Lionel Abrahams
THE CUSTOMER IS WRONG AGAIN
(Me, o me, remember me!)
Aha! the poetry magazine’s arrived.
Not to be of new coined joys deprived,
I turn each crisp and hopeful page....
and slowly smoulder (woe!) into a rage.
What creature gets inside me as I read?
Dunce? Curmudgeon? Censor's breed?
Pedantic, spiteful, envious-blind
ignoramus left behind?
Some kind of madman scared of change?
Vandal allergic to what's strange?
(While also what's not strange enough
will make me sneeze and itch and cough.)
Philistine? Heavybooted cop?
Straightest of squares insisting `Stop!'
to what's half-hidden, hinted, slant,
curved, dreamy-coded, shade-lit, can't
or won't explain itself or be
a term in my equation? - Yes, I see
how horrible my sneers, how hard
and low the hubris in my disregard
for this enlightened splendid season's
poets' inspirations, pretexts, reasons:
(Me, o me, remember me!)
You've wined your muse, or potted her,
or tripped her into bed with rarer stuff;
found that you can do this thing
(like riding bikes), or it gets done
(like bungee-jumping), or is allowed,
or fun; or you’ve been liberated as to
creed, class, custom, gender, canon, sex.
You’ve identified the dimple
whence the pain of passion springs;
been post-modernised by theory;
picked up the neglected tune,
or insight hid in some despised,
or else respected, oeuvre.
You’ve possibly been stricken
by delicious shame or proper guilt;
embraced your duty to denounce
this fortnight's relevant atrocity;
embraced your girl or boy
or boy-or-girl; disinterred
a scandal long recalled
only in forgotten books;
been pricked to carry out a neat
experiment with form; visited
planets; opened your third eye;
spoken with very God; found
beneath illusion the last
inmost truth, behind confusion
the true and moving bit
of inmost self;
you have exposed and sworn to cure
some rottenness of history;
invented a game with syllables,
lines on the page, or gnomic refrains;
been stirred to disturb the bourgeois
conscience, or slam the iron-grey
apparatchiks; freed your mind,
or freed from mind some deep sublimity;
done what's never, perhaps,
been done, BECAUSE it's never been
done...as far as anyone remembers;
claimed the right to shout or mutter
whatever you choose however
you choose or
don't exactly
choose......
(Me, o me, remember me!)
O, composition's noble causes! I respect
them all, or almost all. How else reflect
what moves the pencil, quill or cursor -
mine, yours or that of any would-be verser
coining new coin. What bothers me is not
the poems' source, but that the poets forgot -
nine times in ten it seems - who in the end
(past editor, secretary, printer, those who send
subscription copies out) will read the stuff.
(I'd save the time I waste in snarling and gnashing
by throwing the journal out unread, for trashing -
but, wait a bit, here's a part or whole
that speaks to me, lifts me, feeds my soul.)
Eager to gather, respond, enjoy (well, just enough),
but bitter when baffled, vengeful when foiled,
not to be stalled too long or fooled or oiled,
merciless with dullards, hoaxters, bores,
counting my hours as precious as you yours:
last in the line, compatriot Poet, is me -
your only friend, your Reader-Enemy.
Me, o me, remember me!
Jason Armstrong
the swirl of smoke through leaves
activating shafts of sun
chaos looms with every light stream
only breath holds the flag of order
the water is a flood of music
the earth moves closer, fills my lungs
so much moves, more remains still;
you move your thigh and my thoughts
stop
Jason Armstrong
behind closed doors down empty streets
under the counter between the sheets
on your lips in your eyes
into your arms between your thighs
over a glass of wine after the fact
into uncharted waters don't turn your back
on the tip of my tongue against the tide
over the moon nowhere to hide
Arthur Attwell
FROG
Beneath the wind, beside the slim canal,
I sit to stare beneath the water there
and wait for frogs. In still, thalassic flight
their limbs transpose an urge into a glide,
their reflexes construe the riverbed’s
elaborate calculus. When I was small
I fished for tadpoles here and took them home
raining in their buckets and their jars
upon the windowsill. This, only till
I found them growing legs and mottling,
and my nerve collapsed. Then spring on spring I’d sit
and gurgle every glass upon the stream
before the creatures lost the grace and poise
of the marine. For when a full-grown frog
lands, alighting squat and bottle green
upon a rock, its glistening, swelling throat
expands and falls, expands and falls;
its eyes are dimmed and dull, its legs lethargic, bulged
and grievous. Nothing mine could ever be
so honest to its defects, so resolved
to not plunge down at once, not try resist
the slender tadpole's metamorphosis.
