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- Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
Frank Kuppner's new (eleventh) book consists of three long, hilarious, philosophical, existential sequences, 'The Liberating Vertigo of a Final Passage of Meaning', 'Not Quite the Greatest Story Never Told' and 'Not Quite a False Fresh Start Either'. Those 'not quites' are a keynote – what might have been and what actually is, the gap between being the space of the poem, its ironies, humour and wry heartbreak. The poems in the sequences are short, reminding us of his first book, A Bad Day for the Sung Dynasty, where short 'orientalising' forms were first perfected. 216 poems through the second sequence, he interrupts himself with, '[I have almost said enough.]' But that's just short of the half of it. 'Points weaved together / to make myself' – these are the points of each poem, haiku or tanka or something else, the weave being uneven and richly suggestive. Words fill out unexpectedly, the ubiquitous Stars become Sta[i]rs. His subject matter is what lies beyond the window of his rented rooms. The world is an erotic and philosophical minefield. He is rather too fitful and feverish to relish it for what it is, what it might be or even what it might have been.
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3
Contents
TAWA ‘Can we be led life enhancingly towards the Unbearable Truth?’
[Well, actually, I meant ‘TAWH’ – but ‘TAWA’ would no doubt do perfectly well instead]8
NOT A MOMENT TOO SOON
The Liberating Vertigo of a Final Passage of Meaning
ONE
1.
Of course there is no
correct final order for
the World to assume.
2.
Points weaved together
to make myself – (hello?) – then
on to other things …
3.
Sometimes I watch my
hand writing – but I’m still not
entirely convinced.
4.
No. I too can’t quite
grasp the sense of a self which
has emerged like this.
5.
Perhaps the whole world
is not really like what it
so clearly is like?
6.
“Life is rarely quite
what one expects – even if
one knows what’s coming.”12
7.
Non-existence seems
to have badly lost control
of the whole business.
8.
This fitful fever –
with the odd request for a
birth certificate.
9.
Through the Dantean
dark woods blow pages torn from
fashion magazines!
10.
It flared for a brief
shining moment in the sky,
whatever it was.
11.
How can it make me
so happy to reach these dull
ordinary sta[i]rs?
12.
I’m guessing. It may
be that star there. Or, perhaps,
the one next to it.
13.
A muted quarrel
comes up the stairway, pauses –
then goes in next door.13
14.
I’m here now – but that
would simply not be the case
if I were elsewhere.
15.
(Having reached the peak,
we nonetheless decided
to keep on climbing.)
16.
The absurd striving
for something else beyond the
limitlessly real.
17.
As if all were on
a boundless surface, but the
surface is too deep.
18.
And, all the time, this
relentless, mindless churning
far below our feet …
19.
I don’t know. All these
stars, planets, and so forth, just
don’t feel safe somehow.
20.
If the Sun were to
explode – (but, no … it’s doing
just that already.)14
21.
(These restless seconds –
all of them sure to vanish
eventually…)
22.
I’m told there was a
once-in-a-lifetime eclipse
a few days ago?
23.
How unlike a crab
it scuttles across the sky
waving its bright claw!
24.
Through a skylight which
he hadn’t noticed before
there came no moonlight.
25.
Perhaps it’s the sweep
of the light from this cheap lamp
that does most of it?
26.
The church-spire’s shadow
now blocks out half the room.
I’ll
need to move my chair.
27.
The light effect banged
off various walls, before
noticing the door.15
28.
For a moment, I
couldn’t tell whether it was
sunlight or gold paint.
29.
A rat carefully
crossing the superb floor of
a darkened temple …
30.
Whatever it is,
it’s been spreading over the
lawn for a while now.
31.
In glorious bloom
over millions of years – yet
never once admired!
32.
One of the deckchairs
sank to earth shortly after
both the guests had left.
33.
A bird lands, looks round,
then flies off – since all we are
is two more details.
34.
A leaf flew in through
the window … and landed on
whatever was there.16
35.
Still … fairly soon, it
got back onto its feet, looked
round, then hurried off.
36.
So many aspects
of this room must once have been
widely spaced-out trees.
37.
A vast squall of leaves
blowing over the slope, more
or less forever.
38.
Leaves whirling about
in the grounds of the vanished
Children’s Hospital.
39.
So many children
we never had, darling – if
I may call you that.
40.
Or one of my own
parents might have passed you in
the street, unnoticed.
41.
Doing all we can
to sound like proper adults
to the very end!17
42.
