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The Pain Clinic  a work in progress

HOMAGE TO TSVETAYEVA: after Elaine Feinstein’s translation of ‘Homesickness’ by Marina Tsvetayeva

I am a fugitive in the winter

Light and there is no refuge anywhere,

I am as a log left behind after

Falling forever through the empty air.

Tsvetayeva’s ‘avenue of trees’ draws

Me towards its ineffaceable space,

There where I am lost in a limitless

Landscape of starless dreams I cannot face

Or turn away from paralysed useless,

The random days flicker as distant Morse

Code, their echo refuses to let go,

The mute sound of a shell closed and hollow,

Its sea receding endlessly breaking

The remembered map of my own making.

18-19 December  2002

1

The locked momentum of January

Surrounds me at every turn, marginal

Insubstantial yet without the right key

To let myself out, there without the will

Just to simply run in tandem with time

And allow the day to keep me afloat,

Clinging on to its cargo for the mime

Of my life left drifting into remote

And unfamiliar amnesia

Where I exist only in the background,

Brought to life from the negative of a

Dream, a surface echo over the sound

Of profound silence, of memory long

Ago abandoned breaking into song.

 17-18 January  2003

2

There is nothing to bring from the buried

Years, they lay in agitation in my

Mind, trapping me in a maze of hurried

Sealed sudden turnings even as I try

To make an escape, left behind in a

Terminal light with the lack of a map

To go by, the pathways in miasma

Narrow into darkness until they lap

At the edge of time, leaving me to wait

Endlessly searching until it is too

Late and recurring airlessness innate

Paralysing stifling and breaking through

To night and day indistinguishable

Confined in channels interminable.

19-22 January 2003

3

There is a pain without a narrative

Somewhere deep inside the void of being,

Something left there impossible to give

Way to, existing beyond my seeing

Or knowledge, experienced long ago

When I was then too young to understand,

Reflected beside my mother’s shadow

And its slow effacement by her own hand.

The words are lost that should describe that place

And if I could find them what would they mean,

Aligned with a future I cannot face

Left behind me. For so long I have been

Waylaid held fast in a maze with no way

Out of darkness that on the surface lay.

23-26 January 2003

4

My mind tells me that only stupor is

Worse but my senses say it is the pain,

Either way, between these polarities,

I live through days that will not come again

And endless nights that will not go away,

And however much I try to simply

Hold on, my life is just another day

Breaking into the dark infinity

Of a void with a paralysing force

Of its own that stuns me and propels me

Into stasis, the arc of an early

Existence nearing the end of its course,

The words echo mimicking airlessness

And the long drawn ricochet of distress.

30-31 January 2003

5

Poetry remains in spite of it all,

It is a stream that runs through the bedrock

Of my mind, beneath imperceptible

Stupor, a key left over to unlock

The future and free it from the endgame

Left behind. Somehow it survives entire

Heading off to an illusory fame

On its own, not lodged with me in the prior

And yet unending surrender to chance,

A paralysing unreachable void

The its aftermath. At the last distance

Just before horizon, the words avoid

The end, learning how to pull back in time,

Young independent and no longer mine.

2 February 2003
 

6

I have left an anonymous unknown

Legacy to a remembered future,

Something kept from the silence on my own,

Tremulous with the weight of my first sure

Footprints left in snow all those years ago.

My days amount to nothing, just the same

Fears through the nights since then, the dull echo

Of failure that follows me like my name,

A fugitive shadow thrown on a wall.

My mind feels too near to reality

As though I am now too far out to call

Out to anyone, yet a memory

Surfaces from its own vacuity,

Of how impossible want waits on me.

4 February 2003

7

The void is wide open perceptibly

Nearer and my futile resistance is

Diminished, nights are irretrievably

Lost just searching for an answer I miss

Outside in the dark in the disarray

Since then, the days are left there unfinished,

Left there while darkness on the surface lay

In their young infinity extinguished.

Mornings now I almost visualize

Their void, their delirium drawing near,

I cannot close an open core that lies

Too deep for hope or despair, sheer as fear

That questions and then echoes without end

Down through the fractured years I could not mend.

4-6 February 2003
 

8

Poetry has always been there for me

Quietly urging yet keeping ahead

As though in the background casually

Waiting with nowhere else to go instead.

