Two long narrative texts telling fragmentary tales of the 1930s and 1940s have been reluctantly de-selected from History or Sleep, my 'Selected Poems'. The first was the long poem 'Schrage Musik', which deals with both the RAF and POW situations, as well as addressing the utopianism of the New Apocalypse poets (or that generation). Even as I'm typing, I'm thinking it should be there but it's too long and doesn't work in excerpt at all well. It is, in the words of a wartime song, 'All or Nothing at All'. It is already posted on Pages though without italics, where it appeared i.m. my father, whose experiences very generally influenced the text. So that's here.
The second text is one of the 'books' of The Lores. This I call my haiku novel and I am pleased that this 1930s history of a fictional Blackshirt can be intuited from the 12 word verses. Something about it didn't work between two impacted pacey anti-fascist 'books'. (The voice of apologetic, self-admiring ex-fascists is unpleasant here, too, because it doesn't operate through irony.) Of course, I might change my mind about using it. But here's that one. Read it verse by verse. Slowly.
Book 2: Bolt Holes
They are bleeding this
country, secret Whitechapel gutter
rites. Bolshevik bolt holes
Terrors traversed autumnal ethics.
Our fresh Lordship negated
introspection over sherry decanters
Bronchial children cough, three
to a bed; crystal
voices from its frame
Protocols kicked, shattered Yiddish
on jagged glass. Mongols.
Tomorrow, our promised land
Marching between tramlines, tight-
necked blackshirts claw the
air. Lightning bolt salutes
Solutions, hands raised, stopping
stones. Your face, a
jewel, crowd-fleshed; crowned
You kiss my scars,
our struggle. Emotion retreats.
Anarchs copulate with Queens
Bolshevik jazz, jungle nights
in Pimlico. Jerusalem
Old Gang rich bitches
stoke the engine for
the Empire’s last Plantation
Her blackshirt bit of
rough, I serve. Dismissed,
savage dynamo, corporate individual
Wife hanged like a
ghetto Jew – obsessive simile
knots her suicide note:
‘Chasing skirt for the
Party ... Suffragettes licked your
stamps ... Man and master!’
the crowd one slice
of zeitgeist (broken windows
Uniform mind fills Olympia
Regulated hearts, public health.
Public Order, embodied ideals
Venerable cigarette card image:
Mosley’s staff car; razored
Red along running boards
Saluting crowd, prickles on
a pelt, policies brushed
to the Centre, Leaderfear....
The limp swastika; Rundfunkhaus.
Schnapps and bitch sensuality:
‘Southern England in flames
The World-Soul clears
his throat; his plans.
The poetics of propaganda
Bent wire slipped back
into pocket: Jew bent,
bleeds over yellow Star
Brutish airman, parachute caught
in charred Berlin
the people almost decide
Last drunken broadcast: ‘Final
phase of European history ....
What you must become
Shot her – and our
curled child. My manly
bullets, one fact unswallowed
The Bűro’s leather chair,
my dead microphones, lovers
wired in delirious parallel
How quickly the airship
slipped – band still playing –
firestorm roared through Ambrose
With horror I realise
these prison uniforms have
come from the camps
To speak; by way
of silence. Eloquent statuary.
Race suicide; condemned Men
Gives the fascist salute;
a blood-stain on
the cleared gymnasium’s floor
As Joyce drops, his
street-fighter’s scars burst;
clocks stop, valves plume
heart stops) The broken
promise to follow your
pregnant decoy (sentence begins:
I search my mask
for a face to
redeem me) Collective guilt
Passion and hatred flicked
your curls. Memory’s bones,
your scattered clothes; disposal
My slogans – for history
books and marble plinths?
Eyes tethered on stalks
Leaves drip, leave no
measure. Hermetic hut, camouflaged
with endless autumn leaves
Stench of burnt coil
from overheated wireless. Cell
fills with burning bodies
Posthistorical thunderclap, limp lightning.
Administration without Men, time
drifts, creaks. Self-shipwreck
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/robert-sheppard-tombland-re-history-or.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/robert-sheppard-blickling-hall-poem-re.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/robert-sheppard-looking-north-1-re.html
http://robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/robert-sheppard-hymns-to-god-my.html
http://www.robertsheppard.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/robert-sheppard-sacred-tanks-of.html
