In The Heart Of The Afternoon

Excuse the sledgehammer entry here but I have just listened to the recording of Oppenheimer describing the effect of the first atomic bomb test on those that witnessed it. I knew the main bit - 'I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' but I had never heard the preamble about it being Vishnu taking on his multi-armed form - (something which is these days such a throwaway joke or stereotype) - that makes an already-powerful statement so much stronger. I get the impression that most people simply think of nuclear weapons as large and powerful explosions but to me they are like prising the back off the universe just to gain a slight advantage.

That is slight in the overall scheme of the cosmos - imagine some final conflict when every missile gets launched and every warhead goes off. The earth would be burning and irradiated - sterile for millions of years. Now think of the camera in your head slowly panning away from this vision of hell until it focuses on some celestial object. Now we begin to zoom away from this once-blue planet and space steals the sound instantly we are at peace just a few hundred miles up from the surface of our planet. Maybe some civilisation will pick up a strange burst of radiation in a few years time but the total affect of our day of judgement over the rest of the universe is almost nil. Pan away from a suicide bombing, out over the debris-littered beaches to the sea and the cries and the acrid smells are gone. A fighter bomber is gone in seconds - leave it to go home and there is just the wind in the trees. This is no solution. Good people will have to focus on these things in order to make them better. Our world is full of horror, things so much more terrible than your average episode of Star Trek.

Yes! I know that is all airy-fairy wet-liberal stuff but I am within ten pages of the end of the Larkin book and it is not nice. Larkin had to have his oesophagus removed, something that is obviously traumatic and still I don't feel anything for him. Now at the end of the Biography of Laurie Lee, I cried. I was at work and had to try hard to set myself right for the day. I have to say that Andrew Motion has written a book devoid of boredom. I was quite worried that I would not be able to finish (or even start) such a dense and detailed tome. It has also prompted me to get Lucky Jim out of the library if only for the shallow reason that Larkin is the dedicatee. Let you know on that one later. Also BOUGHT Status Anxiety - because I can AFFORD TO, being of such high STATUS.

I was re-reading some entries this morning, prompted by visits noted to various archive pages of mine. I got the normal "Did I really write that" feeling again. I seem to be able to remember most of the poems I write but blog entries just seem to fly away into the blogosphere and never into my brain. I would like to say that this indicates that I am being totally unguarded about the entries here but that is not the case. I have long though about starting a private version for more personal thoughts - something to instruct my executors to burn when I go. I could say that I have already started this and indeed the poems are probably already more unguarded than this. Even so, I don't think I would really be worried about any of them being posted up now. In fact, here comes another one now :-

White Noise (25/03/2004)

The rumbling of whales has broken sleep,
a weight of animal to ripple harbours
over half the coast, sub-sonic dives
messing with the spring-tide notes.

In this room, the surf is ludicrous,
a shivering of lighted curtains
a gale-force ghost to awl through
flaking paint and warping frames.

This ocean is a mask, a baffling,
a thing to steal all talk
a crawling, winding special force
which joins me in my snaky dreams.

And now the sea has merged with me
a ruined sense destroyed by music
that leaves me silent. All I have is sea,
a nightly high-tide, breaking waves,

an ocean of regret at money spent
to drop me stupefied and ill,
of ignorance and injury
at things I meant or never said.

The water at the door has called for me,
a knock of soak has entered here
and flows like nitrogen,
an upwards glow of panic.

The gauze is cool and hard,
a trap of stream and fruit,
as strange as words that loop
and scream against the truth of home.