Angels Over Elsinore Read online

  Propellers of the Normandie,

  Those museum-forecourt-filling pieces of sculpture

  (37 tons each of cast manganese bronze)

  That transmitted the electric

  Power to the water,

  Giving the ship her all-conquering speed,

  Not to mention her teeth-rattling vibration

  Even in First Class –

  The cost of elegance, as the Victor Hugo clematis

  Costs me my equilibrium,

  Until I wonder: don’t I mean the narrow-bladed

  More-wood-than-metal airscrew

  Of a WWI Armée de l’Air bomber?

  Say a Breguet 14, faster than a Fokker D VII?

  Perhaps that would be better:

  I grow uncertain, I have to look things up,

  And stuff that I thought I knew for sure

  Turns out to be wrong.

  Inelegantly reclining in my liner chair

  As the evening sunlight finally fades,

  I watch the flowers, that were never really my thing,

  Glowing their last and blacking out closer

  And closer to me

  (When the dancing finished in the Grand Salon

  At one o’clock in the morning

  They brought back and unrolled the half-ton weight

  Of the world’s biggest ocean-going carpet

  To cover the parquetry floor

  Copied from the throne-room in Versailles)

  While the great poet’s record-breaker of a funeral

  Still stretches half way across Paris –

  Well, it does in my mind –

  And the rockets and flares go up to look for Gothas –

  I can see the colours burst and fall, going dry

  Like the baby dribble of cherubim

  On a black velvet bib –

  And the pinwheel flower, even in silhouette,

  Drills a sibilant echo of Cocteau’s voice through my brain’s ruins:

  The Victor Hugo clematis is a madman that thinks

  It is Victor Hugo.

  Mystery of the Silver Chair

  As if God’s glory, with just one sun-ray,

  Could not burn craters in a chromosome,

  We call it kindly when it works our way,

  And, some of us with tact, some with display,

  Arrange the house to make it feel at home.

  With votive tokens we propitiate

  Almighty God. Just to be neat and clean –

  Running the water hot to rinse the plate,

  Chipping the rust-flakes from the garden gate –

  These things are silent prayers, meant to be seen.

  Strange, though, when parents with a stricken child

  Still cleanse the temple, purify themselves.

  They were betrayed, but how do they run wild?

  With J-cloth and a blob of Fairy Mild

  They wipe the white gloss of the kitchen shelves.

  They, least of all, are likely to let go

  Completely, like the slovens down the street:

  The ones who could conceal a buffalo

  In their front lawn and you would never know,

  Yet somehow they keep their Creator sweet.

  Unjust, unjust: but only if He’s there.

  The girl with palsy looks you in the eye,

  Seeming to say there is no God to care.

  Her gleaming wheel-chair says He’s everywhere,

  Or why would the unwell try not to die?

  And why would those who love them give the best

  Years of their lives to doing the right thing?

  Why go on passing a perpetual test

  With no real hope and with so little rest?

  Why make from suffering an offering?

  Why dust the carpet, wash the car, dress well?

  If God were mocked by those who might do that

  With ample cause, having been given Hell

  To live with, we could very quickly tell –

  Somebody would forget to feed the cat.

  Sometimes they do. Sometimes the spirit kneels.

  But when those with the least take pride the most,

  We need to bend our thoughts to how it feels.

  Shamed by those scintillating silver wheels,

  We see the lightning of the Holy Ghost.

  The Genesis Wafers

  Genesis carried wafers in her hold

  To catch the particles sent from the sun.

  Diamond, sapphire, gold

  Were those fine webs, as if by spiders spun

  Beside whom specks of dust would weigh a ton.

  A million miles from Earth, in the deep cold,

  The particles collected in the skeins.

  Diamond, sapphire, gold,

  They flowered like tiny salt pans in the rains –

  Fresh tablecloths distressed with coffee stains.

  Back in the lab, the altered wafers told

  A story of how poetry is born:

  Diamond, sapphire, gold

  Serenities invaded by stuff torn

  From the incandescent storm that powers the dawn.

  Museum of the Unmoving Image

  The objects on display might seem to lack

  Significance, unless you know the words.

  The final straw that broke the camel’s back,

  The solitary stone that killed two birds.

  Does this stuff really merit a glass case?

  A tatty mattress and a shrivelled pea,

  A shadow that somebody tried to chase,

  A rusty pin that somehow earned a fee?

  That gilded lily might have looked quite good

  Without the dust that you won’t see me for.

  But where’s the thrill in one piece of touched wood?

  I think we’ve seen that uncut ice before.

  A strained-at gnat, how interesting is that?

  The bat from hell looks pitifully tame,

  As do the pickled tongue got by the cat,

  The ashes of the moth drawn to the flame.

