Valence 5

5.

at the beginning of every year we ask whether
the killing spree is over for now all the soldiers
who heard earth’s tinnitus ringing on the frontline
fly home walk through the front gate
cannot explain what they have seen have heard
that there is no longer any grace in the world

in the houses where women keep time with days
over stoves where hunger is the taste of childhood
and thirst a close neighbour no one dares to speak
peace is a mirage a vision at the edge of thought
cities stagnate and are separated from the people
countries are divided like pieces of cake

few speak against revenge slit the veins open
let the blood run a long-fingered violinist
plays a spree of notes emergent gravity looping
as a new virus explodes crossing all the man-made
boundaries taking off on its very own killing spree
rampaging through the gutters into the glare of air

Valence 4

4.

on the tv last night the dead of Rwanda remain
where they died in the school buildings their bodies
preserved displayed as if part of an art installation
hands grasping at air mouths gasping a vacuum
skulls and leg bones sorted by size like hats cloths and rags
skins slung from a fork is it ever enough you never know

in advance what life-dice you have thrown the one where
you get to decide between flat buttons or round ones
on your jacket where foxes minks and seals sacrifice
their lives for your pleasure will you be the one whose foliage
screens the pool’s liquid arabesque where cigarette smoke
wafts lazily in summer air not likely these chances are few

Valence 3

3.

you study the index find grief sitting alongside greed
how dictionaries can turn destiny on a few letters
consider the difference between a water sprinkler
its afternoon sun of rainbows and laughter running
and a gas sprinkler its grey days of mud rag and bone
what a difference our meanings make of the world

you pick foxglove from the garden hoping for cure
there in the corner among the electric ferns is an old nude
green with moss her eyes crossed her forearms
broken at the wrist like a museum Venus her breath salty
you long for the nostalgia of flames foggy windowpanes
streets that cobble between old stone buildings

leaping shadows of gaslight in real-world film noir
galoshes keeping out the damp as you stroll the stream’s
bank your lungs filled with the effigy of cold air
your destination was the Sistine Chapel but Rome on a
Monday has no secrets to give up to naïve backpackers
with budget time and so you wait twenty years

to see that composition now engraved in your dreams
arriving in Cairo might never have happened had you
travelled a day later not the shock of machineguns in the street
but in the hijacked plane sour breath a blurred video death
you talk the half dead tree fern back to life gentle it out
when the time comes to write the word grief yet again

Valence 2

2.

that widowed ground has been filled with half-grown trees
almost impassable they are topped by yellow-crowned florets
along each side run sorrow pegs a means to navigate grief¬
against the fox-pelt cloud a woman stumbles tear-blinded
and half-demented her mind dismantling itself in a meltdown
so profound that buried poetry rises unbidden

the tiger’s tongue is red at the root like a meridian
dissecting the fearful symmetry of its body
melting in the delicious buttery light of late afternoon
you dream of Petra’s rock red caves imagine the bone dry
severed joints slumped like a ragdoll lumpy and disjoined
cranes settling above that old city in their precarious nests

no ladder long enough to reach them no florin
of pure gold to take you across that stream of air
you know you’d have to pay a bigger price for death
to mint that coinage sometimes you wish you’d learnt more
than just the Hebrew alphabet like raindrops in an eyelash
preciousness is nothingness against silk and stars

in your heart is a great hollow of pain like the chiselled
sound of a cello washing away the world’s grief
a pilgrim on that Spanish trek to Santiago
your world turns illegible with its multiplying echoes
all you can do is eclipse the scream stuck in your throat
like a sow at sacrifice roped to interminable silence

Valence

This is a 12-part poem that I am putting up section by section over the next 12 days.

Valence
1

all day long the gods have been screaming
their prevalent song of war and pre-emptive strike
war leaves you gobsmacked words slaughtered in the throat

Elephant cow

When I wrote this poem, I was thinking about the family of elephants - and this family is made up of the matriarch, aunties and a child. I visited South Africa in 2006 and saw this group of elephants in Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Game Reserve. The elephants have been here far longer than we have been and I expect they'll be here long after us - and having an elephantine memory - well you can see where this is headed. Mahadevi means the great goddess and in India she is very much alive.

Cellist Jami Sieber has composed some beautiful electric cello pieces which she plays in the presence of Thai elephants (I don't know if Thai elephants are any different from Indian elephants.) You can see her video at http://vimeo.com/channels/jamisieber#10832421

what Queenie says about Mahadevi

Mahadevi elephant mother smelt
another being in the world
she said to her friends
it’s time for us to walk the world
and so they set off with Mahadevi
in the lead they walked across
the African veld

they walked
across the seas to the hot lands
they spread out all across
the tundras in the north
crossed land bridges and
waterways an isthmus or two
snow capped mountains
some of the time they carried
thick fur on their backs which they
shed in the desert lands
eons went by as they walked
seven times around die Welt

and one day Mahadevi said
it’s here where we started
now I know the common smell
those small four-limbed creatures
whom we’ve passed in the latest
circumabulation the hairless ones
there is something about them
that worries me

and as she said this
a group of these small wiry creatures
came over the hill and stared
they formed a circle around
the calves protecting them and sent
out a low call to others that rumbled
seven times around the world

earth dragon

This is a NASA image.

I've been looking at images of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano and this image came up after I'd written the poem, it seemed to find me!! I might be being melodramatic, but why be a poet if you can't do that occasionally?

thin skin of the dragon

the thin skin of the dragon erupts
in pustules sending out plumes
feathers of air that trail the skies

the thin skin of the dragon rises
this sleeping giant moans
rolls over spilling earth’s blood

the thin skin of the dragon paints
the air green its breath as hot
as stinking sulphurous ash

the thin skin of the dragon sleeps
no more she keeps watch
at this wake for earth’s death