SELECTED POEMS
Philip Conover 1
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INTRODUCCTION
I have tried to live a life consistent with Poetic Principles. Since the age of thirteen or fourteen my transcultural experience in Saint Paul´s School threw me into a world of self- analysis and deep emotional state. Perhaps that is why I began to write Poetry as soon as I returned to Mexico in the summer of 1963. Around that time I came into contact with the Spanish Republican Poet, León Felipe, while listening to the recitation of his poetry in his own wonderful voice in a recording produced by The National University of Mexico, (UNAM ), titled, “El Rey de las Salamandras”; a title no doubt chosen by the Poet himself. This record album came with a printed text of his poetry so that I followed it while I sat entranced listening to the old man who had come to find refuge in Mexico after that most tragic civil war which had devoured his country like in the very portrait of “Saturn eating his son” painted by Francisco Goya. I started writing poetry as soon as I could, after hearing and reading that wonderful poetry for I cannot remember how many times, and of course I wrote my first poems like León Felipe, which I hope to include in a forth coming collection entitled, “Poems of my Youth”. And I fell into the thing, all summer long I wrote. I became,‘il Fabro’, as the Poet said, until I started reading other poets: the English Lake Poets, Wordsworth’s “Ode To Nature”, Coleridge, de Quincey’s, “Confessions of an English opium eater”; encouraged by my friend Toribio Esquivel Obregón, who became a great influence in all Pre-Raphaelite matters of Edwardian taste, a Sir Henry Wotton to my Dorian Gray, we studied the paintings of Gustave Moreau and the designs of Aubrey Bearsley, we read Huymans and Pierre Louis until I went to Huautla in June of 1968 and entered and entirely different sphere of spiritual existence. I wish to evoke a happy recollection, the luminous image of Eleanor Lincoln in her beautiful home and ceramics workshop, which she built at Coyoacán in Mexico City. She was always a source of inspiration and friendship, who encouraged my poetic efforts with her example, her special wisdom and grace. I want to dedicate this collection of Poetry to her. She was an anthropologist, a friend of Margaret Meade with whom she had been among the first women who graduated in Anthropology from Columbia University. At the University of California she met and was for a time engaged to Robert Oppenheimer . She later married Jack Lincoln, the archeologist, with whom she was among the first to excavate at Tikal until Jack died of Malaria while being ferried in a stretcher Eleanor had contrived slung between two mules. Jack died in the jungle trails while they were making their way to San Cristobal de las Casas. Eleanor stayed in Mexico where she eventually was one of the first foreigners to be granted Mexican citizenship, a rare recognition at the time.
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Eleanor celebrating life with one of her grandson´s in the background
About that time, in the middle sixties, I read Catullus and Saint John of The Cross, Blake, John Donne; and with Barbara,”Babi”, Jacobs e.e. cummigs, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlingetti….We listened to Bob Dylan, read Dylan Thomas, listened to Joann Baez, read Pound , T.S. Elliot. I read Robert Frost on my own because I had met him as a boy in Saint Paul’s School one evening when it snowed and he was standing in a black coat in the grounds of The School surrounded by boys. As the snow kept falling on his white hair, I came running dawn hill from the post office and asked: “Who is the old man?” and one of the boys said, “Robert Frost”. He was a neighbor of the school, he lived on his farm where he wrote: “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and many miles to go before I sleep…” A poem, which by the way, is a favorite among school children. Later on, during the 1970’, I came under the influence of the Mediterranean Poets: Giorgios Seferis whom I had read and , along with Paul Valéry’s, Le Cimetiere marin, with my friend Mariano Rivera Velasquez in 1967. I read Constantino Cavafis, Salvatore Quasimodo, my great companion over the years; Robert Graves of Majorca, with his “White Godess”; Lawrence Durrell in Alexandria with his “Quartet” of novels inspired by The City he loved and those unforgettable characters: Justine, Nessim and Balthazar. Quasimodo in Palermo, in the hills of Tindari overlooking the Mediterranean, at the foot of Mount Etna near Taormina, in Syracuse by the Temple of Neptune…The Poets of Andalucía: Federico Garcia Lorca, the white houses in the mountain towns of Andalucía over the cliffs. Luis de Góngora and the poets of Al-Andalus: “Nada me turbo más que un pichón que zureaba sobre una rama, entre la isla y el rio…”
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Ali ben Hisn, secretary to the Emir Mutalid of Seville, XI Century, prefigures Federico Garcia Lorca in Granada. ( From a beautiful collection of Poetry: “Poemas Arabigoandaluces” with a wonderful Prologue full of historical knowledge and poetical insight into Arabic poetry by Señor Emilio Garcia Gomez, Espasa Calpe, 1940. ) And then I read Anna Akmatova: “The door is half open, The lime trees wave sweetly… On the table, forgotten… A wip and a glove”.
