I call anti-grace
first the offering up of life
as an unending battle waged to bring light
(in this divided province where nothing happens
where no road goes up a mountain
where the sun itself now never rises out of the hollow of the sea)
into this nethermost dungeon where history has stopped breathing
the only inhabitants now a clutch of mindless oysters
who in their perpetual condition of iodized rapture
allow themselves to be consumed in white butter
anti-grace
a life dismal and congealed
like an enormous hernia drooping from a tripe-stall
I call anti-grace
that epileptic pendulum sprung from the Angel's malice
swinging back and forth
passing into the sun and passing into the shade
powerless to shatter History
and to reach the privileged rock where the Spirit has set
his seed which binds and loosens
powerless to rise from its offence
anti-grace
those pincers deep at the roots of being
at the height of love
the full armour of the man plundered in the dawns
his portion filched his leap forbidden
his blue sky confiscated by apostates
yet I had dreamed of a life pearl-white
like the first smoke of morning in the village sky
I dreamed of being born with a bugle at the heart
so that every impulse should be unbroken
I call anti-grace
that life of scraps and little words
drawing doubt to your skin at the moment of leaping
I dreamed of an engine
pulling full steam on its train of stars
reckoning without the anti-grace
that condemna me to a long expiring loneliness
on the straw of agricultural shows
I had dreamed before I was born of being a prince not a peasant
I call anti-grace
my face out of hell considered undesirable on the Broadway of pleasure
like a curt acknowledgment of some disgrace
the typhoon of loving clinched to the miner's slow toil
and the world around still insists on spelling out my shame
while I look so hard that I lose sight of it
anti-grace
special pleading never winding its winding up up
solo turn of an ageing star who will never leave me
the past engulfed under torrents of words
and these shadows instead of men at the crossroads of reckoning
leave me to cry I have no more speech
the master organists the enemies of polyphony
have interlined my now illegible speech
to be born without pills for sea-sickness
is what I call anti-grace
banana skins under foot
for an unending slalom down the slopes of life
and this performance is continuous
for the race has risen up again greater and greater
since she made her womb fertile under the hatches of the slave ships
and if grace exists and if love is rustproof
if grace hears me
let her bring to sight at last
on the palette where since the first day I have ground the colours of
my destiny
the cornaline glints where my race standing
will read the premonishing signals of triumphs to come.
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