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Anthony Howell is a poet and novelist whose first collection of poems, Inside the Castle was brought out in 1969. In 1986 his novel In the Company of Others was published by Marion Boyars. He was invited to the International Writers Program, University of Iowa in 1971. His Selected Poems came out from Anvil, and his Analysis of Performance Art is published by Routledge. In 1997 he was short-listed for a Paul Hamlyn Award for his poetry. His versions of the Silvae of Statius have been well received and Plague Lands, his versions of the poems of Iraqi poet Fawzi Karim, were a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for 2011. He has published three volumes of poetry with The High Window. He is UK editor of Grey Suit Editions. He is a Hawthornden fellow and has recorded poems for The Poetry Archive. His latest book of poems is Collected Longer Poems published by Grey Suit Editions. His Shorter Poems are available online. Here is the heyzine link which will take you there.
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Anthony Howell: Ten Poems
THE TEMPTATION
I Wilderness
He was led by a voice in a stream, until the stream vanished
And there was only the voice, leading him by the ear,
Until he came to the wilderness, then the voice chuckled
And evaporated among the chuckles of stunted reptiles.
Sky cradled no cloud. The bushes would not burn.
Once, a solitary Phoenix hazed on a far rock,
But disintegrated immediately into a mound of ashes.
Each day, the blabbermouthed baker paid him a visit, bearing
Stone pellets to his marble hutch, grinning, unlatching the jaw,
Saying, ‘Scones. They are scones. Taste one.’
But he knew them to be stones or dung;
Camel dung mixed with the sands or petrified by the ages.
Persevering, pestering, it shoved them under his nose,
‘Smell bread,’ gibbered the tempter, ‘smell.’
The smell very closely resembled new baked bread,
But might have been Brimstone. ‘Where is your faith?
To the faithful this tastes like bread,’
It taunted him, gnawing the stones. Forty days,
Forty years concentrated in as many days,
And not by bread, by bread alone shall he survive them.
Must learn to survive on the leftovers;
Berry and husk when Blabbermouth takes himself off.
Religion’s tit-bits, waters of reflection;
De 1’eau non potable, nail-filings, scraps in The Lord’s garden.
At dawn, dew rises like yeast.
He crawled out to lick the bewildered stones.
Quails plump themselves down and will not budge;
Sabbath days, a roasted quail strutted across the threshold.
His hunger stemmed from an appetite indifferent to emptiness.
He had long entertained the suspicion, “I AM THY BREAD.”
II Pinnacle
Out of the whispering gallery by a coil of steps,
At the top of which blazed the roof. Thence, by a ladder
With as many rungs missing as Methuselah lacked teeth,
To the pinnacle, where his colleague importuned him.
‘Leap. The pinnacle you stand on is His fortress;
And He is your refuge and your fortress, leap.
He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler,
If not from the noisome pestilence I personify.
Let no one call the tempter an agnostic,
Look down. There are the ancient wings spread waiting.
Where is your faith?’ He had no need of faith.
An opened map, his short life lay below him:
Rama, where tin soldiers spitted pink cicadas;
Close at hand, the hollow hill, the weekly scaffold.
Falling, he would plummet through the cages of the doves.
“I have no need of faith, which I personify.
Would you tempt me as you tempted me in Massah?
Wound that rock, my blood will swamp this city,
Drench the world it draws about it for a cloak.
A generation of stars will shine more damply. Death
Is a form of madness. There is no sin greater than to tempt
The Lord thy God with such lascivious madness, dream
Called death. The eternal city with its long dunes.”
And he remained on the pinnacle, deliberating this
For as long as a city’s braziers may bewitch the shepherd.
With the devil beside him, he gazed on the deep sea;
Whether to pitch himself again into that long instant.
The breast quietening the mouth in Galilee.
III Kingdoms
It was late afternoon. They were arguing in the gardens;
Their wits made sharp by citrons in the shade.
Then they were moving, silently, mounting the terraces;
Senor in the lead, switching at grapes with his cane.
Almost by accident, they came to the high place.
Cities were suspended in the haze below them
Like Portuguese Men-of-War, pendulous with gardens.
The snail paced river left a silver trail.
Even at this height, a stench of fats, issuing
From the scent-works, was formidable. Then the smokes
Were halted in their rising. And Senor
Fingered each kingdom as he might his beads.
He described the holiness of the waters—
What beliefs were to be had, and at which wells;
And the profits annually from their bottling.
How every parish boasted at least one shrine per toll-gate;
How each cathedral disgorged a carpet like a tongue
To lap up obeisant ladies and their lords.
Livings were comfy. Ought he not to be ordained?
He smiled. “I had not thought you so unsubtle
As to imagine steeplehouses tempt me.
The motionless kingdom suffers no promotions,
Mine nor yours. Those Hierarchies
Make such a poor investment;
I confess my preoccupations are with this world.
Angel, get thee behind me.”
With this profanity, he left Senor,
And went down alone among the soughing groves.
A dark form losing its figure in the darker Cedars,
While the tempter remained on high, reciting his credo.
A REASON FOR FIDELITY
Far be it from me to say what you are;
xxxxabsent or inland, one is from another,
Singular waters are seeping down,
xxxxare lakes of aloneness where each one
Is far. The eye inside me, the out-
xxxxsider’s eye, pursues compliments you
Deny. Think of the room we sink in
xxxxwhere I heave, my love, into your arms
Such happiness it tires me—
xxxx“Dreaming, he cries,” you dream & cry
In sleep our closer alone. Who
xxxxcares explosion in the eyes without
The heart? The heart explodes, unloading
xxxxleaves of the sea of leaves
Like a rose bloated with Summer. Lovers,
xxxxlocked up for a night, are
Thrown out on the streets, this morning,
xxxxmournful as drunks. A rose you
Are; as far from me as violence,
xxxxand that brings violence close.
That brings violence close, as close
xxxxas a rain veil over not so distant shore
Takes out of sight and
xxxxmakes a distance of distinct
Weeping; a dream at the latest,
xxxxdreamt in the wrong place, which, loved
Out of time, may be prone
xxxxto linger. But once you refused
To blow this out the damn thing
xxxxburnt my fingers and the scar
Has not washed out. Now
xxxxwe separate with hurt and listen
To healing; each secluded beast
xxxxmust suck remedial grasses in a sick retreat.
Animals. Watch
xxxxhow, dun from the veldt, they cross
A line that traces no man’s land.
xxxxA family browse; species stalk
Each other; enter a forest
xxxxand become spotted. Forest is there
For a use, they use it. Ask
xxxxthe beasts; they cannot describe it.
Beasts cannot describe it, nor what
xxxxthey are, nor how they grow together
In the undergrowth and disturb
xxxxno one, nor how uneasily
We hunger. Frontiers are to affront
xxxxus, parting their way; their distance
Quick as the largesse of money; time
xxxxis their dirty war. They’re a
Fallacy, Joe, get killed for dad’s new
xxxxcar; be widow’s company in the dry
Air. If individuals are out of mind
xxxxthere is no anarchy of animals nor
Hierarchy of rock. In singing
xxxxhills to hills on either shore,
No knowing sniper if he snipes
xxxxprecisely what he’s aiming for.
To learn the weakness of one’s enemy go
xxxxto those that love him; faults
They know but those
xxxxwho love him well will not
For ever tell them, those
xxxxwho would tell them do not know.
Those who would tell them do not know:
xxxxbetween what I know and what is
Seen, what may not be told or what you
xxxxmust deny leave much unsaid between
Outside and in. That speaking
xxxxpurred or lay aslant with love
Admits the indivisible commune,
xxxxemission from the pores of word.
“My wife, my child,” are plausible
xxxxexcuses—they rise so fast in farthermost
Trenches, the ends of the road
xxxx—but give the lie to the war.
At least our least state
xxxxis beyond frontiers, distance
Is all its length, and you
xxxxare with me and without me, I
Know where you are.
xxxxBut far be it from me to say what you are.
CIVILISED PEOPLE
Camping in allocated sites, below or above archaeological sites,
xxxxdesignated your personal temenos, pitching the tent
xxxxwithin a wall so low you can step over it in flip-flops.
You get one tree for shade and your own outhouse,
xxxxcomplete with seatless toilet and plugless wash-basin
xxxxbreeding mosquitoes glad of a meal on the doorstep.
Then you may find yourself in a sort of campsite suburbia,
xxxxwith other inmates hosing down their shaded cars
xxxxalong the street of pitches, just as they would
xxxxon Sunday at home while the wife starts the potatoes.
Certain campsites look as efficient as Belsen: high fences,
xxxxand ominously immaculate facilities which civilised
xxxxpeople will leave in the state they were conceived.
The more desolate the landscape, the more impoverished the locals,
xxxxthe more lavish these holiday villages for those who
xxxxlike to rough it in style; more expensive too behind their
xxxxwhite walls crowned with broken glass, their seasonal
xxxxsurcharge and their guardians in the official T-shirt.
