verse by Pieira dos Lobos
In April 2004, a contributor posting as Pieira dos Lobos — Portuguese for "stone of the wolves" — put thirteen poems into alt.magick.serious without comment. The same voice posted as Steve Kane elsewhere in the group. He lived in rural Portugal, near Arcos de Valdevez; his foreign wife asked him questions; he killed a pig with his neighbours at dawn. He had been a soldier, a socialist, a psychiatric patient, a father. He mourned Ken Saro-Wiwa. He escorted a dying man's spirit to a London river.
The poems are not magical in any technical sense. They are the record of someone practising magic in its oldest form: paying attention. To the fox under the door. To the moment the mountain gained mind. To what the dead look like when they forget how to gaze. "Winter is the true time for being," he writes. "In summer we rehearse fitfully."
Into Templum
After this first storm of the autumn the forest will be flush with birds.
Like kids come down early to clean after some late, old lustful party.
They flit the beam-opened birch and cleaned oaks like your late
Thoughts blown here — debussing to tunnel my crown. Voiding, feasting.
Robins from Shepperton, Thrushes from Scheveningen. In the summer
The soft and tactful nightjar drifted, now these cheery tourists probe.
Winter is the true time for being — in summer we rehearse fitfully,
Assuming no pressing reason. In winter the conditions grasp us, the cup shaped
The top spring, shut at March equinox, considers returning — feels the level
In the deep granite mesh. The remnants of the pre-metal age village stand
In thought effigy around her, holding clay-puddled baskets. Only here the
Gentian has been flowering. On their idle beds, humped by head-born baskets
Of element and humus, the wild spiked pear grows its tallest. I remind myself
How China's first printers blocked with them. In these times I hunt crook'd
Sticks and make what beauty will bear me, carve soft hooks from crude crucks,
Fist for pole, wrist straightened by sun shafts — forced up by the deep store of
The winter spring. Meanwhile ponies scrum for chestnuts, picking for
Nuts pigged out from thorned pockets. Last winter for me was for pear crooks, one
Holly, and the slight dreams that became fast as fiction. Marks of wolf, a brace of
Shocked roebuck come upon me in a strong rain. This fall the verse wells out
From me, like child wrens tumbling free from her little rick nest in ivy. With
Snowdrops and the south storms they'll be too light to stay here. With surprising
Shatter songs these little brown nothings will penetrate your borders, shriek
Beautiful, delightful probing cracks in your winter constructions, nest and egg.
Of some Certainties and Dead Guys
Tell me what sort of look has a dead guy?
Gazing is what he has forgot. In his cot of
Chipped paint on steel he cannot remember
How he's to feel. All of the rest of him still
Seems real. Then he cools and come nurses.
And the newborn, who trip at the step, how
Them? They would be such soft linen wrapped,
Warm. One's first would be so weightily full
With that density of tenderness. Thus I hefted
The small dead that no elder has outlasted.
And the mind thing — it can roll on a sudden
Hairpin when too hard charged — tell us all chum.
I sat on a slope in Wales once, watching water.
It was day pumped up there when you all drifted,
Eyes on the chalk, snores drowning talk, until
Later there was a break on that figmental Street —
A zillion molecules decided that with the hand
Of the clock was the way of rock, and mountain
Gained mind in a moment — a vortex, all events
Enter. Thus gratifying your three-pin plug thirst
Ending at the heart of a mud cone darkness sucked,
Needing all people to revert to calm soap watching.
The note deep below retuned, unfeeling upwelled.
Lazarus said: So it is for the high slope witnesses
And pals sucked deep in such shafts when called.
How leaves love? You notice how the foliage
Is no longer sweet and tender as in spring. It
Blotches, loses out to nibbling things. The siren
Blows on the day's main production. Conversation
Gets a bus. A weekend storm bares a skeleton.
and Again
Falling in love is so often a climbing up and
Out of something like unlivable yet still fascinating
As a weasel absorbs that rabbit even unto death
By choking. Inside the victim gropes for remote
Control to shift to the gaze of sweetness even
If it is just a shampoo ad. For the rabbit, predator
Is the only offered program, but we get chewed
And recorded, slayed back. Like I said, succumbing
Feels like angels snatched us free, then we
Get to be weasel. This is no kind of angel task —
We can sort it out between us, retch and hurt
Again. There is another frame bright and changing
In our room, not the paintings: they are maps.
