from Telltale
1
Even his friends could feel embarrassed
by his undulating walk, further
distances of memory and longing
and at the same time a world
of blackbirds hopping about,
the incarnation of charcoal
nudes, textualised smears,
in essence a memory of giving
oneself to a stranger in a kind
of search for an island before a dream
of order, and questions from his bishop
about his enviable estate.
2
When he saw me all dressed up
as him, he ran away. Those
falling out of the sky have the most
to lose. The spiritual ones
will pack their bags. In the end
there’s a bargain to be made
with the dark side of clowning
in stinking cast-iron urinals,
a town’s attraction just as much
as the monuments outside. Coming
to faith will mean getting the joke
and this, amazingly, is what happens.
3
Thus the tell-tale signs of throbbing
veins under the skin. And the shifting
fretwork of nerves. I have the feeling
I have entered a world too deep.
The whole way here I was pestered
by an old man asking me riddles,
his forehead white where his cap had been.
He had the warm hands of a farmer
good with stock in the cowshed.
Walking with my father through the woods
it was quiet and peaceful. At home
my mother always maddened him.
Ian Seed’s collections of poems include New York Hotel (2018), Identity Papers (2016) and Makers of Empty Dreams (2014), all from Shearsman. His book The Thief of Talant (2016) (the first translation into English of Pierre Reverdy’s Le Voleur de Talan) is published by Wakefield. New York Hotel is selected by Mark Ford as a 2018 TLS Book of the Year.
