John Ash's The Branching Stairs (selections)

I won't describe these. You know them

or you remain in exile.

"The Philosophies of Popular Songs"

The monster came up out of the rain--
oh help!--like something vomited
from the dank depths of the gooseberry swamp,
all hirsute and dripping.

* * *

remarks of such a hurtful
and cynical nature, thrown

altogether like a basket of arrow-heads
that they retreated in tears.

* * *

Before the world finally forgot them
it was observed that they had begun to paint

on the underside of the table
a bright blue sky, scattered with gold stars
and the episodes of an epic
were creeping remorselessly across the carpet.

"Life Under the Table"

They fear the time when they cease to recognise
the names in the anathemas.

"Bespalko's Devotions" (much stronger in context)

Of course one must presume such charming people
innocent, and perhaps one should ascribe the ruins
(which are so calculated in their disorder
they might be fakes) to the ancient wisdom
of the city fathers who wish to remind us only
that all cities are mortal, that even this most
prosperous, most impeccably bourgeois of cities
will go the way of Ephesus and Antioch,
of Tanis and Sahala. But a doubt remains:

a city is not an axiom.

"The Ruins, with Phrases from the Official Guide"

But I can hardly speak. I feel
I am confined inside a drinking bowl.
I am surely, the seed inside the smallest berry,
and if I were to say more you would not understand me.

"According to Their Mythology"

the city is bound within a ring, a ring

thrown down in boredom.

"Without Being Evening"

Too late to talk of moorings
or bed rock. The scent of mushrooms
or sorrel carries us far away:
an interminable drunken conversation
is the fate of exiles.

* * *

the gulping music lied to us.

"Ghost Preludes" (the beginning and ending)

There must be mountains
inside those clouds
and the sea still exists
where the port once was.

* * *

No use lamenting the caryatids' faces
melting in the rain as if they were modelled in snow--

* * *

But there is a community in despised professions
and when the street musicians look down
into the deep red or blue linings of their instruments' cases
they are like divers, like archaeologists

discovering for the first time after centuries of burial,
centuries of invention and vast migrations no one understands,
a lost beauty, a vanished art like a living face--
Philip of Macedon's tomb.

"Street Musicians"

Now the storms, the heavy heat confirm
distance from the event is no protection--
besides you live in a country where half the population
are criminals or fools, all of them
staring through sealed windows at the vast
cataclysm that is the weather.

* * *

Yes we also look at the sky.
At intervals it turns black.

"The Weather, or The English Requiem"

Istanbul, Day 3, 23 April 2008

One of my favourite things about Istanbul is the street cats. They're everywhere, and it seems everybody's happy to give them a bit of leftover sandwich, etc. Some people I spoke to had their own street cats, ones who would visit regularly for food and affection. I first decided to photograph some of the street cats I saw as I was walking from Kadir Has to Eminönü.



My next stop was Eminönü Mosque. I was so tired, though, I didn't go inside. It's even more awe-inspiring and beautiful in person.

"The Forecast" on a New York Times blog

My poem, "The Forecast," from the newly published anthology Feeling the Pressure: The Poetry and Science of Climate Change, has been reprinted on Andrew C. Revkin's New York Times science blog, "Dot Earth," in his entry for 2 May.

John Ash's The Goodbyes (selections)

-


The pianist commences the sonata about the angels and the rain.
It is so slow, so lingering we will soon be fast asleep

dreaming of pink rooms with musical animals and roses
while our teeth rot in sympathy, and outside
the autumn air grows dense as a preserving oil

We must start now on the long route back
to 'the evidence of our senses' but it is hard,--
we may have to unlearn as much as we learn,

"Great Sonata I" (first three stanzas)

Our lives
have been folded away like a letter

bearing a message of terrible
urgency
and never posted.

"Our Lives: A Symphony"

And each individual--
their clothes, their hair or the small movements of their hands,
impresses us as the element of a pattern we wouldn't, just now, alter a stitch,
although we know sadness is in it like an ink-stain

"The Threshold Moment"

we're listening and leaning into a distance htat's
immense, capable of any transformation--

How far? How deep? Who will come with us?
Everything is in there, even the mountains
where the elephants go to die.

* * *

The clear air's full of the feeling of curtains rising
and everyone's ears are tuning up.

"Music Understood by Children and Animals"

Talk
turns to the furniture of permanence.

* * *

the goodbye like a black stair-
case leading
back into whatever you were.

"The Goodbyes"

John Ash's The Bed

Not long after I learned I was going to Istanbul I learned John Ash has made the city his home for some years. I'd read and enjoyed his poems thereabouts before and began reading his Selected Poems from Carcanet in preparation for the chance of meeting, as he teaches at Kadir Has. I am so glad this opportunity arose, for I learned I love John Ash's poetry; Ash is a contemporary Calvino, taking the imaginative possibilities of a real city into its archetypal psychology. Here are selections from the selections of The Bed in the Selected Poems.


It is all perfect: the mirrors are hardly tarnished at all
and still flicker with the faces of unhappy children.

We have stepped into the frontispiece of a new book:
it is called 'The History of Pleasure'.

"Even though" (final stanzas)

The cat screams and hisses in the pipes all night.

"Prose for Roy Fisher"

In the last photograph to be taken
before the entire area was sealed

off, a black flock of birds descends
towards the snow-bound city--

descends in the shape of a neckline,
descends like a frustrated wish.

"The Last Photographs" (final stanzas)

The recital of nostalgias begins.

