Halcyon Ghosts Read online

  ‘How sing the forms the eye apprehends in the green world? Sam Sampson here – while reimagining the venerable tradition of the “shaped poem” – asks us to rethink our assumptions about the limits of poetic speech and presentational immediacy. The result is a reverential and deeply lyrical voyage of discovery, a celebration of things seen and sounded anew.’ – Michael Palmer, author of Thread

  ‘Halcyon Ghosts reads as an investigation of the Romantic scored serially. A collection of delicately composed cartography / scenography / choreography, and yet such rich language. Words in flight.’ – Ian Wedde, author of The Lifeguard

  Sam Sampson

  Halcyon Ghosts

  Contents

  The Kid

  •

  Halcyon Ghosts

  Erasure

  Doubled Lexicon

  Flushed from a Tidal Retreat

  All the Everlasting Cataracts

  •

  I Spilled My Story

  •

  Broken Architecture

  A Strange Harvest . . . A

  The Tombstone Epitaph

  Unearthed Vestiges

  She is Sparrow-like and Fierce

  •

  Six Reels of Joy

  for Doris May Scotting

  Hand in hand with equal plod they go. In the free hands — no. Free empty hands. Backs turned both bowed with equal plod they go. The child hand raised to reach the holding hand. Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede. Backs turned. Both bowed. Joined by held holding hands. Plod on as one. One shade. Another shade. — Samuel Beckett

  & Lucia Torrance Sampson

  The Kid

  Watch Charlie Chaplin un-

  wind

  listen in-

  tently to that blind

  mazy course

  running wild

  through all forms of mim-

  icry, fun-making and clog-dancing

  childhood imbroglio

  old-school sheet music

  where landscapes are raised

  used stamps stick

  a trio for three bassoons

  a lane of horse-chesnut trees

  a red bus turns

  this city past, passing . . . the Queen’s Head

  the horse-drawn bakery van

  the booby hatch

  ... framed fixtures

  streams from some old world mix . . .

  tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor . . .

  ..............................

  where pigs roamed

  a mill :

  villagers peasants, villains

  three craftsmen two slaves, one tramp

  the total number housed

  in a small brick building

  rebuilt twice

  built from playground to dalliance . . .

  rich man, poor man, beggar-man, thief

  ..............................

  Doris May . . . re-

  visit this institution :

  1931

  a school for the orphaned and destitute children

  modern times .................. rest-

  oration . . . O on song we’ll-

  get along :

  (in time)

  as body shadow

  and light ... reel

  a-shrug-and-a-kick

  come-shadow-shadow-come

  and cut . . .

  (on film)

  mirror images . . .

  over-

  lapping scraps . . .

  the evanescent

  smile (likeness) chorus

  of that unknown

  . . . lady, baby, gypsy, queen.

  in memory of my grandmother

  ... and I dreamed we were still alive

  dreamed we were not yet born

  dreamed we were yet to be.

  — Michael Palmer, Thread

  We are as free as birds. Only the birds aren’t free.

  We are as committed as birds and identically.

  — John Cage

  Erasure

  history in a nearby tree

  isolated sightings (aligned by absence): huia extinct

  for Don Binney, artist, conservationist

  Doubled Lexicon

  the horizon

  O

  pens

  the circle

  Sobin

  circles the expanse expands dirt

  distributes

  the liquescent

  ellipse :

  the glittering ......... geometric design

  of the glass-headed light

  ________________________________________

  two in-

  complete oblong drops

  the pond of the Olive Tree

  O

  pens

  the mirror

  shadows swing the windrow

  :

  ground

  rocky outcrops: composed of chalk and green sand

  composed of shelly sandstone cliffs

  layers, over-

  laying clays, marly macigno

  the lignite field

  ________________________________________

  erasure links the sentence

  sentences the

  pause

  recesses the sun

  O

  pens

  the corridor

  (structure up-

  dates a staircase disappears . . .

  ceramic wind chimes

  charred grape seeds

  Ionian soft paste

  pinkish circular bands)

  registers

  as rectangular frames

  the utterance

  awkward doubled lexicon

  two diagonal lines

  at right angles

  the child centre it-

  self dead-centre

  O

  ________________________________________

  pens

  the footnote

  calibrates . . .

  passage

  caresses the eye-

  lid-en

  closed circumference deeply etched

  ligated to the (be-

  clouded) presence of identical blocks

  printed in raw clay.

