1) Hall,
Moss, & Toxicology Report
Our hotel at
the Porto Seveso (2007). Thirty-one years early that name
more sinister, as we crossed over the Passo dello Stelvio,
& called him ‘Hall of the Stilfserjochs’. Sixty hairpin
bends, the Landover base so hot we could fry an egg on it,
we thought. Stirling Moss went off the road here, years
later, it is said. And nearby the Dreisprachenspitze, the
peak of three languages, where Italian, German, &
Romansch meet – surely, I thought, they could get four, or
more, here. And down, bleakness abounds – Stelvio high
plains hinterland, strange glacial moraine, & the lower
landscape as if after a drab thaw – missing crispness. The
weirdest countryside I had seen at that age (fifteen). But
unique & a conservation area now (& monitored, where
a borehole in the permafrost measures warming – and I listen
to benign Pipelines, Hans
Kennel & John Wolf Brennan – Triangulation, steeped in these
Alps). Sweets for change at the border
(the soaraway Lira) & slept in the Land rover at Bormio.
And later the Jura, not snow clad in the summer, the same
drabness of land otherwise under snow. Sailboats on the
bleakest lake. Featureless it seemed. Bought a walking stick
for my mother in Les Rousses.
And now
the prize-winning poet speaks of the brilliance of the
Modern Jazz Quartet – ‘Milano’, ‘Django’ – something he
keeps returning to.
Toxicology Report;
between Milan & Lake Como, was all we knew then of
Seveso – a gas leak unspecified, on the plains below us.
Update. The contamination exported. The substance
(techrachbrideibenzo) a key component in Agent Orange. The
UK
, as with
cluster bombs today, unsympathetic to attempts to get it
banned. The EU, on the other hand, took corrective measures,
enshrined in the Seveso Directive – setting out, it seems, a
need, though not a right, to know.
Bhopal
,
Chernobyl
still, then, to
come. Union Carbide, Governments callous & warlike, will
always find a way to hide between need & right &
blind. Ginsberg sounded the alarm for me in 1990, the
fearsome east imploding, dirty & heavy water we had to
fear – toxic, rotting mountains, ochre, rusted lakes of
sludge – detritus aplenty from industry & weapons gone
awry.
The Stelvio at least, appreciated & redeemed,
& to me (at fifteen) a wilderness
indeed.
Portrait Thoughts (Disorder
/ Performance)
Muscular-skeletal disorder
Absorbed in
the portrait
In the dog
days of summer
Heroic,
stoic
With a hint
of mischief
(Or: stoic
fits
With mischief
added)
30
minutes
But the
moment passes, forgotten
Is this,
“Never trust a plumber’s promise?”
The plinth
vanishes
(Yawn)
*** ***
***
& in the
rest period
Reading
through my own interview
With Allen
Ginsberg
Performance
his study & his art
Charting
mine
While
practising stillness
*** ***
***
Scaffolding
poles falling
Outside the
window
(She cannot
see why I flinch)
Poles - slow
motion trajectory
Gallows &
greasy
Does this
show on my face?
From Poison
an Elixir
Descant
laughs
At miasma and
mishaps
Map reading
myopia
And marsh
gas
Dead to lace
and lipstick
Cold with
ampersands
Deaf to
jingle, sparkle led display
Receptive to
miasma and ellipsis
(Ginsberg and
Stevie Smith things)
From poison
an elixir
Prays
Minor
chords
The
mainstays
Dying
fall
The
axis
Bereft or
ecstatic questions
(The
anomalies of praxis)
In a darkling
sway
Ring.
Tolling
Ur-texts, or
a mesh of texts
Forever
extolling older or different
Trajectories
or declensions
Telling it
like it may have been
Like an old
broken bell
Calling cold
travellers
Through the
fog and snow
Across the
Piano Grande
To daunting
Castelluccio
Sparse hard
hamlet
Above the
plains…
And the
ancient graffiti there.
The Piano Grande (one of the largest
upland plateau in Europe)
& Castelluccio (one of Italy’s highest
& most remote villages) are in the Sibillini
Mountains (Central Italy) .