LETTER TO MILAN KUNDERA

LETTER TO MILAN KUNDERA


- poems -

by

Paul Murphy

Paul Murphy - Biography

Born in Belfast, 1965. He studied at the University of Warwick, gaining a BA in Film and Literature. From there he went to Queen's University Belfast to study for an MA on T.S.Eliot and the French philosopher Jacques Lacan. He has just finished a stint as writer-in-residence at the Albert-Ludwig Universitat, Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Wurtemburg, Germany.

His poetry, literary criticism, book reviews and travel writings have been published in English, Irish and American journals. He has published a pamphlet and one previous book of poetry, and has read from his work in Paris, Cambridge, Galway and Belfast. He is at the moment writing an oral history of the Black Forest, and working on many reviews of contemporary authors. He also writes philosophy and enjoys working on the interface between poetry and philosophy.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems first appeared: Envoi, Never Bury Poetry, Connections, Krax, Poetry Now, Time Haiku, Fire, The Journal, Iota, Poetry Scotland, Black Mountain Review, Curlew, The Quarterly Muse, The Honest Ulsterman, Braquemard, Buzzwords, Marginalia (supplement of Monas Heiroglyphia), Scintilla, The Black Rose, The Purple Rose (USA), Markings.

E-Zines: Baker Street (USA), Seeker Magazine (USA), Can we have our ball back (USA),

I am indebted to Dennis and Rene Grieg of Lapwing Poetry Pamphlets, Belfast, who published the pamphlet The New Life and to Dr Wolfgang Goertschacher and Professor James Hogg of the Poetry Salzburg who published the volume of poetry In the Luxembourg Gardens. Also to all my friends who kept me going through it all.

P.M.

Contents

7 Haiku Sequence
8 Sunday Night in Paris
10 Vision
12 Dream - in a Garret
13 Mandarin
14 Cats - After TS Eliot
15 Letter to Milan Kundera
16 Rain
18 Fraud of Vienna
20 Still Life
21 Three Haiku - composers
22 Spanish Siesta
24 Jim Morrison
26 De-Commissioning
27 Necropolis
28 The Tower
31 Letter to an Unknown Woman
33 The Sea
34 There was Some Talk of the Word “the”
35 Spanish Landscape
37 Haiku sequence
38 The Abyss
38 Whatever That Was About?

For Doro

HAIKU

I

Lemon dawn, under
A brightening sky, I write
Bright, lemon haikus.

II

Lakeside, four swans
Swimming together beside
Wrack of tide, disgust.

III

Crow flight, swan flight day-
Break without you, I can I
Can’t, and then the day...

IV

Out spreads its wings, flying
To the edge of the lake
The swans hover over

V

And disappear, in-
Finity is the dawn...

SUNDAY NIGHT IN PARIS

The lights on the Seine
Are shuttered, fluorescent flowers of life;
The city, in the walk
From Shakespeare & Company to Finnegan’s Wake pub
Is spangled, and stars shine
Like clusters of lime and orange in a glass:
I reclaim a pint of Guinness
And a whiff of Parisian
Wine and garlic, odour retrograde,
Spasm of neutral laughter in
The afterglow of the fire:
In the Chapel of St.Julien Le Pauvre
Fireworks of Vivaldi...

Possibly on a faulty Tuesday
Of a faulty year, my Ich
Rang out along the streets
Nestled in the buildings
On fire, the sunset and declined
Below the rooftops, we entered
The Labour Exchange, but there
Was no information, we
Sat, sat, sat, on into the dusk,
As the Guinness settled,
And disappeared into
The blackened gullet of a day.

A VISION

I

Black hair, black hair, but not the years
Undone, bitten through, petals of memory
Sighs of repose, the garden rose,
Sunlight, vision of unearthly light
Surround you, but not the years
Pulled back, segmented, split like so many seeds.

II

In a dream, jeweled unicorns pulled the hearse
Frescoes of light figured on the wall,
The image of Botticelean Venus
Rising from the waves in baroque dance
All rose and swayed in a trance
Illuminated nightmares transfigured all.

III

The dream betrayed us, led us on, fitfully,
Through each antechamber
Death and decay, unbearable blackness
Beyond the doorway
Lay transfiguration and repose
It was the dream betrayed us
White light, aura of ashes and dust.

IV

The ceiling rose all petalled splendour
Shining, incongruous metal,
The dining room, trays of silver,
Gold, amethyst, pearl, the dinner
Was consumed, the diners slept, avoided speech...

Dream - in a Garret

I am caught in the tedium
The vacant, dimly lit hour
Before dawn, waiting to dream dreams
Birth hour, death hour, so much between,
The emptiness and the dreadful.

MANDARIN

Impresario of the Kingdom
Juggling his confutations, algorithms
Standing there - Mandarin
Echoes, recesses,
A fan weaves the air

Of form, knowing ends and means
Adages, pithy witticisms
Flat full of rags and filth
A hoard of old merde
Coughing, condemning scheisse
In music and poetry.


CATS

After TS Eliot

The perfume-stained cushion
A copy of the Iliad sitting on it
Lamp in the window
Betrayed

The next day is rushing in
Cats, cats, cats, cats, cats,
Odour of puss - stains of puss
The fetid smell of cat’s piss
Cat’s faeces, cat’s claw.

Nip Nip Nip Nip
I fed the cat.


Letter to Milan Kundera

Scent of Parisian Autumn blown in by the wind
A doorstep mottled with white and Prioritaire
Inscribed upon the lid; I imagined him
Opening my message in the country:
An escape from the horrors of the everyday world
Other people; in a garden in sunlight
Sundials peppering the lawn, amber peacocks
Strutting in a cornucopia of light and shadow
Defecating on the roses, the roses which
Stretched in military lines through the garden
Beyond, basking in sunshine, my few words,
Hypocrit, I reader, my brother.


RAIN

Rain is as
We see and feel
Re-perceives the scene
Fourteen
Days
With
water
Only if we construe verse
As symbolic
Of
How
We
Feel:
Thunder in the mountains
Sound of
Death’s incantatory
Shudder
Finding form and somehow
Rejecting meaning
All
The
Time
Time time
Rain is as
The
Dead
Return
Unemotive images
Of
The

Past;
Shapes and constructs
Looking out into
The
Day
Wept, wept
To see the return
Rain falling
Blur of unemotive patterns
Patterns, patterns
Patterns, patterns, patterns
Wishing for ending.


FRAUD OF VIENNA

Aus Wien aus Osterreich, phallic symbols recede
To the horizon this LSD day
Mit Fraud of Vienna in the Cafe Horizontal
In old Wien mit mein madchen
In uniform, naturlich, “Are you on Urlaub
Or here to stay in the city
Of the Founding Fathers of psychoanalysis,
You leper, my friend, my brother,” she said
Mit Steffi, Vergissmeinicht
Staying in the Hotel Mozart, in the stiff armchair.
“I am an Umlautophobe
Germanophile and minor poet:
Holderlin with a chamber pot
Barking mad with syphillis
Or third-rate manic-depression:
Disguised as a minor European aristocrat,”
Said she to me -
With reference to his
Constant changing of underclothes -
“I am a schizophrenic,” my dear
I said, to the American
Heiress, Chicago, Semite,
Viennese, “and Dr Completefraud
Has agreed to treat me
With the brush handle method
Corrected and tested
In this city, possible ECT
And genital grip,”
Imploding with laughter
The sun exploded in a shiver
Mit Tina und Steffi
Reclining in the Cafe Horizontal:

Shards of the afternoon.

STILL LIFE


Under the moon’s halo in dim city street
The unkempt children, I ill at ease
Tease at the still life: revolution within
And only the blank gaze of the street urchins
I could not vent my anger or hope to relive
Another day of this disease, hoping for
Unique, inbuilt hysteria, to ease my condition.

Mahler

Architect of souls
A supreme lapse, rising, falling
Rhapsodist of fate.

Beethoven

Sharp, severe moonlight
Death can be sympathetic
A mid-winter’s day.

Bach
Ashes of two hundred years,
The harsh, unforgiving moonlight
Years between.


SPANISH SIESTA

The endless beaches myriad to the horizon;
Palm trees bend in the evening breeze
I am an outcast; I ask Elisabeth
For a coffee, she gives it willingly
I wanted more; I’ve gone to Villa Seca
Reus, the names fall like Spanish coins.

In memory I’ve pounded this road:
Anyway, the bookies, the bars, the knick-knack shops,
The Euro-discoes with their pungent, techno beat:
In the port Tarragona,
A tanker lists out to sea, like a dying whale,
This was the town where Pontius Pilate was born:
I have made poems out of flowers,
Flowers with Latin names, but somehow
There are no flowers here; two American
Tourists argue, talk to the Spaniards,
Who greet me with downcast eyes:
They must know I’m bad news, there is
Bad news in the offing, bad weather:
I read the paper, dream of gathering mushrooms
In the moonlight: at the Fundacio Joan Miro
I have a reunion with my blatantly unSpanish-
Looking amiga, reading a copy of Ulysses
In Catalan: bizarrity is compounded with
Bizarrity, I wonder why I bother, I could sleep
In the shade all day; Hasta la vista (baby).

JIM MORRISON

Like Christ you are crucified
To the black plastic poster

Your will is undivided
And your attention - elsewhere
As a beer-bloated hippy
That ‘something else’
You pointed to
Is fulfilled in Rimbaud:
You are like Europe
Tethered to the drunken boat of America.

In the Gard du Nord
I was surrounded by your ambience:

And though I did not venture
To Pere La Chaise
I dislike icons

You floated like a buoyant
Sperm whale in my bath

On the 3rd day
I left Paris never to return:

I was soon surrounded by white casas
And Spanish graffiti

Miros, Picassos and Gaudis
I went into downtown Barcelona
Another coup by activists was taking place

I took the metro to the Holy Family


You, Jim Morrison
You remind me of the Sagrada Familla
Another bit is always

Being re-invented.

DE-DECOMMISSIONING

This is a word left out
Of all dictionaries
It is our newly-formed catch-phrase,
It is wedded
To all prefixes and Urs;
Ur-city, Ur-necropolis,
Ur-Babel, before
The explosion of languages
Will render all linguisterie
As meaningless and harmless
As a rack of pistols:
Not meant for de-
Deflowering, de-humanisation
Decontamination, or one
From schooldays
Debagging,

Not that either.

NECROPOLIS


How I remember you -
Lewis Mumford
Because, behind me now
Is the necropolis
The wind fans the flames
Of the little candles -
Placed there for the dead
The Padre Pio statue:
But this was the beginning
Of all cities, in the past-life and afterlife
Of civilization;
I wander into the city
Of the dead, it is no more
Than a row of bungalows
Of neat, little thrones.


Letter to an Unknown Woman

She lies on the sand, a Pallas Athena
I picked up in the street. She said ‘I’ll give you money’
You know the sad story, always unfolding:
And in the lamplight, in the hotel room, here I lie
With an unknown woman, and her story unfolds
In harsh, unsentimental detail.
The Milton we were taught at school, the Blake
Was no preparation for this unpoetic story
Too grimly real, naivety, innocence, honor
I don’t know any real words; on the veranda the lights
Don’t illuminate the unknowable skein
Of this woman’s mind: there is nothing to say
The word love is too rough, too coarse
For this, and for all that I maintain
A chance encounter thousands of miles
From home, is as real as the brushes
With honor and destiny at the doorstep:
The images are unclear, and out of this sadness
This scene, bed, bathroom, light
Is just like the madness we all inherit
I unfold the past, the distorting, reflective
Mirror it doesn’t illuminate anything
It’s not like Tragedy or Epic, it’s real
It hurts too much, and all our blindness
Is uncountable, as the sand grains
Pallas Athena’s head stirs, I sleep too.



THE TOWER

For Steve and Sina

I

The gentle snowfields
A dour, sweeping sky
Wind from Eastern steppe.

II

Each train track is
A finger pointed eastwards,
The stark, segmented light.