Ken Barris
Somewhere on an island
Here, she is gorgeous
and perilous. Approach
if you will but keep
procession, singing
in good order.
She is thought to possess
frightening mysteries:
sleight of hand, mathematics,
tricks of light and measurement
of shadow, the power to turn
men into swine (provided
they comply as some have
though unwittingly)
and her double once dwelt
on the moon, the dark side
where none might scry her
out, learning archery.
Go, single yourself out
if you must, advance
your cause, interest her.
A traveller once went
to a cold land and returned
with secrets of arbitrary fire,
his left hand lost
and in the sojourn of comets
instruction may be found,
so too in the eclipse,
or the flight of pelicans
and the rule of such women
who speak divers tongues
of chaos, remembering nothing
and changing all they touch.
Go, single yourself out
from the ordinary heroes,
advance your cause, interest
her. There is little ripening
without blight.
Ken Barris
Uisge Beatha
Everything resolves to speech,
each atom a pronouncement,
phoneme, if you prefer -
so he decided, sipping whiskey
and flat warm soda, feeling
Johnny Walker inspired -
even electronics, speakable
arcana in which subtext
is tangible dangerous flow
of power; then pondered
how to resolve this metaphysic
exercise - with a switch?
Let language slide about
where it will, drunk or not
one has to ask: what kind
of power mounts up in merely
verbal climax? Enough to move
he thought as the glass slid
out his hand and broke:
mountains.
Ken Barris
Senility
I cannot recall any picture script
of Aegypt, though I was born there
nor imagine those golden ships used
in earlier times to sail the air
so brightly that we rivalled the colder
more distant planets.
It comes to this now: the strict
pedantic memory of a printer
gnawing endless sheets of paper.
Ken Barris
Reminiscence
Only a shadow now
bitterness past telling –
everything else scraped away
– leaves him staring at
the malice of life
Come let me be, she said
– that was many years ago
bas relief on a stone wall –
he forgets now: something
to do with her legs
Ken Barris
o celebrate
o in your heart celebrate the pygmy calibrations of
the moth at midnight's trembling wing which
determines who shall prosper who shall die; yes
celebrate all reflections concerning that abyss that
men cross and women too and those ruder views
which lead to safety in the Christmas mall to the
grand and silver spangled helium balloon; o
celebrate in secret joy angel wings in green fields
that wrap about your broken bones and clean pink
skin; so too the winged Seraphic head its flaming
fourfold sword which put you from Eden from that
trilobite-riddled yes that amniotic sea; celebrate
with all the patient sweat of your dimly conscious
brow o one more time these things.
Mike Cope's version of the above:
o grieve
o in your heart grieve
the pygmy calibrations
of the moth
at midnight's trembling wing
which determines
who shall prosper
who shall die;
yes grieve all reflections
concerning that abyss
that men and women cross
and those ruder views
which lead to safety
in the christmas mall
to the grand
and silver spangled
helium balloon;
o mourn in secret grief
angel wings in green fields
that wrap about your broken bones
and clean pink skin;
so too the winged Seraphic head
its flaming fourfold sword
which put you from Eden
from that trilobite-riddled
yes that amniotic sea;
grieve with all the patient tears
from your dimly conscious eyes
o one more time
these things.
Ken Barris
Hey diddle diddle
the tomcat played bull fiddle
the squint old cow jived
with the moon
The little bitch sprang widdershins
in glee at such fun
and the dish was drummed
solo by the spoon
Ken Barris
Moles in the pool
A clarity belongs to rotten things in this autumn light:
the granular diction of oak leaves and black mud
in the gutters, the dull mass of loose-tiled pine cones
strewn about. There is clarity in the piss-fouled fences
and hedgerows, in the smashed bottle litter glinting dully.
