Archeologies from The Ceylon Press

David Swarbrick @ The Ceylon Press

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From disco to disappearance.

11/06/2025

Songs Without Music

So Watch So watch my flesh decay and see how beautifully it goes; like something asking to be loved; like you, too shy to ask me to your room; marks that will survive are marks on skin and mind: not you with me, not face to face; and only this, a last decay pitching to hide itself when each has gone their way. Cause Under empty skies air finds no flags; people march but the banners are burnt; the world is bleeding into hell, and into hell the world betrayed. My fist is flat, the truth is traded; there is nothing left to kill for or to honour. the world is bleeding into hell, and into hell the world betrayed. Angel I bought a glass palace in Paradise with a pool and fifty rooms; and off its slender flagstaff I can fly to the moon. I’m god in the city, god in the town, I came from hell but I’m here; from nighttime to nightfall my parties do not end. I’m alive and free so look at me I dream at the top of the sky; my fingertips are strips of jade - there’s no way I can die. I’m god in the city, god in the town, I came from hell but I’m here; from nighttime to nightfall my parties do not end. Welcome, roll up, welcome, watch kings and princes sigh; they beg to use my golden wings. they beg to learn to fly. I’m god in the city, god in the town, I came from hell but I’m here; from nighttime to nightfall my parties do not end. City of Fear Last night I flew over the city of fear; dark coated people came down the streets; they had angel eyes and shrank from light; they looked at me and wished to fly - but they couldn’t grow wings. And in the end it’s the end that living’ about; they do not know how to go they can escape no more they have turned to salt inside the doorways of this city of fear. Moon high, my rocket feathers carry me free I see the late night-clubs open up, the curtains of private room drift apart; the battle’s over, but in coloured light, the battle starts again. And in the end it’s the end that living’ about; they do not know how to go they can escape no more they have turned to salt inside the doorways of this city of fear. People wait with wet wide eyes but the gods have gone, the night goes on; coins rattle in their mouths the gates have closed. And in the end it’s the end that living’ about; they do not know how to go they can escape no more they have turned to salt inside the doorways of this city of fear. Heros Come kill the heroes, tear the faces from the walls; there’s no misleading leads us closer to Hell. In every street, in every room their faces stare, they take the air, they grin and cheat and stir us; they’ll do anything for us; live our lives the way we want, the heroes. Pictures in magazines blow up their public lives; the roles they play kill for us and lie. In every street, in every room their faces stare, they take the air, they grin and cheat and stir us; they’ll do anything for us; live our lives the way we want, the heroes. Wars won in cinemas are all we never were; and all we ever are just turns to dust. In every street, in every room their faces stare, they take the air, they grin and cheat and stir us; they’ll do anything for us; live our lives the way we want, the heroes. River Night-time holds me down and empty open to the flood; nothing stops the river breaking in, stops the river breaking me. Not sleeping, not waking, I’m trapped in the dark – cold shadows surround me closing around me; it’s the dream world of a lost world of a world that never was. Faces, and the colours tasted turn the years I have not lived; take the lost road back, take the road unsaid. Not sleeping, not waking, I’m trapped in the dark – cold shadows surround me closing around me; it’s the dream world of a lost world of a world that never was. Cold City In rooms and bars the city through I see you face the same; every word and touch we make recalls our needs again. There’s no time for holding back no time enough for fear, and if you wait forever there’ll just be nothing there. Yet when love moves and speaks its eyes are flat and closed; and every time we want to give it suddenly lets go. There’s no time for holding back no time enough for fear, and if you wait forever there’ll just be nothing there. We scare of loving, loosing dreams with this love that must not say with this love that cannot ever declare itself again. There’s no time for holding back no time enough for fear, and if you wait forever there’ll just be nothing there. So hold me on your fi...