  Spilled milk, rough diamond, gift horse, gathered moss,

  Dead duck, gone goose, bad apple, busted flush –

  They’re all lined up as if we gave a toss.

  Try not to kill each other in the crush.

  They’ve got an annexe for the big events:

  Burned boats and bridges, castles in the air,

  Clouds for your head to be in, rows of tents

  For being camp as. Do we have to care?

  What does this junk add up to? Look and learn,

  The headphones say. They say our language grew

  Out of this bric-a-brac. Here we return

  To when the world around us shone brand new,

  Lending its lustre to what people said;

  Their speech was vivid with specific things.

  It cries out to be brought back from the dead.

  See what it was, and hear what it still sings.

  Statement from the Secretary of Defense

  This one we didn’t know we didn’t know:

  At least, I didn’t. You, you might have known

  You didn’t know. Let’s say that might be so.

  You knew, with wisdom granted you alone,

  You didn’t know. You say, but don’t say how,

  You knew we didn’t know about abuse,

  By us, in gaols of theirs that we run now.

  Well, now we all know. I make no excuse:

  In fact it’s far worse than you think. You thought

  You knew how bad it was? If you could see

  The photos in this classified report

  You’d know you knew, as usual, less than me.

  You want to see a stress position? Look

  At how I crouch to meet the President

  And tell him this has not gone by the book.

  How do I know he won’t know what I meant?

  I just know what he’ll say, with hanging head:

&n
bsp; ‘They don’t know what pain is, these foreign folks.

  Pain is to know you don’t know what gets said

  Behind your back, except you know the jokes.’

  I feel for that man in his time of trial.

  He simply didn’t know, but now he knows

  He didn’t, and it hurts. Yet he can smile.

  Remember how that Arab saying goes –

  The blow that doesn’t break you makes you strong?

  They’ll thank us when they get up off the mat.

  They didn’t know we knew what they knew. Wrong.

  Even our women can do stuff like that.

  Fair-weather friends who called our cause so good

  Not even we could screw it, but now say

  We’ve managed the impossible – I’ve stood

  All I can stand of petty spite today,

  So leave no room for doubt: now that we know

  We might have known we didn’t know, let’s keep

  Our heads. Give history time, and time will show

  How flags wash clean, and eagles cease to weep.

  The Australian Suicide Bomber’s Heavenly Reward

  Here I am, complaining as usual to Nicole Kidman

  (‘Sometimes I think that to you I’m just a sex object’)

  While I watch Elle McPherson model her new range

  Of minimalist lingerie.

  Elle does it the way I told her,

  Dancing slowly to theme music from The Sirens

  As she puts the stuff on instead of taking it off.

  Meanwhile, Naomi Watts is fluffing up the spare bed

  For her re-run of that scene in Mulholland Drive

  Where she gets it on with the brunette with the weird name.

  In keeping with the requirements of ethnic origin

  Naomi’s partner here will be Portia de Rossi,

  Who seems admirably hot for the whole idea.

  On every level surface there are perfumed candles

  And wind chimes tinkle on the moonlit terrace:

  Kylie and Dannii are doing a great job.

  (They fight a lot, but when I warn them they might miss

  Their turn, they come to heel.)

  Do you know, I was scared I might never make it?

  All suited up in my dynamite new waistcoat,

  I was listening to our spiritual leader –

  Radiant his beard, elegant his uplifted finger –

  As he enthrallingly outlined, not for the first time,

  The blessings that awaited us upon the successful completion

  Of our mission to obliterate the infidel.

  He should never have said he was sorry

  He wasn’t going with us.

  Somehow I found myself pushing the button early.

  I remember his look of surprise

  In the flash of light before everything went sideways,

  And I thought I might have incurred Allah’s displeasure.

  But Allah, the Greatest, truly as great as they say –

  Great in his glory, glorious in his greatness, you name it –

  Was actually waiting for me at the front door of this place

  With a few words of his own. ‘You did the right thing.

  Those were exactly the people to lower the boom on.

  Did they really think that I, of all deities,

  Was ever going to be saddled with all that shit?

  I mean, please. Hello? Have we met?’

  And so I was escorted by the Hockeyroos –

  Who had kindly decided to dress for beach volleyball –

  Into the antechamber where Cate Blanchett was waiting

  In a white bias-cut evening gown and bare feet.

  High maintenance, or what?

  No wonder I was feeling a bit wrecked.

  ‘You look,’ she said, ‘as if you could use a bath.’

  She ran it for me, whisking the foam with her fingertips

  While adding petals of hydrangeas and nasturtiums.

  Down at her end, she opened a packet of Jaffas

  And dropped them in, like blood into a cloud.

  Diamond Pens of the Bus Vandals

  Where do bus vandals get their diamond pens

  That fill each upstairs window with a cloud

  Of shuffled etchings? Patience does them proud.

  Think of Spinoza when he ground a lens.