Dogs have been here, and coughing beggars leaving
their tubercular sputum, the discarded fishbones
and greasy paper saved from restaurant bins.
Beneath the supermarket ventilator, gusting warm
stale air, stink of cabbage and the maroon smell
of sawn bones, a homeless woman spins about
in rage. Her head is too big for her twig-thin body,
the lips are worn beyond exfoliation, her eyes
are marble-blank with what she’s seen and drunk:
‘Hy soek my poes!’ she rasps, flailing against the
wall.
I wince, not at her language but at the compressed agony,
the psychic scabbing, the tortured history in every movement.
Intensity belongs to the silent moon, casting a double
corona of light, screened on the mackerel sky, framed
by the savage protestation of the oaks. Insects, frogs
and muted traffic conspire to keep me out here
with a dull song of praise for my life, its narrow interests,
its entertainments. There are drowned moles in my pool.
I hold a glass of sour wine and with it drink a salute
to the pictures of the day. Everything is cold
and black to the wet touch of shadow: the moonlight,
the sky, reach down to my lawn.
Ken Barris
February night
It is a relentless warm night
in this moonlit republic
we hardly possess. Women,
men and sleeping children rise
to the pleasurable suffering of it,
their souls become bodies
lifting with careful ease, barely
dangling above houses and rooftops,
passing through the branches, the trees of the city
their company crowding moister reaches
of the air, the luminous spaces. But though
we glow for all we're worth and float too,
there's no moral to be milled from it:
only warm darkness
filled with sullen bodies
and minds smouldering
in broken beauty.
Ken Barris
Waiting for the aliens
with apologies to CP Cafavy
The aliens are arriving fairly soon,
probably the turn of the century.
It's widely expected now - Hollywood
has made it clear. We don't believe
the movies of course, but everyone
knows that the collective unconscious
turns like a vast array of bowl antennae
to Andromeda, to Arcturus, to the great
Horsehead Nebulae of primal chaos.
What will we do when they come?
What riots, what extravaganzas,
what cavortings of the human spirit?
It is unimaginable. Hollywood's
wildest exaggerations simply fail
at prediction, their canvas is far
too small. But then, what if the aliens
are boring? Say they come bringing jazz,
the electron microscope, modernism,
a cure for cancer, caffeine-free cola?
What if they're anxious about death,
spend time in therapy as we do
and don't fully understand
the economic cycle?
Oh, there will be colossal parties
to make Rome pale, orgy upon orgy
of fundamentalism, myriad wise voices
fulfilling their own stale prophecies.
But deep down - felt only in the still
small voice of individual hearts
and in the fall of stock markets
everywhere - it will be a terrible
disappointment. There is only
one thing possible more calamitous:
what if the aliens never arrive?
They were meant to be
a kind of solution.
Ken Barris
There is a device
struggling to invent itself
within my fantasy. It has
glass plates and optics -
pools of silken light, very hard,
perhaps space itself distorted -
and hums uncontrollable earthy
chords according to season
and position in the hemisphere.
I cannot say what this engine
does yet; I know it emerges
again and again in half-baked
poems such as this one, struggling
towards a clear demonstration
of its proper form, inevitably
sinking back into trembling
vagueness and dissipation.
I imagine that it will prove
one day to be a psychic
projector, a kind of ouija
board or valve radio, its cones
and rods projecting laser light
through a lens of unattainable
wishes and febrile suggestions.
Half achingly clear glass lamps,
half overheated plates of stainless
steel (in the earlier forms, bronze)
it will shine in the night of my thoughts
making artificial certainty,
a winged and miniature demiurge
in its own right
that will inscribe in bile and fire
poems outside my knowledge.
Ken Barris
The acolyte’s choice
He thought he might have been Pound,
though that troubadour died shortly
before he was born - but he lacked
the alabaster touch. Perhaps then Plato,
Pythagoras, the Comte de Saint-Germaine
or one of the lesser Boddhisattvas?
