In the land of mutual rivers,
it is all a conversation: one flows uphill, one flows down.
Each ends in a bottomless lake which feeds the other
and the boatmen who sail up, down, round and round
never age, growing half a day older, half a day younger
every time... as long as they never step on land.
In the land of hot moonlight
the bathing beaches come alive at midnight.
You can tell the famous and rich by their silvery tans
which glow ever so slightly in the dark
so at all the best parties there's a moment when the lights go out
and you, only you, seem to vanish completely.
In the land where nothing happens twice
there are always new people to meet;
you just look in the mirror. Echoes learn to improvise.
So it's said... We've sent some of the old
to investigate, but we haven't heard yet. When we
catch up with them, we might not know.
in MAPPA MUNDI by Philip Gross (Bloodaxe, 2003)
In their Presiding Spirits feature, Magma Magazine asks a contemporary poet to write a poem drawing on work on the past. Philip Gross wrote a poem responding to the haiku, and his article, On the Train with Bill and Basho stirs up thoughts about the writing of this poem and poems in general, and traces the effect of Oriental ways of looking, on writers in English.
Follow this link to read the poem and article on Magma's website: Presiding Spirits
In Magma 33 (Winter 2005)
Old Zalavruga, Belomorsk district, Karelia
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I was the son of the Duke of Nowhere.
Nowhere was home. The first sound I remember
was engines sawing steam, the butt
and squeal of waggons full of clunk
shunted cruelly. Lifted to the window sill
I had my first sight of our exile
as I thought: Here, me, watching ...There, trains, going away...
*He was living incognito
but his secret was safe with me.
I was the solitary heir to everything
he never once mentioned. I guessed
from his brooding, his whole silent days,
it must be vast. The lost estates
grew vaster in the weeks,
then months, he went away and stayed.
Beyond the roofs, beyond the dockyard wall
were cranes, then the edge of the world.
On a clear day I could watch grey frigates
climb it and slip over. I woke one night
to singing in the streets that suddenly
grew small as all the hooters of the fleet
brawled up together, blurting
Home... as if any such place
existed, over the horizon, anywhere.
in CHANGES OF ADDRESS by Philip Gross (Bloodaxe, 2001)
top(Stonehenge)
A game of Henge, my masters?
The pieces are set. We lost the box
with instructions years ago.
Do you see Hangman? Or
Clock Patience? Building bricks
the gods grew out of? Dominoes?
It's your move. You're in the ring
of the hills, of the stones, of the walls
of your skull. You want to go?
You want out? Good - that's
the game. Whichever way you turn
are doors. Choose. Step through, so...
And whichever world you stumble into
will be different from all the others, only
what they might have been,
you'll never know.
in CHANGES OF ADDRESS by Philip Gross (Bloodaxe, 2001)
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