LinkedIn profile.

  At thirty, I started radiosuctive parole therapy.

  At forty-one, I began to look sideways and call it inward.

  At eighty-six, I’m a work in progress.

  Today, at 120, I’m a proud piece of gum,

  who’s almost forgotten the countless nights it took me,

  locked in the shoe of the human mind,

  to get here to tell you: don’t let others humanise you.

  Don’t let them take away your objectivity

  no matter how much they brutalise you.

  Song of Myself (Apocryphal)

  I am my own listserve,

  advertising job and fellowship opportunities

  for myself by myself to myself.

  I sing of unpaid internships to my soul, O soul,

  and of passing controversies on which to take sides

  is to take the side of the self.

  I re-post myself and forward myself

  and respond to myself with emojis

  for I am the screen and its anticipation,

  the pleasure of being liked

  and of commanding myself to like others.

  For all pages are contained in my potential

  for sharing, scrolling, even viewing

  incognito. I sign in on myself

  and log out of myself and yet remain

  more than my usernames

  and forgotten passwords.

  For I am the great web itself

  and every parody known to it

  is known to me, and every troll

  who devastates its comments section

  is of myself. I am celebrity culture

  and conspiracy theory culture –

  the metastasis of meaning

  that nurtures both political

  gossip and culture wars,

  food blogs, parenting blogs,

  and cat videos. What you

  shall click, I shall click,

  and where you shall cut and paste

  I shall be cut and paste.

  Do I make myself redundant?

  Very well then, I make myself

  redundant. I am a paywall

  (disambiguation)

  I co
ntain metadata.

  Poetry TedTalk Notes

  Most poetry has the same shelf life as the technology of its time.

  Therefore, poetry is less about the individual poem, than about the brand, the update, the

  plan, the package, the network, the merger, the deal.

  The question isn’t ‘Is this a good poem?’ but, ‘Is it scaleable?’

  A poem, like a business, should always have an exit strategy.

  A poem is a platform.

  You can’t solve all of poetry’s problems in one poem, but you can use it to build your

  profile, make connections, plant seeds.

  The poverty of poetry is an asset.

  The meaning of poetry isn’t liquid.

  Carried interest in poetry is essentially tax-free.

  Reading is a better return on investment than writing.

  Without without Title

  A poem that admits there is no meaning

  besides the gathering of syllables

  into little bouquets of desire,

  placed, somewhere, between light and dust,

  is said to need, as winter needs,

  the beauty of visible breath. If

  wisdom is not to be had, it is

  to be sung. A poem is nothing

  but the sound of emptiness

  enfleshed, or else the sound

  of a half-naked emptiness

  caught between an urge to strip,

  a want to decorate,

  and a lingering contentment

  to stay here

  Fake Judaism

  Abraham, says Deleuze,

  could only become a Jew

  by first being a goy.

  Inside every pintele yid