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Hear poet Douglas Tawn read poems exclusively for iamb. If you like The Poetry Archive, this poetry site is for you. Douglas Tawn back next the poet Douglas Tawn is a poet, actor and screenwriter whose poems have appeared in the in-trays, at least, of numerous literary journals. His first collection, The Collected Poems of T S Eliot, was disqualified from the T S Eliot Poetry Prize following accusations of plagiarism. Douglas holds a 100m swimming badge, and is now working on updating his CV. the poems 13 Birds in the Way of Looking (or The Parliament of Fowls) 00:00 / 05:52 I Following on from the Keats House they taxi over garden feeders the green chute’s permanent flash-spangled guitar licks ascend with a flourish of birds gone wild Para! Para! Para! Para! So we’re left to ask what to make of this ornithological hypotaxis? to wit: where do they belong? to whom do we owe the pleasure? are they not, these birds, out of sight? II ‘We know we are supposed not to leave, but suppose we had some friends to stay? They’d brighten up the place … ’ ( Letter to a Beefeater, the Ravens) III The kite where I come from is not I’d say something to write home about. There again, why write home when you’re there already? They’d say it should be taken as read. Everything has its place, just so the parakeets of London and just so there are no hard feelings, feel free to point them out when you see them. IV magpie silent eyes his pound of carrion starling spangles sky dark with murmuring crows nineteen amass numbering full murder they see the carcass and look no further V ‘Brighten up the place— What do you think we’ve been trying to do? I don’t wear the uniform for fun you know.’ ( Letter to the Ravens , a Beefeater) VI Flush with all heaven’s range blackbird beetles about the town ready to sing and define the age. Even the worms all dig her sound they love her style and critics agree she’s a bird of high renown. They offered her a record deal, all the fat cats in the yard, lining her up for their next meal. But blackbird caught them off their guard “Sure I’ll sign on one condition, so you just listen up hard: “In this deal you give permission for me to sing whatever I please with total freedom of expression.” Those foolish cats at once agreed: they signed up blackbird there and then and prepared for her first release. It was a jazz-fusion album. Didn’t do that well. VII I am not one for sorrow nor was meant to join the dance, signifying union of man, woman and song Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! passing under the stage the god, Hercules, whom Antony loved leaves only our senses dimmed and silver with age memories of beaten gold sickening and slow awake the sinning bird squatting greedy overhead like a secret. VIII Behold the fowls of the air: some of them do sow actually; nor did my first draft take into account the barn owl. Behold, they mount the sky; cross-winged embassies to heathen shores; yet why should foreign masters not call these birds native? Behold, the peregrine falcon, a native species; how did we figure that one out? Such divisibility buckles belief. Yet see how this open secret rewards the kingdom; her white cliffs shrink and her statues swell. IX ‘We didn’t mean to offend you. Maybe we could wear the uniform too?’ ( Second Letter to a Beefeater, the Ravens) X Well, that was the day he went completely cuckoo—riding high on Mellow Fruitfulness (I’m guessing the guest ale down the Wheat Sheaf). Real state, yet kinglier in his madness, somehow, he comes in raving about some bird. Now I like the guy, although it’s a pain this nonsense, bursting squawk-eyed mouth oozing in here, proper disturbed, crying “So you like sad stories? I’ll frame you one now: a real traga-doozy!” “Now I’m out on the heath having a blast: the birdies were pinging from tree to tree, the smell of sweet flowers swelled through the grass (my eyes were blurry, but they looked great to me). Then I hear a warbling cry overhead. I look up to find a bird wringing her wings, frantic: “Detested kite! My daughters! No feather stirs, no breath heard—I had hoped to see them grow full singers— here cracked—some parasite has thwarted us!” “At my feet lay two fractured crowns, her chicks. She cursed, forced to feed the alien brood perched over us. Some opportunistic fowl, some sterile conveyer of misuse, some stalking spirit of infestation had laid them there and waste to her daughters. Vile cuckoo! To sin against her singing sisters—” but he couldn’t go on. He crumpled, still muttering tortured slurs, tugging at buttons where his shirt choked him. XI Þhre crowes gaþered aboute a pyloonne “A straunge bowre!” proclaimeþ oone, “Grene leves yt wants,” spake anooþer “Eke he bereþ not swete fruyts nouþer.” “Yt carrieþ mens powre accross the dale,” Resouned þe þrid, “eke illumineþ wele Hire lyȝtsomme wodes, iwrouȝte on hye. Ek þes strenges ylonge do kepe armonye, Makynge a plesaunt noys of musique softe Yherd alounge þes þreds alofte.” Ech herkened, wel lykinge the melodye So þey set þem doon on thys steley treë. XII ‘This probably sounds like an odd request … ’ ( Letter to his Tailor, a Beefeater) XIII The parakeet’s cry retreats over the heath le beau oiseau sans birdseed is all I can think without calling on more authentic superficies (e.g. an MA in Creative Writing, fancy that!) Honk! Honk! That was a goose shrewdly complaining of the lack of water-fowl under discussion today, which is fair, and I think they will agree with me that truly these high-flyers are out of their minds. Les Poissons Puissants 00:00 / 01:04 I, a fish, I want to—hang on sometimes there’s the net (some say a soft cage) one doesn’t know one’s in it until we all are—too late. This is not ideal but we’re used to going unminded—now I’m under the dense cloud of a gunboat here to assert someone’s rights (not mine, I’m sure) under these waters. Dominion over the fish means you gotta let them have it. Where was I? Constant motion makes that a difficult question. Where going? Ditto. That dreadnought means life or wreck to someone. Been a while since one came down here, all noise until it isn’t then we get a chance to nip in and browse: you sink, we swim. Eventually you’re pulled up the sky dense with voices charged with all their differences left ashore—they sound the same to me. From Whitman to Dylan, Their Multitudes ‘(I am large, I contain multitudes)’ ~ Walt Whitman, Song of Myself ~ ‘I play Beethoven’s sonatas and Chopin’s preludes. I contain multitudes’. ~ Bob Dylan, I Contain Multitudes ~ 00:00 / 02:16 ‘Contain,’ we know, has its double sense (both to possess and suppress) parenthesis creates and contains multitudes, in equal parts, suggests copia is more or less the sum of its parts. Repetition multiplies and refines to the singularity from which it starts restarting similitudes; resonating decline. The Song of Myself is no more a song than repeated multitudes mean no more. Was copia their dominant mode all along? An epic rhapsody with an unsettled score? Apparent formlessness finds ease with tradition tracing a song to the Trojan diaspora while The Great British Novel might be on television a saccharine story in aspic vernacular. ‘Past and present wilt’ Whitman tells us wilting his own name into timeless self ‘wilt,’ too, suggests archaic future (ambiguous, but better, I think, than saying ‘melt’) leaving with us wilful tradition refusing the will to be traditional the voice withers in the songs of Dylan as the multitude he’s given have given all. History is the addition of what is lost (Today and tomorrow and yesterday too) to the sum of what is coming to pass (The flowers are dying like all things do) and the past is not what is meant by tradition. Dylan’s flowers wilt in and out of time in time to the off-beating Whitman’s feet: by and by, Lord, they walk the line. Oh my, America! your new-found songs revive the dead democratically each season’s bloom of virtuous carrion stirs equal hosts of union and confederacy: Oh pick out a tune, boys, of Raleigh or Drake They’ll be landing here soon, boys, and make no mistake It’s the song of our doom, boys, sing Lowell and Tate To the Land of the Free, boys— PAY THE TOLL AT THE GATE Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb