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published
in full in Obsessed With Pipework, 12, ISSN 1367-9147
2 of 6 pieces from: Mata Hari and The Music Box
Sailing
from India
Steaming,
Sumatra to Zeebrugge,
under
a moon washed up like a cuttlefish
on
violet skies.
Across
the drowsy Indian Ocean
a
steady wake churns up spume’s feta tang.
Cymbal,
drum and flute, Shenai music,
billows
in the cinnamon echoes of the oil lamps.
Improvised
curtains part in the Dutch officers’ mess
and
a devadasi, sopping with jewels, glides
into
Orissan dance.
The
rhythms of sandalwood; her fluvial limbs
begin
to lull the gods to sleep;
the
officers languid on cigars and port.
Invocation
to Siva
Like
a rabbit in gunsights
I
sat transfixed as she
winked
at someone behind me:
the
spotlit watchspring of my love.
I
was falling backwards into her,
I
was losing my skin, if I wrote
like
she moved
what
words could I use?
An
audience of unwieldy bodies,
artists,
poets, English officers,
consuming
her politely,
using
a fork to eat a peach.
Swedenborg
himself
would
have called her divine
but
she still prickled
like
a Colette novella.
I
only have words to offer, just paper flowers,
picked
scabs of self-expression,
and
Symbolist bonemeal, connotative properties:
the
poetry of double entendre.
The
end. Curtain.
I
place my stupid hat on my stupid head,
left
in love
in
Paris fog
to
weather the spiel
of
the gaudy streets.
Andrew Nightingale
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