12 min
11/01/2025

Pilgrim

1 in tight lines a dozen houses line the winter wheat – already: frail bungalows with front lawns, at the village edge; homes, already, transitory as inns, and clamped to a new access road that slices though the down. diggers have quarried the chalk - upended it; torn out the clay beneath - heavy, dark, greasy as abattoir meat embedded with flints, clewing to a long-departed sea. in a web of cul-de-sacs, of silent gardens of chipboard walls history is being forgotten; the land is practicing how to die. SNODLAND, MARCH 1977 2 clouds clog the river’s fallen level - a dry day at the furthest edge of summer; at the month’s almost-final, almost-end-point, flat and still; indestructible. hay, cropped in silent meadows rests in long gold lines; the battles to be fought are far away; nothing is corruptible; now is all there is. THE RIVER BEULT, AUGUST 1977 3 wade in the corn waves undisturbed; come home - there is no toll; the hip-grass will conceal and recall; fearing no fall, the dusty green will restore the world, its marks, its scars - bring it to a field of sun - to this home, crushed out within it. NEAR CRANBROOK, AUGUST 1977 4 of course there are grander things than this Victorian rebuilding of medieval stone; but not for me. for eight years i have been its steadfast visitor, a pilgrim of sorts, returning to a place where nothing is urgent; where custom points, like transepts, to the enfolding fields and woods first written in Doomsday. THE CHURCH OF ALL SAINTS, BIRLING, MARCH 1978 5 amongst the few remaining leaves of last year’s autumn, daffodils shake in a slight breeze; they lord it over the wilderness - the stone angel drowsy under moss; the mausoleums, rectangular, preoccupied; the crooked tombstones, dreaming of places other than this; the sleeping columbaria spread between the shot green shavings of recent trees - defiant, redeeming. BIRLING CHURCHYARD, MARCH 1978 6 winter rain has darkened the hayrick’s sides; now a nine-hour sun expands upon it, restores it, saves it with lengthening days; returning all. SNODLAND, MAY 1978 7 only on the road between the trees; only on Birling Hill do i evade the day; slip the sun under leaf; freewheel on the scarp, believing only in Cistern Wood and Coney Shaw, in Stonebridge and Ley; in the fields that flit by, worshipping only the swift dark woods, the down’s allegiant oak, and beech, and chestnut - saved by speed each time i turn into the ceaseless haze. ON BIRLING HILL, JUNE 1978 8 now the cool weaves white; the high day ends; the ridge simplifies; the downland tightens – a narrow gate, darkly green - trees open to an ageless sky; a time for nightjars, nightingales, sparrowhawks; and i am washed away. TROTTISCLIFFE, JUNE 1978 9 this is a road for sunday walkers, wanderlusters who go just so far, their communion curtailed by an absence of magic, fitted in between reading the papers and lunch, as is customary now. THE SNODLAND TO BIRLING ROAD, JUNE 1978 10 clouds shift; over the hill the moon swells, the grass, dark this side, lights up - ignites a sudden thoroughfare showing me the way, night by night, as i cycle sections of the old pilgrim road, all difficulties shattered, past fields of clover, cowslip; past Blackbusshe, Badgells Wood, past the Battle of Britain cross,

21 min
10/27/2025

Border Lands

march 1981 having this, no fantastic hate can rob you; not devils, not warriors, not demons; nor even angels, spying from their steep slopes, nothing, truly nothing can rob you – nor even this town, that has a history of theft and mutilation: the churches empty, the homes neglected the parks choaked with weeds. you do not need to stay. you do not need to pay. april 1981 i’ve not wordsenough to say - i saw you walkingon the road today, nor eyes prepared to follow: folly , prey. may i 1981 eclipsing streets,a steady shore,an ordered crashof waves; through sunlight, shafts,marbled clouds a far, far out horizon, unreachable;unbreachable. may ii 1981 i amin envy of love; i am in envyof these two figures strong as the sun. i am in envy. june 1981 how far do seas stretch? here, my love;beach, sand, dunes, and rocks, rising, cliffs, rising: we sit, hiddenin stumpyheat-drenched grass; a high hollow,spread with towels, a picnic, cigarettes: and two tight bodiescurled like babesobserving visions. july 1981 on this shore – on every shore the sea rolls, spreads,swobsexpandsexplains but we –you and i – we are fastened like limpets. we cannot leave. september i 1981 the wavesof last night’s stormlinger, loiterinsistendure: they stir still;they stir now, white, wild, whipping the heavy sea is not becalmed; it slaps on jetties,smashes the sea walls,breaks up the boats; and we must shelter. september ii,1981 i have cometo meet myself again –to catch up.find fault,find favour. it is the same homing, bleak sea,the same empty horizonblotted out by mist. my heart gives into it;beatslike a forbearing tide. october 1981 behind me a television towerfeeds the air, feeds a hundred thousandunseen homes; feeds them all, gannetsrazorbills, gulls greedy as Ahab with a rattle of stodgy voicesi cannot hear, mayday signalsfor the dying day for the yearning empty night. november i, 1981 november. the pebbles are smooth,grey, oval, wet; they slide,roll,rattle; children gather driftwood; build bonfires. the inlet – south beach - lies under a muscle of white cloud; wheeling waveswhiten,spreada pale disappearing line; we breathe airno city has maintained; i sit on a washed uptree trunkgreatest of all. november ii 1981 just above the line thrownby the strongest wave; just at that pointwhere the sand shelves, where it is wet, softer, darker just at that point – that is where the people group where the people watch, where they walkthrow stones; the pensioner too,in his fawn coat, we are just at that point – each day,same time, same placebeside the shifting sea. december 1981 hallo there.hey!hallo! i see my faceunder the street light; i see that when this passionhas gonethe shop’s glass window will remainreflecting it all back;everything bloody thingbut hazy, stickywith salt, it is my father confessormy witness to others who walk,like icatching their faces,in this unkind abrupt waylong before they are ready to own up; catching their features too soonin the vast unending night. february 1982 lean mountainsrise seaward,rock on rock; thin fields stretch,taut as canvass the first lightgilds the couch grassacross Swyddffynnon,fills the hollowsfrom Pontrhydfendigaidto Ystrad Meurig runs goldover Cambria. march i 1982 unspeaking, we’ve watched the daywake and slide unfelt; old room in an empty house. our bodies lie still,unspent; under the huge grey skythere is no trade. march ii 1982 brieflyi remember lying in your lap, my stock against the nightelectrically charged,incriminated; my fingers familiar each contour knownas my own,the warmth and textureof your feckless flesh. april 1982 her eyes coilaround a worldi cannot see; in her headare the smiles of friends, and elders,smiling sadly, as they will smilewhen she is dead. may i1982 living by the seawe have missed the firstgraffiti of spring,the scrawl of buds on bush the harsh soft hasty green the pebble beach is our park, cold and harduntranslated, unpreserved,seen in flashesmoment by momentwithout memory.childless,parentless. may ii 1982 but for thisthere is no other world; this is the magic of your face,the fascination,the hidden sea - waves rearrange the light; currents coil beneathlike massive ropesencrusted with barnacleswrenching the water dragging it this wayand thatdragging it into a warren of rolling whitecaps. this is the only place for love; this time my heart will take its ancient pathunseen. may iii 1982 somewhere, somehow, something will end; just not be there; we’ll wonder why we ever looked; adjoin, ajar,elude, escape – the door will neverclose again. will never. may iv 1982 remember that old image of summer; the blooming trees,heavy with green; the flower crowd and scent – someone sittingnear the house; someone playingthe music of old scores on the piano? it never was. get up and go; the door is open. may v 1982 i cannot see it in your eyes, the lover, mistress, master - it is only the ocean i see – the eternal cross of lightdimming in the depthslate as the latest night-known dreamsthe trances and delusions – the truth. june i 1982 this cold magic has – as possession – every length of time, has the fascination too, and the light it steals: oh, how it steals the light – dragging it beneath the waveswith such dark graceonly a fool would not follow. june ii 1982 stay in. we are cannibalstogether; adequate, sufficient. all we needis all we are. june iii 1982 she dreams with her eyes;shapes of ships and long dark seas; a diviner,a first time diver,going places - such places as you never saw and being all he is,he is all hers and she dreams on. june iv 1982 apart from casual painhe will never walk disarmed,as if alwaysinto ...

24 min
10/26/2025

At The Volcano

ONE Wholly beautiful, this is a remote withdrawn unsaid place; knowing nothing, wisdom held unaided. The volcano, burst, blistered, blasted before time, rises above savannah, autonomous. Nothing of what I have left behind has followed me here: no bars, or clubs, or safari parks swarming with mutinous animals; there are no buildings here, no cables, no pylons, nothing. There is nothing, nothing; there are no roads even, nor walls, bridges, hospitals, barbers, butchers, pharmacies; museums are absent; and shops, and markets selling fruit and sentimental knick-knacks. TWO Even the ruins around this place have still to be built, lived in, fought for, destroyed by monsoon rains, by dead and dated wars, and rebels hiding from the recent defeats of old conflicts that never end; there are just trees; just podo trees rising like citadels around the titanic flanks of the volcano; trunks thirty feet round; their branches forking low, twisting, arching into artless beams, hewn lintels, giant joists; a stronghold, spontaneous, animate, built in a high lapsed land, soaring above borders that have worn into wasted lines, pale snaking imprints woven invisibly between every spur and stream, climbing the sides, between ridges and peaks, vents, conduits, lakes – the crater, cloistered, limitless: every inch of every border remembered in old, disputed books in archives in Nairobi and Kampala; in the stories the tribespeople tell each other every breaking day in villages far, far away. THREE Mostly though, there are no people here: no trippers; no travellers, tourists, not even residents; just me, and one bemused young driver smoking through a pack of Marlboro lights. Especially, there are no houses, no homes or gardens; no streets or settlements. In this place - in this place here – no cars sound no buses blare their loud exhausted horns; there are no windows to open for music to escape from; conversation to drift from no drilling, grinding, crashing, crunching, no barking dogs or phones, no people talking, shouting, singing, nor even passing each other, to pass the day with a nod, a “Hi,” a “Humm”. In this place here there are no rooms filled with the ordinary things of life or of objects passed from one generation to the next. In this place here it is the trees that talk, that chatter and discourse in sudden winds; it is the birds that speak, confer, negotiate, the buzzards, bustards, cuckoos, kites; and the waterfalls, slapping over a hundred meters of rock, the hot springs bubbling, and hyenas baying at a cornered buffalo. In this place it is the sounds you cannot hear you notice first and last: the stealthy leopard, the bushbucks, cobras, lizards. This is a place that leaves no trace. FOUR I have climbed here quite alone, leaving the jeep where the level ground ran out. At the end of a ragged tread of off-road tyres the bush rolls, scrub to forest; long burnt grass - the colour of lions – reaches to the forest on the mountain’s sheer as tombstones sides; the slopes narrow to a lawless green, strip out light, break space into an elaborate maze only animals can navigate, following the antique paths made by wild elephants. You hear them, travelling by night, scouring the salt caves, their tusks - like the claws of massive diggers - carving deep channels into the volcano’s heart. Jungle defends the cancelled land, morphs into thick shadows, repeating and repeating all that it is; fugitive tracks - the tread of wary animals - blur and disappear, snaking off in the sombre light, the measured lunatic murmur of insects twists in tail-winds. Colobus move. FIVE Python creepers curtain from forty-metre trees; camphor, redwood, juniper, rebuff the shrinking sun. A hungry old insistent night begins to fall; and in the evening mists the volcano appears and disappears; floats, through the turning years since before the day was late; a temple over the world it made; a dreamland built in fire and ash in tephra, cinders, lava, a guarded shangri-la whose gods have names now quite forgotten (if they were ever known at all). Here, the jehovahs are perfect, imperfect, perpetually lingering on heedless of permissions craving not to know

