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soft sift

HARCOURT, INC.

Chapter One

Anything can be forgotten, become regular As newspapers hurled in a spinning arc to land With a thump on the porch where Grandma sits And knits, her hound dog yawning at her feet.

And other strangled details will emerge and prove Suddenly potent to confound the wary-footed, and even The assembled members of the panel; in turn Each pundit speaks, yanks from the hat an angry rabbit who flops

In spurts around the circular paths of crazy paving. No pressing need to watch them but you do.

* * *

Dirty fingernails in August, and just The amount of lightning threatened; superb Courtiers sweep through the various precincts Fingering each other's beads in the jagged dusk.

I myself went and left like a moron, but heard The rumours nevertheless - meanwhile the wind Pounds this shack with wilful abandon, then inquires, As it eases, just exactly how many spliffs there were

Stashed that night in the cicada-coloured Pencil case tucked in the side pocket of her satchel.

* * *

Harsh truths indeed! I act the part of my own Nemesis, polite, dazed, addicted to adversity, Frequently drunk. Overhead the wires hum Obscure ultimatums, mutterings that threaten To aggravate forever these ordinary feelings, and inflict Upon the world quantities of crazily-worded postcardsSent off on impulse from decaying seaside towns. For I still Love the tang of brine, the old women hurtling on motorbikes Through swirling banks of fog, any who loiter Resentfully about the war memorial on summer afternoons.

* * *

Eventually one hears the cuckoo's call, while friends Recline in armchairs. Let's off then, backwards through The fish-eye lens, bone by bone, clean shirts Soon streaked and torn. Some fought like lovers Under the bluish lights that swayed so weirdly On their stanchions of pale, unpainted metal; how Suddenly the team began to perform as if a stranger Watched and cared, blindly probing through the endless rain For openings, reeling back aghast, bitterly dispersed One dank October, the sediment settling as best it might. * * * Afloat on the flood, indifferent to the cries And the silence, I imprison your wandering hand: In it lurk anecdote and polemic entwined, scars Faint as a plate's, the luck of the stars ... Yet the affect hardly emerges, peers forth Like a strayed mole through a cliff-crevice On the unfamiliar scene; though I have leapt and held And carried, grimaced sourly at the brimming heavens, A few feints and the incident spirals Beyond reach, turns turtle in dreams displaced before morning. PLAN NINE

The dreadful telephone again: gentle as a kitchen He'd walk through snow to lay his wreath or convey Misgivings. The signal fades, freeing me to crawl Through cold Friday, to forage amid the shadows cast By a reckless crowd of brittle soap-opera characters. Our bodies drag, halt mesmerized, lurch forward With a yelp. 'What's the story, morning glory?' Inquires the super, whose reign of terror And mind like glue leave less than ever To be desired. I drink my Rhenish, though it tastes Of poison, and attack with everything Until at last the bugle sounds. Briskly, beyond These streaming drapes, a caustic voice unfolds the case To a clutch of bright-eyed interns: no mohair, no alcohol, Lots of plain yogurt certainly, no foreign languages, no téte-à-têtes. THE GREAT DIVIDE

The teapot slips from the hand. Some Muscular ache lies patterned on the floor in irregular Fragments of china; beyond, through the narrow meshes Of twilight, children's shriekings filter and drain. Raw fingers' ends search the delicate scalp. Can these be stray traces of argument Lost forever to posterity, while delays And distractions alternate like chequered shade? In an ill-fitting suit, heart pounding, one Frowns at the herald's summons. Nothing moves, Though a fleck still troubles the eye that absorbs The scene, the shards, the gaudy colours of formica. CONTINGENCY PLANS

On balance it wasn't so much the cash I was owed, as the attacks on my character; I Prayed for deliverance and revenge. November Lingered on gloomily: colds and fevers swept The population, reduced swathes to troubled brooding And red, streaming eyes; in a quandary I seized My innate Englishness, and practised Wrapping it around me like an old army coat. Two strikes, it was decreed, and you were out: appeals For clemency were received with merry scorn. As the gridlock eased I changed the subject, Knowing my father, knowing the trees and the turnings and the signs Along the route, and remembering his aversion to all Blockages; I felt the engine growl, then Shudder and forget itself. `I'm a Rhinestone Cowboy' rode bucking and spangled across the airwaves That spread like contours above the country's bumps And hollows. A buzzing, roving helicopter eyed The progress of our orderly parade: it would swoop When necessary, a featherless scavenger lured by carrion. BEYOND THE BOULEVARD

He merely flapped when we steamed by, then settled To his accounts; we were all dressed in clean Summer clothes. Our hearts were thumping in our breasts. I wanted to punctuate or somehow refute my own Breathing. Messengers on push-bikes seemed to float Through the haze like false witnesses for hire. There was work, and there were forms of recreation Enjoyed by brooding men: their anxious, sun- Struck eyes scoured the environs for taxis. My mind - had it been weighed - would have been About the mass and density of an old-style association Football. The scar across my forehead was the lace. We were a long, swirling punt from the names And numbers sewn into our garments: our milky Reflections kept merging and dispersing in mirrors and doorways. Every team learns to ignore its desperadoes; it was, However, as yet unclear who would be chosen To double back through the streets in search of help, or directions.

