From THE EMPIRE STORES

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

"How can we sing King Alpha's song in a strange land?" (The Melodians)


5

Jerusalem the Golden shipped up in the south east,
in the Valley of Dawn they believe what they like;
see the mansions on the hills, barred and empty
-- last time I looked, the variable script disintegrated.

We made deep pools of all our anxieties,
hungry mouth at the bottom of the well said nought;
plans for the real world in the language of beasts,
a distilled purity, contra natura, abhorrent.

Come dance with me Joanna, Ioanna Southcott,
Ioanna big mouth, the sun is always rising
in the riff riff valley of Don Van Vliet,
I was miles away myself, under a sky thick with migrating souls.

Do you think for one minute this dub dub over tracking
out of the ever living past tres moderne?
Wake up, the room is full; Shelley and Ric and young MacSweeney,
dying for want of intelligent talk.

And what will happen to any of us?
Speechless boy of a speechless tribe,
see the nation of morning, nation of supple creatures
beneath the pretty page of a kind empire.


6

Shelley took wing, wrapped up Lundy Fastnet,
sent thought balloons across the Bristol Channel
to the slave trade capital, a power of no good,
astride its Palladian funding stream.

He was my aerial in that broadcast
on the ever living short wave, anagrammatical;
court historians swing on the rim of the imperium,
snorting stipends, vamping up the Empire News.

Our Boys March Along Candlelit Streets
Babylon Falls To The West- Byblos Taken
Child Prostitutes Lie Down In Alleyways
Make A New Home In King Alpha's Land

Shelley took wing on that day,
migratory birds homing in joined the dots;
in one moment radar spelt it out,
the lost art of traffic control, welfare, moderation.

I was miles away myself and rushing back,
at the same time the pigeons of Assuit rise
and the white wings of our common books open
lifting into the common light one word.





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