One hot gettone lasts two minutes in the tepid shower,
xxxxleaving you stuck, nude and soapy, several
xxxxhundred yards from your tent and another gettone.
For some people in the South, camping becomes a modus vivendi;
xxxxtheir domicile is the mobile home; an extravagant van
xxxxwith a balcony to its roof, behind which they lounge
xxxxin deck-chairs during the long summer siestas.
Others hang their hammocks woven out of coloured string
xxxxin the dappled light swinging between gum trees.
Under the massive white cliff of Eraclea Minoa, they pop
xxxxtheir caught swordfish into a dustbin to keep cool or take
xxxxphotos of their children finishing bluet-cooked rigatoni
xxxxby an open-air television hooked up to the camp electricity.
Tents with several rooms, or at least boasting a raisable
xxxxante-chamber orange door, go up under bamboo roofs between
xxxxposts in aisles beside the sea below the gleaming cars.
Pity the poor fellow sold a pole or two short on his first trip,
xxxxforced to improvise with the guardian’s rake and a clothes-line.
The campers strum guitars beside zippable arches in canvas:
xxxxthey flick matches into the pine needles: they take
xxxxa communal shower in their swimming trunks and bikinis.
Under the violet blotches of the circling mirror-ball
xxxxthey dance motionless with their children in the disco,
xxxxand a photographer’s flash illuminates the wires
xxxxon the lighting trellis against the steep chalk face
xxxxof the cliff some ancient town has fallen off.
PRIMITIVE COLOURS
Her upright inky figure trims the glitter:
That blob stuck in the sand is a parasol.
Dazzle on spindrift glazes tearaway crests,
Blotting out foreground pitched at the intensity
Of a bay buttered gold. The girl in the Speedo
One-piece with cross-straps at the back
Steps out of the wet with a shiver. There
Sprints an ebony boy. Choppy wavelets
Float gilded cornflakes on the brimming crater.
Black headland spills a tree-tossed silhouette,
And the brighter the sky, the darker the body
Of the stout man adjusting his wife’s panorama.
Headland after headland enclosing golden tesserae
Make these bays Byzantine; halo-shaped, as if
An hour before judgement, on the last day,
When the sun proves alchemical, and the landscape
Shrivels before a goldset burning the world
And the gold reflections from the sacred letters.
Blackened joists to stables and retreats, blackened
Apses shattering in temples. Then the saints
Anonymous will stand among their removed lids;
Return to sun-warmed, stone hermitage beds,
To the temptations in gold deserts, tortures,
Tauntings before the expulsion of swart devils
And pillar-snapping in the precincts of idolaters.
Wipe off the smut, and gold will be underneath
On the last day, as the sky goes openly gold,
Earth scorches, and the olive trees grow black.
TICKLISHNESS
The bird she cannot bear
Walks with tiny strides
Attacking here a grain.
Her belly shrinks before
Suggested promenades
Of its feathery idea.
But such a tease as this
No ocean dare resist
Or lunatic ignore.
Imagine either fate:
An overbalanced wave,
Asphyxiating mirth.
Surrender is a fort.
The cornered ball uncurls
Inviting beak to nest.
This confuses predator
With timid prey impaled
Upon a broken sword.
YOUNG MOTHER
She was weighed down by the one child;
Weighed down by the arms. Too old
For a piggy-back, they pull the shoulders
Out of their sockets. On the cover
Of a book women pulled at a rope.
The waiter set down a Martini.
They get set down and forgotten about
Or snatched up so that their handles rip.
She had forgotten to ring the station.
Her mother-in-law snatched up her son
Whose pants had ripped on a fence.
Either they come free or you have
To pay for them. Just then her eyelash
Came free of the lid. She was told
She would have to pay for the operation.
Bags carrying precious objects or perfume
Can be used again for the garbage.
Saint Christopher carried his load.
She wondered whether her body ever would
Be used again, the child weighed.
YOUR BODY IS ALL
Your body is all angles and balances
Like my mind. The shape of you
Is silence where things are posed.
Such things as are heard of,
Imagined, but never seen, I touch
When I hold you inexpertly
Before you go in from the rain.
Then I am left with a maidenly rain
Inside me, and cannot tell
Which way is home.
LOVE POEM
I have tried to write you a love poem,
But its reasoning doesn’t ring true:
Shouldn’t it imply a belief in something,
Sex for instance, not to mention you.
Undermining belief in anything
There’s the work of those talented moderns
Who begin from nothing. Certainly I find it
More sensible to be writing you a letter
Rather than a love poem. In a love poem
There seems to me a conflict between
a) the desire to communicate and b)
The compulsion to make a thing of beauty.
