numa

imagine climbing
into God

into the empty cabin
of God

onto the backstage
up to the projection-room
of God

stepping onto
the cutting-room floor

and turning
the theophany off

and making yourself
at home

in the silence
and darkness of God

lights out
switched off
logged out
God

sitting in
the Mercy Seat
going nowhere
in the chariot

then walking out
where God is not

traveller into silence
into more and more
into less to say

Keble College Oxford
25 February 2004

i/

laying the angel
the assailing angel
Teresa wrestles her angel

lay
your angel lady

get your angel
laid

ii/

oblivious to any pleasure
except the overwhelming
of you

he comes at you
with a cautery
kneels in on you
distended

thrusts stroke
after stroke into you

till you loose count
Teresa

sets off
unbearable orgy

endure it
Teresa

take him
take it on

the prosthesis
of the angel

don’t fall back
from him

martyred
by your angel
Teresa

don’t let it go
make sure he lingers

thin-lipped
pride frozen in his eye

that he sees you can take the climax
cauterising from within

undergo
calamitous pain

iii/

watch for his smile
at withdrawal

he’ll go away glad
you endured him

he won’t ever come back
you’ll never know his name

the afterburn’s
so sweet

so’s the peace you feel
when he’s gone

you’ll come to
in the quiet

the bliss is when you’re letting go

when you feel you’re melting
exhaling away

like tallow
like a smoke a steam
or a dust

your body
the words you wrought

all running
this is your soul’s dissolving

you’ll be left now
with a cold lump
of grief

this won’t
happen to you again
Teresa

“Wherefore is it that thou dost ask my name? ”
(Genesis 32.29 KJV)

“They do not tell me their names”
(Teresa of Avila, “Autobiography”, on angels)

Keble College Oxford
February 2004

This dedication was made with the permission of Dr John Money in 2004.

you made it obvious when you
encarnadined the sea

with the green billow
gushing at its crest
off the heaving slick

from your strewn
upswollen wreath
of gore and shadow

the wind-borne “Leandro”
with his Orphic head

that sharks had got Leander

Keble College Oxford
March 2004

a Japanese woman
left the table she was at
took the one beside mine

kept her back to me
and starting doing her hair
she unbound then ran her hands
through her hair

she displayed for me
all the luxury the abundance
the flow of her hair

she unravelled
un did and did me up
with her hair

took me up in the torrent
of her hands and hair

at one point
altered its course
let it down over her right
shoulder for awhile
so I could see her neck

a shore I’d throw myself on
get swept off from again

yes I’d risk
getting dashed
and broken
dragged along
in her current

struggling for grounding in her
till I found the bed the floor
to her body

Keble College Oxford
February 2004

there must be
hand-sized
black and gold insects
where you come from
which you take after

you came in on me unseen
from behind as I was sitting

expected I’d recognize you
just from your touch first-time

your hand was an insect
that landed neatly
on my neck and left shoulder

you numbed
but didn’t startle me

by carrying the weight of your hand
on your middle finger
with the other fingers lightly spread

you pressed down with it
upon a vertebra
I realise now
with the first knuckle raised
and tapped the gap above

I could feel the proboscis
of your blood and nerves probing

finding out drawing out
what I’m like inside

I’m glad I couldn’t see the bite
I felt you raise

this poem
is a cast of your hand

amber
I’ve preserved
this intent
and pullulating
insect of yours
in

God what a moon
what a fucking
great boob of a moon

it’s like it’s come
out of a nightdress
this evening

the nipple’s huge -
its edge though’s
been lost in the glow

St Giles Street Oxford
September 2004

your beauty
is evident

what this means is
you are quiet you are calm
nonplussed

nothing can be added
or detracted from you

you are simply there
as others are not
when everyone’s
just passing through

with your relaxed
and efficient body
impassible mind

you make the moment hover
with the slight drag
you exert on time

I wonder what
your tumult is like

when you grip
onto a moment
and won’t let it go

Keble College Oxford
April 2004

immured
in the flower

the fading
blue flower

go and burn
the blue flower

impossible
blue flower

get deeper
into the flower

let it shrivel
as you burn

sky
and ocean flower

burn it
to its core

there won’t be any light
from the leaves from now on

just heavy flake
from off the char

Keble College Oxford
28/29 December 2003

I had to look at a painting
to get some sunshine today

I went to the Ashmolean
and looked into Samuel Palmer’s
“Flight into Egypt”
and his other visionary miniatures

his still hushed tight
close-furled worlds
fecund with hoarded
leaf/sheaf/eaves stalk and cloud
implicated root branch twig

here is this golden light
in everything green

pricked-eared shaggy-dog donkey
exhausted bambino Christ
prefiguring the Pieta

suspended smoke
from a cabin
and palm trees
copied from from Kew

elsewhere his mowers
under moonlight starlight
then under wind
with his unfurled painting
“The Cloud”

crag and steeple valley
gale-threshed leaves
hurled birds
and their wheeling
shadow

mowers working on
in the commotion
of mountainous
cloud and shadow

this Brueghel-Blake-Danaean
scene reaped in raped by
torrents of gold

these are not England
they aren’t Devon or Kent

maybe millennial England
when the saints rule
their 1000 years

Keble College Oxford
9 Dec 2002 & 17 August 2003

I want to know what alders are
I have no idea what alders are

except they’re plants
in boreal literatures

New Zealand hasn’t any alders
but I know they are here
anywhere in Britain
where there are wetlands

there are here
at Christ Church meadow
Oxford this winter afternoon

I am trying to find them
although I have never even seen
a picture of them

it is not even a word
I’ve ever heard used
let alone pronounced
I have never written it down
until now

I don’t even know
how to say it correctly

here goes the phonology
of the alder

“older”/ “awl-ders/ “ow-ders”?
orders maybe it’s like
the Bloomsbury pronunciation
of “cold” :- “cuerld”
were they “uerlders”

a poet in English
ought to know
how to pronounce
if not identify alders

alnus glutinosa

those red stalks
in that channel
that Cherwell that creek
are they alders?

is that strange
little bird I hear
squeaking amidst alders?

is that 3 pm twilight
setting amidst alders?

a cold wet dusk word
its vowel glows like a berry

alderberries however
are entirely beyond me

Keble College Oxford
January and August 2003