Out through that pane is a real place with love
There in it. It does nothing that we can fix
For ourselves. It does the angel tasks and awesome
Wonder.
On the Stair
In a moment I shall be out and cold rolling in the wet riches of our
Common vocabulary. Crushing myself a blot on the dew-grey'd tongues of her.
Being exposed and cold on such a field is fine for me, having been
Grazing with such daisy-meadow'd beastliness, fat munching on rich lies;
Happily, covertly sliding out naked from a paved hall since I can
Remember. I will take down and unstretch a picture, shake off the flakey adhesions
And dry myself thereon. Striding back to that Great Mansion
Brandishing a potency that no normal chap would wield willingly in sight of oaks.
I shall enter the main door — you all around in sharp shirting,
Holding glasses to facial orifices looking at something that approximates to fine detail
And gross structure. I will enter nude among you all. Your Britannic
Dissemination will allow your affected ignorance of I. On the stairs a sitter:
Displaced from the general harsh vertical and now implying an
Unconsidered query will draw out candidly from a flap of mine that this house is
Y'all may herd in her. I hate halls where each echo calls an
Individual and none whispers back mine earing. I'll slide to my bedside, sleep presently.
Wake and dress thinking of Graves in a soft great hat and his stocky
Hawk aspect. I'll isolate a metre of lawn with wicker chair and table a lemon on.
You may creep to me pleasantly feeling me stone like Lincoln and as
Such virtually absent and so strip and fold suiting neat to place beside me and roll.
I will have arranged a clipped zone safe for the young. A canvas will
Be around for you to friction some cellular detritus — it will adhere fragrantly
On your robing and, ridded of that previous deep solitary conclusion
Of us all. Kiss me, handle a part of my apparel as yet unknown to me, regain
My dwelling that you once occupied: being rich realtors possessed of
The bunch of keys that fitting all estates: once dignified your agency.
With my blessing.
Trainspotters
There was a time when I would train the street and depending
On your root state you might tremble or else leer indulgent
At the plight of one working the city in shorts on a skateboard
Cool back from L.A. or Rio shameless — city-clak city-clak city-clak.
And you sensibly shafted by fluorescent tubes, just a gleam
Of teeth from a fax machine or a cathode ray screen not quite
So extensive as to suggest a pool. You grimly typing across it.
There were of course — then as ever — types who were not fain to
Board that train — yours cattletrucks to concentration — mine a
Rhythm in our head. These still crouch as we alight — no not
Seeking either of us — noting numbers not for counting — for
Intoning against eventual insignificance. Trainspotters — alert
But passed by the adventurer and the top-table pretender — not
Heeding poets without number. The variations in their books
Primarily concern novelty within the final integers. As always
At the end of epochs the lists seem almost final — might now come
To them that moment between pre-coitus and the triste of it
Passing rattling insistent whispering implication of rage not to
Linger threateningly. Each new class more silent and distantly
Combusting — here just hissing under alloy screwed with pan-head
Bolts eschewing wasteful turbulence like their big winged inspirations
Fleeting the clouds in new jazzy liveries more relevant now than
Your armatured engines — powered from far and deniable stacks.
Now — even their output ignored if polluting and protested by
The differently anorak'd. — Then it arrives — hoarsely roaring out
The undoubted proximity of its external and unshielded combustion,
Were once these things let loose when entraining was the way to
Go and spotting was for real boys yet little? Did Yeats and the
Challenging Kipling get themselves Nobel'd by being such
Dynamite vehicles? Before planes made all the notable noise —
Oh God! It is not only sarcastic with its heated venting also
Hideously cheerful as if it will arrive and leave with a sound
That negates our scribbling. It has a number that we dare not
Have listed along with our series. It being so short and indivisible
Yet implying a series exponential like the expansion of steam
Above a chasing stack. Why could he not be (like us) bashful
As are those modern poets we love to list, and make gentle
Variation? The obscenest of its virtues are the sharp edges of
Iron and a lack of polish that like some kind of steel punk
Proclaims it new out from the works — and not matured in
Obscurity and then redeemed from the outlands by our inland
Chums. It behaves as if it held this station against our spotting
As if platforms were for the plain travellers — laughing, weeping,
Littering — unlike the polite and transparent watch and listers
For whom the new silent ways of Rail were so nicely arrayed.
