Sideways Station

Somewhere in Sichuan

Listen to the poem      

>

Whenever youngsters out from school

catch sight of me, they cry,

“Hel-loh, hel-loh.”

I smile and stop, pick one out

with my gaze and ask,

“Nǐ huì shuō yīngyǔ ma?”

Can you speak English?

It is as if, for them, a dog

whose head you'd scratched

had answered,

“Hey, just cut it out, I'm concentrating

on a bone.”

Impossible that someone with my looks

could ever imitate however badly

the sounds of Han.

They all turn into unhinged clockwork toys:

fall off their bikes, stray into trees,

grab hold of nothings in the air;

a passing girl pushing a barrow

full of cabbages discovers that her

head is stuck in my direction

and cannot turn to face the wall

in front of her into which

on the count of five

her load collides.

All raise their heads from their

new states of wreckage to watch

the green stars rolling as they explore

the myriad concavexities of the road,

making a living map of gravity in Einstein's universe.

And at the centre of it all there stands

her bawling mother under whose

ample skirts all cabbages eventually

converge.

 

I am a wizard—

I summon whirlwinds

with just five words.

 

(This poem is included in my book The Observation Car which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

The Umbrellas of Colombo

Listen to the poem    

These girls I see

all day

with their lithe ways

and plaited hair,

all with umbrellas,

black, ungainly ones,

cousins to rusty bicycles—

are they, just them, expecting rain?

But although most are closed

some are already held aloft

against the blazing sky.

There is no common purpose I can see,

except they seem

tools of importance.

Some toy with them

with nervous

eagerness, unsure of

what to do and how to be,

some,

very few,

swing theirs

in broad arcs of effrontery,

some hold them solemnly

like parts of a uniform,

some seem to want to keep

them out of view,

the way one might attempt

to hide a cello or a

team’s supply of

hockey sticks.

All day I watch,

all day I’m lost for thoughts.

I see them suddenly appear

at bus stops everywhere,

or else

in Pettah standing next to bristling

market stalls,

in Cinnamon Gardens stepping out

from underneath magnolia trees,

and at De Soyza Circus,

where the crows go bouncing

around, behind and

in between their steps.

On Duplication Road their numbers swell

and just as instantly they disappear.

It’s when I reach the coast,

upon the Green,

where people stand in lines to chatter

back at the grumbling ocean down below,

that things begin to come together in my mind.

I see three of these girls, with circumspection,

cross the lawn, sidestepping all the huddled families,

sit down and carefully arrange their skirts

and then bring their umbrellas down

level and open straight before their eyes.

A boyfriend slips behind each one.

And then with no change in the sky,

most gently—

it is not a storm, there’s no monsoon—

it sets to raining

kisses.

(This poem is included in my book The Observation Car which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

A Minor Key

Listen to the poem      

When looking back, I found my days

lay tangled in untidy heaps,

like unassorted clothes,

just washed but with the colours run.

As when there's one thing

which turns everything to pinks or blues

my wednesdays, thurs and fries

looked just the same as all my tues—

a slush in retrospect,

perhaps a glimmer here and there,

but all the rest unfeatured, unremarked,

an epidemic of unending undays.

So, on the first day of the year,

upon a shore,

I found a stone and threw it in the sea

and told myself that each day I would

take one picture in my head

and keep it polished

so that they'd all shine bright

as markers in the fog between my nights.

And now you ask what did I do

this first month of the year.

Well, I suppose I would have said

that mostly I recall

I slept and ached

and pined and worried,

tried to remember

and fretfully attempted to forget.

But then

I stumble on my picture treasure chest.

It starts one winter noon—

the Adriatic green, a thickly newly poured and

frozen paint. Above the line the sky

starts from

three clouds, identical

in shape,

like corncob pipes.

In size, one large,

one in between, one small.

Below, almost about to disappear,

a ship and, flying out to it,

swaying inside a

quaking carpet of unrolling wind,

a train of birds.