And Elsa Cross:
“El agua se desliza imperceptible ---sierpe de luz--Y devuelve el reflejo del sol ---caricia evanescente--Iluminando el abrazo de los amantes Y el ojo feroz de Polifemo.”
Quasimodo:
“Desire of your bright hands in the flame’s half- light; flavor of oak, roses and death.
Ancient winter.
The birds seeking the grain Were suddenly snow. 6
So words: A little sun; a haloed glory, Then mist; and the trees And us, air, in the morning.”
Of my poem, “I think of Saint Anthony…” I can say that it is a form of instantaneous poetry. I wrote it while sitting in a canvas chair in Hyde Park near the Albert Memorial . I saw a black bird with a piece of bread on its beak flying, describing a circle in front of me. I brought out my notebook immediately and wrote the poem without a single correction . Many years later a girl friend told me after reading the poem that Saint Anthony was the patron saint of “novios”. I did not know that at the time. “Ahab’s whale resurrected” is a more complex poem: it is a history of my impressions of Piccadilly Circus. Of Boots, the drugstore where at that time registered addicts could buy their heroin legally; of that cavernous bathroom in the Piccadily Underground Station full of peeping winos and junkies “harpooning” themselves, while sitting in the toilets with the doors open. After injecting themselves they would go up to the Circus and stand with their backs to the wall of Boots, and stare, vacant eyed, at the fountain while taking the sun. There, I once met a sixteen year old girl who had just smacked herself and was standing in the sun leaning against the front at Boots. There was something about her, a heroic quality, which drew me to her. After chatting briefly I asked her, in sympathy, if she wanted to do a “cold turkey”, an assisted withdrawal from heroin; she agreed. On the bus to Chelsea, in King’s road, she suddenly got up, jumped off the bus, went into the Chelsea Cementery and disappeared among the graves. I followed, like Orpheus, but could not find her. In my Author’s Note to my Novel, Teonanacatl, I have described the relationship between Dreams, Poetry and the Unconscious so I will not repeat it here. Dream 10506 is another example of instantaneous poetry. I woke suddenly with a start in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and immediately sat up in bed turned the light on and wrote the poem through without a stop. I once read in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a dream he had during the First World War of a young soldier who was drowning in the sea, and Yogananda felt all the weight of his equipment as he struggled to come up for air. This most have been during an amphibious assault probably off Gallipoli Peninsula. Yogananda thought that this dream was an out of body experience and that he had crossed paths with this young soldier in the night. Yogananda was then sleeping in his home in India. San Angel, April, 2014. 7
SELECTED POEMS CONTENTS BY TITLE OR BY FIRTST LINE
I THINK OF SAINT ANTHONY… * LONDON IS A SILENCE… * BLIND GREEN FAITH... * AHAB’S WHALE RESURRECTED * STILL DREAMING * DELICATE EMBRACES… * FUNK AT THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT * A MIGHTY EDIFICE… * WHERE THE ROCKS OF ST. PETER… * LET THE PAIN OF THE WORLD… * A WINDOW OPENS… 8
* IT IS NIGHT… * ALI IBRAHIM… * NEAR THE SEA, WITH JACOB BURCKHARDT * THE JAPANESE BOX… * ISABEL… * MANIFIESTO * TO A PIANIST * CHAIRS AND BOOKS… * WE CANNOT USE A POEM… * A HOT IRON… * AFTER I DIE… * THE ORANGE JUICE DRINKERS… MEXICO CITY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1976 9
I think of St. Anthony, A black bird Circles the air With a piece of bread On its beak, The trees make A silent comment. Two lovers Walk towards me In the park They are almost here, I can feel their presence In my thundering heart.
c. 6 p.m. Hyde Park, 1970 10
London is a silence Unfolding through Landscape light, Avenues in the minds Of its subjects, Bright blue and gray In the stillness, To break it Is almost a pain, The spoken word Is danger, Is internal turbulence Released. London, 1970 Blind green faith grows Spread over a field In Gloucestershire. It does not bend so easily Under the weight of dew drops; It reaches the sky Were the green And the blue Embrace Beyond words or abstraction. Gloucestershire, 1971 11
AHAB’S WHALE RESURRECTED
Eros Piccadilly, Fountain of love, You have a slot machine for a cunt; And many layers of lovers of absent faces Throwing sterilized harpoons At your white loins From Boot’s, the chemist.
Underground, blood flushes in The toilets Legally and royally, with a grunt, 12
Over ground, dirty foreigners Extract work permits From their bloody pockets; Whilst dirty pigeons Walk the streets in a daze Shitting all over the place In a funk.
London, 1970
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STILL DREAMING
‘Hyperthyroideal metabolism set against the will. Of God.’ Together we win. Every one of them is Jesus Christ And the girls are Virgin Marys. They wear their pain long And smack themselves hard. Yes, no one need take any drugs, But then there need’nt be pain And they grow their mental pain long To the death… like Jesus Christ… As humiliation grows leaving no breath For joy. Isle of Wight pig pen… Corrugated iron fence, Intimacy in the warm dirt, (Lost memory and pain), Insanity in the Press… ‘Parental dreams forfeit’… Innocence prolonged with acid… And the show goes on, The hot dog vendors peddle Fraudulent onions and other s..t, 14
Cocktails are being served At the performers’ tent But the children do not care… They are not aware… They are together, Digging the music… Rock, raga, rock... Spinning waves of light Over the curvature of the earth And up towards the sun.
Isle of Wight, 1970
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Delicate embraces Drifting in the train Of metaphysical reflections… No light, no texture But life… Gently materializing, In the scent I look for, That I long for. How strongly You mingle with my memories, ( Do you remember our morning in Paris? ) Your sweet breath was you… Is you… Recalls you to me; And you are here again In being, In body, In soul, In love.
Memory of L.
Tacubaya, August, 1973.
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FUNK AT THE VICTORIA AND ALBERT
A crowd stood in fear, Waiting for the doors of the museum To open. It was the circumstance of three o´clock Which had trapped them at the door, And being in the open, could not hide their fears. Our eyes met in sacrilege, My long hair, perhaps a mirror, Infringed across the solitude of space. The air reeked with fear; With the unacceptability of our common humanity. Breath, parasite, breath… exhale, poison, kill… ( Thought the good, gyrating mother earth. ) So we left little spaces between each other, Zones where all the germs were dead. Well, I cut a path amongst them, With electromagnetic stealth And was thrown at the void of historic space Through the revolving doors of the museum.
1971. 17
A mighty edifice stood Shining gracefully Under the silver light Of the moon, Desolate in the parkland Of a dream.
My spirit approached it, Hovering over the trees, Like the night air itself Unseen. Of silver it was made, indeed, For all time, cool, Like the geometry of man, Like the living geometry of man; This building was intelligence.
No sound stirring, I brushed against its sides, Like a breeze, And ascended it. This was beauty itself I felt, I thought In passing; For it did not quite retain me, 18
And I floated off again With the cool air of the night, Over the trees, While the earth arched below, And the moon lent her silver face Suddenly, the hottest whirlwind Nearly shook me out of all my senses; Throwing me into an exuberant warmth. I did not resist this, But I lifted my arms To acknowledge His presence.
“Oh God, You are Peace, and peace derives ( Prayer to God upon first sighting The Ka´ba. ) Taqbir, Akbar, Shalom…
1972.
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Where the he rocks of Saint Peter Commence to dissolve, There is He. He is no rock, no History, No Church. He is. Easily He flows, For the power of no one, For the glory of no one. We are of Him. We are from Him. We are nothing‌ Save in Him, Through Him. We know not If we see, We do not remember Or remembering, We see an obliterated clarity; For our consciousness Is His consciousness‌ If and when we are ever Conscious of Consciousness.
We move not; 20
He moves us. Cogito, ergo sum Is the solitary arch of consciousness; Coming from Him Going towards Him We are not.
1972.
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Let the pains of the world Pain Our undefended consciousness. Not the crashing of a blow, Nor the smell of my burning flesh, Nor electric shocks, Not a tranquilizer Will put to rest This undefended consciousness.
1974. 22
A window opens: The waters of the sea rest Before my sight. I stand in the balcony; Near by are the jacaranda trees. On a large rock Two iguanas are taking the sun. Yellow and green. Beyond, the open sea under the sky Becomes a single continuum. Blue. O, the restlessness of life, Majestically the waters roll on In their tireless course. The sun, the breath and vapors Of his radiant lover, Alone makes white clouds To sail above his lover. This powerful expanse Of water Is the primary substance That swims eternally In the mind of matter. Man, mind and matter, Beholds himself 23
In this powerful expense of water.
Our spirit settles over it, Like the air over the water. It is the spin of the wind, Moving over the sea, Like a hand rolling over Her body of waters. Free of gravity, we become levity: Elemental verity, Tranquility and peace.
1975.
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It is nigh An anguished woman Leaves a country house And enters a forest. And one hell, Being more breakable Than most hells, Went on breaking, Like twigs From a dad branch. So was her lover‌ Her tenuous hold on reality. And yet she went on Hoping, reaching, mending, binding For the devolution of her love, Or some such tenuous moment Of mutual understanding. She longed for total fusion, Like those two drops of azure Water Colliding on the green expanse Of a leaf, Fusing their destinies, Their trajectories.
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An unyielding forest Was the one she loved, Impenetrable, All embracing, Flinty and this Like the first black ice Of winter in a winter pond.
She broke everywhere, With finality and at once‌
Like Doom.
( Dream 10,506 )
1976.
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Ali Ibrahim: Is this not one world? And is this not the same Flesh? Do not we worship then, The same God? It is the pleasure of this garden. The fresh water in the fountain 27
Splashes gently, Translucid under the sun. I remember Babur Kahn. Come, the laurels of India Shall shelter us both In the cool of their shade.
See the grass florescent: Now violent green, Now dark as a dream, Overshadowed by a passing cloud. Such are the phantoms of history. I laid this garden straight Concealing the hand Letting nature be the mind, The joy of my imagination.
But here comes My Muntaz Mahal. Let us pause to see her walk. How she sways gently so Under her sari! Resist if you can, my friend, The glow Of her almond eyes. 28
Or then fall; Fall like this fig. Open it, see its crimson skin, And burn with desire.
In memoriam David Herbert Lawrence, In memoriam Thomas Edward Lawrence. 1976.
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NEAR THE SEA, WITH JACOB BURKHART
The honor of men is sometimes offended. The honor that is life is seldom remembered. La Motte insulted the Italians In the presence of his host, Diego de Mendoza. ( The same Diego de Mendoza who was to become The first Viceroy of New Spain.) The riposte was a challenge: Ettore Fieramosca with thirteen of Italy Would battle La Motte and his Frenchmen. It was in Barletta, ‘La disfida di Barletta’, 30
Being present Diego de Mendoza And Gonzalo Hernández de Córdoba, “il gran capitano”. The strong arm of La Motte Fell victim to the rash Consequences of his words. Fieramosca was honored, La Mote disgraced.
The sight, the furor Of Italian arms Has disappeared into The paintings of Paulo Ucello.
Children, Construct castles in the sand. Let the sea dissolve the tumult Of The Hohenstaufen ridding into battle. The roar of the sea Makes a finer sound, Breaking as it does on the beach. Can Grande della Scala, Bartolomeo Colleoni, Transformed by art at last, Murmur with the tides in peace. 31
1976. The Japanese box Is tied with A string. It has no metal latch, Nor wooden ring. It is a box, in a box, For a box.
It contains nothing, Nothing, nothing. It is a box For your imagination To fill.
1976.
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Isabel, Femme infidel, Fille des intellectueles.
When are you Going to start Taking care of yourself? Dropping out of cars, Eating hamburgers With careless appetite And falling into the arms Of strangers.