Just a man who fell to verse
There are days when you must writhe in noise
And those where you must hurtle in silence
Not knowing if we just travel in time or with the Earth
Spiral past nothingness with our mother Sun.
My home is a hole in the mountain — cool in summer,
Not cold in January's death. Now I know who I
Am — like the man — not who you think I am — I'm the one
Who climbed rhetoric without oratory. It was bad up there
Plain hard, cold, stiff howling winds — not fit for soft humanity
For a month or two — dug in up there —
I felt sure that this was a no good planet to be landed on —
Me half from Mars the rest from Venus. The cold vapour
Slashed the window as if we still fell ballistic, sure
To smash on impact, relishing what little time was left to us.
But the staunch sin of the granite was her permanence,
Our providence was her intransigence. While I inscribed
The bright slab, the screams of the gilded calf, the wailing of
The ancient officiators, were almost like natural cries to me,
Brought with buzzard's high mews, and the World-Service news —
The palaces are no place to see: when Jason brings home
The Medusa. Best to be slyless, dis-ingenious, above the settlement
And beyond consideration like the wild-eyed goat-boy,
Who smiles at the pretty flames and the flashes of Viking swords,
Finds the scent of flesh savoury — sings babble songs to his
Mottled flock, now all his property — the village being axed to earth.
The next wave of settlers will honour him — thinking the
Carnage his operation. Silent, he'll give them no nervous reason to probe
Their poor conclusion — until raven prows again crash on shingle.
Summer Foxes
Oh sweet lithe rust-dipped vixen — your cubs deep planted
In the drain under our door. We stamp over them
All day.
Their play
Lifts my head at four. I feel no duty to number or
Give them names — over the laurels for chase and pure joy.
Oh dark little hurrying half parson — my foreign wife asks
Me: Why Steve? The priests feel the need to skulk one
Whole day
For
Their play
To shed dark chic? While our punk chums go black all
Week? He, being degree'd in both 'ford and 'bridge, having
Bothered God and chipped at old dark souls down in Africa has mot
Juste right for me. To punk is not professional. I am then
Seven day
From
Lear's play,
Face to the lino in the nut-place. No surprise that I out sing —
Seems to me punking's for them vocational, as so my sly priesting.
I walking and ranting up a little at right time-out for mixed infants
Spy fox. He's up ahead of I — jumped out trim from clipped
Green box.
A death pox
He calls; on finding mums and herding toddlers as followers
And I quiet song-yomping suburbia before him. He seems to break
Himself. Chops out a dog silhouette, without Reynard's signature —
Walks like a cockney talks, instead of Olivier. One child and
I hush,
Ground brush.
The Bastards Hung Ken — Steady Men Steady
Oh Ken — I now am what you was and you
Not anyone. Dear John — in Camberley
We were cadets together — you great, huge-
-hearted all manner of African — stepping on
Into the ranks to make a clean place of your
Sweet messy Nigeria, as brother Grant of
Massive Attack chose his best brass Army.
The makings of soldier and poet are pretty
Proximate. Were it not for Robert Graves
Our (now gratefully dead) assholes would
Have strung Sassoon for less — he'd not then
Have found his form for God as you did
John, good and early. You (giant, smiling)
Me (stressed, average for UK male) Rana
Being from such high mountains, royal,
Not needing much mass. We smile from
Beaumont's (Sark, feudal heir) snap and
An imperial bronze field piece crouches
Like a willing dog — happy to bark for any
Man's match. Less than a decade later I
Wait by Comrade's estate — arms ready for
Printed propaganda. We need to demonstrate
Before the Moscow mission. For anti-bomb
Socialists like us, Com'. — Only they're in the
Lubyanka, while we address the T and G.
Might you not stand with us and them —
Show yourself even-handed after Greenham?
