Emporium Read Online Free Page B

vagaries of the global economy,
    they come upon white shores, ignorant of the inhabitants,
    utter brief words, build bridges and sing of ages past.
    Their children are small and brown well into adulthood,
    when they are bought and sold, dropped from great heights
    into enemy territory to become
    bleached bones and souvenirs, perhaps
    a television documentary, if they are lucky.
    The unlucky are soon forgotten.
    . . .
    After a decade of treading water
    he recalls his optimistic youth,
    broods on abandoned loves, lost friends, dead-end jobs …
    A line of boulders at the front door cannot be shifted.
    He must find a new home, dashes out on to the moors,
    follows predators and slams doors.
    At midnight he sings the blues.
    He is continually searching for her on long journeys.
    She haunts him everywhere and communicates by shrill,
                                                                        high-pitched shrieks.

JOAN MIRÓ
MAN AND WOMAN IN FRONT OF A PILE OF EXCREMENT
    A turd like a curious
    cobra or pagan idol, inwardly
    trembling, knows this man and woman
    of old. It is watching and waiting to see
    if they are going to worship it or
    destroy it. It would like to assume an air of
    insouciance. We should worship it,
    she says. Worship a turd?
    Preposterous! says he, waving a tiny
    pick-axe hand, his red snake fixing
    its one eye on her fingers, aching to be
    stroked and choked but
    she is too busy holding up the sky.

IT TAKES A MAN
    It takes a man in all he might be
    heavy twisted rope of consequence
    of no consequence
    weighed in the balance and found wanting.
    Not a man but a twister.
    Outside the mob demanding: ‘Who comes?
    Who is it now dares speak for us,
    for our lives?’
                            The virtues work
                            through us. They do not
                            indwell. They do not
                            inhere. They are not
                            in here. There are no
                            virtuous people
                            only good acts,
                            always virtue and its opposite –
                            the virtues working through us.
    It takes a man to unmake
    his masculinity, to unmake
    the man they made him.
    We are come to this. Coming
    here in all innocence, willing to hear,
    willing to be made and unmade
    and taught the virtue of checking
    our facts, consistency, avoidance of error,
    making a life appear reliable,
    a narrative, a story we tell others:
                            My name is … I live at … I am …
                            I have … I want to … with you
    that they may understand who it is
    speaks to them today,
    and who they are every day of their lives
    until there are no more days.
    Someone will come after me and say:
    ‘This poem was said once, as I am saying it
    now,
    as others will say of me:
    “He breathed – he spoke – he stood
    in the garden at midnight and wondered
    at the wonder of a mortal brain
    coming to consciousness, the cruelty of a mortal brain
              coming to consciousness,
              the birth and death
              of individual consciousness.”’
    Living appeals, as you appeal
              to me, as I appeal to the gods – those crazy imaginary gods –
    as I appeal to the soldiers
    beating on my door 
    The great Emathian conqueror did spare
    The house of Pindarus …  
    But in wartime
    Husbands dragged from wives
    Sons from mothers.
              At Rodez once
              the Nazis in retreat
              shot thirty maquisards,
              smashed in their skulls with stones
              to finish it. At Rodez