Many times I have turned it from my door

Refusing to listen to its whispered

Entreaty or hear it in the hearts core,

Left there abandoned and unremembered

And reduced to the level of a serf,

Left to turn this way and that in the thrall

Of time and with an echo of the earth

To go on left at the end of it all.

Something familiar  unassuming

And alongside waiting to be let in.

10-11 February 2003

9

Poetry opened an ordinary

Life and turned it around out to face the world,

In the guise of an analyst with me

Salvaged a language from the years untold

And often steered me away from the end

Without asking anything in return

But the time to be allowed to depend

On me to go on living and to learn

That reality and poetry go

Hand in hand and there is no turning back,

That the last ricochet of an echo

Is no more than an absence and its lack,

That a sound stemming from an early source

Can only go backwards with its own force.

11 February 2003

10

Somehow I live in a co-dependant

Arrangement bartering with the rhythm

Of the spirit and with words never meant

To be heard yet caught up in a maelstrom

Of their own. Word maker, I am no more

Than a wandering journeyman selling

My wares by the wayside forced to ignore

Something deep inside the hearts core welling

Up and out of control. I never know

Where to go, only the sound of the next

Fairground from a haze of neon can show

Me the way, jettisoned and yet annexed

As my life is, the future but a cry

With night coming on, for someone to buy.

11-12 February 2003

11

Something left unfinished keeps me awake

An involuntary void with no rest

Or refuge in dreams, managing to make

A mockery of my days unredressed

And with nowhere to go even before

They have begun. And I have narrowed down

Life itself to its darkest utmost core

Paired it back to a night in which to drown

In or an endless space in which to fall

As though forever through the firmament

The dull hollows of city stars that sprawl

The black rain over night’s neon vestment.

Only the words know where they are going

Unsilent sensed and beyond my knowing.

13-16 February 2003

12

Sometimes there is nothing that can be done

And the day falls with its own domino

Effect on all the others that have gone

Before and I am trapped and left below

Every single one of them. Nothing could

Ever be done, only a surrender

To an overwhelming chance current would

Save me and carry me to another

Shore, where I live much as a castaway

Inscribing fleeting words into the sand,

Indecipherable even as they

Lay in their meaning on an ebb tide and

Receding vanishing without a trace

With no one to know they were once in place.

16 February 2003

13

Nothing seems to matter the words will not

Get through they will not make it to the end

Lost in illusion yet all I have got

To cling on to while trying to pretend.

And what is there is a coterminous

Void and the price I pay for the future,

Dwelling at the utmost precipitous

Edge of time and language as though to cure

Myself of an unreachable malaise,

Balancing on the knife edge of a rim

Powerless against the magnetic days

That just draw me inexorably in.

The way back is but a distant echo

As far as the vacuum of sorrow.

16 February 2003

14

Never before now has there been a way

Back and yet time is running out on me,

Stranded without the fare even to pay

A boatman or prepare for a journey.

The words carry me on their momentum

Back to an origin before silence

Hurtled echoing through a vacuum

Trying to remember what it was once

That startled language into the rhythm

Of the sea, was it a momentary

Low cry from its beginning in the womb

Or an unbearable reality,

Nothing that is existing seems to be

What it is, a part of infinity.

16 February 2003

15

The poems are now old enough to fend

For themselves and they have outgrown their keep

I’m forced to let them go that they might lend

A hand to life while I learn how to sleep

Once more, somehow trying to remember

The forgotten girl I never could be,

Left there before the death of my mother

And the aftermath before poetry

Could even begin to make itself heard,

An apprentice simply trying to tend

To knowledge that experience conferred,

When suddenly and entailed without end,

With an ordinary infinity

Life came back to me as it used to be.

17 February 2003

16

Day by day my days become more subdued

While I try to imagine a footbridge

Erected across a void vast and viewed

As somewhere I have to get to, a ledge

From one side to the other and balanced

And projected over infinity

With nothing to hold on to, the distance

At the end of time hurtling towards me,

Pushed to a plunging last extremity

By the magnetic force of my own fear,

Unable to cross to the other side,

Transfixed by illusion there before me,

Only the silence within me is near,

Its low echo fills the void far and wide.

