
                                ###     ###
                                 ###   ###
                      ###   ####  ### ###  ###   ####
                      ###    ###   #####   ###    ###
                      ###    ###    ###    ###    ###
                      ###    ###   #####   ###    ###
                      ##########  ### ###  ##########
                                 ###   ###
                                ###     ###

                         Underground eXperts United

                                 Presents...

         ####### ## ##      #######     # #   ##   ## ####### #######
         ##      ## ##      ##         #####  ##   ## ##   ## ##   ##
         ####    ## ##      ####        # #   ####### ####### #######
         ##      ## ##      ##         #####       ## ##   ## ##   ##
         ##      ## ####### #######     # #        ## ####### #######

         [  Eight poems  ]                    [  By Robert J Berry  ]


    ____________________________________________________________________
    ____________________________________________________________________



* THE MAKER      * ISLAY      * LIGHTHOUSES      * AILSA CRAIG
* CAVES          * CYCLES     * THE PIER         * SNOW

by Robert James Berry


THE MAKER

        First
        I make a
        stark monochrome sketch

        Then throw the clay
        Turning my fingers
        To mould four senses
        Pedalling the treadle

        Last I hang the lips
        Hook the nose

        I am spattered with clay
        Flush with creation

        Overnight
        The head is put to rest
        under damp cloth

        I sleep with crossed fingers

        Today
        Cut from its pedestal
        The muscles have stiffened
        The mouth pouts

        Suddenly I have
        Gouged the eyes
        Brought my hands together
        and twisted the living thing
        into a slimy lump

        Again the wheel is turning
        With the whole of my hands
        Drawing the clay tall
        My feet under the spell

        I am remaking my head
        Not with faith
        But because I must


ISLAY

        On her stomach's flat pan
        The otter cracks shellfish
        Then whiskers off
        To waterproof preen

        I turn to the unison strut of oystercatchers
                                jabbing the strand

        and a horseshoe of basalt
        where seals snore
        You can catch their stink

        Morning is running now
        The mainland has unveiled
        Buoys on the swell
        in only a hat of cloud

        The winter light is beaten gold
        Brief                ice
        The silence cogent

        As our ferry builds smoke
        noses into the sound
        I am stitching its wake
        into this sheet
        Feeling the patter of drizzle
        The gulls whirling


LIGHTHOUSES

        The peat bricks and
        cleft wood
        burn lavender

                                Tall
        Shadows permeate the solitude

        I continue to stoke the small blaze
        Lever the firetongs
        coax reticent wood
        to crackle

        A knot spits like a shooting star
        extinguishes at my ankles

        Out of the window
        Over the water
        are the rain-stained lights
        of another country
        The unaltering eye of the lighthouse
                                crabbed to land's end

        In the condensation
        With my index finger
        I write your name
                        Fascinated
        as the tall letters and arrowed heart drip

        When the fire grows flames
        The pane clouds
        and my other country is folded away
        under a wrapper of fog

        Your companionable blink put out
        I walk to my seat
        and sit with winter


AILSA CRAIG

        A fang from the sea monstered floor of
                                        the straits
        Or the igneous hat of a wizard
        ruckling waves

        Grown in the swell's accent
        Fishermen mystify
                A moonwashed beacon in the spring tides

        In winter
        A gruff sea demon

        When gales utter guttural oaths
        and north atlantic booms
        This giant's toehold
                        Slides under the world

        To become
                In evening calms
        A basalt pebble in the sea's playground

        In the geography of dream
        It is always inhabited
        A turret struck for birds
        A crag to cleave the sun in two

        On canvas
        Or off the rail of a ship
        It is what it always was
        Awesome        Solemn


CAVES

        Faith is secreted in caves
        Away from light
                Whooping like a pagan

        Here stones guard their
        most private grief

        Water drips from the vertigo
        With the virtue of patience

        Carved monstrances of rock
        The statuary of strange deities
        Daubed with the
        full stops of the world
        are fed shadow

        The dark is elephant-headed
        Silence has tongue

        Here faith
        Slays demons underfoot
        Calcifies fear as
        flues of stone

        Where bats are the only reverents
        men will block steps
        Cut out an auditorium of rock
        Bringing smoke        music
        altars and assuaging gods

        Because man must banish        forget
        The awful irreverence of death


CYCLES

        Heat has mummified
        The flower's bells
        which shake like black castanets
        in the earth's drought oesphagus

        Over the graveyard
        Sun assaults the dead
        Dents crucifixes
        Cracks marble
        Chiselling its own epitaph

        White roofs that noon has charred clean

        Are like the waterless face
        of a clad woman
        stirring the dust with her sandals

        At her gate
        A pack dog is cannibalizing
        the blown stomach and muzzle
        of a brother

        Sight hobbles
        To lap a v-neck of sea
        between the land's blistered shoulders

        In another town
        Cloche the bells
        of a stricken god
        Thonged by light

        Soon sky is a torso of blood
        and Sun is
                humping its crooked back
        below the world

        Dusk stirs
        An acrimonious
        Chthonic god

        Dogs gather
        Man devours
                his mate

        Then the moon draws
        A narrow harelip

        and stars hang uncharitably
        From the noose of heaven


THE PIER

        late afternoon is
        wet with light

        Two fishermen stroll
        the brawling surf

        A lizard
        decorates a sun-boiled stump

        Time has settled on the pier's
        dentistry of rotted timber

        its bicycles
        fishing pots and
        Stinking bait

        In the idle swell
        Sunburnt men
        dangle rods

        Two mating dragonflies hover
        Prehistorical as the
        horned monsters
        anglers pull in

        Reefed up below
        Are boats under black canvas
        and gulls lashed
        to the rocking water

        At the curve of the world
        Sun is a spitting apocalypse

        Stood close to pier's end
        A man scans the horizon
        for a morsel of sail

        and tosses a hissing butt
        in the heartbroken ocean

        Listening to the
        Slosh and
        amen of the sea


SNOW

        Snow is
        Winter's linen

        Watch it print
        A white page

        Convert the firs and
                outlandish hills

        First snow is amnesia
        Lost memories eddying
        The flakes settle finally
        inducing sleep

        Its coma domes the world

        In the high country
        For cold clenched farmers
        The year is finished

        The nativity sheep are
                           bodies to burn
        Our Father is a splinter of frost

        Against a snow cliff
        December dusk bleeds like a sacrifice

        Then overnight men feel an uncanny stillness
        The air is hoar                wrought
        Snow utters silently
        From lungs of ice

        Morning
        From the timber church
        Bells toll like creation

        The thaw scrunches with life
        Children scream         build
        The hills burn like bonfires
                             in the blue skies

        Winter has gone out

        The world is white as sainthood

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 uXu #488              Underground eXperts United 1999              uXu #488
                   ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/texts/uxu/
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