THE LONG MAN

of Wilmington winces with the dawn; he has just endured yet another mythical, pointless, starry vigil. His ankles ache, and the weather looks irksome and moody; the early traffic whizzes by regardless, but the news and emblems borne by each car permeate the soil that sustains the straggling furze, various grasses, and the odd towering oak. Across the damp fields a distant siren pleads for attention; he cannot move, nor, like a martyr, disprove the lie of the land. Who was it who established, in the teeth of so much evidence, the laws of diminishing returns? I woke up feeling cold and distended, my feet pointing east, my head in low-hanging clouds. A stream of curious tags and sayings flowed like a potion through my veins. I had the `look', as some called it, meaning I floated in an envelope of air that ducked and sheered between invisible obstacles. The alarmed senses struggled to respond, then bewailed the absence of detailed, all-powerful precedents: I kept picturing someone tracing a figure on the turf, and wearing this outline into a path by walking and walking around the hollow head, immobile limbs, and cavernous torso.

LIVING WITH EQUATIONS

As I emerged from my hip-bath it suddenly dawned The facts might be remarshalled and shown to rhyme. Now the era need never end: its coefficients learn To crack their knuckles, or reach for a handful of silver. I watch the entangled sums unspool, as if the weight Of earth pressed fitfully upon their mad proposals. Stray hints lead across perilous forecourts, around Noisy corners, then out into featureless, sandy scrub. The devolved particulars - a shoe, a mole - reappear In compounds that seem so explicit one forgets to gasp. The remainder can only imperceptibly dwindle, retreating Backwards until their long lost premises turn inside out. JACK RABBIT

Will I ever catch up, or will I be easily Caught first? It was assumed I'd branch out With the heretics, commit a few crimes, then Suffer the decreed punishment: instead, I paused Near the knoll where the vociferous and well- Groomed gather to consider their options. I yearned To wade through buttercups and clover towards The sinister squadrons of an embattled Bourgeoisie. Vivid mottoes - One Size Fits Nearly All!, No Grammar, No Furniture!, Le Temps Viendra! - still adorn the half-built walls. Prodigal Sons and daughters stream forth in search Of business, clutching their coats, bewildered by doubts And strange aches; a thin layer of soot powders the buildings They pass, and the cracked bark of the peeling plane-trees. * * * So I reckoned to get quicker, leaner, braver, more Self-effacing; I'd pick my way between The mounds of junk cast off by warring factions, cleverly Disguised and idly humming. I swam mid-stream With the freshwater boys, and lounged on rocks At evening. Meanwhile the air slowly thickened With intrigue. Blueprints and memoranda Began to circulate like the seasons, melting The obdurate, blossoming where least expected: We were to police ourselves, produce Solemn recommendations, fall on our own Swords. Wishes were transfigured into parables And omens. Neither threats nor Chinese burns Demolished my cloudy strategies, though a tow-haired Bullyboy still slouches at the edge of sight, killing time. EARLY TO BED, EARLY TO RISE It was in Berlin you mixed up John and J. J. Cale, And we found ourselves watching Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past yet again. I, on the other hand, confused Teniers the elder and Teniers the younger In Amsterdam, where I saw Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys on my own. On the outskirts of Moscow we failed to distinguish clearly between Charles and Burl Ives; Our punishment was to sit through Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II, twice. I met a man in New York who couldn't tell the difference between George And Zbigniew Herbert: his favourite film was Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari, which he insisted we see together. In Cardiff I confounded Edward, Dylan, and R.S. Thomas; To get over my embarrassment I went to a performance of Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville. People continually mistake the work of Antoine Le Nain for that of his brother Louis, even in Los Angeles, Where most films are made, including Doug Liman's Swingers, which I recently saw for the first time, and really enjoyed. MISGUIDED ANGEL

Where will you ride in this minute that stretches Its wings, and soars aloft, and turns into An unplanned, devilish interval? Serial Misadventures have shattered the grip Of barbed rubric and corporate logo; enigmas Swarm at the brink of the five senses. When revealed Each unlikely event exacts the stipulated Blood-money, bequeaths boils and frets and fresh Starts. Whirled from place to place and buffeted By cross-winds, the sorrowing imp struggles on, gloomy As the impending thunderheads: - Reflect, he insists, On these peculiar facts: there is no controlling One's renegade thoughts, nor striking The fetters from blistered limbs. Inflexible etiquette Demands every gesture be also a memory: you stare Into space where fractions and figures still pursue Their revenge; half-veiled by fumes, a lurid Sickle moon unsettles the foundering traffic. Whoever claims A stake out there must rise and speak in guttural tones Of all they mean - or meant - to do, and why, and where. HOOKED

then thrown back, like a long-finned, too bony fish, I finally took him at his word, and felt the lateness of the hour acquire a dense, rippling aura that weighed down these eyelids, pressed apart membrane and nerve: howsoever I twist and retreat, I thought, or silently glide from sphere to sphere, the merest splinter of rage keeps returning as a glittering, razor-edged weapon, and even after dawn has tightened still further the angle between reflex and use, a sort of sunken tide pushes open my ducts, washes through or else over uncertain crumbling defences, dissolves into itself whatever floats, like quicklime, filters the air through fluids thicker, heavier than water ... as in a riddle, my entire active vocabulary scatters and drifts, sucked under, worn smooth to the touch; instead, circling cries and swirling, opaque graffiti scrawled in black clouds of enormous letters come to seem to define only their own unforgiving and yet volatile laws: "Thou yet behold'st me?" I'm half-inclined to bellow in jest at the elements, but decide, inversely, my first real manoeuvre must be to conceal from the inquisitive, lopsided sun the direction in which these currents are secretly driving me, and the immaculate, tiny moons that now cover my body.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from soft sift by MARK FORD Copyright © 2001 by Mark Ford
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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