The beauty of the poem is a rival to the beauty
Of the person. It purports to be about them
But is only interested in drawing attention to itself:
A reason for rejecting the poet who wrote it.
Beauties loved by poets get irritated
When they receive poems dedicated to them.
This may not deter the adolescent who
Thinks that a poem can win love by its eloquence
– Which it invariably fails to do.
Given it could, the person probably
Likes you enough anyway to go to bed with you.
Pen and ink will simply delay matters.
Can such poetry only be a projection
Onto an unknown and not particularly loving quantity?
I wanted then, if not to write a love poem,
To create a written version of a life-drawing
Or a well-oiled painting choc-a-bloc with bodies
Like ‘The Death of Sardanapalus’.
Here the carnage apposite to his last throes
Infringes upon shared intimacy though;
And I remain uncomfortably aware
That some readers may not be so taken by it.
One man’s meat, Erotica never gets through
To everybody – as Literature ought to.
I have tried to write you a love poem,
But there’s altogether too much intended
For even an abstract, collaged attempt
Not to betray my brand of mental weakness.
Either form or content reads askew;
Yet there persists a prior image of the love poem
One day one might write
Which coaxes me to have another go at it.
ACAI
I think vanity has had a bad press.
I’d say it’s good for you, more or less.
Vanity keeps you at a decent weight.
When you see a 60 year old with a 6-pack,
You can put it down to Vanity.
Vanity sustains the fitness industry.
A special joggers’ and cyclists’ path
Runs alongside the promenades.
There are open-air gyms with shiny bars
And you can improve beneath the stars.
Arpoador beach has an outdoor gym
Overlooking the sand beyond the headland.
The weights are concrete and the bars rusted.
But people train in the rain.
They train because they are vain –
But you can look at them again and again.
Vanity is responsible for all this.
For girls wearing t-shirts which say YOGA,
Thrusting the word out at you.
Beautiful! Vanity improves.
I don’t understand why it ‘s considered a vice.
People who are fit feel nice.
Vanity is justified. It should be beatified.
What a packed place of worship that would be!
A temple, dedicated to vanity.
Vanity demands you stay healthy.
That is why there’s a juice bar on every corner,
With every sort of juice, including
About seven no European has ever heard of.
Best of all is a giant cup of frozen black sludge.
Too many spoonfuls too fast and you get a head-ache –
Gives you a great complexion though,
And if you are going to wear a bikini
That’s just a few pieces of string,
Bear in mind it’s not the thing we’re looking at, it’s you,
And that part you can’t even see in a mirror.
Pamper it with aloe vera. Vanity demands you do.
Beware of preachers spouting tripe,
And while you can, stay smooth and ripe.
ODE TO THE SUNSET
It’s a February evening. The liners leaving port
Are still in the sun. They gleam on the horizon
Between this beach’s bow and the northern peaks.
Here, the sun’s just set behind the Marriot,
But no one seems to want to leave just yet.
Long, lazy waves keep rolling in, neither too rough
Nor too gentle, at the end of a baking day.
It’s lilac out at sea, while a crag behind the front
Is gilded by our burning star, its crown of trees
Picked out against a final beige and cerise.
People are still at play, racing in or wading out
Or rolling about or going head-first into surges,
To surface, adjusting their cossies. Others stroll
Along the slick, wet edge, or simply sit and watch.
Nobody sneers at the sea. None of us seem
To have a problem with it as we may with art.
It seems better than tv – more honestly
Always the same and ever changing. Now
The eastern sky has a rose pink hue,
But nobody seems prepared to go.
It’s Sunday. They want to spin it out.
They want to mark the waves as they build,
And as they fall, or look at other people:
What they do, how they’re built, who they have
The hots for. The crag darkens. A kite in silhouette
Nibbles at its sheer edge, and on the palmy roofs
Of the penthouses, millionaires and minas
Can be imagined sinking caipirinhas.
The sea darkens, green by now only where the waves
Achieve their critical mass and over-bend.
There are still some of us out bathing though
Since nobody wants this day to end,
But the moon has appeared, half-submerged,
If crisp as can be in its own part of the sky
Where the great birds float, incredibly high.
The vendors have already gone away,
And the promenade’s been lit, its condos black
Against a deepening red. People
Start to leave at last, reluctantly, as the moon
Begins to shine, brightening with every passing minute.
What ships go forth are nests of light,
And only the breaking surf defies the night.
The High Window 