12 min
07/04/2025

The Jungle

The Jungle, the Work of an Unknown Author, edited by David Swarbrick & Max de Silva. Whether or not the original text of The Jungle included a dedication can, sadly, only be a matter of random speculation given the passage of so many hundreds of years, but for my own part I would like to dedicate my contribution in its publication, the Preface and Notes to MM. I secrets Nothing yet does the jungle give, however long you wait or watch; it is eternal, it does not age. Its appearance is scarcely a hint of all that is hidden - tight-lipped, dark green; ceaselessly undisturbed, untouched, unconcerned even; indifferent to what begins where, or how, or why - as if it could know that it will all simply return. Actually, it is a great wall, limitless, its ends unreported, holding close the smuggled secrets of this day and tomorrow, of one millennia to the next, filtering the sun like a censor, carrying forward its confidential cargos in low capacious vaults. Listen now; stop, and listen. It speaks in ciphers that have no key, yet picks out imperfections betraying them like a spy to an enemy, dipping, dipping into nameless valleys and up the steep sides of unforgetting hills. II island The songs that have endured are merely words, the tunes themselves long lost; the texts are somewhat incomplete, but what survives is that perfect island, presented in the way a child might dream of an island set in a great sea, rising up from forested beaches to a centre of mighty mountains that disappear into clouds. Immense rivers tumble back down. In the villages the old dances are still young; new babies are fed on milk dipped in gold before their horoscopes are taken. Numbers rule the universe. Boys touch the feet of elders; households prepare their daughters to come of age washed in water with herbs, the girl concealed until she is presented with her own reflection swimming in a silver bowl beneath her face. The gems later looted from their antique tombs were not even from the island - diamonds, emeralds, even amber, to mix with their own stones, pink sapphires and rubies, garnets, topaz, aquamarines; rose quartz fine enough to see through. Carpenters inlaid furniture with ivory and rare woods; crafted secret chambers, hidden drawers. Fish sang off long sandy beaches. And along the rivers stretched parks, warehouses, jetties, mansions. III bounty Later, they measured that happiness, when happiness was a choice, recalling a time of bounty, an embarrassment of great cities, of shipping lanes that converged on southern ports. The safe shallow waters of the Lagoon welcomed visitors. Kings ruled, father to son, brother to brother, daring to do all they thought, There were brindleberries and fenugreek; lemongrass, mangos; the coconuts fruited; frangipani bloomed, ylang ylang, , even kadupul flowers, queens of the night. High wooden watchtowers rose protectively over wide courtyards, and gardens grew cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, vanilla. Waters rippled in great tanks built by kings like inland seas to flow to fields and homes. Kitchens prepared milk rice and new dishes with ginger and kitel, turmeric, tamarind. In the shade of palace buildings frescos were painted, statues carved, the talk was of new trade routes, marriages, miracles. Tomorrow is tomorrow - Here I picked a flower, and this is for you. Mangosteen ripened in orchards their seeds, fragrant, fluid-white, strips of edible flesh. It was like eating sex. Within the stupas were thrones and begging bowls, and relics won in foreign wars. From northern temples great chariots were hand pulled through the crowded streets by thousands of worshippers. Fortifications, moats, ramparts guarded the borders; the realm was not made for defeat; and the fishermen flung their nets with ease. IV underfoot Somewhere, rotting in its red earth