  A fog in London used to be outside

  The bus, which had to crawl until it cleared.

  Now it’s as if the world had disappeared

  In shining smoke however far you ride.

  You could call this a breakthrough, of a sort.

  These storms of brilliance, light as the new dark,

  Disturb and question like a pickled shark:

  Conceptual art free from the bonds of thought,

  Raw talent rampant. New York subway cars

  Once left poor Jackson Pollock looking tame.

  Some of the doodlers sprayed their way to fame:

  A dazzled Norman Mailer called them stars.

  And wasn’t Michelangelo, deep down,

  Compelled to sling paint by an empty space,

  Some ceiling he could thoroughly deface?

  The same for Raphael. When those boys hit town

  Few of its walls were safe. One cave in France

  Has borne for almost forty thousand years

  Pictures of bison and small men with spears –

  Blank surfaces have never stood a chance

  Against the human impulse to express

  The self. All those initials on the glass

  Remind you, as you clutch your Freedom Pass,

  It’s a long journey from the wilderness.

  The Zero Pilot

  On the Hiryu, Hajime Toyoshima

  Starred in the group photos like Andy Hardy,

  He was so small and cute.

  His face, as friendly as his first name

  (In Japanese you say ‘Hajime’ at first meeting),

  Could have been chirping, ‘Hey, why don’t we

  Put the show on right here in the barn?’

  After Pearl Harbor he was one of the great ship’s heroes

  And the attack on Darwin promised him yet more glory,

  But his engine conked out over Melville Island

  From one lousy rifle bullet in the oil system.

  Caught by natives, he should have done it then,

  If not beforehand when the prop stopped turning.

  Instead of hitting the silk

  He could have nosed over and dived into the ground

  But he didn’t. When the natives closed in

  He could have shot himself with his .32

  But he didn’t do that either.

  Under interrogation he was offered chocolate

  Which he ate instead of turning down.

  What was he thinking of?

  He didn’t get it done

  Until a full two and half years later –

  After the Cowra breakout, which he helped

  To lead, madly blowing a stolen bugle,

  Psyched up to guide his party of frantic runners

  All the way to Japan. Upon recapture

  He finally did it with a carving knife,

  Sawing at his own throat as if to cancel

  That sweet, rich taste of surrender,

  The swallowed chocolate. His ruined Zero

  Is on display in Darwin. The empty bulkhead

  Is torn like silver paper where the engine roared

  That once propelled him through the startled sky

  At a rate of roll unknown to Kittyhawks.

  Paint, cables, webbing, instruments and guns:

  Much else is also missing,

  But the real absence is his,

  And always was.

  ‘Hajime’ is short for

  ‘Our acquaintanceship begins:

  Until now, we did not know each other.

  From this day for
th, we will.’

  Well, could be,

  Though it mightn’t be quite that easy.

  Buried at Cowra,

  He probably never knew

  That the Hiryu went down at Midway,

  Where the last of his friends died fighting –

  Still missing the cheery voice

  Of their mascot, named always to say hello,

  Who never said goodbye.

  Iron Horse

  The Sioux, believing ponies should be pintos,

  Painted the ones that weren’t.

  When they saw the Iron Horse

  They must have wondered why the palefaces

  Left its black coat unmarked.

  Bruno Schulz said an artist must mature

  But only into childhood.

  He called our first perceptions

  The iron capital of the adult brain.

  I would like to think my latest marquetry

  Was underpinned by Debussy’s Images

  Or the chain of micro-essays

  In Adorno’s Minima moralia,

  But a more likely progenitor

  Entered my head right here in Sydney:

  The first aesthetic thrill that I remember.

  In a Strand Arcade display case

  A tiny but fine-detailed model train

  Ran endlessly around a plaster landscape.

  On tip-toe, looking through the panorama

  Rather than down on it, I formed or fed

  Lasting ideals of mimesis, precision

  And the consonance of closely fitted parts

  Combined into a work that had coherence

  Beyond its inseparable workings.

  Later, at the flicks, when the Iron Horse

  Was attacked by yelping braves,

  I heard their hoof-beats on a marble floor,

  And later still, having read about steam power

  In my Modern Marvels Encyclopaedia,

  When I realised the little train

  Had been pulled by an illusionary loco –

  Directly turned by an electric motor,

  The wheels propelled the rods and not vice versa –

  My seeing through the trick only increased

  The recollection of intensity,

  Immensity compressed into a bubble,

  The macrosphere in miniature.

  But mere shrinkage didn’t work the magic:

  There had to be that complicated movement

  Of intricate articulation

  As in an aero-engine like the Merlin

  Or the H-form Napier Sabre.

  In the Hermitage, a Fabergé toy train

  Was not so precious, didn’t even go,

  Was hopelessly disfigured by its jewels.