Certainly not Yeats, not Socrates
(the one too metallic, angular, the other
too rough-hewn from the rock
of his understanding). In the end
he settled on Plotinus, knowing little
philosophy but liking the sound
of the name, its closeness to Plato.
That would be perfect, nothing
too pretentious: the Alexandrian
must do for his previous incarnation.
As to the next one, who knows?
Blake come again, Boehme,
perhaps even the Maitreya?
Ken Barris
Interviews with Bat on the Devil
1
Bat, in repose disgustingly
upside-down, tells me the Devil
is a close, a special friend
(though a shudder involuntarily
runs through a fold of his wing),
"since the very earliest times;
I'm no ingenue namedropper
yet I'm willing to do an interview
on someone I know well
and is badly misunderstood."
"The Devil?" I ask. "You're joking
of course. He's hardly taken seriously
even as a mythic figure though
his advice is often followed.
Is there sufficient interest
to justify the time and effort?
Only Christians eternally locked
in battle with his image believe
he exists in the first place;
but they're prejudiced, desiring
to see him through the eyes
of his worst enemies.
"What could one say to a public
militantly convinced they've beaten
the subject flat, talking of "battle"
and "soldiers" and their "victory won"
or again, huddling together in clubby fear
and talking themselves into a state
of virtuous hatred? Then those
who don't believe in cosmic powers
decode that unfelt terror swirling about
in the current elegant language;
while others are too jaded
to imagine anything at all.
No, I can't see it."
Bat sneered: "The Devil I know
is devil indeed and fools of any kind
are his second greatest interest,
religious, jaded or fashionable:
his concerns extend well beyond
the religious mind. Believe,
I speak with authority,
he consults me often.
Take up your pen
and I will disclose
the hidden deeds
and thoughts of Satan."
A twitch of his wing and my skin
turns to glass; the fluid clockwork
of my soul is seen. "I will dictate.
You write on that slate," commands Bat.
Interviews with Bat on the Devil
2
"You should try cockroach," said Bat,
"the flying kind," his tongue licking round
the abdominal plates of just such a creature --
"excuse me, my mouth is full -- though the wings
are dusty to the touch and if you swallow
enough of it whole the parts convulse
all the way down, most satisfying.
"I cannot understand why those of you
who claim to be human find insects
revolting. Apart from being delicious
they show a touching innocence,
their savagery is pure, unmitigated
by moral belief, so too their terror
in flight which is the very best part
to consume or their lust and like myself
they are very nearly the eldest among us
at least this side of the threshold."
Bat spat out a scrap of chitin:
"Where was I? Ah yes, not arrivee
like that upstart early post-modernist
Crow or the Don Marquis creature
whose name I would shudder to remember -- "
"It was," I said, "a cockroach, like the one
you've just eaten." Bat looked displeased
and uttered a supersonic whistle
which I felt as a crawling sensation
along my scalp. "Where was I?" he asked
disdainfully. "The Devil," I prompted,
"You promised to talk of the Devil."
Interviews with Bat on the Devil
3
"One doesn't," said Bat, "talk of the Devil
just like that, the matter requires gravity
which His Darkness invented personally;
not that I wish to avoid the subject
but certain trappings of ceremony
seem necessary --" Oh, Bat appeared
a trifle harassed, if not exactly fearful --
"as a safeguard against the Satanic
occupation. No, nothing as dramatic
as possession, I refer to an influence
over the direction taken in any given
speech, a subversion of the moment,
a colour tainting each phrase
(his touch you see is delicate)
whereby one attributes ideas to oneself
quite mistakenly. Who can claim
mastery over his own sentences?
They speak us to our detriment!
To which end the Devil invented
the Art of Printing. Of course,"
added Bat with a disingenuous
cough, "things are different
for an accomplished Demiurge
like myself, one of the few voices
one might regard as original
outside the Devil's own;
I am no journeyman
when it comes to grammar."
A stillness stirred in his cave,
terrible, fearful, as if that other voice
might whisper out of the limestone tongues
and dark chalk passages below us.
"Printing?" I prompted, only half
as a distraction. "What has that
to do with it?"
Bat clawed on
to a stalactite, flapping
his wings horribly,
creating a musty
downdraught.
"Material Process!" he roared,
"Thought hurled down out of Spirit
and cast into suffering rigid blocks
of form, the true demonic magic!"
"How does that differ," I insisted,
"from handwriting? Isn't writing
of any kind the visible corpse
of an unseen thought?"
His eye glittered with blind malice:
"It's obvious. Your spirit is most
truly found in your hands,
down to each finger.
"Each letter turned out by hand
reflects the soul of the writer,
warmed by his by blood,
sculpted by his nerves,
his individual movement;
each leaden slug of the press
is a soldier of monotony.
Language itself grows flatter
by the day, verbose, repetitious,
abstract, dry."
He wavered briefly out of focus.
"Don't take my word for it," he said, collapsing
jerkily into a cylinder of darkness,
umbrella sheathed: "Read the crap
you write every day and compare it
with the art of that other scribbler Dante."
Interviews with Bat on the Devil
4
Let me describe (said Bat) how
Beelzebub created a Human Form,
starting with Head, the prototype
that is, of all human heads.
The demon took a sphere
of brass, hollowed out
like a great metal pumpkin,
turning its face on a lathe
of his devising;
His talons scrabbled at these fiery
tools, titanic disk on colossal chuck,
his leathery knuckles grinding
and as he took off the dome of the skull
the lips of the wound glowed
orange as they
sucked apart
and parted;
He dropped the brass scalp
up-ended on his bench
where it rocked
a trapped turtle
and lay still,
blind
the gaze of the open head
following his movement about
so trustfully;
And he gathered from sundry
quarters of the world:
power packs, silicon rods,
circuit boards, enamelled
cylinders and cones and stars,
golden spheres and three of lead,
and ethers from which the frost
spewed lazily, and monstrous
volcanic essences; assembled
and membered and measured
these powers, pouring them
into his thinking cavity of bronze!
As he began welding on
the top of the skull, sealing
in the engine of this magnificently
wrought time machine
the smoke curled slowly
about the brass brow, sank
fainting from temple and occiput, poured
poisonously into the gutters --
It was, concluded Bat
gravely, his greatest
failure.
"How so? You puzzle me.
The Devil, I thought, boasts
his most enormous successes
with humankind?"
That may be, said Bat. He tried
to teach Head to speak. It could
only repeat the instruction manual
he hadn't written yet. In the end
God stole the idea (you've probably
read this somewhere) and though
I hate to confess it, did a better job.
Interviews with Bat on the Devil
5
"To speak of evil," said Bat,
"you need a terrible sharp mind.
Posturing about it is simpler.
What do you know of the subject?
Do you hate? Murder? Lie?
Torture, plunder, rape
the innocent, preferably
on gargantuan scale?"
"My evil is petty," I replied.
"I forget things, I'm not kind,
I'm insensitive. I practise
class war helplessly, injure
the environment, cheat on tax
and sometimes lose my temper
with my children."
"You're mediocre," retorted Bat.
"You cannot meditate on evil properly.
Certainly not with authority or distinction.
You have no poetic gift and don't know
the difference between chapter and verse.
What is evil to you?"
"Dachau," I said confidently.
"The Russian Gulags, Auschwitz,
Genocide in Ruanda. Apartheid.
The child abuse I witness
on television."
"You're a victim," Bat retorted,
"of everything you've read. You've learnt
to manufacture reactions. You need
museums, documentaries, horror and schlock:
cheap thrills faintly redolent of your own nature.
Merely to talk of evil demands a spirit
seared in the cruel fonts of knowledge."
"Is that you, Bat?" I asked,
impatient with his posturing.
"Are you such a spirit?"
Ugliness flowed in my veins
and I said: "You're nothing but
a flying rat, barely capable
of sight!"
Bat let go his stalactite
and fell into the abyss,
sparks blitzing from the edge
of his fibrillating wings.