A simple request
reached across the centuries
and opened this door.
43.
These eerie feelings –
whatever they mean – go back
for millions of years.
44.
I switched on the lamp
and said a few words which I
felt had to be said.
45.
There’s that light again,
far off high among the trees
of the park at dusk!
46.
One by one, the lights
go out, and the more
intense
conversations start.
47.
Night. A brief light shines
in the building we had thought
long since derelict.18
48.
The last light ebbs, and
a few million sighs weigh
down
the fading grey clouds.
49.
The lights go out, and
countless universes are
gently laid aside.
50.
Off they go, branching
back, often intermingling
with their own dead weeds.
51.
Such a dangerous
world! – and with so much sleeping
going on in it –
52.
Hmm. That’s a highly
unusual position
to fall asleep in.
53.
They look to me like
failed women. Narrowly failed,
perhaps. But, still … failed.
54.
For half an hour, I’ve
just been sitting here thinking
about Piltdown Man.19
55.
In my dreams, I talk
to people who (perhaps) I
should talk to much more.
TWO
1.
An old friend, long dead,
making some fresh, new, witty
remarks in a dream.
2.
“I’ve often thought I
would rather like to be one
of these wayside shrines.”
3.
There used to be a
small statue near that garage.
Yes. Venus, I think.
4.
Then a large statue
of a god’s mother farted
and fell to pieces.
5.
Surely there can be
nothing ultimate about
anthropomorphism?20
6.
No. Even one arm
reaching out of the sky would
be one too many.
7.
“This is not something
which I had quite expected
to not happen twice.”
8.
Is that the same cat
that was here last night? It looks
a good bit bigger.
9.
Put that one there and
that one back there. Right. Good. What
do you think of that?
10.
Though the god had died
his penis kept lengthening
for the next few days.
11.
Good Heavens! It turns
out that Almighty God was
quite right after all!
12.
Glory be to that
for so many cries of pain
which help fill our lives.21
13.
Such hordes of microbes
working away at their tasks
during Christ’s lifetime!
14.
I nearly had this
same operation over
fifty years ago.
15.
Efflorescences
of microbial life take
in our history.
16.
It was the last thing
I expected to see from
a hospital bed.
17.
“I would prefer all
this to have happened without
grief, loss and so forth.”
18.
Complex atomic
structures, caught up in such vast
local confusions!
19.
Does existential
superfluousness turn out
something lovable?22
20.
How one still awaits
one’s apology from the
Universe as such …
21.
Whatever this is –
how can it possibly have
happened to me too?
22.
Non-existence seems
to be an even weaker
cage than existence.
23.
Yes. Non-existence
too evidently ended,
darling, in failure.
24.
How like the All, Sir,
your work is! (In no sense a
product of genius.)
25.
But who has yet said
a truly revealing word
about Nothingness?
26.
Drifting through all these
particles as if we had
nothing in common!23
27.
All that real love – and
off it drifts into the stars.
Heat. Starlight. Gases.
28.
All that space for the
Earth to move through? Perhaps a
little excessive?
29.
If that swarm of stars
were nearer – would we not (here
too) be used to them?
30.
I dare say we could
have looked at those dots for a
bit longer last night.
31.
Some things in my eyes
are dried blood – while others are
a world beyond them.
32.
Two days after I’d
read some Kafka parables,
my eye[s] haemorrhaged.
33.
I lost a huge map
of some city or other
in my dreams last night.24
34.
“This street used to be
wildly busy – when it was
a real street, of course.”
35.
A f[r]og slipped out and
paused at the kerb, shouting “Which
way to the Castle?”
36.
Being a tree would
perhaps be all right if one
could still walk about…
37.
How can such clearly
absurd forms of life fit in
so seamlessly here?
38.
Flying about all
over the place – frequently
landing on rooftops …
39.
What? Only one of
all the world’s arms is easing
this throbbing shoulder?
40.
“Oh, I know I’d hate
to spend my life in a cave,
hanging upside-down!”25
41
Are those the remnants
of a living thing up there
among the cobwebs?
42.
So much loose liquid
falling from the skies, as if
that was simply that …
43.
Those small black marks on
our kitchen wall … surely they’re
not also alive?
44.
I had such high hopes
for that cushion with the print
of Loch Ness on it.
45.
Remind me again:
What is Saint Arsenius
the Patron Saint of?
46.
Avoiding a world
which was only just reached in
an endless crisis …
47.
A large bright feather
has somehow arrived at our
front door overnight!26
