Years of Pilgrimage

a long poem by Tim Cloudsley

with border art by Mary Johnston

part 1

Voyages, Explorations, and Dreams

Vast voyages of the mind

On the deck of HMS Beagle

Like the voyages of music

At the piano of Franz Schubert

Or the Search for a Theory of Everything

Of Einstein, Davies, and others

Or the dreaming of the Ninth Symphony

By Beethoven, deaf, courageous

The glaciers of Tierra del Fuego invite

Sunlight on the ice

Adventure through the retina

The senses absorbing essences

A girl with a lovely laugh

Is at the heart of the mystery:

Life, youth, and beauty -

Happiness in spite of all.

Knowledge is not gained through one means alone

Whether that is talked of as Science or Religion

Or the Intuition that integrates all,

Or Imagination, Emotion, or Greater Reason;

Only in miraculous flash, it seems

(But quickly forget that phrase, before

It becomes cliché) is anything happened,

And this is the opposite of Dogma.

When the hallowed sound of Mozart

Is opened to your soul,

Extraordinary it is to be alive,

Alert to such wonder.

Beautiful burning gods

We can burn and bite

We can eat and even turn,

In pilgrimage of soul

With mandolin or charanga notes,

Fantasy, love, bleeding pain,

Skip a beat of heart blood,

This is of love's finality


At The Uttermost End Of The Earth

We can still do honour to the Ona and Yahgan

Even though they no longer exist

As peoples: their blood, and some of their culture

Survive, but also there is memory:

Hunting guanaco and eating shellfish,

They successfully inhabited this southern island

For millenia, among glaciers and forests,

Mountains and winds, storms and green sea.


"I write of you: beautiful, gigantic,

With your snowy, white-crowned peaks,

In the bays interconnected with your valleys,

Of you I write strongly, vibrantly,

You are the Queen and we the vassals.

"I was dreaming of your shining streets,

Those boxes, full of peace and work,

Trees felled for the making of houses,

Disturbing the future of energy,

Children in their thousands running on your shores.

"Today I write of your deeds in dust and snow,

One flies away, the other melts.

Today I become a wandering beggar,

A petal from northern impotence.

You are not a refuge, you are an Island of Fugitives."

At the snow-capped corners of the ultimate earth,

Here also we may see our fate;

As the petrel flies or the bark sinks,

Here Imagination flies too;

In a crystal, quintessentially white,

A snowflake of unbroken beauty,

Bright as the face of a cosmic angel,

Smiling without fear like a million stars,

In myriad rings of silent dance.


War And Peace

How sad it is, that the Torre de los Ingleses,

A 'Big Ben clone,' as Lonely Planet calls it,

Has now been changed to the Torre Monumental,

Standing in the renamed Plaza Fuerza Aérea Argentina,

No longer held in pride and friendship

With Britain. How miserable and mean

Was the Falklands War.

Centuries of hassle over those damned islands

In a different era, when control of them

Was so important for trade,

Navigation and Empire - both for Britain and Spain;-

Should not have resulted in 1982

In an old kind of war in a new kind of world.

Those habits and reflexes should have been controlled;

Are we always going to have disputes thus resolved,

By the clash of force and armed might,

As if, when two neighbours dispute a piece

Of land in their garden, the solution were

For them to pick up a sharp axe each

And fight to the death of one, over it:

Is this the answer to infinitely complex questions

Of political justice - just to bash,

As of old, with guns and killing?


Sueño De La Plata

O are you again chasing the crazy

Silver in a vast river

That flows with muddy dreams

And rippled waters like divine hope

And escape from all that does not work

In reality. In ships with heavy anchor

The only salvation in squalls and storms

Myths and utopias of Caesars and giants

Plates of gold or peace at last

O have they said there is a pure land

Of goodness and truth, or dripping with silver

Deep in the interior like a warm womb

Or a clearing in the forest where no dogs bark

And no savages attack you as you prepare your supper

And the Virgin protects even the roughest man

And the stars encircle the most perfect sky

They are counting their money from the day

I am pondering my dubious poetry,

Everyone pursues something to keep their heads

Above water, that might gurgle them down to death,

From the temporary, precarious realm of living

Just outside all Eternity's play

Of endless inorganic and lifeless day

I wander the streets, I buy a book of Lorca

From a kiosk; with dictionary in hand,

Wine from Mendoza, and a dish of spaghetti,

I take in the wonder, the cricket singing

Beneath the moon, your blue and orange

Ribbon, the afternoon that paints your mouth

As it passes through the mountain.

Yellow cupola, wind of silver,

Dios mío, I have come

With the seeds of questions!

I plant them, but they do not flower.

O Lorca! And to be in Buenos Aires,

Like Rome if like anywhere else -

O world! 0 gift! 0 time!

As I take a drink, a heavy, hot cocktail of Lancia,

And the star-trails plunge down to earth,

Knocking out the juices of ground-level dreams,

And the air above is still in a night-blue

Sky; poetry is still a dark, difficult journey,

As Joy soon swings into downward Pain.


La Música

Much more silent than a poet at night

Is the guitar, dripping colours,

As Ariel to Miranda took,

Through the Gulf of deep Livorno

Sounds soften out to zithering quiet

And 0, what am I,

0, what is the World,

Perfumes and leaves of grand trees

Sing with cicadas and memories


Thinking of The Bully-Bosh

O Bosh, he is the 'son-of-a-wimp'

Who wills to be so tough,

Now he wants three more wars,

In which he can unleash his boors,

And leave the ground so very rough

Wherever his bombers bomb and maim

And his ignorant arrogance makes its claim

To defeat all common sense.

Everyone now wants to know,

"How can we join this Axis of Evil?

Are only three allowed to be

Members of the club?

Or does it suffice to burn the Yankee

Flag, to be included;

And can only nations, or individuals too

Proudly join the throng?"

O Binny Lad, he really did

Prick a goof to madness,

How cleverly he provoked the Bully,

In this Absurd World Disorder.

Smart Bosh likes smart bombs

And smart wars too,

He loves to see an arse kicked

With all his nobility.

Now Bosh, when he heard New York was whacked

He quickly got out of there,

But sent his bombers and many men

To bomb the dust in Afghanistan!

Being so brave he wagged his finger

And threatened all the world,

"Agree with me, or you will die

As I have all the power!"

Various creeps and sycophantic poops

Agreed with him so strongly,

Such were Blair and Saudi Arabia,

Delighted to clap so wrongly!

After they had given Bosh a big taste

Of blood, it was hard to stop him,

Especially when his pal Sharon

Intensified his murder.

"Now let’s drop a bomb or two

On North Korea too!"

Thought Bosh, being so very clever,

And giving in to nothing, never,

As Britain is such a lovely ally

With earnest mask and shallow jogger

Blair, who tip-toes not too close

Behind his beloved Bosh.

And Thatcher too, she whirled her bag

And cried, "Kill Saddam Hussein!"

And Mayor Guiliani was made a Knight

In glorious London Town!

Noone could see why Bosh did not

Want to bomb Colombia too,

Or Libya, Sri Lanka, or Timbuktu,

As there was much poverty, too.


Reconocimientos

The feeling it is time to go,

Feeling time has run itself out

For you; re-embark upon the pilgrimage,

Revitalize your juices, and your brain.

Here it was sweet, but also bitter,

Find other tastes, where all is mingled

Again. Thus the seaman's and the earth-

Traveller's motto, like those crazy

Explorers of the Magallanes -

Van Noort, Drake, and Sarmiento.


In The Sweetness Of Summer

I love to read and write

Upon a star at night

In Paraguay, or wherever the spirit

Bites and feels good.

It is the Southern Hemisphere,

Everything hangs the other way up,

And the moon is bluer and clearer green,

As my imagination wants.

And the girls are different, some like fire,

Unselfconscious in warm looks,

Gorgeous in dark shapely freedom,

Spirits of another universe.

My deepest and most naive belief

Is that we are all brothers and sisters

In this world: that is my Socialism,

This is my basis for thought.

O so delicately dreams can spin

A wonderment like the fine silk

Of fairies’ wings that gently ply,

Flying queens in midnight's air.

And we move step after step, there

Towards that which must be, there

Enveloping ourselves and the world around

In the musical colours of our dreams


Jimi Hendrix In Asunción

He was inspired in some outer star,

His mind created from other spheres,

In absolute control, absolute wildness,

Fingers in such rapid Dionysian exactness

The Greeks would have been mesmerised.

For me, he is at the ultimate pinnacle

Of some unnamed beauty, which I love.

Flying into this night, Asunción

I love it here, peaceul, calm

Friendly, members of the universe,

The soul direct to the guitar.

O who might have a tragic destiny

Like a sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,

Like a gipsy boy, 0 so yes

The wanderer and the drifting dream

The Portuguese wanted Solís back,

A mistake they had made losing him to Spain:

"Era el más excelente hombre

De su tiempo en su arte…"

As the USA lost Hendrix to England,

They did not see who he was at all.

Evidently Díaz de SoIís was a strange

And difficult man, not unknown in prison.

Mysterious suspicions and accusations

Accompanied him throughout his life,

Across the border between Portugal and Spain

Especially. He was a mariner.

Strange, lost, exiled adventurers

With hearts filled with strange dreams,

Hopes of a silver mountain; maybe

To find Love somewhere

Hallucinogenic impulses and visions

Shining like crazy diamonds

Outside the ordinary, trying other

Mistresses of extraordinary juices

Fruits of foreign mountains, bays of hope

Or hunger, the dead cold plodding life

Abandoned, like a poor baby

In swaddling clothes outside a monastery,

Later to become an artist.

Death unfeared, or, at least,

Put to uneasy sleep.

And then when you want another smoke

The ship turns because of a storm,

Pelting waves rain in fury

The ship creaks in agony

Out on the edge of a ship that seems

To be sinking, every captain knows tricks

For the moment of disaster or discovery

Held in a primitive part of the brain

Pushed to extreme, music floods

From the medulla, danger dances

To sublime tunes of invisible pipers

Serenading in the fiords,

Drinking depths of gulping hell

To which all know they will go.

At that intensity and pitch

The dense clouds crash

The ocean gulps into its stomach

Death crunches with bare teeth


Sound Thoughts

Could you really live under the snow?

It's not dark yet but its getting bad.

l'm sick of love, l'm sick of it.

Marlene Dietrich would not join the Nazis.

An emperor can love a courtesan,

A servant-girl might love her master,

The sunlight turns in strange forms

Before it falls to the sea.

Strange is the world, like The Next Supper,

Hooligans sucking crumbs from the table

And dying of lies: everything grey,

That was the vision from Paraguay.

Rocks fall among the morning stars,

Perfumes change with every ray

Of the capricious sun, flickering eye-lids

Into pretended dreams, thus we die,

But not until dogs have bitten bones

From every chicken and dead vicuña,

Not so to do would insult the bins.

Some fools would rather eat a pig

Than dance on a fork, or dig a crumb,

They will always scoop their dreams

Into frying-pans of alligators.

What are Relationships anyway,

Too intense, they always die.

Sometimes they leave poetry,

Like the dim sky after the night,

Like the floating mist on a lake of hope,

Like trees whose perfumes remind you of women,

Who seem then to dance on their every branch,

Partaking of the sexy moon,

And the breakfast of dawn that needs a kiss,

A red-lipped kiss of the waiting dawn,

The hope in the first light watering earth,

The excruciating wish that noone knows,

The dog-eared love of something on fire,

The crucifying hunger for another night,

The impulse flying beneath the boot,

The girl who smiles with eyes like boats,

The dreaming floaters upon imaginary trees,

The hoarse cries of immense gulls,

The flamingos whose pink toes pick

Into a marsh where worms wriggle,

And dreams are plucked by goose-pimples,

And silvery toe-tails are painted with sex,

And the moon imparts its sleepy command,

And nothing obeys lists of rules,

And all disperses into a round circle,

Which never ends, like a jazz break,

Or a toucan biting your thigh in quiet

Thickets where adventurers plot their advances

And farces and débâcles are breathed into life;

Thus are the wisps of early cloud

In the bluey sky of Asunción's day

Brought to glorious rain.

My death will not happen here

Quite like I thought, there is some time

Hidden in a quirky loaf,

Rising from fermenting wine,

Dancing up into demented flames,

Where wonderful witches fly about

On sticks of fire, and the red sun

Giddies itself in its slain night,

And the singing angels of sweetest life

Love each other and everything else;

There I want to be.


Portraits Into Dreams

Lovely curved lady

Young, dark, soft

Lips of delicious touch

Artisan Guaraní molds

Art-life from basic mud

Expression writhing from fingers

The sun seems, within

White rolls of cloud

Singing silent goldenness

O let the Light rise above Great Wars,

Stories that grind the brain

Panteón de los Héroes in blackness

Hideous the tombs there

Solemnity over ghastly error

As with Britain’s false glories

Death death black corpse

Wonderful Victory killing idiots:

Who had the best guns? (baby)

Just shoot into the crowd, yeah!

Kill a few outright, best,

Scares the others

No! rude tongue sticks out

Against AIf Garnet, Thatcher,

Fathers in lost brain cells

No! rude tongue sticks out

Against Bush, brute brothers, any yob

Still thinking thus

I hate those who always turn

To War to solve problems:

Yet I no pacifist am.

No! I’ll kick any bastard

Who tries to rape a girl

Within my street-sight!

Maybe I’ll die, no problem there

But no War to satisfy Bush nor Blair;

No War, no War, no War.

Preferable is the world of art,

Imagination’s mighty fantasies

Connecting Truth to Reality;

Don't try to deceive me more!

Art has violence as part of its

Breathing, but not real war.

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a raunchland publication 2002

text © Tim Cloudsley 2002

images © Mary Johnstone 2002