"Impress me not!" he thundered
up distantly, "with your trite
sagacity: *evil* is inscribed
on your soul, in the marrow
of your spine, in your eternally
contracting brain! Do you know,"
he hissed from somewhere nearby,
"that evil is two? That is the number
of the Devil!
"Duality?" I leered. "I wouldn't
expect from you such New Age pabulum!"
Oh Bat scuttered and hissed and swooped
upwards again. I thought I had him
pinned down, exposed at last: a self-
appointed bulletin of the inane!
But he was to have the last word.
Interviews with Bat on the Devil
6
I strive with Bat: “You speak
of original powers, yourself
and the Devil. Yet you say
he creates duplication,
staleness devoid of life.
This seems to be a most
indefensible paradox.”
I needn't (said Bat) defend
the Devil's creative honour.
Where would art be without him?
Without his diabolic insight
that antagonism so pressing
so insidious and vast
what could one write?
Homily, shouted Bat, sampler,
priestly confection, tales
of the faithful de-voutly
at good work and prayer,
all in fatuous agreement
saccharine and nau-seating,
without choice, without
the delight of corruption
or the pain of integrity.
You owe the Devil much!
“That may be,” I replied,
“But can't help feeling
you're skirting the issue.
That brass head the Devil made -
what did it say? What could it say?
The device only repeated instructions,
regurgitated the thoughts contained
in its blueprint! So you told me!”
Bat flickered
out of sight,
annoyed, buzzing
like an invisible
Helmholz coil.
Typical, his voice hissed
out of nowhere, the nattering
of a pedant lacking insight!
He flickered back, his body
firming black and shuddering
at its own horribleness.
The Devil is two, intoned Bat.
I mean this literally,
you know it well
but can't see straight.
Lucifer the brightest star
fell burning ever
God's true first born:
this prime intelligence
is a spirit of beauty
unable to obey. He churns
in no hell or underworld,
never did. He falls still,
great wings outspread
in a void of plasma,
a Bat of cosmic proportions
hearing all thing true
and many things false,
whispering again
their secret laws,
the sublime itself
given voice.
Satan is more popular by far:
lord of ugliness and god of power,
his claws twisting through the coils
of matter, milling all things down
to atomic number, tyrannically logical,
inflexibly oppressive, stewing
in hatred of all things living.
Those who revere the mysteries
of egoism love Lucifer -
Satan's worshippers trample
down the lives of others.
The universe rests on this dichotomy -
it is implied in the Bible which no-one
reads carefully anymore, least of all
its custodians, those priests and churlish
ministers, their hosts of fellow travellers.
I may well add a footnote (said Bat
in an insincere professorial voice):
with-out Satan there is no technology
or material progress - the angels
don't understand it. Without Lucifer,
no cul-ture, art or freedom of thought.
You owe the Devil far more
than you imagine.
Interviews with Bat on the Devil
7
It is true (said Bat),
tucking his head under his wing
and gnashing at an armpit,
that fleas have lesser fleas;
you may ask questions.
"Does the Devil believe,"
I mused, "in incarnation?"
There is only, Bat declared,
life after death in everlasting
fire and unendurable torment
from which existence on earth
is a brief respite, an eyeblink
of illusion that human being
has any meaning, dignity or joy,
oh Saint Paul was correct about this
and right to cast those he dis-liked
into Hell for the good of their souls.
In fact he had no choice in the matter -
there was a true charlatan, knowing enough
to claim power over the inevitable, laughable,
quite laughable, like commanding the sun
to rise on Tuesday! Everyone lands up in Hell.
"But incarnation?" I urged.
"The Devil's view?"
Bat gnashed his mandibles
piously and sighed: incarnation,
and for that matter life before birth,
so too the teaching of karma - the Devil
is in full accord with Mother Church,
there is none, these are oriental fictions.
I smelt attar and roses,
streams of incense circling the cave:
faintly, faintly, a choir of bass voices.
What else perplexes
your mortal frame?
Ask (invited princely Bat),
I'm in a mood for monologue.
