I came to tell you my feather:

at the marina so many bells,

so many voices coming ashore

saying listen we have nothing

to say beyond who we are:

old business the wind works

through the slack riggings

of boats laid up for winter,

each the one note clapped

on the incoming wind, slap

of metal on mast, wave on hull,

rope on the rain an orchestra

of random notes moored where

always this was the river,

for someone the waters of home.

 

My blue feather. On the beach

so many lives feathered into being

and out of it. And so much

interesting foreign detritus

in the rubbery scourings

in the kelp’s piled tripes

weary with flies in summer.

Everywhere a tangle of guts,

crabs, starfish and bladderwrack,

the weeds of abandoned brains,

tumours, dropped masks, amputations

and all the bloody murders ever

ending in string, ripped nets,

hooks, driftwood and the wreck

of the good ship One blue glove

 

Quatre-vingt je ne sais quoi,

Merde de lapin s.v.p. Ce poisson-çi,

c’est une seule nucléare n’est-ce pas?

Mes enfants, ma langue c’est fini,

je suis en vacances, après la guerre,

not permitted to be bored or to work.

Mine is a country of small cheeses,

here I live in a bordello of cheese

and white Muscadet with the widow

of Arromanches, perhaps I’m a man

other men would like to be like

but they keep their distance,

ces enfants que le bonheur oublie.

It’s late et la clef c’est fini

dans la chambre privée,

et Monsieur Toledo bonne nuit.

 

The wind off the sea, steady.

On the quays faces of Vikings,

on the beach wayward paths

secretly marked by stones,

by the track of a dog,

the snake tongue of seaweed

spelling your name in cursive

in a scribble of wormcasts,

and the doll’s burst head,

from her bleached broken face

a single blue eye staring seaward.