  ________________________________________

  for Gustaf Sobin

  Flushed from a Tidal Retreat

  in the deep-freeze we

  will feel no pain

  just go to sleep (as if winter was coming)

  it is ‘asleep’

  as in Rosei’s dream

  watermarked origami

  from the fold butter-

  fly logic

  to be : becalmed

  afloat with the telling

  sail said the lullaby

  scissoring and . . . captioned

  ...

  elevation commotion and roseate histrionics

  to see hills I didn’t even know existed | rain transforming this patch |

  spring eagles returning to the same nest | bodies - each in foetal position

  | suicidal Inuit youth shackled hand-to-heart . . .

  ...

  quieter moments when fights for food abate

  ... fog shrouds Snyder lake | a deer fords the main branch | riparian light

  blinking on a dark field | the grotto where tradition states Jesus was

  born,

  after descendants, not everyone believes : believes, fragrant

  pastures celebrate love | jaguar dancers torment the mineral kingdom,

  and the whorls (many coated) turn . . . El Niño churns in, disarming | the

  last war is not over

  ...

  under the masked avatar

  the body wills its i
ncarnation

  ... electrical improvisations

  the young born miniature adjuncts

  (((collisions beneath the moon)))

  ghost moths generate night skirmishes

  wing-tips

  shadowing the wall

  they balance at mechanical rest

  a fold: one ghost upon

  another

  ...

  leverage in memory

  a rift between

  for instance try

  to replace

  (mise-en-scène)

  no need for excavations

  the process gifted

  grown in wild streams

  FLUSHED FROM A TIDAL RETREAT

  RUSHED FROM A TIDAL RETREAT

  Shhh.

  i.m. of my father, perched 40 years above Little Muddy Creek

  All the Everlasting Cataracts

  near at hand

  rip-cords surround the centre

  gurge of pulse

  on / oft

  to sometimes detect

  actual remnants

  to look up, and tell of this fractal shape

  one gradual solitary star

  which comes upon silence

  ...

  fragments______

  that word startled up

  filled in, in pencil

  a transcript: the story dawned outlines

  nerveless, script-less, dead-

  ends felt in every feature

  eyes closed: bowed head listening to the earth

  to an ever-revolving spiel

  ...

  trace : tracer

  one of two great circles

  intersection: right angles at poles

  nadir: the low

  zenith the high

  circles and arcs

  broad-belting colure

  sages, keen-eyed astrologers

  earth-bound evangelists

  they study the sky

  study the fault lines

  (the god and sunrise)

  both, and both in one

  all along a dismal rack of clouds

  upon the boundaries of day and night

  a drifting mass

  cloud

  on

  cloud

  the sky in-

  verse

  ...

  nineteenth century

  slow-breathed melodies,

  like a rose in vermeil tint and shape

  enter, but who entertains?

  effigies, visions, extras . . .

  opaline forms

  amorphous

  : pictures of intimacy

  all the everlasting cataracts

  ... pools

  loops these crystalline pavilions

  pure fields mantled by sea salt

  ...

  re-cast the self-

  same beat

  in hollow shells

  in the cadence of time

  where a dead branch fell, there did it rest . . .

  reset to follow, to turn and lead the way

  a stream went voiceless by (streamed)

  mountainous: no shape extinguishable

  when the bleak-gown pines

  when winter lifts his voice, a noise

  the mysterious grate of wind in trees

  whether in calm or storm

  (the same scene)

  god of the sky : bookish séance

  that old spirit-leaved book

  sifted well . . . from the ion-universe

  ...