20 February 2003

17

The paralysing force of poetry

Gradual yet sudden will not me let

Go, my life is lived within its shadow

Then it is gone leaving me to follow

As an echo, unable to put one

Foot in front of another, uneasy

And bewildered and left there on my own

Unable to explain expectancy

And its loss, the presence of an absence

In a mind resounding and magnified

With longing and want, a left over sense

Of something living even as it died.

Nothing after can make up the shortfall

Of Being, with infinity in thrall.

20 February 2003

18

From the start I was meant to write even

After losing my way in the dark for

So long not knowing who I was, so when

The time came, inexperienced and raw

And waylaid by chance, I failed to see what

Was happening why it had to be me

About to break into song. I could not

Have been made aware of how poetry

Was to alter the whole of time after,

How the days would unravel one by one

Until almost everything was laid bare,

Until no stone was left there standing on

Another, the shadow of my mother

Would fade to a mute recurring rapture.

21 February 2003

19

I am paralysed always by the pain

Of it all and unable to summon

The means to think, the days arrive in vain

Without anything to do, left among

The disarray a night has left behind.

I depend on language forever out

Of reach outside the compass of my mind,

Existing and unknown and yet about

Playing me off against time in a game

That has no ending and no last retreat.

Nothing after could ever be the same

My life an arena where echoes meet,

When suddenly a poem is alight

In dreams lost in silence beyond my sight.

22 February 2003

20

There is a known momentary release

When a poem has just reached its ending,

But also the fact that the words might cease,

A feeling after yet apprehending

Everything in its wake. Most of the time

The only thing to be done is to wait,

However long it takes, another line

Will suddenly break through bearing a trait

And a signature entirely its own.

Time is running out I can ill afford

To keep them still anonymous unknown

Or abandoned as though of no accord,

And there is no let up from the pressure

The poems were written for the future.

22 February 2003

21

And poetry is anaesthesia

For a pain that cannot be reconciled

Either with its origin or its end,

The time in between was make believe, a

Reckoning somehow even as I whiled

Away my day imagining a time

To come when the words would have made it through

To a life of their own no longer mine,

Yet looking back at someone they once knew

Or remembered maybe from long ago,

There in their own right, existing outlined

In the light, away from oblique shadow

Superimposing itself and aligned

As a black haze on days that would not mend.

22 – 23 February 2003

22

For days without end I am at a loss

For words while the unlit night stands about

As though listening for a cue across

A void, everything is on hold and out

Of joint and I seem to be left over

From another time. Imagination

Is the only thing I have to offer,

The currency and tender for a one

Way journey to an unvisited reach

Of the mind through a landscape of darkness

Without a star to steer by or to search

With as the night begins to coalesce.

Language was my abode, my life the rent

But with no return for that investment.

25 February 2003

23

Nothing can alter the course of language

I cannot add another syllable

After it goes, just left there to manage

As I close off against a colossal

Sense of loss. And I live my life always

Awaiting its return, still restlessly

Unable to forget, numberless days

Left endless in their own vacuity

Arriving with a simultaneous

Echo of nowhere to go. Yet I wait

Through interminable anonymous

Silence until it is almost too late,

The mute night for which there is no redress,

Each morning augmenting its emptiness.

27 – 28 February 2003

24

Why should this be, when my life should have been

About poetry and not this endless

Process of despair where my eyes have seen

Too much, my mind a signal of distress

Shinning intermittent across the vast

Void of an everlasting consciousness

With no one there to understand the last

Flickered darkness about to coalesce,

As a late sun shown below horizon

Extinct and mute through massed banks of time or

A ship going down with all hands fast on

Board, seen from the reach of an unlit shore

Where there is no one near enough to hear

Silent immutable infinite fear.

2 – 3 March 2003

25

When I turn away from time just to write

For a while, my own life seems to explode,

Language is useless and I cannot fight

Back and a poem cannot bear the load

And the weight of it all, abandoning

Me without looking over its shoulder

So I am left there without anything

To cling on to until it is over

And the words return in their slow makeshift

Way and ready to make a mockery

Of my day. Their rhythm is left to drift

Before the ebb tide of reality

And the endless sound from another time

Echoing recurring in the sea’s rhyme.