He: Those dissidents — fascists all (he forgot
His usual tape-recorder) Solzhenitsyns all,
They call for us to bomb Russia. Poets and
The lot — all fascists. Yes Pop — and you too —
No longer having me on your side — applauding
The good choice of Bristol for once — I'll now
Go with the dodgy pen men — walk with the
Unmanageable and free. Be dead wrong
Often. With feeling. These outbreaks of
Excessive certainty are what murders the
Casually innocents and repressed and
Doubting. Does for us impertinent and
Surly. We are that rag-bag army of scum
That steadied by a certain occasional
Expletive from our blessed Sepoy
General might turn the tide of the delinquently
Decided. Roll a single wheel from each great
Gun of eloquence, and hide it in the stiff
Square of infantile poetics, so the Dictators
Might not have it sequestered, drawn off and
Spiked. This week I passed into that promise
Of volumatic paper publication. There was
Neither champagne nor applause for this pause
In the personal campaign of private causing.
I sat like Wellington after Waterloo. Those gaps
At his table were within me. My own sweet cursing
Picton. Herding his blasted boys through my own
Breaching. Dead on the ground — and you too
Ken. Brown as the ground, sweet, rude, wrong
African man d'estimação. Wily old Yaller-dog
Like both Nelsons. Le Sheikh de Poesie. Colin won't
Run — I won't diss him for it — though, by God we
Need him for the sweet reason — rag and bob taggle
Only Army. You sons of the Niger, and all surging
Gods of brown freedom now washing in land-stripping
Spate. Fall back on your silent lines of Torres Vedras
Let the jackal starve for want of corpses. His rolling
Mass of love-stripped reason slides on the round
Buttocks of the raped — yours and theirs. Be not his
Feedstock. Browse not on unquestioning absolutes.
The not-dreadfully-perfect legion lightly drilled
By such sweet genius must retreat in good order, then
One brave day, as was with Sir John Moore, you'll
Have your vengeance for Bro' Ken. Don't listen to
Their soft fusillade of logic — for that ranked reason
Lies professionally for that rugged Prince of This World —
That is to say This World — over breeding, too freely
Bleeding for no reason other than emotional impotence.
For which we need right smart — real and wrong ranters
Like Fond Ken. John: old comrade of arms, choose your
General. On Ken's last night, more or less at two or three,
I heard the great audience start into applause, coming first
On the tiles and skylights as from those gods, stamping
Puddles at the barred doors, soiling and staining white-
-washing of granite permanences. Tedding up through
Improvised spouts. Fondling the stilled silt — rousing it
Out. Waking leaves and plastic-bags. Trees stood in streaming
Ovation for the victory — sure and eventual — for such poetry
They had been up all day learning your music Ken. While I
Walked down through the quiet wilderness to the sleek transparent
River — clear green liquid and human, dying at the sea — see
It rest in her. But now the roar of such a crowd wakes the quiet
Condemned. The huge godly torrent — replete with waste and dark purity
Taking the old thin pelt off the land with him, clouding the gunmetal
Sea ahead of me. Hear this clear. We who hear English, and dream
In her arms — as Ken now sleeps. Know her as a kind mother —
Irish, ancient Indian, African — older still, she took us all in with
Sweet Will. She has no academy correct reasonableness —
Accommodating of imperfection. Sipper from foreign talking,
We must stand around those creeps — like the cows do — silent,
Masticating, looking. Be the deprived grandmothers of the land
Stand barely witnessing madmen with cell-phones and power-
Formation uniform and delinquent suitwearing in all skin-tight
Colourings. Until our angel intimates start that slow hand-clap
Up and stand we still staring and quietly counting their last
Seconds of potency. They looking now lost and friendless, we
Hooves to ground watching for the inevitable. Fix them with
Your dumb gaze — make them feel cunning — all masculine.
Rumbling then the river rolls them over to slap them all with
Plastic sacs, dead sheep, coats, fishing floats, as dun-in-dark
Dank debris. Cold in the dawning of new provisional truth.
Drink small strong coffees to the death of dry cracked certainties.
Pick up your kids and kiss 'em like soldiers should. You'll have
Beaten off the fine uniformed columns of shiny baby-violators —
Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, brilliant decisive demons all dead.
Now's time for Africa. Steady now Lads — delightful scum — Steady!
Stick Dance, With Bells
It was the day that Morris came, being but a while dead —
I didn't know him. With him was Will, with Tom and Kipling.
