Seven Marks and Fifty Pennies *
I have learnt a new language;
(C) Sandy McCutcheon.
spoken only by myself.
I whisper its syllables
into the ear of the rapids.
The other side of the park bench
sits the muse.
She looks at me, shrugs, spreads
her shadow on the grass
and toys with silence.
Having failed in walking past:
new strategy.
I offer her the bench I'm falling off;
green on green on corpses
from the plague -
Anne's street, old church
and pigeons fail, dissolve in dust,
which quickly blows away
and leaves...
the cold red granite base,
and yet
this magic does not move her.
The muse? Oh yes, the muse!
She says? She says...
nothing,
shuffles her silence
and deals a hand
with cards marked "absent".
Having missed the bench and real world...
seven marks and fifty pennies ...
Having missed the bus and fantasy
by half an hour at least...
I mumble words at the triple-glazed
distortion looking back at me
from glass doors weightlifters fear to open.
Not stupid though... oh no!
I know that in that park, in late night sun
and shadow, she is watching me from
behind the veiled threat of leaving.
Blue car cat boys cruise the street,
capturing a bagful of the fullest
emptiness the city offers.
But I am beneath the bushes,
above contempt, below their gaze
and at least six feet further from
the muse - who sits...
Sure you know, she sits in
park, silence, absence, threat
and completion - desiring
nothing.
But I will not be outdone, outpaced,
manoeuvered or maligned by silence.
I take the sounds of the rapids
and spread them round her -
seeping, golden sounds -
butter on hot porridge.
I take the black toy towers of Freda.
Jugend-pop and granite grotesqueries
and build such castles... such dust,
as blows and stays, blows and stays
in wind from harbour smelling of the
market, dried birch, gypsy-booted
purple wind and amidst it all the
lone mosquito drinks my blood and
passes out to dream of the
great red river paradise.
The muse gathers night around her.
The muse who flirts while taking
cigarettes from strangers and knowing
I am too unsteady on my feet
to offer her a light.
Yet still she can not fool me she is gone.
I hear her voice -
in secret rapids' language.
I hear her voice in distilled white silence
from beneath the park bench where
the newspaper is unconscious too that it's
a bed with plastic supermarket bags for
pillows and the sun that wakes
flashes blue and white, blue and white
in uniform and gloves put on
to make certain he never touches you.
But he touches me.
And careful! Muse! Careful!
There are strong arm boys on one side...
And the whisper of white water on the other...
And there is no great gain or distance won
by leaving this park and going down.
The muse says nothing.
Unseen because of cloud,
not night.
Mist, not morning, comes
and through the long night
I feed her
silence.
Feed the muse -
images of reindeer's deaths
beneath the fenders
of the German cars
that come
too fast too often
and too grey.
Feed the muse -
images of Aalto's city
of the north,
too sad, too clean, that he
should not have built -
should not have had to -
and its river flows all night
with logs, past the ear of the rapids.
And is it fair to ask myself
who feeds the rapids
all night with logs
with which to pick
its rotting teeth?
The muse looks up!
I have her interest?
She vomits from the bench
and smiles her river smile.
The morning muse is screaming now!
Laughing with me,
unconnected,
unashamed.
Laughing at the morning.
Taunting it with empty
bottle nodding, flies and disdain
from people
on their way,
going to
the same place
we are going.
Laughing muse
is mad with
knowing that
I can not
wipe her out -
with cold,
or night
nor absence -
For we are of the same tribe now,
knowing
the language
spoken by the stones
that listen
for the river
tumbling
far too fast
to hear.
NOTES
* The price of the bus from Anne St in Helsinki to my old home in the
forest
"the ear of the rapids" - translation of Koskenkorva - a Finnish Vodka
Below Anne St. Church are buried six hundred bodies from the black death
Blue Car Cat Boys - Helsinki slang for cops
Freda - slang for Fredrikenkatu Fredrick Street
Aalto's City - Rovaneimi in arctic circle burnt to ground by Nazis, who then
came back as tourists
Last Revised: January 2001