Para madre Y para esposa, No sirves para otra cosa.
1976.
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MANIFESTO
Vast areas of my soul are anarchist. In fact: The fields, the meadows, the beasts, The woods, the mountainsides, The lakes, the clouds, the sky! And above all‌ the sea, The father of earthly life, That primordial receptacle Of inmense peace.
The towns and cities Are social democrat. In them, the parks, The museums, the meeting places: The cafes, the piatzzas, the arcades Are all liberal and communist.
And my heart, My heart is conservative‌ For I do wish To keep my Love alive forever.
1975. 34
TO A PIANIST
Johanns Vermeer Sits beside you. Graceful clarity, Depth and strength. You are a playful Girl, Going to and fro From the piano. How many hours How many hours Have you sat Like this? 1975.
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Chairs and books And art and life. Death. It is all too fantastically wild. What, in God´s name, Is all this about? This organic symetry? This material geometry?
Along distance call In the middle of the night Informs me That the survivors of Bergen-Belsen Were brought back to life. From the twilight of the night A lover gently tells me That I should not feel obliged. The barest minimum, Seven days for me, Will suffice To last me for a life time.
We all hang to the thread of love Like a circus ballerina 36
Somersaulting on the highest wire. We all hang fast, Bight tight The thread of life, The rope of love, Till we can; Until we can no longer stand, Until we burst.
1975.
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We cannot use a poem To put forward our individual egos. Because a poem is a fragile illusion And needs an independent life If it most endure in other memories. Other souls Crystalize pieces of the world, Pieces of their spirit For our nourishment. It is through Art That we awake into the life of this world. As we perceive the movement of The Spirit Throughout all its various forms, We rediscover our memory As multiple creations, past lives, As agents of The Spirit.
Let there be silence then To disperse the transient Imagery of our consciousness. Let there be silence And collect the silence To bring forth our being;
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For the world speaks only to the silent Who would listen for the murmur of life. The thoughts, the noise And the speech of man Overwhelms the silence Of the sound of life. We see only what we wish to see; Our sight has become the expression Of our tired souls. Our minds are not in peace, Not in silence. To disperse the transient Imagery of our consciousness We most be al peace; We most be in silence. And then the world Will reveal itself to us; For our consciousness Is His consciousness, Life becoming aware of itself, Being born again. (To feel) a hot iron Entering your brain, 39
Life receding unfamiliarly away, An outgoing shock of electric energy; Looking desperately at your scattering Brains, Fleeing from your prostrated body.
Between the shock of death And the shock of death And the shock of birth, There extends a time that Tibetans Call The Bardo. Have you heard of The Bardo? I have thought about it under another name; Death. But I prefer The Bardo. To begin with, The Bardo is a more extend thing Than just plain death. And according to these same Tibetans, A lot of things take place and precedence During The Bardo. We most consider the permanence of consciousness; Very much akin to a living dream. Except that The Bardo does happen in reality, (Which is a frightening thing!)
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We most surely encounter important spirits More experienced than ourselves. Perhaps some of them have inhabited The Bardo For very long periods of time; And timelessness is precedence, The unavoidable advantage of wisdom and old age; Most wheigh heavily over us, impress us. For this we most be prepared And answer all questions with assurance. Considering all the accounts, The Bardo most be an absorbing place; We will find out what it was that happened In the end. And having thus cleared one life away, We will commence training for the next. Nothing unfolds gratuitously in this world; For like every other generation, a returning soul, Most enlarge upon its previous comprehensions. This will seem obscure while in THIS Bardo. Gracefully, we are spared the memory of that other Ordeal; for it is a strenuous deed of selflessness To have to accept our past mistakes. Few are willing to do this, And so The Bardo most be a rather lengthy affaire‌
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Fortunately it most all come to an end, And we are reborn again; Until we learn our lessons well And become full members of The Bardo.
1975.
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After I die There will be small children Singing in the schools.
After I die The silent Orb Will cruise the heavens As it has always done.
After I die Complex thoughts Will be thought In laboratories of the Moon.
After I die Little lizards Will take the sun On the balustrade of my terrace And then vanish with the thrush. 1975.
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The orange juice drinkers, The sons of George Washing
1969.
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