Aidan Semmens
Dead Souls
in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread
it’s no use being too clever
a man who works on the land
is purer, nobler, the factories
will come into being by themselves
I am afraid I shall move to the town
which ends in gambling and drunkenness
one may buy a library of books
and never read them a shadow
of gloomy black melancholy – here
the manuscript breaks off
for two pages a damp
dank cell reeking of soldiers’ boots
a voice echoing in hollow distance
Hut
nobody speaks
of what takes place
in the white hut
by the railway siding
the smell of old oil
and human waste
Aidan Semmens
The three poems above come from his forthcoming collection Life Has Become More Cheerful which will be published by Shearsman in October to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution.
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Dead Souls
in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread
it’s no use being too clever
a man who works on the land
is purer, nobler, the factories
will come into being by themselves
I am afraid I shall move to the town
which ends in gambling and drunkenness
one may buy a library of books
and never read them a shadow
of gloomy black melancholy – here
the manuscript breaks off
for two pages a damp
dank cell reeking of soldiers’ boots
a voice echoing in hollow distance
Hut
nobody speaks
of what takes place
in the white hut
by the railway siding
the smell of old oil
and human waste
De Triomf van de Dood
Pieter Bruegel the elder, 1562
starved, starving dogs of death
scavenge on the flesh stripped
from the dead and dying
bent backed, intent
on making what they will
of folly’s bounty
beneath the domes of the catacombs
skeletons stacked
awaiting resurrection
monks and priests whose meat
once adorned
femurs, metatarsals and sockets
heaped up in niche upon niche
faith and distrust misplaced
replacing theology with radioactivity
sub-alpha particles with god
the omniscient system that shapes
eternal interlocking connections
the dead will advance
from the earth
to cudgel and lash the living
punish their squalid misery and sin
the dead in shrouds and windingsheets
regimented on horseback
playing the hurdy-gurdy
with dead-eyed rush-hour faces
in rust brown fields
with hose and snake and fire
the naked man pursed by starving hounds
the dying at their gaming board
the dead tolling bells
the ship of fools sailing
from a smokesmeared horizon
crows attending carrion
on the gallows
gaunt dogs nibble the babe
at the dead mother’s fallen breast
hellhounds, boneyard hounds, ossuary curs
plagued by tumour and cancer
cankers, lesions, rotting sores
the dead whose heads
protrude from their own arses
the dead weighed
in scales of injustice
the dead clothed in nothing
but their crowns and insignia
the dead who once were
glorious as you are now
the emaciated dead beating kettledrums
pouring lees from wineskins
the skeletal dead triumphant
waving banners over the field
where broadsword and H-bomb
halberd and napalm and agent orange
sarin, scud and ballista
rampage and crossbow
have done their work
on a land stripped bare
of crop and dwelling
as a coin is found in a field
bearing the outward face
of a forgotten tyrant
of a forgotten dynasty
and a people whose borders
are become obscure
while the lights and pyres
the fuel rods and flares
that forged this power
continue to decay underground –
you will say the soil in this garden
is malnourished, unprepared
for the weight of intent
it must uphold
but the songs and sounds
of bush and scrub
the sparse vegetable patch
landscape scars
and parched, toxic well
must bear all the meanings
we still have to face
Aidan Semmens
The three poems above come from his forthcoming collection Life Has Become More Cheerful which will be published by Shearsman in October to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution.