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Michael Coy Poem
(In 1807, Beethoven wrote a piano/violin
piece with this title. Count Leo Tolstoy
followed in 1890, with a short novel of the
same name, in which he argued that
matrimony can never work.)
What is a marriage? A fusion, or a tether?
Two very different creatures, yoked together?
I was a piano, you a violin:
I, solid, calming, you, discordant, thin,
and laced with bitterness. I was your base,
and you provided brio, flourish, grace.
A lacewing trapped inside a window frame,
yet driven by one blind, unchanging aim,
you struggled up until, played out, defeated,
you fluttered down again, debased, depleted.
A war's a love affair, and love's a war.
We're so inept - or what's a heaven for?
A nest of wasps, my grievances boiled over -
but could there ever be a vita nuova?
We never learned. I hammered pointlessly,
while you abraded. Why could we not see?
And so I played it stately, sad, no frills,
while you kept up your repetitions, trills
and variations. Hovering and wary,
you shunned my structures. Ever more contrary,
you coiled and squirmed in spasms both continuous,
spontaneous, free-wheeling, lithe and sinuous.
It seemed to me the harmony had gone:
we sang on, yes, but each a separate song.
Two butterflies together, intertwined,
we tangled on the same, but different, line.
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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Michael Coy Poem
( … if you catch me doing one of these.)
Naming any baby Finton,
voting for Hillary Clinton,
complimenting Nascar,
moving to Nebraska,
using "literally" to mean "very",
calling Derry Londonderry,
uttering the word "redact",
claiming Johnny Depp can act,
saying society's to blame,
mentioning fifteen minutes of fame,
feeling sorry for Amanda Knox,
watching anything on Fox,
or even one second of Jerry Springer,
making speech marks with my fingers,
drinking alcohol alone,
admiring Sharon Stone,
labelling anyone a pagan,
sighing "bring back Ronald Reagan",
playing Rod Stewart's "We Are Sailing",
paying money to see Van Halen ...
(and if ever, instead of clever,
I say smart,
I promise to wear -
right there -
a target across my heart.)
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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Michael Coy Poem
(after Alfred de Vigny)
He glided through the somber pines,
a shark in surly ocean.
In truth, I loved his sleek, low lines,
the danger in his motion.
Wild creatures do the best they can
to keep their young ones fed,
and I'm ashamed to be a man -
I shot the snow wolf dead.
The first ball doesn't always kill.
He'd need another round.
I tracked his blood up Cullen Hill,
to where he'd gone to ground.
To meet with death, he chose his place
under a dogwood tree:
as I beheld his handsome face,
he blazed fierce eyes at me.
He knew the game was up at last,
nowhere to run or hide:
but in that glare, a meaning passed
that's scalded me inside.
I saw acceptance in his look,
and dignity, and hurt.
And wonder, at the time I took,
as I knelt in the dirt.
"It's how it is," the green eyes said,
"to moan or whine is weak.
You've done for me. I'll soon be dead.
There are no words to speak."
I did it with my hunting knife,
then wept hard for my friend.
I pray I'll own his grace in life,
his courage at my end.
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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Michael Coy Poem
6. Matsukaze
("Noh" is an ancient Japanese style of
drama, broadly similar to Elizabethan
tragedy. "The Wind in the Pines" is
my version of a well-known Noh play.)
Despite
the vigil I kept, night on night ...
despite
my spring purification rite ...
paper streamers like fronds of willow,
tears soaking into my pillow,
you did not come.
Madness touched me.
Like the spume of a wave
that boils and fizzes,
in my pain I raved.
Love returns like the ruthless tide,
like the air perspires in the hot night,
and leaves beads of water on morning grass
to mark its sweating.
The agonies pass,
but there's no forgetting.
Waiting at the gazing tree,
I look out on the restless sea ...
is that he? Coming to me?
Cut the succulent leaf of aloe vera,
and it weeps clear healing tears.
I am restored. Here's Yukihira.
See how his ship skips as it nears!
I deceive myself.
Am I blind?
