Two Poems

From the stomach of the unconscious

startled dream-like objects are being retrieved,

handled like antiques, given collectors' names.

After dinner he'll arrange them in a mandala

on the mirrored table-top, the saltspoons,

crucifixes, hairpins, wounds.

This is a room that knows itself, deeper than red,

Mycenean, saturated. It's a burial-ground

of obsessions: displays of inlaid eyes,

bone, ivory—flesh's spies

on the psyche, a whole-body problem

en déshabille. A scene is being set: here

geophages and dolorous sword-swallowers

tightrope-walk across the Persian rug, watched

by bull-leapers and dog-headed gods.

Voyeurs, full of their own insights.

He has them on a leash,

like dirty words. She is stuffing the cushions

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down her throat, dévoré velvets, cravings

she likes the taste of, anything crimson

that comes into her mind. Behind her head,

for a moment he's the Jewish refugee

renting a space to live, staining his beard

with nicotine. At the edges of his reverie

is a landing lit sidelong by a bay window,

a shining grey seascape taking shape inside him

like a bookcase of afternoons.

Then he remembers where he is, downstairs

with the curtains drawn, the closed eyelids

of his patient, the mute wolfed things.

It was an ottoman, covered in silk-weave kilims, heavy-set

and generous like a lake whose main darkness is off-shore,

unmoored and so openly reminiscent of the body's

need to dream. Shouldered by removers into the day-room

where rivers feed the marinas and promenade-gardens,

it had about it an aura of absence, a lifetime of mourning,

it was a lost world where light gathered, grey as a pearl,

just above the fast-swimming clouds. Like lake-shore walkers

or coded self-portraits two men appeared to be resting, one asleep,

the other looking out towards the mountain. Much was unsaid,

the last war still fresh in the memory, some ills beyond help

so soon afterwards. Talking was impossible even to oneself—

behind a wall a string quartet was rehearsing its camouflage

music. The faint had lasted only a few seconds but it was draped

in scarlet like a too-warm room, a fatherland of tall-plumed hats:

all over Europe the guardians of instinct were taking their leave.

Decades after, Gustav and Schlomo, made fretful by forgetfulness,

palpitations, poor digestion, have met to take a final meal together