"Orchestral Manoeuvers (In the Dark)"

...the violin resumes before the rose can fade
or the stars fall out of the polished arc of heaven.

"Advanced Choreography for Beginners"

yes, the world is simple
and very far from our lives

* * *

I like this picture
even if its charm is suspect

"Salon Pieces"

but the longing stays with us--

I mean the golden longing

* * *

And a song is the engine
that builds this different climate....

* * *

We have to love the past
it is our invention.

"The Rain"

concluding in signatures
of a fantastic and lethal elegance.

"Accompaniment to a Film Scene" (last lines)

I escaped

and ran over some mountains--
they cannot have been so high
it is only now that the light reflected from their snows

is dazzling...


* * *

but I embraced the violent innocence
I found in America's great heart.

"Glowing Embers: Paraphrases & Fictions"

The
swoon

is all, like star-light
piercing

the worn linen
of a life.

"The Bed"

(nb: I also copied the whole of "Sonata in Two Sentences" into my journal)

Let's Hijack a Medi-Van

Return airfare from Heathrow to O'Hare for my prospective dates (21 July-12 August) has dropped below 500 pounds, so I'm starting to have hopes and make plans. In March, the best thing I thought I could do for my father from afar was have him sent Season 3 (Series 3 for you Brits) of Battlestar Galactica, as Mom had bought a new laptop and he could catch up on what he'd missed. Now I'm thinking it's been fifteen-plus months since my father was somewhere besides a hospital, rehab centre, or the family home at 220 Arlington Drive, and I'd like to take him out for a nice dinner. In the past, we've all enjoyed wonderful dinners at Biaggi's, and as it's on the fancy side as local restaurants go, it seems appropriate for the occasion.

So I called my parents tonight and ran the idea by each of them. For my father, as usual, the issue was money: "But it's fifty dollars for those vans." For my mother, predictably, the issue was practicality: "I think the wheelchair vans only do medical trips." This conjunction--the limits of insufficient money, the limits of what was practical--were depressing as a teenager, but I wasn't going to be brought down by that tonight. "We'll hijack one," I said to Mom. "We'll get a medi-van and make it take us to Biaggi's rather than the hospital." At this my mother burst out with a gleeful laugh: maybe we could, it said to me. Let's do it.

Istanbul, Night 1 and Day 2, 21-22 April 2008

I arrived in Istanbul some time after five p.m. on the 21st but didn't properly arrive at my hotel until nearly eight as there was confusion over the airport transfer; so all I did that first night was have dinner near my hotel, at Doy-Doy. As it was quite warm, you can imagine how disappointed I was that they didn't serve alcohol on account of their proximity to a mosque, in this case The Blue Mosque. Here is my view of The Blue Mosque from Doy-Doy's terrace.

That thumb in the right corner of the picture isn't mine, but that of a friendly foreigner who wanted to help me obtain the best shot after I'd agreed to take a photo of him and his girlfriend--he seemed keen to return the favour.

The next morning I went to Kadir Has University to meet the faculty and teach a class introducing the prose poem. By the time I'd taught, we'd been to lunch, and I'd settled the arrangements for my next teaching session on Thursday, it was mid-afternoon, so I decided to visit nearby sites, beginning with The Greek Patriarchate. At the Patriarchate is a beautiful small church, the Church of St. George. Here are two interior pictures.



(To see more detail, click on any photo to enlarge it.)

Next I walked to the area of Eyup and its summit at the Pierre Loti Cafe and had a cup of tea as I looked out over Istanbul--there's a grand view from there (but with the humidity there was a heavy mist, so the photos I took there didn't turn out well), then back down into Eyup to do a little shopping.

Early evening I rejoined the faculty at Kadir Has, from which we took taxis to Taksim and drank beers at the outdoor tables of a bar I believe was called Urban. After a while those with children headed home, and those remaining, Mel and Selhan, took me to Lades Restaurant for authentic Turkish food. Such a day!

"Pleurisy" in today's Times Literary Supplement

This is a poem I wrote when staying at Lytton's in January, his noisy radiator providing some of the inspiration.

NaPoWriMo ends

It's the last day of NaPoWriMo, and I intend to wring out of myself another poem. I have not managed a poem every day, and I doubt I've done 30 for the month, but I've certainly written at least 20 and pushed myself to write a poem more regularly. Others?

Tea sugar dream (day 5 in Istanbul)

"Tea sugar dream": this is what the owner-manager of The Halik Cafe in Sultanahmet told a group of Australians was the way to say "thank you very much" in Turkish. He performed quite a lead up, showing Turkish tea in its traditional tulip glass as well as bringing over some sugar before talking about dreams, and I was following his performance wondering where he was going when finally he put all three together, "tea-sugar-dream," and I burst out laughing. One of the Australians asked me if it was true, and I told her it was pronounced "te-shek-kur ed-air-im" (teşekkür ederim). I know hardly any Turkish, but my time here has become easier since learning teşekkür ederim, lütfen (please), tamam (okay, all right), bir (one), and çay (tea).

Today I joined John Ash's class touring parts of Istanbul on foot and learning of their architecture and history. With his knowledgeable and playful running commentary, we saw the Greek Patriarchate; the oldest running church in Istanbul, St. Mary of the Mongols; a Muslim tomb (whose I don't remember); and the rather significant remains of a palace that John Freely, apparently not checking himself, reports do not exist.

I look forward to posting pictures on my return--both photos of Istanbul's sights and of its street cats (on which more anon!).