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Lynmouth               [untitled]

         Augusta’s Hoax           The End of the Day

 

Lynmouth

 

Lynmouth, Watersmeet,

the time the water pump

packed up in a cloud of steam.

We left the car and walked

down towards the gorge.

The rivers were in flood.

We were both so angry.

 

Watching two rivers meet,

we caught the rush, were silent,

kissed, didn’t want to talk.

This water worked:

the car was all words

water wanted to resist,

like tension and torque.

 

The RAC man came and went,

came back and began

to remanufacture flow.

We stood in that valley soaked

in whitenoise, in drenching mist,

trying to understand.

 

 

Andrew Nightingale

published in Magma, 19,  ISSN 1352-9269;

in collection, The Big Wheel, 2009, Oversteps Books,

ISBN 9781906856052.

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[untitled]

 

Like a neutral card from Smiths

Detail: Waterlilies (Monet)

I leave this poem

blank for your own message.

 

Andrew Nightingale

published in The Acorn Book of Contemporary Haiku,

ISBN: 0-953420-52-3;

published in HQ Poetry Magazine, Issue 21.

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Augusta's Hoax

 

The recent discovery of Augusta Ada Lovelace's enigmatically self-titled "Mathematical Scrapbook", at the bottom of a trunk in the attic of an English country house, has brought to light this previously unpublished poetry. The style differs greatly from any of her known work but is believed to have been partially dictated by an obscure occult procedure.

 

The "Poetical Faery Engine" that she claims is author of the poems, through its application of Bernoulli Numbers to source texts, is unlikely to have ever existed. It is believed she wrote the poems herself during moments of distraction influenced by Mesmerism. The supposed Engine is likely to have been an invention designed to exonerate her from the production of poetry, an activity frowned upon by those closest to her.

 

    WAYWARDNESS, BEAUTY & INTANGIBILITY

    BERNOULLI NUMBER 76

 

The black dwarf is black tonight; poor father,

if my poor father had but possessed me; wayward,

marvellous, electrical &c, &c we could

twine like an ampersand, the subject of Force

Circulating. Poor, black, intangible

father. His comely-looking ghost has transmitted

to me its ugly game of human solitaire. Now

I am under the dominion of the black dwarf

and together we celebrate the Sabbath Mathematically.

                                                                                               Not A.A.L.

 

    WILL ' O ' THE WHISP [sic]

    BERNOULLI NUMBER 74

 

This is not your A.A.L., your Avis Phoenix,

your prescient Bluestocking Augusta speaking to you.

The black dwarf has a new language requisite

to furnish bird plumage for the purpose; say

marabou feathers mixed with silver corn.

Pray dress up your affectionate Avis Phoenix,

little bird, so when you bring her earthwards

with the usual crimes, she'll be underlined

like a body under the abstraction of the Electricity.

 

 

    ONE THEORY OF THE MODE OF ACTION

    BERNOULLI NUMBER 72

 

Even the sprites & faeries at one's elbow,

in one shape now & the next dissimilar, fear

Him who is so darkly known in the world;

who has me commit the same crimes; done thro'

the night of my life behind the green curtain.

In maroons and puces I court another sense;

I am under the dominion of electricity where faeries

cannot mitigate the transmission of genius

& sprites hold out most strange & dreadful hidden realities.

                                                                                         Mesmer: decode.

 

 

    MORAL PERCULIARITIES

    BERNOULLI NUMBER 70

 

There are days when I am literally underlined;

the Astrologer at Dulwich could see it; as if

I had died, an intuitive perception echoed

I dare say in my Phrenology. These random

Frankensteins, self-made, as even this,

pre-eminently vibrate in an increasing ratio,

an unlikely run of backed winners more curious

than I can tell you. Such engineered intercourse

with a Lord as in due time shall machine a Poet.

 

 

    DEVIL OR ANGEL IT WATCHES

    BERNOULLI NUMBER 68

 

More of the crystalline & less & less

of the nebulous form, your puzzle pate breaths

(no purely mortal lips). You are saying

"I am now going out on horseback",

while I have a Spell; you leave me your Fairyism;

you ink it all over for me later, fairy similies

in a madwoman's hand, automatic,

when the machine deserts me and I'm you again,

unwell, very pale & a dull heavy mortal!

 

 

    UNSUSPECTED, EVEN REPRESSED

    BERNOULLI NUMBER 66

 

Behind the green veil: feasting & flirting

in luxury & ease. I have taken much pains

father, to get thro'. Here comes in

the intrigante & the politician!

I, poor little Fairy in your service,

mind & limbs! Deliver to me tout

suit plus vête! Your poetical surrogate

in violet velvet; your c—— (that little word spoils it)

for the work & duties for you & the engine here lucidly demonstrated.

 

 

    DEVELOPPED [sic]

    BERNOULLI NUMBER 64

 

Bernoulli runs thro' bubble science & bubble nature,

enough to be seen in all real and natural genius.

See how it shapes me, it's surely meta-analytic,

my own Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, pent-up!

Unknown! But coming thro'! I could even

call it a translation; mathematics turning

into a thing, the verbal & symbolic representative;

carrying on an infinite chain of deductions.

This I know. These are the seeds of destruction, within me.

 

 

    A SINGULAR FUNCTION, IN VERY DEED!

    BERNOULLI NUMBER 62

 

A million successive additions +, +, +,

&c, &c, &c very amply analysed;

this ampersand machine in the great laboratory

of my unspoken libido; pain a million times

over & over. Oh father I fear not

your almost awful energy; let it stand,

pithy & vigorous. I go over it again

and again like the proofs I revise, I can't leave

those wiry little spooks of mine alone! I have a Spell!

 

 

Andrew Nightingale

published in Tremblestone, 4, ISSN 1463-9181

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The End of the Day

 

In this slow booming heat, the moon

floats like an impossible ice cube.

As the dregs of the sun glance sideways,

the moon is buoyed in a floodlit pool.

Why should I tell you this? For the pleasure

of recognition? There's nothing new here.

Some arbitrary Roman stood the same heat

and saw the same impossible moon

and thought of the pleasure of ice.

 

The moon is melting.

Today its ice is even more impossible than before.

I recline among Romans

who pick their teeth and wait for entertainment.

The mind that thinks of ice

sees a blade of grass and thinks of war,

sees the sun set and thinks of blood,

sees an empire die and raises a glass

to the new empire.

 

When I next drop ice

into Bombay Sapphire, I don't

think of the moon. I think of the associations

I make every day as if they're new, as if

they're not echoes of old atrocities.

Then I wash them through with juniper.

 

 

Andrew Nightingale

published in The Journal, 13, ISSN 1466-5220;

in collection, The Big Wheel, 2009, Oversteps Books,

ISBN 9781906856052.

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