Rg Gregory Poems

song of sea-leaves in an orchestra of foam
branches of violins sprayed across the mind
what is magnetic in a wave breaking white
drawing the chords of evening to a single sound

i would liken your hair to a slow movement
of seagulls in the wind catching my eye
by sheer virtue of design - i could nest there
as naturally as the anemones nest in the sea

in a promontory of thought i might mistake
the sea-air for a hand brushing my face
for the breeze i think is not so fleshless
nor your fingers so earthy as the rose

and then like an expansion in the blood
sometimes in the restless reflections of the boat
leaning in company across the rail i feel
another sea coming in at the elbows of your coat
...

in the shadow
of the flower
is the sting

the bee driven by need
uses its painful gift
to keep its sense of beauty
in proportion

it does its job with
a thoughtless dedication
its honeyed world
excites no inner space

bees are not poets
who wade through words
with too much brain
around their ankles

each itching bee-part
is attuned
to a cosmic web
each buzz miraculous

flowers put powder
on their private parts
to call the bees in
it seems a good game

much fumbling and the bee
goes home to mother
rewards ripple outwards
to many dripping tongues

bees hate anything
that gets in the way
the bee-world is exclusive
aliens - keep out

bees live on a knife-edge
between honey
and a ripped-out sting
violation propels them

in the shadow
of the nectar
is the horror
...

it began as a secret desire (an itch
in the marrow too vague to get through
to the bone) an idea that never could
make it as flesh - there wasn't a part of me
sane i could tell that would have spared
it a breath to get started
so i slept

one midday i woke up with a bang - light
was bashing in through the windows
and suddenly out of my pores
sprang this fully-fledged practical paeon
this triumphant brass-note of praise
for a why-hadn't-i-yelled-it-before
sort of answer to my life's rubbing-out
of my dreams
i'll jump from the window
(i sang to myself)
and i'll fly
and be damned to daft icarus
i crowed
and i flew - or i fled (which is
very much the same grain of word
and it graciously covers the gap
between the experience i had in my head
and the one i met rushing up
from the ground where the glasshouse
splashed around to reflect me
as i passed on my way down to earth
and the squirt of my dad's best tomatoes
and my mum's angry mask of a face
that just wasn't brought up to be fruitful)
so i fled - or i flew - out the gate
up the street till i melted
just like that daft icarus before me
and i thought
well why the sod not
so i jumped in a pond till i cooled
and the blood from a scratch on my hand
turned the green water red but not a
thick peasant came to be in on the wonder
and i had to go home soaking wet
to a tongue that had blisters and a belt
round the head from my dad - but i lived

which is more than daft icarus did
...

two old lazy crocodiles are basking by the water
they get round to talk about the macdonalds' daughter

gemini gemini
have you ever set eyes on young stephanie

jiminy jiminy
who lives here in abingdon - the one who is two

gemini gemini
everyone knows she's a smart one that stephanie

jiminy jiminy
oh ever so smart - there's just nothing she can't do

gemini gemini
so smart - she could be a crocodile could stephanie

jiminy jiminy
she sees what she's after - then snap - and it's true

gemini gemini
if she came by here now - we wouldn't eat young stephanie

jiminy jiminy
oh no - we'd be too scared to even say boo

gemini gemini
so why don't we wish happy birthday to stephanie

jiminy jiminy
then straight in the water before she rings up the zoo

gemini gemini
don't be so daft - she likes creatures does stephanie

jiminy jiminy
ok - but no tears - or she'll raise hullaballoo

and the two old lazy crocodiles who couldn't hurt a fly
sing happy birthday to stephanie as she passes them by
...

to the seaside
to the seaside
to the change and peace of mind
to the easy la-
zy holiday
the leave-it-all-behind

to the seaside
to the sunshine
to the body-littered sands
to the deckchairs
and the funfairs
and the burst-your-ears brass bands

to the ice-cream
to the wasp-stings
to the sand-in-every-meal
to the castles
and the donkeys
and the plates of jellied eel

to the bosoms
and the bottoms
to the bodies-in-the-raw
to the he-men
and the paunches
to the what-the-butler-saw

