The Face of a Woman

Fractures

(in memory of my grandmother)

The tectonic shifts that shaped my life

Were shaped by her, by her alone.

I rose not from her, but through her son,

And yet I call her mine, mother

To the heart that still weeps, calls out

In sleep to the ghost I remember,

Etched stark by the runway lights,

Beneath the still wings of my flight,

Still, hands raised to stay my departure,

Still the fracture opening, my cry

Drowning under the dark deep grind

Of the engines firing farewell.

Her ghost now comes to me often

To heal life’s fractures and soften,

And her shape is the molten rock,

Shaped and shocked into the stratum,

Which keeps, sustains love’s momentum.

Dust We Play

We bear in silence plays of grey,

Imagine dazzling dress one day.

We smile, grind dust to clay,

Wear bricks and mortar, fear decay,

The fading paste, our alabaster flaking dust.

Dust we play at green,

Run hearts on suppleness of rust,

Eyes definitions, images we trust.

Orion fades, suns turn black,

We stand on tectonic crust

Scrabbling for pearls to line our lack.

Copyright ã 1986-2005 Pilgermann BM

What's a Dog know about Morality?

Was listening to the radio and came across the interview with a Scottish woman who had been married to a Rwandan Church Minister. The marriage had been going through a rough patch and she had left the country to see her sister in Zimbabwe. While there the killings started in Rwanda. When she came back she expected the worst:

This is her story.

What’s a dog know about morality

“In Rwanda 800,000 were murdered in 100 days.”

They welcomed me smiling, careful, watching

As I retraced myself into the land.

Their glassed eyes spoke of an aged bloodied,

A generation ghosted by a neighbour’s hand,

Casually directed, casually dispatching

Life, friendships ended, victims of a creed

Blind to all but its self, its new strength

Powered by hate, death’s deliberate scent.

The brochure showed plain and mountain clear,

Skies burnt to gold, sun lighting green the ground.

I found an earth crawling with abortions,

Its weather moist with blood, chill with fear.

The brochure showed tall children at play,

Parents, stilled, leaning happy on their hoes.

I returned, passing children in fatigues,

Armoured, gun barrels ploughing shallow graves.

The brochures showed orchards, fruit heavy,

Temptations branched, shadowed by the red rock.

Stretched before me gardens weeded with skulls;

Empty eyes ploughed, seedless, grounded by the truck.

I approached my home, hunting my husband’s face,

Found bones laced with the leaf, his lines, his trace

Obliterated, marrow married with the dust.

‘They took him away,’ the answer to my quest.

A child captains the chair my husband carved,

Ignorant of the books my husband read

He looks out into the plot where still charred

Flesh stench hangs, where dogs fed on the dead,

Unclothed the man from the bone.

But who, I ask, cast the first stone?

And,

What’s a dog know about morality?

copyright (c) 2005 Pilgermann BM

Who is she? If anyone can tell me who this woman is a personalised poem is offered as a reward. All I know is she is Greek. I was getting off the bus when I happened to look into the mirror and there she was.

The Poem of Everything

“Myself, I have a pilgrimage to make to the One dwelling in me. They offer lambs; I offer my breath and my blood.”

Husayn Ibn Mansur Al Hallaj: 857-922

“From my solitude I come:

To my solitude I return.”

Lope De Vega

Master, noman, everyman, wombman

Ghostman, whispers furled till the waking hour

when the flower runs its curled stalk

creeping from the ground to the thin sun strong

in the low day, new sky young

coloured still by the old, memories

anchoring to the past, this present

this coming,

Opens the crescent

To the eye, the stretched horizon

Circled and circling the red, rooftops

Burnt to gold, windows awake to the kiss.

Sea swerve past the shore, thin water flanks

Backward move the scree, rounding edge

By edge the earth, its swell, the wrack;

The moon tide pulling at the depths,

This day signed begins:

Beginning

Spring,

budding tints this eye and that,

Reaches past the curve this hour, colours

The latitude brothers, sisters

The same spring sprung signatures.

No visible disorder clouds come breezed. What plays?

She wanted to get back early,

Left the party, started to walk;

Didn’t have the fare; could’ve asked,

We’d have given her a lift

But it’s just around the corner,

A right, another, a left,

you’re there: There they found her stomach

Ripped open, bottles crushed into her eyes.

“We’re investigating the significance of chrysanthemums placed by the victim’s head. We haven’t ruled out the possibility of links to a cult of some sort, an underground sect. We’re appealing to the public to come forward with any details to help in solving this terrible crime. Our prayers go out to the parents and family of this young woman in this their time of sorrow.”

Change the record: abstract ecstasies follow.

"If I could be with you

I would be nowhere else

Every shadow bears the mark of you,

Every moment is a reflection of you.

Every moment is you and you are

in every moment that is

Babe, we can dream,

Dreaming is free.”

Before the boorish Neopolitan crowd

Maria[1] bent, bouqueted the radishes,

acknowledged proud the brutish louts:

‘I have pleased you well with myself.’

Stomach swollen, corded suddenly spits

Splits; riding eddies, the rip and turns,

Fourth coiled beasts, part u is me fission.

In credible currencies the barter burns:

The child, is just, is slapped quiet, bundled into the back. They drive to the hotel, enter by a back way. Waiting the buyer there. Just off the plane, travelled half way across the globe, he says. ‘This is prime steak,’ the driver tells him,’ very good stuff.’ Turns the child showing every which way. ‘See,’ he says, ‘been plucked pure, just for you, for you man.’ Smiles all around. Whisper in signs, strike a bargain, shake then leave. In the room he begins. When begins the scream takes a sock, stuffs silent the mouth then wiping his brow ties tighter the ties.

Syntax denied the whurld takes flight

Plantied by the night Saturn phades

Cullours shreaded degrailed Cascades

The preyer ghost wite kite white bright

The scream jumping the gap synapse

Lands to brand each gene a bastard

From high the first a startling relapse

Grace grounded blood gels no longer heard

The tongue that taught love.

Sea skin shimmering river runs

Still feeding without bounds dry noons.

‘Teeth pushed through, were stuck to his lips. Mouth puffed up, perforated with sores, blood crusted his face, his sides, had soaked the pillows. Terminally ill, they said. Better he die. Was left without food and water. Fourteen days. Just drugs they gave him, keep him quiet, and he such a talker. Wouldn’t look at me no more. That’s how I knew things weren’t well, he wasn’t right.’

The report concluded:

A deliberate policy of liquid and food denial was adopted

In all those cases judged, within strict guidelines prescribed,

As hopeless. Drugs were administered

To ease the suffering until they died.

“No comment.”

I an empty house, uncrowded

Bricks failing, mortar denied,

Incomplete, uncapped, wounded

Architecture unrendered.

Burnt butts prayers wither on the vine

copyright (c) 2001-2005 Pilgermann BM

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[1] After a performance in Naples Maria Callas had vegetables, including radishes thrown at her. Picking up the latter as if they were bouquets she stood, like the diva she was, proudly acknowledging the abuse.