Laying hands on me they took my own will far away,
Gave me into his, to be my dying and deep blessing.
Too fast I passed through the ancient throng, scenting his
Recent haunt in the hospital. Towards his old home he gave his
Name — still I didn't own it — seeing as I saw him being yet alive
Where much blood kept him lingering.
His chela was so sad, tired of his man's dying, he slept
At his bench while the flame dropped. Only wax, wick, and air.
Morris nowhere. John in my house — his name being beloved —
I led his fresh soul home like an old dog.
His door, shut, stared at the park. We sat on the bench together,
Said how summer came now soon, here with us now at this hour
Of last breath. His wife came home — I told her. For me
Today Death died.
His new corpse lay emptying there inside. I only ever met him once —
His people kept all but I at bay. They never really believed.
Sometimes once is enough: then we wait 'til we can get away,
Catch a few moments
Between meetings. He and I went singing and walking to the turbulent
Merging of New Cut and Old — the tide churning and turning.
I dropped his blade in the opacity, nearest to still and spring
Topping for him.
There were other key things I care not to remember. His retainers reviled
Me as his unseen releaser. Stood aside when I fell, sharing his beam
Through those stations of his past master. But that immortal
Remembering beast tamer
Held me down in a place of his better remembering, replaced my
Dismembering. Gave me that pearl I before only borrowed, shaved me,
Bathed me, made me sip all manner of waters, brought me
His two precious daughters.
Hill and river, sky and sea. Bird and bee, tree and field, sword and shield.
Open and closed, raiment and robe, bishop and priest, famine and feast.
Rowboat and sail, mattock and maul, Saul and Simon, Marys and Martha.
Jesus and Johns.
Thank God It's Friday
Remember — it's winter when the rot stops,
Not in the glad glades of summer with her silken days
Of shopping and shipping.
We call out for the fall and its plenty which
Is prone to mould. This story should be more truly told
By some unbreasted maid.
She secures herself — as her hair by her lady's pins — has little
Subterfuge bar the using of her Madam's scent so as
To go scented unnoticed.
I'd not be telling this like I am if I could pass for her. If my
Swain's tales of red running cows on swelling green
Might serve to satisfy.
But I have this tale of darkness-tide. When the dank cold washing
Dries by crackling trees. Heat merely rising and fingering
Smoke smells lingering.
Not like summer when the raiment dances — air spirits don our souls,
Dancing and flying as we might try. Winter hot holds us with
Its fossil sprites. Inside.
In winter we dry. Dress as each other through that direst straight,
Heap the plate, against the fondling footfall of our damp dreams,
Huddle at the flame.
When's the merest heat, the evergreens grow at the expense of the
Drop leavers. They scratch the pane — fallen on lean-tide we
Pray with them.
Of course those city folk seem as if it's all a joke — this is fullness without
Ending. Because so many of us are here — must be a party — let's all
Ever stay awake.
The immortals cruise in their shiny cars, able to make any landing crash
Past so very fast. They are the seamless, synchronised suitwearers.
We bear their tidings
Uncomfortably, as toddlers tell mother of Jake's Dad's feats when we know
That the real poor Dad of Jake cannot make ends meet. Oh children,
By all means party —
All our cousins are here. This is your father's funeral. Hear the bell toll
Welcoming to beyond-old, he is now so over-mature, that he is
Truly Dead
Not living at some great disadvantage. Rising to no more subtle challenges.
Were I my ancestor of long ago — at forty I'd be close to him
Sitting sipping out secrets.
We Heretics — to C.S-S.
Soft clenched like blind leverets we unlikely occupy the involuntary
Forms Christian. The lions — trained and no longer to tear, crush, shed
Mess or terror — flop farting on your face, mouth me and roll dousing,
Taking their time which is spanned like ours, pegged on a grit trellis
Like vines, and the once plain Truth. Ignobly we rot. The publi-media-shing
Tycoons sleep, staring.
Though I write in terms of angels, I may fail. And without the chips
Of faith or clash of grace they may shift like salve in Hades. Hell we
Know — in it we stop. Sidle, affecting suicide — like He bleeding at the
Joint of hod to ham. Lovers of tongue and feel wrap us for the furnace,
Baked half twice at brake of week and its breaking. She is just there in the
Garden, now names us.