Next come some rusty pears

and apples inside a wooden bowl;

a Rothko painting, only red on black,

the paint which somehow moves

from place to place;

a calendar which read December 39th;

a dog obstructing flow,

stranded in halfway street

between two billowing smells;

the travelling sky at dawn

outside my window only

minutes from my bed and sleep;

a girl upon a bridge shaking her worries

from her head into a spray of auburn hair;

a photograph from 1938,

ten gazes, none the same,

intense enough combined

to keep the future hovering, still

an inch beyond the frame.

And then,

my newest friend

a demoiselle of ten, aglow with smile

as she ran up to say her first hello.

A downsideup bird in a tree.

A waterfall I stared at long enough

my mind just turned to drops.

A greeting which was honey for my soul.

A Dayak hornbill carving, like

a shriek of wood.

A seagull landing on a car just next to me

to wait together for the fishmonger to start his day.

The dance and song of rain

upon the roof tiles over which I

swung my feet.

And last of all a boy from Africa

spinning a pirouette so

sudden and so

bold it stunned a room

and made us catch our breath,

like when you accidentally realise

you've seen a month of minor miracles.

                                                                Phillip Hill 2007

 

 

(This poem is included in my book The Observation Car which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

Istanbul - Above the Ring

Listen to the poem      

Eminönü  jumps up
the staircase
of its vowels
in a hurry
out from the Golden Horn.
It's not a place to dawdle
waving one's hands
effetely
over the slender minarets
trying to uncork the sky:
here all is cars and boats
and bustle.
Some days the wind
comes gushing
straight out of Russia
and here
turns fifteen different
corners all at once,
scattering the footsteps
of the people
all around the compass dial
so everybody
walks in everybody else's way.
The Arabesk music
lunges out
with all its gaudy beaded threads
from shops and stalls
and winds itself
around your ankles
dervishly.
The ferry boats reverse direction
as they come in to berth
carving wide curves out of
the heavy water,
shrugging off hefty waves
onto the tiny balik ekmek boats
sending them swaying,
wildly cooking
their mackerel
first thirty degrees to starboard
and then thirty degrees to port.
Only the simit seller
stands aloof
the sesame on his
hoops of bread
opening a secret door
away from all this toil
and bubbling hubbub.
I buy a ticket to the other side.
I drop my token into the slot.
The turnstile creaks.
I stumble into
a maze of people.
We shuffle forward dimly,
trying to grow our shoulders out
to keep a special space
to place our feet and
to protect our pockets, packets
and all our various, separate kinds of
loneliness.
And when the boat
comes in,
blotting the light before us,
the thick ropes thwack
against the capstans,
the gate groans open
and suddenly we all grow hooves
and turn into cattle
plunging to a ford.
We jostle up the gangplanks,
some vault the sides,
all have a place in mind
they want to be the first
to reach:
mine always
in the stern
just outside on the deck.
We sit and stare,
the wind from Russia
still whistling sourly
in our mouths.
And then the boat
heaves out from land
and babies who were screaming
glide, rocking, into sleep
and mothers rest their tired heads at last.
Peace gently envelops all.
Two lovers stand kissing
in a private storm
against the rail,
next to a woman
whose head is
covered by a modest
scarf, but no one
eyes in judgement.
All are companions now .
Our crossing is
the only thing there is.
No longer are our minds aground,
together on our vessel we've slipped free
of the markings of the clock
so that we float as well.
A man casts bread  out
to the gulls
which ride upon
the stream of seconds
we shed in our wake.
I never know which way to
look  -  the domes of Europe,
or the hills of Asia,
the waters through the
tulip glass of tea a
waiter hands my neighbour
or at the shimmering sea of faces all around.
But when we come in close
to Üsküdar
I look out for my favourite sight:
upon the water's edge,
Great Sinan's tiny mosque,
so delicate
perhaps it isn't really there,
but just a painting made
with wisps of white upon the air
Voices and noise from land
congeal about us now
and drag us in until
we bump against the edge of Asia.
my fellow passengers arise.
Now they have destinations
weighing on their brows
and other people they must be.
Sometimes I am the last
to disembark.
I linger on the deck and
watch the sea.
I think that in these waters once
a wizard
dropped his ring
and when friends
wonder at this city,
for being two cities
where Europe and Asia
gaze into each other's eyes
and at each other's lighted windows
longingly,
I think that still more marvellous
is that there is another city yet
upon the boats
which spend the days
going from side to side,
from gaze to gaze,
where everybody seems content
bound by the spell of that lost magic ring.

                                                                Phillip Hill 2007

 

 

(This poem is included in my book The Observation Car which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

Airports

Some airports get a person's name
and then drift miles away
and come to dis-resemble them.
Unless Da Vinci was a good
extortionist, De Gaulle dressed
black in grimmest leather
and had a hobby which
he practised in a dungeon
and JFK used sticky tape
to keep his trousers up.
Time for renaming:
Rome Al Capone,
Paris Franz Kafka and
New York Homer Simpson Airport. 

Listen to the poem

(This poem is from my book The Observation Car, which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

The Pharmacy on Reforma (Puebla, Mexico)

Listen to the poem


"This," says the pharmacist reading
the label, "is good for eyesight,
indigestion, back ache,
the liver, children and old age.
Or," she adds, reading my face, "else
we have
three tubes of toothpaste
for the price of one."

(This poem is from my book The Observation Car, which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

A Party of One (re-post)

Listen to the poem       

(best seen if you stand back and squint a little and imagine it as a set of slightly cubist paintings with runny paint and everything a little crooked)

Tonight I dine alone but,
better said,
I am a party of one.
I have brought all my music
with me
in my head
and I have
poems read to me
by poets I have never met.
They flit between the waiters
and bend their verses round the oil,
the pepper and the vinegar.
Except for one, Li Po,
on his third jug of wine
but not quite ready yet.
And people who have been
my lucky strikes, my seams of gold,
send me pneumatic photographs.
I ought to toast them,
but they pop up between the rolls of bread
already toasted into the attitudes
and expressions I most like recalling.
I answer them with postcards
which I write onto the night
framed in the windows open to the air.
Thirty feet down, on the beach,
the cats look up at us, their noses
spiralling amazing patterns
all around the smells
which dangle tinkling
down from the teasing kitchen.
And then Li Po gets up at last,
stands on a table
with a smidgeon of unsteadiness
and faultlessly recites his famous poem
in which he dances with his shadow and
lit by the moon.
And when it's done, I pay the bill,
leave tips on every table,
walk through the door into the syncopating sky
and quavering stars and down the
crotchety and wooden steps in triple time
out to the beach.

        And then the waiters crowd in two rows in a corner like

             an old-time much-mustachioed football team

to watch

        the poets, waving caps and scraps of paper and cravats,

leaning in tumbles out of all the windows

to watch

        the cats jump in a ragged line upon the wall and turn the

    wattage of their eyes to maximum

to watch

        the fish come silverishly swimming in a hurry into shore

to watch

        our party dance.

We're good we are,
just me, the moon
and Li Po's drunken shadow.

(This was the first thing posted at Sideways Station. This version is the one printed in my book as is slightly different from the one which I put up in February 2008. The sound quality of the reading is a little better as well, I hope. If you would like to know something more about the poem by Li Po - more commonly known as Li Bai in modern Chinese - here is a page with the poem in Chinese and 42 different attempts at translation into English. For an interesting discussion of the almost impossible task of translating a classical Chinese poem I would recommend Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger.)

(This poem is from my book The Observation Car, which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

The Compleat Shoe-shiner

Listen to the poem       

My craft is not just shining shoes.
Look all around you. See the queues
of people lining up to see
the sky this morning. It was me
gave it a blueshine after dawn—
my signature's there on the lawn.
I shined the tower, I shined the clock.
I shined the church, I shined the flock.
Now they've got haloes round their hair
which pick up broadcasts in the air
and wait behind them when they bow.
The grocer's wares are finer now
I've luminised his fruit and veg.
And see that blackbird on the hedge?
—I gave its beak that brassy tone
and now it sings the saxophone.
If something dull is in your face
like homework or the human race
in its entirety at times,
another Tuesday or bad rhymes,
I'm able to bring out some glitter
from out of all this dross and litter
and for the price of a few beers
I'll shine the space around your ears
and work my strop until it glistens.
Folk will exclaim, “Oh how he listens!
His auscultation is so intense,
I must, astoundingly, be making sense!”
I'll shine the pillows where you sleep
so that your dreams will glow like sheep
emerging from a laundromat,
just washed and spun. And after that,
high'll shine the haitches in your name
so no one will drop them again.
It's all my breathing rough and thick
that makes the aspiration stick.
Dimwits and dullards I've made bright,
churls I've made polished and polite.
Give your mats gloss! Resuscitate
your doornails! Do not hesitate.
Just ask me. These things I can buff
as well as all the ordinary stuff:
handbags and alligator tails,
sporrans and reins, belts, martingales,
saddles, with or without a horse,
clogs, moccasins and boots, of course.
But I've been looking at your feet
and I don't want to be a cheat,
so one thing I must tell you, mate,
and say it honest, say it straight,
if I were in your shoes, I dare
say I would buy another pair.

(This poem is from my book The Observation Car, which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

The Monster in Ness

Listen to the poem

Perfection, happiness, forever—
abstraction isn't where we live:
if we had not devised a word for happiness
we might well be content
or even happy,
for many times we are.
It happens
when something
like a ray of sunshine
catches us
(often on the shoulder
as we turn away from
too much trying)
and makes us shimmer.
It is the nessness
which undoes us and
makes us think we can convert the glimmer
into a shine which lasts
forever
(another word which is not part of
our estate).
It would be no less reasonable
if we decided to aspire
to perfect,
pure bananahood.
Words are not moulded by the contours
of the universe but take
shape in our mouths.
And yet we spend our days searching for unicorns:
at day’s end failing in our quests
we lie down in despondent beds.
Nessless is what we ought to be,
from time to time at least,
but don’t say it out loud,
or else we'll all start thinking hard
of how to find
the way to
nesslessness.

(This poem is from my book The Observation Car, which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)

The Observation Car

Listen to the poem       

The train for Kandy leaves Colombo Fort
just as the morning heat begins to swell.
Inside the observation car the rusty fans
begin to turn and tilt. We watch the platform
where we stood for one, two quarters
of an hour slide off our moving stage.
And now we're ready for the world
to come by and perform for us.
“It's only jungle,” the man said who had
tried to make me rent a driver with a car,
so I could watch somebody's nape, unending
tarmac and have fifty gift-shops urged on me.
Instead I am in conversation with a family
from the hills. We have few words we share
but when we do find one we splash around in it
as in a pool on this hot day.
“Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes.”
Their small twin girls have pairs which
flash and glimmer and they display them
as if they were four cobras—
fascinating
and yet alarming when wrapped
alive and tight around their feet.
Almost before our journey starts, the train
stops at a halt. The fans go sticky still,
we soon begin to stew. A ragged man with bulging eyes
walks up, scrunches his face against the glass and
stares into our tropical aquarium.
Ours is a two-way observation car,
his grin reminds us.
It grows upon his face,
while it recedes with
him, as we
start off
again.
Two trains broad-shouldered with commuters
hanging from their doors
pass by on either side and scarily converge.
A Hindu temple goes wheeling clockwise by,
a market trails its ragged rainbow edges next to the line,
signs in Sinhala, like a parade of decorated eggs,
which I can't read at all and signs in English of which I read
just snips— Fall ill less often...
... Spare Parts Tower ...
now here's a banyan ... and is that a colony of bats?
A mango tree? A hoopoe? Then there's a sudden
flowering of umbrellas and people, people, people.
It is a bit like watching history, this staring from
the back end of a train. You see the consequences
and reactions, but not the plans, the prospects or the
possibilities of all these people, people, people,
people, people, looking up from books,
or down and back from bridges,
away from walls which they were painting and now painting
on the air or turning round from other people, people, people
they were talking to, each caught deep in a gesture
or expression. Our speed's a camera and
its shutter is never still. All of them I recall
as single images: the monk in saffron reflecting
as he peered above his stylish mirrorshades, the lady in
a sari bending down to calm a fractious hen,
the clerk wearing a ladder on his shoulder and wobbling
on a bicycle, the schoolboy slipping
as he ran, his arms at two and eight o'clock,
who wasn't in my world quite long enough to fall.
We slowly shed the city's concrete skin and then
we run through fields of green and greener
pools, past a dagoba and a buddha standing,
with a secret smile behind the foliage of a tree
and then inland and up into it's-only-jungle country,
where every two, three minutes the vegetation
sidles one step closer in and makes
its tendrils turn a few more twists.
And here we are the main event,
it's more like being history itself.
Youngsters race out from houses, all whirling
arms and tumbling legs, to bring an urgent waving
message. It is “Hello! Hello!” and, like a heralded new century,
we blithely run on unconcerned, not answering,
dragging a keel which slices through the way things are.
But when we move on, we see them re-conjoin
like water in the sea.
People, sometimes whole families, three generations
at a time, jump out of bushes to re-possess
the tracks we'd shooed them from, which are
their general highway and with them cows return
with one swish of their tails to graze the grass
we've breezed and freshened.
Two, three, four times I see a pair of squatting
neighbours put back the pieces of a conversation
across the tracks which we had barged and swept away.
Purposeful boys in shirts of stunning white
march out in single file to check how well
we've flattened out the coins they've laid upon the line,
built back in eighteen sixty-three, four, five, six, seven
to the design, for the designs
of some of my imperial people, who
didn't just excel in making railways
but also in tracing lines upon the world, disrupting
patterns woven piece by piece over the centuries,
re-arranging neighbours, shunting people off
and marshalling them about and spreading noise
and dust and speed.
But not just them. Almost all tribes who've had
the strength and the opportunity have done the same
on every continent in every age,
an attitude which trickles down from empire
through to state and provinces, towns, neighbourhoods,
buildings and houses all have and have had people
laying rails to say this is the way your lives shall
run from which they shall not stray,
because it pleases us to make them so. And so it shall
go on with no relief in sight from power—this great contagion
of the mind for which there's no known cure.
We cross a tiny tunnel now and on our right
a mountain top stands up flat in the sky,
the land falls sheer away from us while on our
left, perched up inside a bend above the cliff,
there is a stop which has a platform only
two, three, four, five yards long
on which, alone in concentration, paying us no mind,
there stands a man, just like a diver about to take a verdant plunge
into the wild and beckoning valley and out of history.
We go on climbing bend after tunnel bend and tunnel.
It should be getting cooler all the time, but every
five, ten, fifteen minutes the fans give up and
then the heat begins to seethe.
I go and ask the guard what's wrong.
He says, “The fans? Oh, they don't work.”
A good and honest answer, better than most.
The things we strive to make seem to be trying to escape
our rule, by breaking down, coming apart
to fall back into nature and secede.
The door onto the universe that's next to him
has not stopped slamming open–shut
since we left Fort two hours ago.
The rails will warp and rust,
the bolts will all be shaken loose,
the sleepers come untied,
the grass will grow again,
the cows will eat it up and
conversations will resume
which had been interrupted
only two, three, four, five, six centuries ago.

(This poem is included in my book The Observation Car which is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2588218)