The Wave Hennets: Poems, words, stories
LINES LIKE RIPPLES
See these lines like the ripples. Each one at one
with the other. To be other it must raise
itself selfing its edge, must not overrun,
but keep limpid correctness in parallel
in an other-wise sequel, an other-ways
mode of travel along without doggerel
repetition, with clear word and certain rhyme
that surprise with their lucent pulse that you knew
would be coming, that startle with dazzling mime
of what led them to there, yet allowing view
of all secret serenity, all profound
revelation of depth, to the darkest ground.
THE RHYTHM OF THIS VERSE
As you're reading these lines, do you notice the
rhythm? It's difficult really with your mind
on the meaning of words, easy to miss the
beat of the sound. Can you split your attention
now, observing with half of it what's behind
all that you read, even this very question?
And the beat isn't regular — there are breaks,
jumps, interruptions, that supposedly match
the surprises in sense, and they're clever fakes
hiding themselves under 'themselves'. You can't catch
them at work. It's a trick, though, you must forgive:
it's not very different from how you live.
HENNET WAVES
You could say that a wave flows through these lines as,
scribbling and rubbing out, he writes a hennet.
At his point you can see that sunken rock has
flattened that crest. Looking down shows this seaweed
dragging heavy rememberings that still fret
forward and back at their rootings. One must knead
in an endless resettling that heedless sand;
over these pebbles; another is stumbling
into mere froth that's sieved away. One is fanned
out in exposure. Those, the boldest, fumbling
headfirst over themselves, had sought to ascend
even higher than land. All come to an end.
VERSE RHYTHM
There's a wave in these lines. That they call it stress
tells you that rhythm isn't just a sterile
repetition. It's cruelty or caress,
ecstasy, wound, a melancholy poison
or a leaping with joy or just for. The style
can't tell you who, nor quite when. The suspicion
that you're driven can't hold when the drive is you.
Waves set you toppling when you want to collapse,
and they're worst when they're words, parading as true.
Who could have thought a procession of pops, taps,
all those hissings and hummings of empty breath
could bring waves to the shores both of life and death?
POEM
In this poem the words follow a rhythm,
keep to a beat. If a syllable shifts stress
(for remaining unchanged would court tedium),
then added assonance, alliteration
or a rhyme will make chime enough in redress.
Few who are reading can name the pulsation,
but they're feeling the metre, seduced by sound
secret in meaning, pleased by the changes that
go along with the changes. Rhythm goes round
neatly repeating, unexpectedly pat,
linking past onto future, dangling a lure,
ever busy with making sure making sure.
WHAT'S REPEATED?
Not a rhythm repeating anywhere. Take
waves -- they're exchanging the water in a pure
continuity. But look at each snowflake:
it's unique but it isn't. A electron
stands its wave in a different place. If your
heart has a pulse, it's changed because you moved on
in this poem with both meaning and metre,
changing your self as you go, for the measure
can be years and not seconds. But repeat a
word and it's new, but whether pain or pleasure
will attend its reception can but be tried --
it's a thing that some other waves might decide.
THE RHYTHM OF THESE LINES
Hear the beat? Hear the beat? of these eleven
syllables? Yes, even though I hadn't told you
to, you'd hear them all right. See a heptagon
having no consciousness of its seven sides,
but a 50p's symmetry lies in view
pleasing the eye all the same. A rhythm hides
how it does what it does. There's no need to know
frequency following melody — But wait!
Hasn't memory learned something, an echo?
Rhythm, though dumb, comes on the scene very late
to sing history's tune. The secret's revealed:
what's in you that responds is really concealed.
WHAT A RHYME IS
There are few seem to know that in a rhyme you
count from a vowel what is the same: e.g.
tin and satin aren't rhymes, although they will do
if all you want is a rhythm. What is wrong
is that 't' — Hear that '-tin'? The sound isn't free:
consonant-rule has interfered with the song.
