Poems

the progenitors for waterdrawing one and two

THE GOLD INSIDE

You sit in perfect happiness
In wonder that life
Can still offer you so much

Your flat is where you've lived in Vienna
All your married life

The high imperial door on my left
Still holds a scar of war
A piece of shrapnel, ein spleitter,
Lodged in the wood
And underneath in black: 9.4.45
 
You laugh nervously
Not sure about this drawing
That I am making out of words
While looking at you
But how can line and colour describe the image
Of you as young and Jewish
Protected by a circle of socialist family and friends
 
In the early hours
The banging military and terror
Flats emptied of their people
Raus heraus everybody out

All standing in the hall downstairs
Having to show your papers
And you have none being Jewish
"You've seen hers already," someone shouts

They pass you by.

How to live your life so grateful to be alive?

Good-natured praise slips constantly
From your lips
Overcoming doubts and hardships

The young girl is still inside
Unconscious of its venerable casing
The dream body all that matters

And the time yesterday
Talking about the gold inside
And you had said
There was nowhere for it to go
No way out

And I'd thought the golden liquid
That's the money you give to me

And the little gardens we had made together
When as a child forced marches through the woods
Had left me small and insignificant
 
Your slow pace, hip injury at puberty,
Made you ideal company
For a three year old
Gathering moss and bark and little tiny toadstools
Making havens to the side of adult motorways
 
And you call on those times when I threaten to detach
"Are you bored with me?" you sing with golden flush.
"Don't go!" you call
And I'm suddenly burning up with warmth
As you pour words meltingly down the telephone
Resistance washed away with fire.

October 1999


29 PINK PIANOS

He came
Talked about the Austrian composer Logothetis
A man he admired for making musical scores
Some looked like ships with dragon sail wings

He had a bag of marbles in his hand
Would I take a picture?

The marbles were a system
For consulting the I ching

I did but he didn't like it

By chance he saw some footage
Moving images of water collected
On a hot and sunny day
The water had seemed like liquid gold
Runny glassy marbles

Would I cut it so that he
Could play the music
A type of graphic score

I cut
He played

We threw an I Ching twenty-nine
 
We did the "waterdrawing"
On tape and in performance
And it was good

For piano and river, the river Dart

But it was not enough for Vienna

The twenty-nine, the hexagram, Abysmal
Giving counsel about how to move through danger
Like water finding sea, not missing any opportunities
Nor lingering or getting caught

I imagined a series of polished grand pianos
Starting off with barely white
The colour deepening a rococo sky
 
Until a wave of evanescent pinks
A morning evening beach of gentle shades
 
In Vienna and in silence
A wave of twenty-nine
A daring to go back with an ocean of insane joy

October 2007