55 min
07/03/2025

Elegies For My Father

1 PAPER BOAT slowly slowly like a paper boat turning in the wind on a glassy pond slowly slowly like a huge ship spinning in a boundless sea slowly slowly like a slurred boom on the edge of heaven slowly slowly you are going your way I cannot reach you. I modulate my voice speak twice as loud; I let you fall asleep and do not intervene I watch you slip, slip slip away into the infinite firmness of age slowly slowly you are going and I cannot stop you; what will be left will be the echo of your voice saying just give me a hug son slowly slowly you are turning slowly slowly you are going away ST MARYCHURCH, DEVON. JULY 2022 2 HIM do you see him? I do. I see him so well, now, as if cataracts have been removed, or darkness lifted, or Bartimaeus met in town, betraying the sight of men like trees, walking. for there he is, down this thought and down that, down every thought; lurking inescapably, stale as water that will not drain away, blooming like an unkillable weed on my perfect spotless green-as-life wildflower lawn. yes, there, there he is, the bastard uninvited guest, the foul changeling morphing, little by little bit by bloody bit into the host. at first, he was shockingly rare; a parent here, a distant friend, a wise and gentle witch; a clutch of gorgeous aunts. now he comes like a commuter bus, like a monstrous industrial vacuum cleaner, like a tsunami mutilating with its froth of white-brown brine, gathering the broken limbs of far flung homes a vortex, churning, sweeping far inland to claim a close friend here, another there, mother-in-law, a mad and lovely herbalist, another aunt. plucked from their stops; and others, always others, waiting in further stops, huddled under the flimsy rooves of bus shelters as if they could ever evade this acid rain. how do I tell him to f**k off to f**k off to the furthest bitter boundaries of the universe, to the ends of time, to the black mysterious ether bubbling in unimagined territories, the godless limitless lands no maps depict; how do I tell him to go, to go, and not return; to fuck right off when I hear him now, when I hear him now, inside of me? ST MARYCHURCH, DEVON. MARCH 2023 3 RAVEN those most I know those noises go; and mad minds draw the raven ST MARYCHURCH, DEVON. APRIL 2023 4 OUR TIME no longer do you worry about what next to do you are submerged by sleep like the waves of Lyme Bay we almost hear a mile away, Hope Cove, Thatcher’s Rock, rolling, one upon another you have lived so long, so bloody long putting one foot before the next. I sit beside you. a terrible rain beating on the windows, feeding you chocolates when you wake; playing you music – the old tunes of the war, of Calcutta, of Bill and Ben, Glenn Miller, the ragged random paths through almost 100 years of life ST MARYCHURCH, DEVON. APRIL 2023 5 PAPA you are so frail now. your body twitches with random movements fingers, knees watching sometimes alive, stubbornly alive hanging on, in case something important has been forgotten, and needs to be done before you go. ST MARYCHURCH, DEVON. APRIL 2023 6 GOOD it is not reciprocal this good, you know - as if it might return to coat you back like a bee with pollen ST MARYCHURCH, DEVON. APRIL 2023 7 ALREADY already, yes already I am already saying goodbye. you sleep much more now hears little eat less. you cling to your bed like an iron sparrow clinging to its tree almost, you are not here. almost. tomorrow or if not tomorrow, then someday soonish you will have gone, died, buggered off; left this planet, left me. and that will be it. no amount of negotiated language can put us both back breathing the same air in the same room. and that, of course, will also be when my own oxygen starts slowly to run out too. ST MARYCHURCH, DEVON. APRIL 2023 8 BUT FOR but for your shoulder’s briefest briefest twitch you could be dead. beyond the half-closed curtains and the open window, parakeets call from mango trees; crows caw; an unendable burr of grasshoppers summons from smooth green lawns: and here, too the ordinary thrill of country noises hum, and echo, and chatter, and splash. at night, foxes bark, owls whoop; and baa-baa bleat the sheep in their long sad day’s lament. oh yes, daddy, yes: of course you are here and now – here and now, here and now, still as a corpse, deaf as a shell, weak as an infant; in pain, in fear, tired, tearful, fretful, finished, forgetful, utterly forgetful – but here, now. come, let us think beyond - beyond this quiet room, this modest, unaffronting room where, just beyond your window any country could wait. come, let us think beyond - beyond this kind and cautious building; beyond the kind lanes of Devon and the buildings rooted in red earth; beyond the ceaseless misty drizzle, the hedgerows high as chimneys ...

