The beds in this ward are for certain death,
for diseases even dear relatives fear and hate.
There are new lovers, though, as well as old,
who make a plan for paradise in this hell.
When sun fell on a light sheet covering
one man’s ribs, where carers look
for signs of life, small movement, someone
had the idea for a garden.
Friends brought small bushes
that will be always green, signifying faith, endurance,
bulbs for sudden happiness, stones and pebbles,
showing some things never change.
They gather there to make a prayer
of simple actions. Some to the God outsiders say
forsakes them, some to the hope small happiness
will last, they sing in whispers, put wishes to the edge
of lips, where a wind takes their words away.
Author: Stephen J. Williams
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Idea for a garden
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Dimitris is not dead
Another poet wrote, unpacking myths
And colors for dying days, of meeting him,
That special feeling, and published
To confirm undying admiration.Last night, though, Dimitris was at dinner,
Wearing his old, aqua beach trousers,
Comparing recipes for home-made bread—
“Two parts wholemeal, one of plain …”“The tasteless olives, promising to look at,
Should be jarred in vinegar, water, a little oil.”
“And Greek bishops—the word for them
Is despot—have reigned a thousand, stable years.”Who knows if he will live that long, taking his pipe
Out to the porch, smoking under a quiet April?
A little thin, perhaps, but as for ‘death’—
He has thought of it, and then thought better.Originally published in Quadrant, December 1989. Dimitris Tsaloumas died in February 2016 on Leros in Greece where he was born.
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Domestic suburban vignette
“40, and the kids at university,
I will sit at home all day listening to Hinch
and reading Derrida; myself in the mirror,
the perfect picture of bourgeois complacency,
the daze of my life as incomprehensible
as a bar of soap. —And, of course, I will want
something indefinable and leave my husband to get it …”40, and the kids at university,
I won’t take shit from anyone
wearing a uniform or wielding a B.A.
who bursts through the door and wants to rape me
(phallogocentrically speaking);
punishment for writing about mirrors
or old photos of my mother.I’ll write about firemen and policemen,
the axes and truncheons of daily life,
the ease of speech in Newtown cafés,
about the light at the end of poetry
and the bizarre satisfactions of golf;
I’ll write about all those things, like one
who knows their true meaning, when pigs fly.“And having left him for good, for the thing
I wanted, there will only be that square of light,
the mother of myself that all mirrors are,
bringing more, little, unhappy Mes into the world;
more ghastly women, multiplying like rabbits
before their mirrors: Lacanian, suburban, neurotic …”I’ll be here, because he’s there, away from him,
nestling in the comfortable poetry of distance
between us: because it’s not just that book
by de Sade my husband taunts me with—
it’s the whole damned city and its monuments
to poet-soldiers of commerce—I want distance from,
we need to escape from, finally.Who will circumscribe me, size me up,
push me out, out here, then call it wilderness?
The boiling kettle, boiling over,
tumble-dryer, its revolutions,
this dangerous Sunday supplément, that is me,
that so disturbs them and makes them go limp
and fall over themselves with desire,sits every morning with the smell of coffee
in front of the window, practising domesticity,
and perfecting it, against every possibility of violence
or dissatisfaction. It’s an idea that tears down buildings
and won’t allow the city of men to sleep at night.Originally published in Nocturnal Submissions, Number 1, 1991
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Dreaming of zeppelins
for Barbara Giles, when aged six
If it’s a cold war, the telegraph wires
Sing the air with a dull whir.Fearing the thing that creeps, or
Numbers mounting without control,No wonder our sleep’s uneasy.
Young as we are, we knowA death on the wind is coming
And what our dreams shall reap, we’ve sown.Originally published in Fine Line, 1988
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Ishmael
Sarah was adamant
the other boy should not share
Isaac’s fame and history.“God has blessed
our own son as you must
now favor him alone.”Uncertain, needing guidance,
Abraham dreamt
of God’s other nation,and offered the boy
to all uncertainty,
the wilderness of doubtingGod lives everywhere.
What was the farewell speech?
“Though men would die there,“He has promised
you will be great.
So you will be great.“I must not doubt it,
but I do; and I will cry,
enough to make a desert green“for you.” For Ishmael,
a long time Abraham’s only hope,
he may have promised anything.…
Mother and son leave
with bread, a flask of water,
and promises.Not Abraham’s but mother’s
weeping saves Ishmael:
Men build a well, nature fills it.“We’ll be more practical,
make the promise happen
with work, not wanting.”They master it together:
Ishmael, the archer,
Hagar, the matchmaker.“What a place
To make a nation!
But the ingredients are simple.”…
When sons return to their father’s death,
burying Abraham at Machpelah,
voices echo in the dark.“Father, father”
on the lips of the boys:
they might make the same prayer …“You tempted us to hate you:
me crying under the knife,
me cast to doubt.”But the prayer made by Isaac
to a father’s history and fame
is also his own to live in.Ishmael whispers
the first confession.
“What shall I do“About forgiveness, father?
You start the story,
leaving me without end.“In my new life
I am rich with everything
except belonging.“I do not hate or love.
My life is the plain, the sun;
and for my heart, an arrow.”Originally published in Studio, 1990
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Songs or people
Switching tunes to suit the mood
— today it could be a slice of melancholy
(sixteenth century, harpsichord and minor key)
moving in to do the demolition job, or
tomorrow something modern (with, probably,
synthetic brass and barely human voice) —
I’ll lay my head in any lap, prick up
my ears to every sad, little wish of love.Then, sung in a pressed school
uniform or the diva’s silk gown,
it all adds up to the same thing:
screaming and loving the house down,
from where the skin shivers and twists
to where, deeper down, old dead things
rattle their bones in time and weep.Oh, it’s sad, it’s very sad, and the orchestra
unpacks its strings to usher it in,
or it’s glad, it’s very glad to see me
and the band strikes up familiar melodies,
drums up a bit of the devil dancing
with his red hat and whiter-than-white wishes.
Either way, the very least I’d say is
it makes you feel alive and, if you’re lucky,
makes you feel, brush away the webs and dust
from places that don’t get used that much,
at the cornices and skirtings where
spiders wrap old lovers up in string
and listen in to new ones talk
of new-year-things.There are songs or people,
waiting between miles and hours of static,
and stones for me to sharpen on. -
Body in the water
Going down to the water, dark, late, night-water, smoothing
Under the moon, plate of light swaying on a mirror, witness
To the weatherchange, coatless-cold or shoulder-bare heat,
The year by year change I witness down by the water.
Not only the change of my face growing old by the water,
But all its meanings and its story dug lines in the water.
I stand under the clear, blank sky, clean slate, waiting
To be written on the skin; any hand or any writing,
Any word or any sound will do; any cloudless clear
And ink black thrill breathed leaves me wanting more.
Imagine, the body in the water sways with the moon,
A harder me, more there, more real, fingers holding tightly
Onto any skin, pressing till it breaks, and bone scratches bone.
The oldest whispers, his hand in the water, smoothing
The side of the younger me’s face. “What do we do now?
What do you want? What can I do for you, here, in this place?”
Stephen J. Williams 