It was the wind,
teasing a pine.
Exquisite, his calligraphy.
He painted a poem, just for me.
"Now I have gone.
Left you behind.
But if you pine,
I'll come at a run."
I am nothing now. I am a sad pine,
doubled over by prevailing winds.
Like salt, I dissolve in the brine.
Nature's madness, love, is a storm,
but it can't last. The sky grows warm
with purple streaks, braided on magenta.
I am held fast, because I have sinned.
Where I go now, none may enter.
Autumn rain will come. Mark the signs.
And listen for the wind, sighing in the pines.
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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Michael Coy Poem
A crisp, cold morning in Hyde Park,
and he is waiting for his date.
As joggers jog and poodles bark,
the girl's unconscionably late.
He paces London's crocused heart,
as traffic booms in Piccadilly:
he's practicing that English art
of seeming calm, while feeling silly.
One final tryst beside the lake,
in front of the Eternal Boy:
a parting kiss, for old times' sake ...
she's stood him up? Or playing coy?
The hotel clerk purrs sympathy
when summoned on the mobile phone.
By now, she'll be in Duty Free.
Well, there it is. This Bird Has Flown.
He tries to feign the jaunty airs
of a striped suit on a sandwich sortie,
but doing drily debonaire's
not easy when you're fat and forty.
He tramps the lonely, flat green mile
to Green Park Tube's unlovely portal,
but perks up with a cheeky smile -
well, for a week he was immortal!
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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Michael Coy Poem
Before I knew your name, you spoke to me.
Before I learned the contours of your face,
or came to know your talents, or the place
you call your home, you'd touched me lastingly.
Before I understood your shifting moods,
or pressed against your skin, or heard you weep,
you were already in me, buried deep.
This never was some shallow interlude.
I loved you though I'd never heard your voice
or stroked your hair. It was just meant to be.
In some unknowable realm we made our choice,
without recourse to hand, or heart, or eye,
for these are carnal things, which fade and die.
And I have loved you for eternity.
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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Michael Coy Poem
(Sir Frederick Treves, Victorian surgeon, has the
following claims to our respect: (1) he discovered
and cared for Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man":
(2) He followed the route in Italy of the characters
in Browning's "The Ring & the Book", taking
priceless photos: and many more things!)
The Eloquent Man
Sir Frederick Treves enjoys four claims to fame:
the lifelong friend of Thomas Hardy, who
supped with him in the King’s Arms snug: the name
of Joseph Merrick (Robert Browning, too!)
is intimately linked with his: he’s due
a place in heaven for his healing feats:
and yes, he lived here, on the street of streets.
It’s Dorchester, or Casterbridge to some.
And Treves, a native, knew its ways and whims
as well as Hardy did. When he succumbed
to his appendix, genteel pseudonyms
were dropped. Tom Hardy chose the funeral hymns.
He also honored Treves in gentle rhymes,
to mark his passing, in the London Times.
The wretch named Merrick, or the Elephant Man,
could well have lived his loveless life untended,
had Treves not found him. Merrick’s mortal span
was made more bearable, being befriended
by one of London’s foremost. When it ended,
poor Joseph Merrick, long reviled and scorned,
found home in Wimpole Street, where he was mourned.
King Edward feels a grumble in his tripes,
and sends for Surgeon Treves, the kingdom’s best.
“You mustn’t operate,” the sovereign gripes,
“My coronation’s looming.” “Which seems best,”
asks Treves – “a crowning, or cremation?” Pressed
to give an answer, Edward takes the knife –
and Treves the genius saves his monarch’s life.
The poet Browning wrote some novel verse,
or rather, a verse novel: ring and book,
Italian murder tale. Treves was immersed
in it, obsessed with it, completely hooked:
went off to Tuscany, made notes, and took
some photographs, made sketches, thus preserving
the base of fact. The man defines “deserving”!
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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Michael Coy Poem
I don’t know why I love you.
It must be the bolero in my soul.
We’re rivals – opponents – we’re opposite poles.
You’re always in need of the things I can’t give,
and what I can offer, won’t help you to live.