10 March 2003

26

Impossible day breaks behind the weight

Of it all as winter begins to wane,

Before the spring to come it is too late

Now to turn about and nothing again

Can ever be the same, the past has gone,

Memory that existed at the heart

Of things now fades into dislocation,

Time is left on hold and coming apart

And the future outspread is yet confined

In the panels of an unfolding fan

Just laid aside at the back of my mind

While slowly opening to its full span.

There is nothing left over to forgive

And there is nothing left to barter with.

9 – 10 April 2003

27

My mind is numb with the impact of spring

And a winter that will not go away,

A war has dominated everything,

With more unnumbered people every day

Who were not given time enough to see

It end or a spring about to begin.

There are things beyond the ordinary

Trials the customary suffering

Casually encountered, yet my heart

Can only hold the moment and the rest

Lies heavy on my mind and is a part

Of every hour, its echo is addressed

In the interval of a dream, a sense

When a poem has reached its existence.

10 – 11 April 2003

28

Poetry creates its own interval

A vacuum between experience

And imagination, impossible

As the distance or span of existence

And where I am paralysed and stranded

Just struggling between these polarities

With a pressure I alone demanded

Of myself, from every moment, and these

Facts will not go away, they will remain

Long after and will be left there to fend

On their own and with memory again

In tow or in shadow right to the end,

A feeling of something left to be done,

With nothing to bring whether lost or won.

11 April 2003

29

Poplar leaves are beginning to open

Thickening and tapering to their height,

A semblance of blond expectancy when

Closed as they struggle to retain the light.

For so long now you have kept me going,

Alongside the years I have forgotten

But every leaf is there and still growing

And a part of imagination when

Even memory begins to dwindle

In the dark in the days that disappear.

Everything is crumbling and the low pall

Of a lost time is now hurrying near,

Winter’s remains are still familiar

Riveting spring to an April poplar.

11 – 12 April 2003

30

Through the lost unnumbered nights of twenty

Years I sat or paced my flat in a dream

Restless in another world quietly

Writing, the starless darkness in between

Was my only canopy a refuge

From the heightened glare, the lasting white haze

Of a new day. Words in the centrifuge

Of language as they veered or stalled, always

Laid heavy on my mind left as a shell

Enfolded and waiting for them to come,

Conjured out of nothing a distant bell

Tolling and mnemonic left there drawn from

The air or signalled through the dark, a Morse

Of syllables of longing and remorse.

13 April 2003

31

Tonight my mind is heavy and oppressed

And it is difficult even to breathe,

Here there is nothing, an undivested

Evening and whatever I could believe

In from another time won’t make any

Difference to the long drawn out wasted

Day refusing to go away, only

A sense of memory re-enacted

Many times before, magnetically

Drawing me towards the end and to an

Empty page, after hours of apathy,

Imagination as it simply ran

Aground, left there without any answer

In the stupefying silence after.

16 – 17 April 2003

The Last Sonnets

498

Hurried before a dream a landau passed

Empty controlled and journey drawn a last

Time leaving its finality behind

As once the mind's shadow over England.

Love is first known outlasting then its own

Realisation and remaining alone

In the memory when all else has gone

The fugitive spirit in refuge known.

August takes the sudden poplar over

To tremble airlessly to October,

Love was never like this, such ruin where

Once falling snow was curling in his hair,

Vestigial the spirit both lost and won.

Higher than water's highest reflection

Overturned, the trees to Canterbury,

A landau passing closed a century.        

1987

499  

for Bernard Burgoyne

The poems were left behind as something

That could not be reassembled without

A text, only the vowels channelling

Through my ear, signalled into meaning out

Of the depths where unwritten words remain

An echo beyond an ordinary

Day, they appear far-off awake again

As though existing in reality,

Already written to be read aloud

And with a life of their own in a dream,

Mnemonic or on hold among a crowd,

Searching for the shadow of things that seem.

Only by wanting so much to belong

Could I leave myself behind in a song.

2001

500

There is no way just to draw to a close

Or escape the ending hurrying near,

Locked in a maze of lost days and shadows

Of my own making, there is nowhere here

To rest enough to sojourn in silence

And only at the utmost reach and helm

Aground in insomnia can I sense

Anything at all, where words overwhelm

Reality with a current futile

In the dark and left to circulate

Around shuttered unvisited dreams while

They wait outside existence, isolate,

Manifest as woken words leftover,

Unwritten echoes that remain after.

2002

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