(Make the Ordinary Language Good or Die)

A reading of Alan Halsey's 'Dante's Barber Shop (De Vulgari Eloquentia)'

We closed down the Empire Stores in the bay,
we don't shop there now, only for our imaging
of the map of others and zero longitude fancy,
globally patched, then a rising tide at your door.

Or the ineluctable, brimful culture piled up
lettering every street, heaps of incoming names
and even this is not my thinking,
see all this dirt fair clogs my eyes.

Be clear: we reject the new but old holy war,
the demographics of canonic fodder and new but old flags,
– these colours don't fade;
give me rivers of dirt and bring my poets back to life.

It's those conversations I want, you speak
Oh England, on slick rails to the dumb chamber;
put your ear to the ground and your hands in the air,
there's a chance archival unity won't get you up in the morning.

If what follows is a metaphor then this is not a poem
– Caspian oil sucked across the Stans to Karachi;
it's not a silvery tubular zero but ignition:
make the ordinary language good or die.

 

*

 

With grammar stocks rising on song
he sat opposite me at the presentation;
– Cosy up to them and push their hot buttons,
triangulate Blair's blueprint and the common thought.

When Shelley arrived out of the everliving past
he checked in at the King Otto, with Byron next door;
he saw dark figures rising before the liberals,
how the few valued the many and bought the government.

Mary dribbled conscience on the accounts,
we stare at the glaze mostly, eyes glued to the past
cold filtered through a grovel image voodoo,
and apply for the post in Concept House.

What scene unfolds in that domed snow shaker?
White boys on the road, zoot suits and patronage,
a limited view of human nature
in a medium of implacable pessimism.

To make us the object of such devotion
the secret voiceprint calls us,
in rank order, men, women, family groups,
our faces tipped into the light and locked.

 

Copyright © Kelvin Corcoran, 2003