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AFTER ZBIGNIEW HERBERT’S ‘FIVE MEN’

These have no faces, till the hessian sacks
are pulled off—then, suddenly, naked air
invades their senses. Dawn. Their hands are cuffed.
Once the white, stainless glove has struck the hour,
they jerk and dance and, with each fresh report,
their limbs become more wooden, till they slump
in shadows of the riddled wall. They fall
together in a line—each tilted head
that angles for a song revolving, just
out of earshot, on a gramophone,
and distant, melancholy gaze that seems
to scan some line of verse heard in a dream—
caught in the spotlight of the sun, and numb
to the applause of startled morning birds.
They lie at the bottom of the silent wall,
beyond the balm and tyranny of words,
limp as abandoned marionettes. Their last
and most authentic act recedes; only
to linger in the acrid powder smell’s
brief accusation that disturbs the flared,
animal nostrils of the uniforms.

We must look forward also to the springtime of the body.
                                                                                Minucius Felix

In distant orchards green cicadas hum;
Their wings are folded in a brittle prayer.
When will the springtime of the body come?

Can you not hear the blind guitarist strum
Songs on the hollow body of despair?
In distant orchards green cicadas hum,

While pigeons squabble for a single crumb
Of stale bread on the smooth cathedral stair.
‘When will the springtime of the body come?’

Asks pale Athena, who has long been numb,
And waits for wind to loose her marble hair.
In distant orchards green cicadas hum.

The rain is beating like a toy tin-drum
That heralds war, the earth is pale with fear.
When will the springtime of the body come?

The poor are begging in the radiant slum,
Beside the palace in St. Peter’s square.
In distant orchards green cicadas hum.
When will the springtime of the body come?

In the abandoned hours, I can hear
The boorish sibilance of garbage trucks
On their rounds. The shy, nocturnal air
Builds a brittle nest with strands of fear.
Insomniac crickets tick, like manic clocks,

In the unmown expanse of the vacant lot
Where, last week, on the razor grass,
A young woman was raped
And her voice broke like green glass
Against a wall while the street slept.

3 a.m. on a weeknight, certifiably dead,
Derwent Street lies wrapped in a body-bag
Of plastic darkness, under lamps as gelid
As fluorescents humming in a morgue.
The casual anger of an alley dog

Rends the pale throat of silence.
A blind opens, across the street,
Like a bruised eye and, fearing further violence,
Tensely watches the threatening night.
The air is sticky, the leaves of trees sweat

And my mind reels with the cheap perfume
Of the jasmine climbing backyard fences
Like a drunk schoolgirl sneaking home.
I retreat inside. In the bedroom,
You have burned frankincense.

We drank sangria before noon and ate
Thick hunks of omelette, olives green as jade,
Spitting the bitter pips onto the plate;
Sipped café bonbon languidly, then made
Retreat, before the fire in the grate
Blazed from the live coals of Córdoba’s shade,
Into a heat like purgatory or worse.
We saw the other thirsting souls disperse

And, walking, passed, in courtyards cool as thought,
Blue as the winter mantle of the moon,
Firm flesh of fruit in corsets iron-wrought,
Until we reached the shuttered pensión.
Our senses in a silken web were caught;
And bodies, in the tea-stained afternoon,
Dissolved like sugar in an amber glass,
A subtle darkness laced with bitterness.

A church grew in the paradise of palms.
Outside, the heat, drunk with a jealous rage,
Pounded on doors, possessive of your charms:
Black arabesques of hair upon the page
Of crisp white bed sheets and your jasmine arms
Forming the soft bars of a scented cage.
Out on the steps of the Mezquita sat
A Roma beggar in a broad-brimmed hat

Shielding a face closed like an ancient tome
Bound in dark leather; while his flesh was hung
Up in the window of that butcher time.
Only in longing were his eyes still young;
His fingers slumped around a sprig of thyme
He sold to passing tourists. On his tongue,
A small dry song he offered for the alms
That memory bestowed—her jasmine arms.

Cicadas roared. The sharpened rays of Sol
Invictus pierced stone shoulders of the day,
As banderillas do a skewered bull.
Dusk stained the dusty sheets of our love-play.
The ancient art of blood and sun is cruel.
Fine fabric of the beautiful display
Catches the heart that bellows deep and fights
The sun-god Mithras in his suit of lights