From Johnny’s Anthropocene Blues
1
‘Du musst dein Leben ändern.’ Rilke
I perturb the earth, they say,
when I eat a bowl of oats
to which I add a cup of frozen
blueberries these days. When I
take a mouthful I see nothing
but smoke from factory stacks
and my interest in Wimbledon
instantly wanes, not to speak
of my love for creative writing
in unspoilt mountain resorts.
They say I should note that
my actions return from the back
of the globe like a toxic loop—
an ouroboros made of lifeless
fish and silent, plastic-riddled gulls.
Who would count the beads on such
a rosary? Who could meditate
on waste? It’s an ominous sign
that I don’t feel like fucking
anyone, not even from behind.
I have stopped going out, whereas
the arctic snow-owls, I gather,
are catching rides nowadays
on the sterns of petroleum tankers.
All of this, I know, concerns
only those who pick with finger-tips
at snippets of breaking news
on the screens of Apple iPhones
and who grab their dinner
from fast food counters. How
can I tell the poor to shit less, shout
less, stop fornicating if I live
with so little fight or flight
left in my bones? Come on, seriously,
would you talk to someone
like me in the queue? It is true,
I must change my life.
2
‘Die Welt is fort, ich muss dich tragen.’ Celan
Quite astounding what
people are prepared to try.
Some hide away like Siamese
twins in the wheel well
of an aeroplane.
When the gear is deployed
on the final stretch the lower
one falls, frozen, head first,
into an aircon sump atop a block
of flats in London. Not even
Hieronymus Bosch would think
of such an arrangement.
The survivor, from Durban,
partly thawed, is held in quarantine.
He talks nonstop to the man
in the mirror he believes
is his brother. Day and night
with a warm, damp cloth
he wipes the ice stars
from his brow.
Others travel in magnetic
coffins stuck to the chassis
of cooler trucks. Clawing
their throats they perish
next to some road while
the driver takes a piss
in the woods. He thought
they were a batch
of frozen ortolans.
I heard of a boy, just
turned twelve, who was zipped
in a suitcase and stuffed
in an overhead compartment,
on a flight from Kabul.
His mother says it’s her fault
to have thought he would
fit unharmed into her hand luggage.
A crushed spleen was the last
thing she worried about.
There are fathers, I read,
in the horn of Africa, who send
their boys barefoot across
the Sahara with caraway seeds
in the seams of their rags
and an empty cob to chew on.
And all the while the boats
keep coming. Thousands
drown. Some speak
of the re-mineralisation
of the Mediterranean.
Three hundred storm the Spanish
border using each other like ladders.
Ten get over threefold fences
but most fall back with ankles
broken, broken wrists from blows
by ski-masked guards.
The flow is staunched
in desert places, the captured
press their faces into chicken
wire leaving diamond
furrows on their cheeks.
The escapees on rocky outcrops
hold up wee blue screens at night—
I’m safe! Goodbye! I go!
One poor sod jumped into
a manhole and swam up a shit
stream to freedom. He got out
alright but later succumbed
to the fumes. In a nameless grave
they buried him, in a barren
dale, wearing gloves
and moon suits.
It shows: you may
expel your waste,
it will return bearing the dead
like bread on the water.
The world has gone and I
must carry you. Who
wrote that again?
3
‘Doch konnten wir nicht
hinüberdunkeln zu dir:
es herrschte
Lichtzwang.’ Celan
When the city cramps
me in its rising glare
I’m torn apart—
the child of Chronos
my titan father.
I can’t tell right or
wrong from left in this
duress of light.
My ankles catch
against the pavement
gutter as I walk
the streets.
What open space
would have me staring
from the thistles,
what incline offer me
a prospect?
At dawn a buzzard
on a stile looks out
over the fields. I watch
him from behind.
A brotherhood hatches
between us—
russet
amber, charcoal,
buff.
My feathers lock
into a coat of mail.
I gather from his tilt
that this bird
has never known
anyone like me
before. He’ll wait
for me tomorrow.
When he dies
I shall uphold
his darkness.