Him, Maps, Low, Time
Turning this way I see my mother, glimpsed in the mirror, and
Passing my hand over my face undershaving, the father of my
Child looks back at me — once alarming — here steadying, he is
Now patient, looking. One day this will be the only way to see
Him.
She might remain for a while longer — it is so often like that in
Real life. Presently they will die. My access to my grandfathers
Will be as ever — slight. I have a Great War compass from one —
The father of my father. I hold his lust for comprehensive sets of
Maps.
Above me sits a Toby jug. He has had a few too many by his face —
Become to me the never-seen Daddy of Mummy. Entering the room
Once, shorn for the military, her mother took me fleetingly for him.
Both birthday — we (I and he [dead]) can think/be dread up and so self
Low.
My children are good kids — now I miss them — gradual, gone, grown — until
They now and then safe home again. As they three shall shave/see/miss me in
Good
Time.
Pig
By the clock it says ten a.m.; by the sun and your digits, nine.
Just killed a sow, accompliced by my neighbours.
We gathered at dawn, fed her her favourite food, the little dog
Yapped, she squealed (as any time you stress her, even slight).
The usual matador known by his boy and man, followed Benfica,
Has his own guru along — sweatered for the blues instead, they'll
Concelebrate. I like these guys a load, they smile and have no
Squirming mainly-vegetarian edge. Pig on cart, oaken-wheeled, steel-
Rimmed, held handsomely by us men, woman with bowl, salt,
Garlic, and knife. I have the peril limb this time, loose, low, right
Rear, axe-hooved. I hold firm. My summer enemy watches, glad
He forced nothing hand to hand — pleased I choose to ignore his
Finger on triggered shot, gorse falling, rattle nearby me. His summer
Son told him I was a gent, being winter-fortuned in France — not to mess
With Malouco Inglês who must have mates from other tribes than
His. By the time the knife enters she is grasped calm. Oh how I know
That feel, of Hold me tight — against the awful void, slow spinning
But never making the right hour. For her it comes with the man's
Long blade — throat to heart. We always find his blow in the stilled
Beater, later. He wrings a hand with evidence of his awareness of
That strike he makes for us — at that ugly last goal. We watch and
Anticipate the tit-bits as he carves — his magister watching him.
I left them my coveted blades — to come home to this bright rectangle
For this confession. I left two esteemed knives — concave and convex —
To stand in for me. I'll drink home coffee with no sugar, avoid
Averting their cups of home tonics for fear of my inner bleeding.
Now that my knife-drawer is safe shut, depleted, comes the time for
Best feasting, on that we bore pain of hunger, search, and fumble for.
How to explain the need to write to one who cannot read. The care for
Flight to held gun chum?
The trotters come off the sow, her ears are split, things pause before the carcass is invaded. I tread
The once balcony of her, see chapel'd peaks scattered into a whole day's driving away from we.
The eighteen-foot poles in the stack-yard are now stalk-wrapped — like giant copper-agers waiting for tin.
In the kitchen, all ages are girls, the littlest — eyes and curls promising heartbreaking — cheeks, chin chucked.
For these smoke and sneeze are altogether forever with heat and fleas, now more in the dog than on that hog.
I must return — the best of them think I flee to fumble live flesh, see my woman in the bed, not my girl in the head.
I must not drink too much — later we van to Celtic Vigo, for Yule consumable wallowing, and hence with fetch'd messages.
Colophon
Written by Pieira dos Lobos (Steve Kane), posted to alt.magick.serious, April 2, 2004. Thirteen poems: winter and forest, the dead, love as predation, suburban foxes, an elegy for Ken Saro-Wiwa (Nigerian poet and activist, executed November 1995), a dream-encounter with a dying friend, a ritual pig slaughter in northwestern Portugal, and the silences between fathers and children. The poet posted from Arcos de Valdevez, Portugal. "Pieira dos Lobos" is Portuguese for stone of the wolves. The "Ken" of "The Bastards Hung Ken" is Ken Saro-Wiwa; "C.S-S." in "We Heretics" refers to Siegfried Sassoon.
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: <[email protected]>.
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