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The
Sunken City and Other Poems
Joel
Lane
The Sunken City
New York was the
city of his dreams.
A wife, a career, a circle of writers;
the shining depths of the unknown.
Within two years, he was losing
his mind.
The architecture made no sense
and he feared and hated the alien
voices, faces and names of the
city.
He returned to the family home
and the buried meaning of chaos.
The city that rose from the page
was ancient, choked with weed,
built and inhabited by madness.
My sunken city is not alien.
It’s where I grew up, and never
quite managed to break away
from the remains of my home.
When the city sank, it took me
down with it; but I swam
in the dark, reached a stone
bridge
from where I could see Birmingham
trapped in a thousand canals:
just under the surface, waiting
like a body, familiar and cold,
all its windows recently broken.
Andromeda
Just
around the corner, still here,
the
shuttered room that was a bookshop.
The
petrol-tinged air carries
no
smell of paper, no secret
confirmation
of the twenty years
I
walked home from here, reading.
Without
the stories, this city is
a
prison. The light is blotchy,
a
bad skin over the darkness.
The
streets are paved with newsprint.
My
hands grip the air, try
to
mimic the shape of a book.
Where
are they now? At home
or
pacing the streets? Their eyes cold
and
staring from lack of dreams.
For
a moment, through the torn-up clouds,
I
can see the faint swirl of a galaxy
frozen,
a snapshot made permanent.
Contact Tracing
And
after the songs of midnight
that
struck flame from stony hearts,
after
the low-key club tours, the late-
night
TV concerts, the awards,
after
the groupies, the smack,
the
branding, the ménage à several,
the
heart-to-heart in the Sunday paper,
after
all of that, he came back
to
the forest gate, the dark stairs,
the
mine where the ghosts waited
unsleeping.
Came back for you,
for
that kiss, that melancholy walk
among
the stone faces, the reek
of
silence, to the polluted river
where
he turned again, reached out
his
thin arms to hold you back.
News From the Midworld
Look
back to us. The frayed autumn curtain
blinks
our windows shut: we cannot see ourselves.
Newspapers
settle like moths on our faces
at
night, to imprint our skins with words.
The
children go out in wax masks, to cut down
the
grass with their laughter; and the men
are
building walls in the forest. The leaves
cover
the neglected summer’s dead. Soon
we
will make a bonfire in the garden.
Turn
around: your past is a hostage
framed
on a mantelpiece, or encountered
by
chance in a doorway. Do you recall
how
the sun lit your eyes like stained glass
from
within, and at your hands
chapels
of vision were traced? I don’t know
what
winter paradox drew you away
when
the grass stretched for your touch
to
warm it, or your shadow to cool it.
Come
home. The ghosts are becoming thin.
Brother,
I am afraid of this house.
Surely
it’s nothing but the wind trapped
wailing
in the chimney, like an infant
abandoned
in a hollow tree? Crows swarm
like
huge flies on the roof, to wait.
I
have dreamt that you stood beside me
in
this long hall, and held me close
in
front of the blind mirror.
Have
I grown up with your face?
Sleeping
I reach across for a frame
to
form upon, to contain; but the night
is
the same for everyone. We will always
choose
countries where we are strangers –
for
you, perhaps, the underground path
of
the pale queen of swords who cannot meet
your
eyes; the broken strings; the wind
blowing
your skin and hair away like pollen.
‘The Sunken
City’ appeared
in Purple Patch magazine in 2006.
‘Andromeda’ appeared in Trouble in the
Heartland (Arc, 2004). ‘Contact Tracing’ appeared in The Rialto magazine
in 2002. ‘News From the Midworld’ was written in 1984 and appears here for the
first time.
Copyright
(c) 2007 Joel Lane
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