"You mention two devils,
but speak continually
as if there is one. Surely
you contradict yourself?"
Now you speak as the sinners do
Bat rejoined silkily. Many people
believe that God is three and yet
they talk of one Divinity.
Should the Devil be treated
differ-ently? One rule for God,
another for the Devil?
Is that just?
"Is it true?" I asked,
"that the Devil particularly
favours women as instru-ments
of seduction?"
An insidious belief, remarked Bat,
brought about by that fool Moses
with his touching little tale of Eden -
speculation on his part, I assure you -
propagated for centuries by men
who wore black dresses and refused
to propagate, at least not honestly.
It all depends, of course, on what
you mean by "woman" -
through which woman exactly
does the Devil gain entrée?
The one you entertain in yourself?
Would you burn that creature
at the stake for a witch?
"Ah, a Jungian bat," I replied
glibly. "You talk of the anima
which I read about continuously
in Cosmopolitan and Femina."
You reveal your depth
of understanding, said Bat.
Listen to me rather.
With each incarnation,
you undergo a gender change.
You were a woman in your previous
incarnation, a charming Italian nun.
Slightly squint unfortunately.
At last I had Bat: "I thought you said
there's no such thing -"
Oh no, said Bat, I've never denied
the existence of nuns, Italian
or any other kind. Especially
Italian nuns, I've known so many,
they imitate me all the time -
"No such thing as incarnation!"
Bat hung twisting
from one claw. Oh no,
he insisted, I said
nothing of the kind.
I paged through my notes
frantically: "Here it is.
You said the Devil doesn't
believe in incarnation -
there is none. I have it
down, in black and white."
Well, I did say that, perhaps,
it might even be true: the Devil
does not believe in incarnation,
not at all. Quite different
to what the Devil understands
to be the case, or what the Devil
is willing to admit under certain
circumstances, or what he considers
it politic to release to the public
at large. Besides, Bat shouted back
as he released the remaining
claw and flapped busily
towards the cavern entrance,
which Devil had you in mind?
"Why is the Devil bad?" I yelled
in desperation. "I mean any Devil...
if we owe the Devil so much..."
But Bat had gone.
"Why is the Devil said to be evil?"
I asked the empty chamber. "And what
do these names mean?"
I was weary of Bat's dark phrases.
I longed for simple things: the taste
of fresh white bread, midsummer leaves,
children's voices shouting in a field.
Interviews with Bat on the Devil
8
Bat came to me in a dream
in which I could understand
the language of animals,
saying if you sup with the demon
you'll need a long spoon.
He took me by the hand
and we flew into a small room
where a writer bent over a table
working half in his sleep, mumbling
to himself about the devil, blind
to everything else about him.
I turned away from his ghastly
brightness, the violence
of his pallor. I couldn't bear
the tormented churlishness
in that gaze, like someone
cheated of his birthright,
possessed and ruined,
fouled by himself.
Bat interrupted my fearful
musing: I forgot to mention,
he said, another good reason
Satan invented the art of printing.
"What is that?" I asked
unsteadily as the writer
in the demon's palm grew
increasingly familiar.
He wishes, replied Bat,
to disseminate his views
more widely.
I fell out of the dream
as if from a great height,
down into my room,
waking with a start,
pen in hand, crumpled
papers strewn about.
Interviews with Bat on the Devil
9
"How do you know
the things you say?"
I asked Bat. "It's easy
to spew out grandiose
statements no-one
can disprove."
He bridled: It was I who taught
Mme. Blavatsky that secret doctrine
she never quite understood; I who hid
in the still point of the turning world,
pretending to be a large and important silence -
what a jape, poor Eliot never suspected a thing!
It was I who maundered the Prophet into Khalil Gibran's
ear at point-blank range, why, I was the English opium
Thomas de Quincey ate and confessed to!
Yes, I was the knock on Coleridge's door,
I was Gertrude Stein's typographical stutter,
indeed I was -
"Jonathan Livingstone Seagull's
flight instructor?"
Bat glared at me blindly
and spat a word into his stale
cave:
Poetaster