What we want is a difference that will twist
dull similarity, and a sameness that
makes us feel as secure when changes insist
now is the time you did. It's a tit-for-tat
to-and-fro war of words of one mind. Just say
all that's serious resolves into play.
POEM THROUGH A MAGNIFYING-GLASS
When I look through the magnifying-glass, this
poem is nonchalant brushings of graphite
over coarse snow. The word 'snow', now I notice,
looks, with the full-stop, like 'Suomi', but I'm
not engaged in a strict endeavour to write
here on the topic of Finland. No, this time
all the words will be just what they mean, perfect
writer-to-reader transmission. However,
it would have to be with this glass you inspect.
Also the script — it couldn't be whatever
you've in front of you now. Still then, I believe,
you would have to perceive just what I perceive.
SCRIBBLING POEMS
All this movement of fingers that are scribbling
this, little twitches and convolutes that write
mirror-letters on air, in a seesaw swing
there at the top of my pencil, all those turns
of the rollers that print poems, with their bright
metal intaglio flattened like fossil ferns
with the words in reverse, all those jerkings
foveas do from phrase to phrase down the page,
jumping on to make matter yield to meanings,
these disappear, always seek to disengage
busy rhythm from calm, by this evasion
making easier my clever persuasion.
POEM AS WAVE
Say a poem's a wave. Just how many ways?
Rhymes to begin with: there at the end of the line
is the syllable '-ine'. Soon, to keep in phase,
there it will be again, this time with a change —
a new consonant, say 'f' (see, like this: fine ),
starting it differently. How we like things strange
with familiar. It's like a peek-a-boo:
Mother's not gone, she's back with a 'Boo!' that means
nothing. Say just the same for assonance too —
say was not same, but it was. The ship careens
from one side to the other. Don't be afraid!—
It's from different water each wave is made.
SENTENCE AS WAVE
An informative sentence is a wave, too,
playing at 'Fort-Da'. How well you know that cat
and the person who's speaking kindly to you,
he knows her too, and of course in exactly
the same way. So when he drops in for a chat,
starts with "The cat...", you are absolutely
sure you know her in the same way as him. Couldn't
start the sentence without nodding that fact.
But it's then that you hear just what you shouldn't:
known turns to unknown in this amazing act.
Hear "The cat's on the mat"! Don't be afraid!
It's from different water each wave is made.
THE WAVE AS STORY
And a wave is a story. See the desire
sliding ahead without let as fingers would
under silk, with identity both entire
flight and complete preservation, going round
to return, making bows so that it could
tower as much, whatever wreckage was drowned
underneath now passed over all unknowing,
what is above, fragments of waves from the shore,
or a swimmer or boat, ignored in flowing
onward resistless, hearing nothing of roar,
seeing nothing of foaming collapse, desire
surges on to its planned peripeteia.
DETECTING
So the murder was suicide, got up as
murder, and Holmes was the only one to see
through the pun. And Dalgleish knew the truth, whereas
Rickards was fazed, for he took too much notice
of a terrorist's motive. It's not a key
you must reveal, but a lock. Not analysis,
but a framing around. Colours are altered
if you change background. It's the same as a rhyme
for the sounds at the end are now registered
plain with a different meaning as this time
there's a consonant changed. So settle your breath
as you speak, for the difference isn't death.
VIDEO-SHOP
In the video-shop you can see the world —
least as it sees itself. There are the adult
films for immature males. Each coiled tape uncurled
puts in time all its magnetism. Terror
shows its fangs to unconscious fans of a cult
creed who believe that it has fangs. The error
of the murderer haunts others, so relieved
private eyes follow the clues to it so that
both the stupid police, who wrongly believed
that the detective was wrong, and plutocrat
criminals are finally foiled. Take away
just the few that face up to the risk of play.
PLAYING GOD
Yes, the trouble with God was that they believed.
They were just acting Him. The script, they had penned
to fit how they'd set up all those who received
goods and how marriages kept them, whether for
kings or for subjects. But they were right to pretend
something should bind them — religio. The awe
should have been but the actor's grave illusion.
Chinese religions used actors. Why can't we
write a better script, fix fair distribution,
even in markets, and then art, poetry,
music, dance join in drama that we'll all play,
not seduced by the hope that death's gone away?
GIVING MYTH A GOOD NAME
Yes, it's fascism's given myth a bad name.
Lenin was mummified. Those inadequate
selves who dressed up in colours played the wrong game,
right to play games. Yes, they strutted on stages,
but they're heard still, all those who are desperate,
being identity-denied. The rages
of the racist betray the need for knowing
who all the others will see you as. We long
to take part in the play, but, if prevented,
play it for real. Wrong the Rationalist, wrong
the Religious. So play on one condition:
play it straight without trace of superstition.
SEEING THE INVISIBLE
These are light corrugations, sun with shadow,
reaching from water to eye. One knows the wave
by what it is not. Out there the shallow
rockings of no-coloured molecules persist
to a pressure the sun some days ago gave
over the ocean. Sight becomes copyist
in another convention: these could be rows,
gleaming with ink, of lead type, printing meaning
out of waves of the water and light, or prose,
curled calligraphically, each line careening
down the page to a rhythm inwardly heard
when the reader's own eye gains sense from the word.
ROBOT READING
All the numbers on cheques have to be just so:
robot-identifiers couldn't manage
if one scribbled a figure, but we all know,
looking around it, what it is meant to be.
That 'c-l' is a 'd' for, on average,
'aily' will follow 'd' — there's no word 'claily'.
We can take up the clues the robot wouldn't
notice and turn what is nonsense into sense.
For the robot, with one meaning fixed, couldn't
shift to another, couldn't deal with pretence
that plays clue against clue. Could only reach higher
if you gave the machine real fear, real desire.
THE PHILOSOPHERS' MISPRINTS
The philosopher wrote: 'A proper name, such
as 'Napolean', names an object directly.'1
Printers' errors can be ignored. You retouch
just as you read. But what thing was on the page?
There's another who wrote: brain-states correctly
register tables when retinas engage
with the 'acion' of tables there before us.2
When he read 'action' during the proof-reading,
was the brain-state correct or the stimulus?
But Carneades noted how misleading
to see rope as a snake. But what hope for hope
if you're logically set to see snake as rope?
1 David Woodruff Smith, The Circle of Acquaintance: Perception, Consciousness and Empathy, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989, p. 5.
2 Moltke S. Gram, Direct Realism: A Study of Perception, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1983, p. 12
MEDIAEVAL MANUSCRIPT
On the page of the manuscript the letters
turned into flowers and plants. A serif coiled
to a cinque-foil of hearts; fine golden fetters,
garlanded green, graced initials. Upper-case
upright writhed into ivy tendrils that toiled
round all the text, even tried to interlace
other letters to illegibility.
Flowers of rhetoric vied with narcissus;
an anemone trope spoke fertility;
knottings of rose were paradox; a lotus
spoke acrasia. Poems, their own Amen,
can illuminate words without brush or pen.
HANDWRITING
Cannot ask what they are that produce unique
differences there in your handwriting. Muscles,
size of hand or of finger, teaching, each freak
history's stamped in you, make your lower-case
and your upper-case, commas and capitals,
yours and yours only. All connection and space,
and the dotting of i's and crossing of t's,
whether your consonants disambiguate
your illegible vowels, these are indices
where you are you. No, letters don't subjugate
any subject. Your writing can't be bondage —
not as long as your body's in the language.
COMMERCIAL PLAGIARISM
All those clouds in the film Koyannisqatsi,
speeded up, wallowed in valleys, dolphin-leapt
over mountains, unseen wild sublimity,
rhythms beyond our impatient eyes. Later,
electricity adverts were most adept
rushing the same waves behind a skyscraper
(that was changed to a plug). The Czech
Svankmeyer, animator of uncanny wood,
battling metal, of clay come alive to peck,
slap, wriggle, harass with satire, was as good
for some varnish. The agent's not a vulture —
No, a wave's spreading out into culture.