19 min
07/03/2025

The House We Share

1 Birch The birch boughs do not stir or sigh though the world is spinning. Oxford, March 1998 2 Here Comes The Spring I’d Stop Here comes the spring I’d stop, the buds I’d freeze before they fleck the hedgerows to a haze of green; here comes the shining grass, the bulbs, the early blossom, the tips of growth swelling unstoppably on the ends of branches everywhere; this is the spring I’d halt, returning time to a time before we knew you were to die, so we could play those days over again, painless and manageable, discreet carriers of a world we could understand, and of a god still one of love. England, March 1998 I’m Not The Exile You Know I am not the exile you know, thrown up by a distant coup, thrown off by a war, thrown out by a sudden dictator, yet my country has vanished too, its room reclaimed from far away, its colours no clearer than I can keep them, its daily patterns traced behind each day. Oxford, May 1998 With Micky Tonight the air is dark and smooth; we sit recovering, the room muffled, cooled by an air-conditioner; and how I need you, your still arms, your sound, your smell, and tonight, especially, your love, your fingers brushing my forehead lightly, brushing it, bringing back a lost fortress amidst the pain. Aswan, April 1998 Daylight Now the summer does not wait, will not wait, cannot; nothing stops the light flooding ahead, flushing out the end of day London, May 1998 How Do I Make You Laugh How do I make you laugh when the bad news will ever come, when you tell me that she fell on the half-step, or could not sleep, or slept too much; how do I make you laugh when you tell me she could not eat, that it is harder to find the air to make the words she wants to say; that the machines have side effects, that now the drugs do nothing, that she is dying, fully awake, in greatest need, yet always – always – as she is: how do I make you laugh then, when our world is broken? Oxford, May 1998 Being There Sometimes this early summer has tricked me out of grief, fetching me into a world where the disease has retreated, taking with it each terrible promise in its long, random decline; you move in your wheelchair still, but the fear of losing you has been pushed back at least a dozen years: you can still enjoy the garden, travel, watch your grandchildren grow a little older, enjoy the ordinary rituals of love - and be there –always – for me. Oxford, May 1998 Tiger Hourly your dying lies between us, a crouching tiger poised - even as we hold you – when you struggle to rise; when you fight to rest; Oxford, June 1998 Where I Am You are not dying here. From where I am I see you walking on the terrace above the Adyah, kicking water in an L-shaped pool, playing tennis on the court by the banyan tree. you are not dying here; London, July 1998 Station I expect you now, this evening, at this – and every - station, walking out to greet me, your simple movement claiming each platform, each airport, home; each city, town and village; claiming each space - for us, forever; I expect you now; I expect you here. Plymouth, July 1998 What If What if what you wanted you had? What if what should be was; what if? What then? Oxford, August 1998 Remembering It’s not my pain that hurts, but time, moving again just next door; the voices of children rise and fall, call, as you struggle for breath. It is time that hurts. Time. Oxford, August 1998 Phone Call Although your fingers move a little less your strong voice fills the phone, charges the line, charges me. You are not old enough to be dying; stay: you cannot go. Oxford, August 1998 This Lovely Month This lovely month is full of death; how do I hold the day, to halt the night I dread? Oxfo...

44 min
07/03/2025

The Cartographer's Art

Ley lines What remains are the maps, laying, like ley lines, the journeys of men who have died, or simply disappeared; the journals others have remembered, building the picture from a few surviving fragments quoted in the books of those who followed. Charts swallow charts, pass on the same fantastic contours - corkscrewing coastlines, pulling out modest deltas into uncharted seas, and, faithfully, taking each a little further as if a returning sailor whispered on the home dock that the journey was further than the old maps had implied. Sometimes, a new hand intervenes, adding an island, peppering, with cities, the board alluvial plains of a dreaming land; gouging out a fierce, flamboyant river; but even the navigators do not know which of the strange sea beasts preying on the edges of each terrain are the ones to fear; or which rivers will take us inland, before vanishing like streams on chalk beneath the walls of the real city, the one that is mentioned in the first accounts? City Without Seasons Because the city has no seasons; because the house beneath the downs was sold it is that summer that holds, its days turning at the end of unfamiliar roads, dry and culpable: forever out of reach. I remember the order of things - sloes, leading a rush of starry blossoms: apple, pear, cherry, plum; fountains of white hawthorn flowing before the chestnut; the chestnut opening before the beech; I knew what would flower when, hawkweed along hedges; poppies banking on high verges; rowans reddening overhead: just now; and now, the years have rolled to this point, to this impounded summer rooted in another landscape, ghosted by the co-ordinates of an older map: the hill is swept by trees; the gate is closed. someone else is in the yellow house. Wherever you lie, come out; the city walls are not so wide: you walk my streets, shop in my shops wherever you are, come out. Daylight shrinks; leaves gather; along the old drive crocuses bloom with tiny purple wings like birds escaping south. The city calls down long dark evenings, faces flash-frozen in the street. Wherever you are, come out It is time, It is time. Forgotten Bounty It stays - that memory of flying once – vassal states break free, daring all. The new frontiers are all the News reports. Journalists speak of cities lost decades ago; forgotten routes reopen, fresh boundaries frame the unsurvayed new nations rising from the blank expanse of disregarded maps. Although the same autumn bonfire smoulders at the edge of the Hyde Park it is all changed: the unending summer has taken us from early lighted rooms drawn us out into a world we thought we knew, and have to learn again. I saw you because it was too early to go home because the party before was dull because I chose that place, randomly, and it is always the ease I remember; the ease and your voice moving us on. All around the city dims, shrinking space before us to a single route remembering the older roads that lie beneath the asphalt. All Night Now all night long beside you burn and fold the frozen stars away; the silver night, secured and safe, floods out across my dreams; within my arms again you turn - the sweet grass and the silent sky - and all forgotten bounty breaks within the space we lie. Now It Is Cold Why go, now it is cold? Already the street lights burn and the park gates are fastened; stay. The air is still; the distant traffic rounds invisibly in cold blue lanes below; here, our fingers move from arm to face, from lip to ear, reading like blind men, reading. Behind these blinds the distant world is flat and closed; stay. Learning By Letter Learning by letter I link the points of your life, the picture growing weekly, cards, tapes, scraps of paper dispatched, received weekly, postmarking the route we take, laying down a sense that we had met before we learnt the adult arts of camouflage. I lean against you caught by the rebounding differences of image, a long lost freedom returning on forgotten tides flooding the recent land reassigning old boundaries, throwing out links like landing ropes until the dreaming jetties fill. The River Alone in the house I see the river as a late traveller might, a winding path cutting through low hills. Colours change with an unreal haste; you do not see them move but where before it was blue, now it is crimson; where it was white now it is gold. Shadows surface from shapes, trees fall out of focus. It is colder. Night binds the leafy lawns; birds seek out a place on bare boughs. Behind the sirens of occasional barges it is quiet; smoke rises in thin blue columns. The sun has sunk behind the hills leaving a smudge of pink silhouetting the old forest where kings have hunted, waged wars, built places, gone, leaving this a...

11 min
07/03/2025

After the Ball

I GIRLS, AND BOY Early sun dissolves the mist; bottles and chairs disrupt paths, paving, lawns; deer keep a cautious distance in parkland trees. On high-backed wicker chairs five girls talk, smoke; contractors dismantle tents, lights; fruit strung on green wire along boughs. At a table nearby a boy sits alone, playing cards. II GIRL, AND BOYS Her hair is blonde, expensive, cut no ordinary way. Her feet rest on a footstool on the grass. The dress she wears has small seed pearls sewn on silk. the arm that almost touches him - does not move. She watches, Looking above his eyes. She watches. He runs his fingers through his hair, plays with the knot of his white bow tie; notes the girls who talk, notes the girl in silk; notes the boy playing cards , nearby. III BOYS I watch you, as I watch myself, and know the breech that undercuts your poise; the face, disfigured by its rebounding image, clouded by what standard parts it can't extract. The picture blurs, but does not hide the other guests departing in their pairs. IV ME, YOU, HER The band is striking jazz tunes; last tunes; light breaks through the marquee, draws to shape gothic buildings, trees beyond the park lit by the lights of early motorists. The moon shrivels in the opening sky, the blind spot grows: and sorrow, snared; the heart, too, a castle without walls an accomplice, in search of an assailant You meet my glance, and stretch your arm to her, fall in behind the pair that goes ahead and the one that follows on. V BOY, BOY Behind the door the recent world is lost, and left behind. This is your territory, I know: these trees, this house, this lane, cleared by the departing taxi; but you have not arrived here like this before; you have watched me, but my voice is alien – you have not seen eyes like mine; not fingers, jaw, nape. I am not an old friend, I am the visitor you have always known; the stranger within, betraying with a kiss, the kiss that waits. VI MOONWALKER There is water on the moon; and though I know - sitting, almost close, watching the sun slide between solider trees – though I know - almost touching; the cigarette's blue smoke rising untasted – though I know what we are here for by all we do not say; though I know there is water on the moon; though I know the names of Roman senators, the parts of trees, the rules of games, I do not know what we make room for here and now below the tall trees of the wood. VII CHILD These gestures know the force behind lost words; articulate what has closed with a homing cry, as if the way my fingers hold your head alone could touch the anguish and the joy, the child behind the adult's face whose eyes close in relief. You sleep beside me nervous to each move. Does the arm that holds me knows who it holds? Am I your mother, brother, lover? Who holds you when you sleep alone, who holds you? VIII SOLOIST If I were not so tired I would spend the night watching you sleep; watching your fingers tighten and relax; your eyelids tremble; open, to what the morning will eclipse. If I could trust myself to care a little less, I would wake you, play this aching game by patient rules; but though the night is pitched so quiet you sing and sing in me. IX MIGRANT Because I have waited; because I have waited so long; because I have waited beside old friends and even strangers, and those grown tired of waiting; because of all of this, all this and more; because I have waited, keeping you for a long journey, I have not learnt how to read the stars I have not learnt the migrant paths I have not learnt which tracks lead across the frontier. ...

12 min
07/03/2025

The Summer Fortress

TO RA AND REMEMBERING VERITY FORSYTH I hear you still clear, sure - talking to me now as you would talk to me then; a corner of the garden room; a long table laid for tea, books piled up, shadows of poets and painters stirring; listening, as you hear me say what I do not say; as you tell me what I need to hear but would not: I hear you still I hear you now, I hear you. Skona, July 1997 DATE This cycle of poems was written in the Weald of Kent between March and September 1979; the last one 18 years later in July 1997, in Skona. 1 for this there is always time - your fragmentary will concocts hours where the day has none, etches a far horizon forever in the sun. 2 take only touch and that electric guess, hand to hand, till hearts rest within flesh; till your touch upon my face moves inside. 3 you would stretch out, draw me apart, for though you do not know it your time is mine. would you want more? would you change the tide that carries us, sand within a stream, toward the sea? evenly, 4 loving you: the picture safe in the cabinet - mine, the dare to remove; the white palms stick with sweat now summer comes. 5 knives cut - and death's unknowing, cells grow and bones will break, and still, the starting point - your face, ghosts all the change; leaves - silence, a space for shadows; a space to turn within; and lie at bay. 6 your cry hollows the hour, touches stars that won't explode: and break their hold. but can hurl javelins up at space 7 you may not believe it but, after the battle, rain washed the blood onto the village streets, into the Weald. night falls on the Bloody Mountain; a bird pulls against empty light; bats fold into the outline of trees, black on black. above us a harvest moon burns a circle in the sky. 8 let us stay, smoke awhile walk between the silver trees of the Cinders track. night holds us; we lie beside a water tank, listening; water dripping drop by drop waiting where nothing moves the moment on, where nothing moves. where the air is cool and grassy 9 your heart is high, sweeping high: tempers, slackens, on again, states of difference - not by joining I, in love, would move. 10 in your awkward beauty the landscape breathes with you; I rest I play; in skies the peacocks fly. 11 do not hold back; you should not fear you shine for you have the brightest light; and shine as life. 12 come, we will evade this, armour ourselves as night checks day; and a smooth sly light slides through the orchards. the last bird songs drain the day into a shoal of trees. we can evade all this. 13 we will become fond of these days; go over them tirelessly as armchair generals over maps. we lay down the living death like bottles in a cellar; effortlessly. 14 the abacus moves but I will not; its beads have a sort of rhythm, a pretended order. do not listen. silence has a safer sound; even calls the directions of a hidden road, easily missed. 15 i 'd rather not think; or imagine, know, or even suspect, grieve, celebrate, wonder. I want to live easy. why should I be troubled? 16 yours is the gift that brings together, that calls me in that keeps me here; your arms open; your imprint haunts your body, is a barrier of words. 17 the train passes places where nothing has changed, where life has gone on just the same all the time I have been so caught up. it will go on the same when this ends; 18 daily the state deepens and I concede to this round and to that the bets I place the game I play, the cards that fall far short of what I make. 19 you smile: the knife you wield opens the knot the quickest way, I saw you walking in fields, a dancer, naked, slender as a scorpion. dares all do you know what we do? 20 lost time is life's regret: death guilds its share, the days rob and bleed, and time smashes easily as glass. the calendar breaks a little more each day. 21 love in distance, and, all the time I know that behind me he kisses you; you do not know his blooded lips smear and conquer. each return you see gets closer. 22 you turn your eyes, catch up my glance; hold it like a mirror, distorting by all it cannot see. 23 he had made a plaything of fear; caught it in the mirror with the sun. autumn will rush before the Kentish hops to dredge his glass - and the image, unreflected, noiselessly dies out. 24 death kisses you; the offering of suns gluts in your heart; an unaccounting change removes your hand. you wake; but the rage for life sleeps on. ...

11 min

10 Episodes

From disco to disappearance.

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David Swarbrick @ The Ceylon Press
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2K
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10
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Explicit
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