I seek you in others, but can’t ever find you,
keep trying to free you, but just seem to bind you.
There’s nothing between us that we can agree to,
but I call out your name, even when there’s no need to.
I don’t know why I love you.
I tread very carefully – you hurl yourself in.
I just want to love you, but you want to win.
Your image in mirrors is oddly askew:
you have all these facets, but which one is you?
I’m pinching myself, but I still don’t accept it.
When I wrote all my hates in that poem, you kept it.
If I wasn’t so eager,
you’d treat me far better.
I’m like some red setter
who, battered, beleaguered,
just wants to run free,
but the faster I scamper,
the more I am hampered
by the rope around me.
I don’t know why I love you.
This can’t ever end in a fiery fandango,
still less in a sensuous, smouldering tango.
Are you just playing, or are you in deep?
This should be bliss, but it’s wrecking my sleep.
Sometimes I think I can take you or leave you,
but I lie to myself, so that I can believe you.
I don’t know why I love you.
A love such as this has no value, no title,
there’s nothing about it that’s wholesome or vital.
You offer no future, you come with no past.
There’s nothing in this that is likely to last.
I’m like a leaf, getting blown here and there,
and only content when I’m up in mid air.
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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Michael Coy Poem
The first weakening of night
picks out telephone lines,
black against sky.
The eyelid of a garage door
lurches laboriously up.
A car coughs blue breath.
With aerosols and plastic scrapers
clandestine delights of frostwebs
are raked to chemical sludge.
Starter motors whine.
Windscreens cloud with pain.
Gears grind teeth.
An electric train
gingerly
utters inarticulate from the sheds,
groaning over cold joints.
Thinking grimly
of tunnels ahead,
it flares with ill-humor
crossing the points.
On unworked land beside the track,
a fox is heading home.
Gliding through
beneath the "keep out" sign,
he grins at the engine,
which just judders along,
headlights trained
on parallel lines
which glint ahead,
reflecting lurid signal red,
extending out, but never meeting,
towards the vanishing point.
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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Michael Coy Poem
(It was 1860 when the English poet Robert Browning
stumbled upon an interesting artefact as he walked
through the city of Florence. It was a file of documents
from an old Italian criminal trial, and he would turn
this material into his masterpiece, "The Ring and the
Book".)
The Old Square Yellow Book
It was the kind of day they call a "stallion"
in Florence, with white sun, surpassing strong.
And it was noon. (In June, to be precise.)
The Englishman came strolling aimlessly
(or was it?) through Piazza San Lorenzo.
And, just as now, a market crammed the square
and foamed around the statue's marble plinth.
Here, plaster busts, there, flaking picture-frames,
and Garibaldi portraits (way back then,
in eighteen-sixty, they were giving birth:
Italian nationhood was in the air).
The tall "inglese", drawn towards the stall
which offered prints and books, picked something up.
He shouted "shop", and put one lira down.
The book was his. He managed to ignore
the girls, a-squabbling over tasseled shawls,
those burly porters, drenching head and neck
in Giovanni's fountain, braying mules,
cacophony and chaos all around,
to read his book. His blood knew, right away.
At last, he'd found the raw material
from which he'd quarry one great masterpiece.
One foot propped on the railing, near the step
which leads down to the fountain by the church,
he read, engrossed. Then, with a sudden laugh,
he threw it in the air, and caught it, safe.
What was it? Well, a book - but more than that.
It was the record of some long-dead trial,
some murder case of many years before,
with statements, pleadings, longhand notes. In this
authentic tangle lay a human tale
of fierce emotion, rich psychology,
if he could tease it out. So off he set,
re-reading as he walked, feeling his way,
along the narrow Giglio, then the broad
Panzani. Via Tornabuoni next,
so long and straight, down to the river.
He passed the Strozzi Palace, crossed the bridge
they call the Trinita. When he reached home,
the cool Felice, there was not a doubt.
His whole life's labour lay there, in his hands.
Copyright © Michael Coy | Year Posted 2017
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