(to the catch-my-eye
the hold-me-tight
the kiss-me-in-the-park
to the will-you
wont-you-let-me
to the bathing-in-the-dark)

to the landladies
and gloomy rooms
and out-of-here-by-ten
to the drizzle
and the boredom
and the going-round-the-bend

to the blisters
and the crying kids
the peeling aching backs
to the god-i-wish-
we'd-never-come-
i-wish-we'd-gone-to-jack's

to the getting-on
the train again
the joy of going home
to the roses
in the garden
and the being-left-alone

to the no-food-
in-the-larder
and the not-an-open-shop
to the ashes
in the fireplace
and the week-old washing up
...

tangwena says
this is our land
soiled by the blood
of black centuries

smith says
the white tongue
goes bang bang
black must learn
words of a new march

tangwena says
every tree here
is made in the image
of a black ghost

smith says
the white tongue
goes bang bang
you must make your ghosts
in the image of new trees

tangwena says
i am a root too deep
for the white man's
knife and fork

smith says
the white tongue
goes bang bang
roots must take up
their beds and walk

tangwena says
tangwena tangwena

smith says
white is right
corn cropped
from the old dead
belongs in the pockets
of the powerful
otherwise
what is progress
tangwena laughs
the mountains catch
his laughter
and turn it
into streams

the white tongue
goes bang bang
the streams glide
into african mists

tangwena laughs
till it hurts

smith is afraid
of the laughter
the white tongue
goes bang bang
speaking in blisters

with great pain
tangwena goes on laughing
...

called out by the sun
this easter saturday morning
i'm sitting on a bank
in pistyllgwyn
(house of the sacred spring)
against a tall oak
(close to a daffodil-clump)
overlooking the road
between brechfa and abergorlech
on the west side of the valley
of the afon cothi
reading a poem by taliesin
from the sixth century
(the first poem in the oxford book
of welsh poetry in english)
which begins
there was a great battle saturday morning
and i have just reached the line
and when i'm grown old with my death hard upon me
when my youngest son
charges up the bank
and attacks me with his plastic sword
and sticks it in my heart
then sits down by my side
to succour me
...

my jerusalem
my newfoundland
juicy as redcurrants
with their sweet tang taste

my desire
my holy requirement
caught in a cleft of mountain
ever clambered towards

my yearning
my place of the blood-red fruit
my want at the first sherd
for the full-bosomed bowl

my jerusalem
my sinewy prayer
where dust and the dry rock
are chastened by the cool red juice

my jerusalem
my revolving love
as the year bends and the fruit's
pangs purchase my lips
...

on a deformed request in a train lavatory

gentlemen lift the sea
be all of you the modern
muscular mountains
who with a scoop of biceptual crags
swoop down for an armful of ocean
leavening the dreadful pressures
on the valleys of lyonnesse

gentlemen rape air with water
let the submarine nose round the moon
and aeroplane astonished
break wind in the vaults between
the antelope ecstatic on the ocean bed
and the constellations of live crabs

gentlemen be men - in the locked
compartment from the nagging
economical head-shrinking
function of the ladies
(for them such exhortation is irrelevant)
dare the utmost of virility
harness the power in your massive limbs
and when the universal waters flow
gentlemen lift the sea
...

october stops the pretence
that somehow summer
should still be loitering around
it walks through the garden
hanging the spiders up
between fences and flowers
it throws rather more dew
on the ground than is
good for the shoes and then
has the nerve to let on
frost is sniffing its way
southwards - some mornings
it can be caught at the windows
looking in with a shrug
it's spotted a shiver or two
hankering in shadows
for the heat-switch - all's
on the shift inwards - colours
bunch into their deeper shades
here's where the year gets used
to growing older and for
the first time with nowhere
desperate to go (and nothing
to prove) admits what it is
and strolls in a blithe sort
of way towards all hallows
...