SOUND-ALIKES AND OTHER COMMERCIAL VOICES
There are sound-alikes, look-alikes. Hear the dead
voice of a Richard Burton recommending
you to buy. A mock Bogart, as Marlowe, said
X's investments were best. And when you've heard
Robert Powell as Christ, in his persuading
you about Brylcreem there tends to be transferred
quite a lot of true faith. Ted Heath must be right —
even his punning on blue cheese couldn't shake
your reliance — he smiled, to prove nothing might
upset your trust. Any face could be a fake
in persuasion, a thought that's quite distracting:
Are you being deceived, or is it acting?
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO PATTEN'S GCSE ENGLISH ANTHOLOGY
There are ideological daffodils.
Who are the ones who are planting them? Petals
can be mirrors. To gaze and little think ills
lurk in solitude's bliss is to miss inside
those vaginal and virginal finger-stalls
the occasional insect. These hybrids hide
a perfection projection honed smooth
over years of edenic horti-culture.
Yes, a vacant mood will insidiously soothe
one to fantasy dancing at heart. Nature
has grown hybrid inside. Plant them featly, lest
some young vandal might trip cardiac arrest.
THE ENGINEER'S STORY
The machine had been making a strange noise,
said the man demonstrating, such a knocking
they had thought it had lost all its cherished poise
kept for a century, — but, no, (with a smile)
just a pipe to the gudgeon gone loose, blocking
space for a lever. A little work with file
and with blow-torch and all was restored. Was no
bigger than this (a pencil). The huge engine
with its beams like a dinosaur's limbs, could go
freely again. A few more people walked in,
and he told us the Story again — the threat
that had blackened the future had now been met.
THE STORY-TELLER
He begins with the strong wrong clues the story-
teller, that point to death (or desire), then brings
the first faint right clue, set to be utterly
normal — it stays invisible, it points to
desire if all the wrong point to death, but rings
with a sinister note wherever they do
to desire; even better if its truth is
taken as lie, right turned to wrong. The faint clues
now increase, and the lucky reader can quiz
all the protagonist can't. Readers can't lose
at this game. Oh what fun! What relief! Hooray!
Their desire couldn't possibly go astray.
THE DRAMA LESSON
They played teenager-games in the 'Drama' class,
just to avoid doing drama, The 'class clown
took the mickey' when Teacher said, "Now to pass
on to the topic of irony," asking
of all "What is he on about?" with the frown,
gawping myopically, of the dull, masking
his pretence with deliberate clumsiness,
which was as much as to say, 'I'm not acting
with the verisimilitude, I confess,
drama demands', thus his contempt attracting
the staged laughs of Brechtian ironies —
and the lesson that day was 'What drama is'.
THE READER OF THE STORY
Ovid's story of Pyramus and Thisbe
takes as its metamorphosis the colour
of the mulberries. They changed from a snowy
white to the dark purple of blood, But the real
metamorphosis by Ninus' sepulchre
lay in the veil. The reader knows what to feel
when a bloody-jawed lioness tears and paws
it to shreds. What relief that Thisbe hides
in the cave! — Yet alas! already a cause,
locked into time, we see of two suicides.
Alas! he should have been there first! For the worst,
we'll be sure in the future to be there first.
A JOKE AT THE EXPERT JOKER'S EXPENSE
Asked, 'Why hasn't the elephant got four feet?'
Given the answer, 'Because it looked silly
with six inches.' Determined to get it neat,
analysed blandly the ambiguous term
'feet', its two meanings, then for each the right clue:
'inches' for unit of length, and to confirm
base of leg, all the first line up to the word.
Teacher secure in analysis, able
to convey all the subtlety, the absurd
switching of meanings, so that both were stable.
But the laugh was the pupil's, for he caught me
as determined by clues that I did not see.
INTERPRETING THE RULES
When you shake you head sideways in New Guinea,
'Yes' is the meaning. The angel that nodded
by the candles was pleased you had paid you fee
(there was a lever inside — a penny trick
made it move). And the Cossack dancer copied
what a policeman directing the traffic
had to do, one arm up, another across,
but the policeman wasn't dancing at all.
