Asylum

For Marina You say the old masters never got it wrong, But when Goya painted the death of the imagination It was a lost dog against a usurious yellow sky And the dog, a hapless creature who had drawn itself Ten miles on two legs, stared in amazement To see the man who once fed him from his plate Reduced to this. So I felt this week, the vile soil and everything upon it— The beggar guest kicked from the table Before his own dog, and even the honest unpicking Of art performed nightly and in seclusion. Like any Penelope my armor is resignation Although I thought I would lift the bow myself And draw. By the morning he is gone And what to make of this? The prostitutes hang from a beam like mice The suitors are piled unburied in the yard. And some say that it is now much better And others, that it is worse. So order was restored I stared in amazement • Perhaps Akhmatova was right When she wrote who knows what shit What tip, what pile of waste Brings forth the tender verse Like hogweed, like the fat hen under the fence Like the unbearable present tense Who knows what ill, what strife What crude shack of a life And how it twists sweetly about the broken sill: Pressingness, another word for honeysuckle But housewives? Has poetry Ever deepened in the pail Was it ever found in the sink, under the table Did it rise in the oven, quietly able To outhowl the hoover? Does it press more than the children’s supper The sudden sleepless wail? Did it ever? It lives. It takes seed Like the most unforgiving weed Grows wilder as the child grows older And spits on dreams, did I say How it thrives in the ashen family nest Or how iambs are measured best Where it hurts: With the heel of an iron On the reluctant breast Of a shirt? • MICHAEL BLANN There was a hush, then Michael Blann Stepped out onto the stage. Michael Blann, with his pipe and his jukebox head Oh, he’s your man. He has a song for all weathers, a pipe And a voice, and he sings and he roams He sings to the wind and a dog of how The trees are all bare and Jack’s come home. He’s a thin voice, like a spider thread On days when the sun is late and fine Live and let live, sings Michael Blann The wind yields not, but the hills is mine. He’s no call for fate passing over His sheep are all angels, the stars are his Lords He’ll play any part the clouds should fancy To humble tunes and hand-me-down words The acts are written in briar strands And the Pharisees are leaves in the air I likes a drop pipes Michael Blann Sing follow hark forward the innocent hare. He wore to his end a clutch of sheep’s wool To show the gods that Michael Blann Went alone, alone for most of his years But crossed the hills a singing man.