Mark Pirie

Jasmine


For Basim Furat


You say poetry
is our lasting friend;
after our lovers and our friends
have gone, it will always be
there - it will never leave us.

So hear the way it sings  -
it fills our dreams
with golden memories; that's why
I hear in your words a song,
and it is sung like Maqams.

Sometimes though it resounds
like a battlescape, filled with
the splinters of bombs; it haunts
your page, it wrestles the love
from your pen, but you

are strong and cast it off.
At night it shakes you inside
and you remove its fear from your
pillow - and how you yearn,
but still it follows you - yet long after

when those in power have gone
and the gilded domes point your way
your poems will be sung - just
look how they spring, even now, like
fresh jasmine, blossoming in the house's light.




Hush

                                   for Sian

A moon drop and a star
Are found in a young girl's dream.

Over the hills and beside the sea
Where she lives is

A small town; it gives her
a place to hide, a place to rest

And a place
Where sadly she must

Fall.

***

Her sickness has raged
Since birth, and every Sunday

She prays to live again. She says
To her sweet Angels,

O voices in the night
Voices be my kite

Send me to Heaven
Where your kisses are my elixir

O let me fly away, my sweet Angels,
Fly away, Tonight!

***

In her death,
A town is restored

With tears. The
Pain of her passing

Sighs with relief,
And their gowns of mourning

Are fixed
By the luminous stars.

And overhead a moon drop
Becomes their dream.




Letter to Leda


1.

The zoo unwinds its cages before me.
And I'm back there in childhood again

with a roof and four walls to hold me.
Can you hear me calling, Leda,

is it true you've left me? I search and search
but your delicate epiphany, your memory

is all I hold -
it seems you have woven like skin to the heart of my labour.


2.

Now, it is silent in the zoo, as I wander
my cage. Will you hold me,

take me far from here? Are you safer now
lost in the particular light of God? Let me

back in to feed on your darkness, let me trap
you within my beating wings. All I ask is

for freedom to roam from the walls of
my cage. This zoo, all it houses is cruelty,

and no one, not even you, knows just why
the incessant hand ticks on. Oh, Leda, let me

unfold in your arms, let me swoon the ripples of your eyes,
let me glide across you, glistening, perfect, swan-like, once more.




The Party Line


“Writing rather than phoning home is a better
way to contact extraterrestrials,” say

American scientists today. Lately NASA’s roving
Mars in search of life and discovering new planets:

Two gigantic gaseous masses, giants of the new
world oil industry. Only thing is there won’t be

anyone making money and war out of matter,
it’s hardly a big matter at all, except the

possibility of a new solar system, the hunt
for a new world, and maybe - although

we should never put two and two together:
new life. Ah, the possibilities of scientists are endless!

So let’s celebrate them for the moment
and keep NASA deferring on the phone line.

Writing the truth about humans 'inscribed in material' is likely
to hit home faster than any open party line in space.




Notes on the Contemporary Poet


by the roadside
birds hide in trees
singing their songs as the poet passes by
he hears them but can do no justice to them.




Mid Winter Poem


To Anita Lane at Sex O'Clock

when a rose withers
in the dance of flames

and the breath of fall
turns to winter

when a garden is gone -
pruned and sheared by gales

and the tears of petals
fall against my autumn

when a star is spied
in the black of night

and red lips are
painted even redder

I think of thee

I think of thee

a rosebud scarlet
black on black

a rose and pale white skin
I think of thee

and know that wanting
and yearning is

really but a
gentle, a fallow spring