SYLVIA
I am in the throes of being tested
examined on a poem
we have not
seen before
unless I have
unless that
was your poem
smacked me in the face
when last night skimming through
that paperback anthology
if so, must admit
a bit unfair it being
an unfair
advantage
but still
they (those in
the know steeped in
verse, figures
of speech and,
perhaps, poetic history
and literary theory)
they
whoever they are, big
wigs in the Department,
have to determine whether
I am up to
your poem
not quite yet whether
I am human
or machine
literary scholar or
just along
for the ride
following you observantly
for I know this
thorned fruit
have
been bloodied as a child
seeking out the juiciest
will
know what to do
when you take
my hand
wrench me with
your words out of
the comfort of my world
(this comfort being
unearned, here on
this lofty
campus
staring down upon
the Flats and
the Southern Suburbs of
apartheid Cape Town)
you
my polestar here, point
me any
direction and I will
feel obliged to follow
and nothing
fixed
even for a moment
everything far
from exactly what it seems
green to
brown to
green
something raging, unbalanced,
in the seasons
something wrong
with time itself (warping in
the heat of
these scorpion energies
can see
in the gravity of sheer purpose
you are a late October
child
and me
thinking, talking Transatlantic,
as the berries in your
bottle feel
suddenly thrust upon me
overpowering me
in an instant, which
that whole
new critical cabal
you were
bound to
find at Cambridge
Richards, Leavis (F &Q),
Empson
and the whole
etcetera
who
knew instantly what
this
style meant
but me back there
battling with the simple stuff,
basic
putting pen to paper
hoping
what thoughts I think
serious
magic in the
ink
beginning to flow will
just have to express
(but
damn thosr hooks clawing
at you
same time
holding you back)
something way off-beam
getting forged
in this cauldron
as soon
as I read the opening
lines, made
the connection
the poem
opened its maw
and duly
swallowed me
taking decades
from that moment
of seizure
to
digest me
you who
were so badly loved
and much accounted for
and I must tell you
I heard those laureate lips
speak
deliver the hard
cryptic truth, so-
called gold
veined throughout (I am
told) all
those crow poems,
in a cold Gothic hall
when I was
a student back in
Manchester
place packed out with
troops of British devotees
and me
mum about my heresy
that he
just not
in your league
and now
by virtue of this
technology of technologies
will be
the death of us
I get to
chat to
you, if
anything there is you
resurrected
for the occasion
courtesy of
the binary brilliance
of an impersonator
and
I recall
this first encounter
wondering how this clone
will react, what
this mind will say
seems
I was none too wayward
making personal sense
of that
dark expressionism,
those tortured ramblings
feeling
that you and
I
always
to, somehow, share
this reading
all
our readings
bound in space and time
ever to
return though
swept away
poems 2 die for 