III

The tram from Kropcke:
A line of haggard faces
I sit blankly stare.

IV

How is it that we
Never commicate, what
Is this concrete shell

V

Of city. A blasted,
Abstract and pitiless
Core of unbeing.

VI

It was tempting to
Say phallus, but there you are
Wasserturm, so

VII

Zeppelin-black
Pointed at the inselaffe,
England, as if you

VIII

Witnessed junkers, madchen
Fire-pointed streamers filled
The auburn Autumn.


Two poems about the occult knowledge, which tarnished my reputation in Guadalajara, Valledolid, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome and Paris -
for Mebdh

THE SEA

Esta es muy silencioso...

A channel stone turns up bumping on the bottles,
The sea of bottles, echoes, plashes,
Light, no longer, fire, trembling,
Water, underfoot, elements, all things,
Signatures:
The Inlingua School was shut
So I deliberately reminisced, it wasn’t that hard,
You could have said,
"This reference from Professor Pfeffermint,
Unmoglich, unheimlich,
Of the Viennese Institute, is a forgery,
Take them,
They are the Keys to the Kingdom,”
You know I couldn’t have said better myself,
So I did.


There Was Some Talk of the Word “the”

For Elena - dolce naufragere in questo mare...

I am dismissed from my casual post
Of Applied Metaphysician and Neo-Aristotelianism
I have not mentioned anyone
I have not used the word “the”
I have not talked in acrostics, acronyms,
I have been seconded to the Institute of Dunces,
I am not speaking your language,
In fact I am not speaking at all.


SPANISH LANDSCAPE

A piece of paper, pen, light
Waiting for inspiration
To condescend

Distant light, waves, the sea’s shimmer
Daylight pouring through the window breech:
This is a Spanish landscape
Courtyards, villas, sea and sky
Waking at dawn
For composition to begin
The hills, bulbous and shunted
Fat with blossom, the clouds hang
The eternal swansong
Of living flowers, plants and trees
Emotions hang like their colors
A patchwork of grays and blues

The locals I cannot understand
In an unkindred place
I hang listless as a mother tongue without a root

I learn the Catalan for slower
the Castelano for questions
As if this new language
Spoke to me, hangs over the ocean
A thousand suns immortalise its Prussian blue

You who caressed me from torpor
And lifted away the impenetrable night
Are gone, lifted beyond the heat and haze
Of the afternoon, in this place
I cannot understand.

Haiku Sequence

I
April lietmotif
Hang in the air, showers
Of rain and smooth beer.

II

Spanish Jew ambles
In near Arabic gear through
The station’s mid-night.

III

Thoughts and images
This summer afternoon, dark
Moments of Mozart.

THE ABYSS

They’re responding to an aesthetic:
I know this, for after every observation,
Measurement, surreal hypnosis,
You can’t but realize the newness,
The audacity: I liked the absence
Of paint, chords, notes, just
The silence, the chilling, tomb-like absence
The nothingness, the abyss-like bottomlessness,
Like nature it has absolute repetition
Of nothing, even the birds don’t chirp
Nor do the leaves fall upwards, or
The trees crumble, like an old piece of bark
In my sink, you are useless, pretty unaesthetic,
Pretty, pretty, pretty (a bit like me, I’m so vain),
But you are the art I create.

You won’t do, you won’t do,
Back to the abyss with you.

Whatever That Was About?

Put words and connections together
Find the inherency
Not here, not there:
Wine floats in glass with cork
Blood red wine on cherry lips
Oozing blood red cherry halos
Coagulated on my lips.

Whatever love is
A headband on a head
Of thick matted brown hair
Glossy, like a horse’s mane,
Or an endless cornfield, love
Is a definite question mark
Suspended, or written upside down,
A forever, or never.

Like a dry valley one must
Find it, in season,
Or migrate southwards,
For replenishment, by a sea
Of infinite light, or lost in infinite night

It is the thing that keeps us alive,
We, strangers, in our cosmic ditch
Like tramps, after a night on the tear

Search each other, blind men
De-Gaussing, phenomena, magnetism,
It is all lost in the aureate air.