Queuing for the Mudd Club
 Cover art by Tibor (Jiri Tibor Novak) |
Queuing for the Mudd Club was published by Twelvetrees Publishing Company, Hobart, in 1985. The book is no longer in print, but copies are available from the author. The following poems from Queuing for the Mudd Club are displayed on this page:
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Windbound
Skinning the river with its bitter blade
The west wind drives to the wall’s brunt
Salt and sand,
Slivers of distance and the other side,
Particles to weather board and paint
With a blank scour,
Grinding hour on pitted hour.
The air’s an assault, rasping in the brain
Like a furious file. A wire
Brush along
The nerves jangles its stupid rataplan,
And in the taut circles of the ear,
Without a lapse,
Grain upon grain scrapes and taps.
Through the thin slit between window and sill
The gale spits its crystals of dust;
On table,
Shelf, carpet, pen and page, on hand held still,
Gathers as you watch, with easy haste,
A crust of quartz,
Glaze on objects, eyes and thoughts,
Till each movement means the rustle of silt,
The foot’s grating fret on floor, sharp
Wince that’s spilt
From gritty eyes, the scratch of mind on fault.
And room to room, chary of each step,
I tread and stand,
Prisoner to air and sand.
Winter is coming. The weather’s closing
In with a harsh, incessant hiss
And howling.
Dust yaws around me with its awful song.
The house is brittle as an hourglass.
This wind is cold.
Something will break beneath my hold.
The Fitting
Cold from salt water on a gusty beach,
A small child shrieking at the wind,
I raised my arms. My father’s sweater dropped
Like night. He didn’t need it. Blind,
Delighted, I tunnelled till my head emerged,
Though my arms could scarcely reach
Halfway, leaving the sleeves to drag the ground
Like an ape’s knuckles. No doubt
I briefly wondered how long it would be
Till such a prodigious garment was a perfect fit.
Another day with water and a wind
And a need to keep away the cold,
Jibbing at first, like tomb robbers who lose
Their heads in the dark, but growing bold
And warming to the task, my brother and I
Go through his things to find
Among the shirts, old sweaters, trousers, piled
Shoes (one pair never worn),
Something that fits, since he won’t need them, and see
In the speechless mirror what we’re dressed for now we’ve grown.
The Dark Fantasy
And when at last they nailed
Him and clipped the pages of their gruesome quest,
After the facile killings, girls he’d despatch
As calmly as we’d blink to ease
A lash from a smarting eye or scratch
An itch, the used-up bodies he had trailed
Like a storm’s litter, he confessed,
Yes, to dark fantasies
Guiding him like a mentor. How do we live
With this? how go on, lit by a smoky lamp,
Building the frames of solace that house
Us over the oubliette, the damp
Chamber where Bacon’s screaming pontiff frees
His gripping hands to give
A benediction, allows
Us to sleep to his sobbing? Maybe our long sickness
Came when we let that fantasy intrude
Which lies about us. So, alone,
Even in summer’s lassitude,
Convinced by all the pleasures where we drowse
We’ve coaxed the clock from strictness,
We hear like the clumsy drone
Of the fly, spoiling the heat, a humble noise
That sings a ruin we shall not escape.
We dare not listen long. The mind,
Playing that music like a tape,
Tries to wipe despair with stories of its own
Telling in a strained voice.
This tension builds the pined
Avenue and the city, gold with boast,
To which it leads, sure as a king’s belief,
Flatters beneath the Sistine roof
The patronage of God, scans grief
As beauty even in what Lear must find
And say by the Kentish coast.
But some, for harder proof,
Do listen and go down the boulevard
The other way. The sights that summon here
A different vision executes.
Here in the dead town, rich in fear,
The hanged man stares blue-lidded and aloof,
Grey children shun regard
And murdered girls, recruits
Like the older trade, colour the thoroughfare.
Oh crowds shrink from here and no steady step
Frequents this district. The few feet
That loiter scrape like a broom on swept
Cobblestones, or echo in the jackboots’
Clicking in the haunted square.
Safe in their cave’s complete
Concealment on the Galloway coast, a brood
Of thugs, fecund with incest, would, for sport
And need, emerge, waylay and kill,
Then slip back glutted, years uncaught,
Unguessed. Here mind and mind’s suspicion meet:
The void under the wood
From which terrors may spill
Unbidden and in which we’re bound, like spring
And Persephone, to lose ourselves. Cheered by
Birdsong, lost in the sun’s delight,
We plan sublime conclusions and try
To reason all is well. When all is still
I see, past solacing,
The drift of things, as at night
I watch the big ships leaving port. The starboard
Rubbing the cosy homes on the other side,
The superstructure’s brilliancy
Merging with theirs, movement is the glide
Of nothing where the dark hull puts out light
After light and, unharboured,
Slides slowly out to sea.
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