Either call 'Heads' or call 'Tails' to win the toss.
It's in rugger not soccer you hold the ball,
though they say that's how rugger began. The fools
didn't know they were obeying the rules.
WORDS
Take each wave as a word repeated many
times. The same lips compress and spill out a surge
in accustomed conjunctures, turning any
water or air, randomly given, to its
own familiar gyration, eager to urge
liquid and labial till substance submits
to habitual rhythm. What had lapsed into
silence, drawn down with that intake of power,
now finds lungs that are strong to renew
all that climactic truth thought lost, to tower
boldly onward, insist on all it can say!
Neither water nor air can wholly obey.
RHYMING DICTIONARY
On a page of the rhyming dictionary
words are collected like stamps or coins. The sound
is the chance theme of order, arbitrary
ranking of birth with dearth, aspire with acquire,
or of thinks with the Sphinx, a merry-go-round
bringing together in doggerel desire
the incongruous lint and Peer Gynt, as much
as the Apocalypse and eclipse. Sense
tries to speak through the leak, will use as a crutch
crutch as adjacent to touch, expense to pence,
and commend to offend. The list is absurd
but the jingling of rhythm inflames the word.
PEOPLE ALPHABETS
There are alphabets made out of people, who
bend themselves oddly in all manner of ways.
This one swimming as S, a J all askew,
I at attention, A who's touching his toes,
and an R, arms akimbo; two of them gaze,
holding hands, making an M; Y in a pose
with his fist ever raised; L is a wino
slumped on the ground; Z is always on his knees,
as if praying or pleading; trying a throw,
wrestlers make X from their struggle; for the E's,
and there's so many of them, obey 'Present
arms!' One wonders just what the words can have meant.
WORDS ON A CALCULATOR
3 - 9 - 3 - 1 - 5 on the calculator
upside down prints the word 'SIEGE'. Arithmetic
at the mercy of meaning. A computer
upside down could be producing 'SIEGE': it knows
not a thing of its signings. On the matrix
dots come and go; the circuits do not compose
any shapes, any lines, any 'sharp edges'
(unlike what Marr thought), only distributions
just as senseless as outlines of clouds, hedges,
fallen leaves, pebbles. No more than illusions
all those 'signs'. The computing's counterfeited,
You need more to project the interpreted.
[With thanks to Nigel Keaveney]
A WAVING FLAG
Watch a flag. You are seeing the wind. Each fold,
hollow and final wave is a model made
by invisible air. It's a loyal mould
of authority's impulse, printing order
in what stripes have to suffer, as a cockade
mimes a nonchalance as high — to record a
leader's confident topknot. But the laggard
flag is now whipped to submission; it's blurting
in complaint; ripples race, leaving it flustered
till it falls over itself, or, perverting
the whole purpose, wraps the pole around with a band.
So a symbol resists what wills understand.
MONEY'S A WAVE
When the coin changes hands, what value has it?
Just what the hands take it to be, different.
For the goods don't have worth away from profit,
whether the seller's or the buyer's, yet both
are pretending the value's equivalent.
Money's a wave, then. Neither of them is loth
to concede it's identical, rustling or
jingling, or else it's a swindle. Like a word,
it can pass between two as if it's no more
than the amount both agree on. It's absurd
to think otherwise. Money can't simply fade,
as if changing the stuff out of which it is made.
BODY METAPHORS
How the body will help you remember it!
Ribbed sea sand, now — and the colour could be skin.
We know hands are for pointing — no counterfeit
if they are pointing at time. The foot of the hill
has no toes, and when we take it on the chin
nobody's hitting us. You won't wait until
you see white in the eye of a needle if
threading's your task — unless the actual thread
is a white one. A word won't play hieroglyph.
All of these everyday metaphors are dead,
wouldn't leap into life, nor equivocate.
How consoling we all disambiguate!