  flames yield like mist

  all calm through chaos and darkness

  from chaos and darkness

  the extraordinary

  the constant . . . the inter-

  nal law and how

  I

  whether through conviction, or disdain

  in this expressive line

  quicken the patter of beads

  (pearl beads drop-

  ping from their string

  ele-

  mental nature

  powerful similes

  ponderous millstones)

  ...

  appearance of strength

  a deception masking real weakness

  essence in its tent

  before the winged thing

  silver wings of dawn rising

  now a silver line hints at this approach

  in each face a glint of light

  see how the light breaks in with this line

  (haphazardly)

  till suddenly a splendour

  like morning

  the horizon in noise

  ...

  at the set of sun

  light fades

  first from the eastern sky

  to one who travels from the dusking east

  attributes of the wanderer

  wondering in vain about

  the inventor of god and music

  of light and song

  soft breaking noise

  white melodious throat

  a name signifies memory

  would come as no mystery

  pin-pricks of the world . . . name-sakes

  for me variance

  by knowledge only

  the above and the below

  gathering all things mortal

  this endless commencing

  this still,

  steady light

  brilliance

  of the moon

  O

  independence

  acknowledges no allegiance.

  after John Keats’s ‘Hyperion’

  I Spilled My Story

  a raft plunged . . .

  picadored green people tethered to years wend their way, squawking

  about an adventure without a conch, conversation you could swim in, also

  magnify . . .

  bubbles . . . well-warped logicians . . . ionised passages

  a deep-freeze refrigerates escapades and layers link the lake

  the ice harvest

  V-shaped bars scene perched in Voice: loud hoo-hoooo . . . bee, ze,

  ey, ay . . . headlamps, holes in the skull saw and lift off . . . to enlarge

  we head upstairs over to the room full of holes . . . sylvan slums

  O bright suit, white from place of the cruel rook, return

  then be done

  (antiques draped in velvets)

  moth wired in the aquarium (this scene is allowed)

  voice ambushes and we are built to divine perseverance, orange amplified

  with cedar-beak : interior wall . . . active aviary . . . bees breeze

  I have a number of poems

  containing the known, the lowest, the hole in the middle.

  I manage to stop myself like that. No not embarrassed. Finally

  to stop. Rest. Turn on the lights . . . the duration beneath tense

  artifice: black : bulging, comprised of sea urchins (all which are

  whiter if a bit starfish fades) . . .

  ... exclusivity dwells in habitat

  adaptable from desert to compass rose, the inherent nature of

  construction. Cubist images: violins and guitars analogous to

  costumes later designed as conforming to the soul . . . there

  are several areas of debate, the capacity of a single imagination:

  emotion for analysis and the claims of a photographer detailing

  colour with interest in the arc of a possible cause

  (a likely cause which cannot leave a trace was omitted)

  transparent blues, the trance of celestial parades . . .

  Eden, Lion, where beginnings grow easily, pleasing to the eye as to the

  general public, rest in these plants, the commonly grown cactus . . . go

  west vagrant Tas wrote:

  I can tell from here . . . what the inhabitants of Venus are like: they resemble the

  Moors, burned by the sun, full of wit and fire, always in love, writing verse,

  fond of music

&nb
sp; ... and Deimos glows from afar (Pro webcam activated: Mars image:

  Phobos and Deimos, November 3)

  I wait, resight it (usually offer the right choice)

  head submerged 1-2-3 white eggs ring the river, numbers have the

  capacity to sing thereby demonising forests . . . 4-5-6 at any time the

  formation of ants sympathetic to the vibrational sounds of the poem,

  alas howling engineers called for more and ships set sail across Kashmir

  ... wings, wailers and frescoes offset as trees, such a tongue, virtually

  tongue lightning against the ceiling, clarification: conservation mainly

  a tiny layer of soil, aeration critical of dots, the abundance of the Red Sea

  and upon a smaller scale Atlantis, that bug-eyed canary, black-finned,

  bluish-purple . . .

  all year minute fish

  stripes, silver below, Jan-June, Oct, above jets that are in fact outlines,

  true bullet points dictating ancient records, momentarily plumes of

  thought matched opposite beetles, days wed to cyclical support coupons: