Geraint Jennings's Poems in English

Elma çay and lokum

Sipping apple tea and sucking sweetened fingers,
standing by the stall and making my selection;
spices colour-collaged like love, cloves and ginger,
barrelfuls of nutmeg, carpets of peppercorn -
elma çay and lokum.

Pink mouthfuls, succulent and stacked like building bricks,
construct sweet marbled, sandstoned walls and terrasses
cross the bazaar. The bright gilt teapot, as intric-
ate, bizarre, Byzantine as silk and attar, as
elma çay and lokum,

is tipped again. I sip. Pink, green, yellow ochre
blocks of nut and syrup, packed in boxes and tied
with minaret-thin ribbon, and served with sugared
cups of apple tea - squishy harems of delight:
elma çay and lokum.

La Cathédrale de Coutances

Insect-like, light, segmented and leggy,
Glowing, glowering - the Cathedral, poised
Mid its web of ruettes, ready, edgy.
Its visiting prey, prayerful and surprised,

Were caught in grasping buttresses and ribs.
Each arch a lean and hungry orifice,
Thin stone tendrils - tendons for spiny tips
Of turrets studding that cream carapace.

Ochre and slate-grey, it sits supported
On its thin arched limbs, lithe buttresses,
Joints quivering as though its builders doubted,
As today's prey, prayerless wanderers, bless

Its ancient stone bones with camera flashes.
Watching windows glare, red, blue, green and white,
Upon these small, unimportant passions
Within its exoskeleton of light.

17/8/1999

Pré salé

Dream-creamy sheep drift cloudlike on this sea of green
Cross-stitched with old gold, ochre rivulets of sand.
The wind-borne sunlight breathing through this limelit scene
Knits china-blue sea threads, green weed-clumps, reedbeds and

Sweet treats of crème caramel sand banked with dune.
Sheep nibbling gold-eyed mid the frosted, fleecy growth
Are rich sun-caught accents in this breezed light of noon,
Eased Eastwards inland cross these stripes of herbage. Both

Prickling wind-thrown sand and this bright seaside Summer light
Sting brine from my eyes - uncorked wine, peppery. Salt
Bathes this estuary pasture where sheep, sweet and bright,
Bleat with the whining breeze - taste, move, stop, feed, walk, halt.

20/8/1999

Drinking cider, looking at the sea

This long double-underlined horizon
Presses and oppresses the cider sea.
Apple-green marine fields windfall dies on,
Bleeding, briny, fragrantly, juicily.

Grey granite hedgerows grow to mark the bounds.
Boats apple-bob amid the waving leaves,
Lines root, masts twig and branch. The coded sounds
Of morse-like taps and slaps converse like thieves,

Scrumping, pilfering fruits de mer - each moule,
A plum - each lobster, cream and strawberries -
Scallops, peaches - oysters, gooseberry fool,
With bladderwrack champagne festivities.

Crush this greenness - pluck it, pulp it, kill it.
Swill it in barrel-loads to drown the sea.
Make fast these small vessels and distill it
To double-strength saltwater eau-de-vie.

As the harbour mouth waters juicily,
I sip the spirit it lives and dies on.
My cider glass's sides have pressed the sea
To one double-underlined horizon.

L'Abbaye de la Lucerne d'Outremer

The tree before the tree before the tree -
Warm metal, glass and tracery, then leaves.
An incense-rich cloud rises rhythmically,
Transfixed by sunlight, pierced as it receives

The gilded light from leaf, from glass, from cross.
Reflected, dappled, glinted rays aslant
Conjoin, confuse each rib, each joint, each boss,
Roll through the nave with this Gregorian chant

Whose swoop and lift re-echoes cloudily
Harsh tones. Soft stones smoke, billow and decay.
The sound clouds grow and rumble louder, we
Add our dim song - like candles at midday.

29/8/1999

Born in the purple, Michael's fingers touch the sky.
Sweet silver waters writhe and curl at his caress.
A sweet bitter Seville marmalade horizon's
Tasted for the richness of this sunset's splendour.

Michael strokes the line that splits the spectrum -
Red and violet invite his fingers in between
Earth's curves and heaven's clouding billows, pillows for
The Sun's lullaby, delft blue and sap-green blankets

Piled among the trees that line our eyes' furthest reach.
Voyeurs shuffle nervously amid the telescopes.
Michael settles, blinks. Candles cross the countryside
And are snuffed as Michael kisses the sun's red lips.

Moules and cider

Moules and cider - fruit and fruits de mer -
Black shells and soft white onion in cream.
Cool cider, warm moules contrast - marinière
And bouché, land and sea, this life and dream.

Stream-fed, sea-watered, orchard-anchored, moules
And cider fizz and clatter, live and die.
The apple's crushed, the juice runs clear and cool,
The shellfish, scrubbed and steamed, gape wide and I,

Anointed with sweet garlic and their juice,
Inspired with the apple's blood and breath
Will once more twist the bottle's cork cage noose,
Will bring half-mourning mussels to their death.

Sweet Summer sunset, strawberry and vanilla,
clouds spattered, wet dream, crème fraîche, cross the sky.
An engorged sun and swollen hills kiss till a
blush of raspberry ripple flushes my

face, my neck, my shoulders. Orange juice-
sharp sugared fingers educate my lips
and teach my tongue to taste long out-of-use
words: beauty, love, adore. His fingertips

stroke trees, manipulate each stream and coast
up and down. The rhythm of the Sun
caresses countryside, absorbs like toast
the buttery gold of his brilliance. None

can withstand. All are seduced. Rich, black
and bestial coffee blesses youth and very
sluttish landscapes whose blue fields lie back
in apricot, peach, apple, pear and cherry.

After Verlaine's "L'Amour par terre"

Le vent de l'autre nuit a jeté bas l'Amour,
Last night's wind has knocked down Love and left him sprawling
Uprooted, Cupid cries - babyishly bawling,
His arrows angled aimlessly towards the floor.

Oh! c'est triste de voir debout le piédestal,
We mouth Romantic wordlessness as Love's dethroned.
He's gone. The gust that thrust him down blew as we moaned
And thrashed, in thrall to last night's storm. Its stamp and snarl

Qui dans le coin le plus mystérieux du parc
Cast down our craven, graven god and left him wounded,
Scattered dead leaves, dying loves and our strewn Cupid.
His white marble buttock slapped by breezes in the dark

Au souffle du matin tournoie, épars. C'est triste...
Last night's love has knocked me down and left me winded.
His sculptured surface chills me more than your sweet skin did
When you consoled me at the loss of Love (deceased).

I am the Walrus, you are the Carpenter

We kicked sand on the beach and, stumbling, I fell laughing
At the water's edge, embraced by wet sand, half-in,
Half-out of nibbling ripples, as waves of laughter
Broke on your lungs, tongue, teeth and lips. So half to

Please my self-esteem and half to tease you, I dance
In the shallows (ruining my shoes), advanc-
ing clumsily, splashing madly and elating
Along the line which finds earth and water mating,

Making waves and love. We careered back up the beach
(Where seven maids with seven mops would never reach).
And afternoon sun radiating from the rocks,
Seducing you to bask, and me to dry my socks,

Warmed limpets, razor-shells and cockles of my heart,
Fired fishlike admiration of your fresh, unchart-
ed coves and gullies. Bellies, breasts stretched out, idle
On the sea-worn granite. Shells scattered by tidal

Flow like confetti snowing in white bridal hours -
Our dying, drying lips blessed by brine-sprayed showers.
Your body's muscles marinière were salt and strong
Like oysters, aphrodisiac; like mermaid's song

Bewitching, raising sea-storms in my teacup mind.
Only sand, coarse between my toes, of course remind-
ing me that we were far from our own mussel beds,
Clammed private 'mid laughs, kicks and stumbles in our heads.

The smoke-and-seaweed air intoxicates this field.
Its furrows fold and crease with languorous ease.
Quicksilver soil and amber light, mercurially sealed,
Hermetic knowledge of the daddy-long-legs and the bees.

This golden field has trapped them in its resined air,
The insects drift along the slothful hedges, indolent
And innocent, they twirl and waltz like Rogers and Astaire:
Faded, grainy, Fred-and-Ginger fluent,

Fluid insects swoop and turn in languid lazy pas de deux.
The sickly, sticky air flows round me, resinous,
Embalming me in gold and frankincense and myrrh,
Mummified and memorized. The Summer frees in us

A breastfed season's harvest of emotion,
Ripened, scented, red and redolent, fermented into
Love's sealed preserve of fecund field and fruitful ocean:
Conceived in Summer, plucked in Autumn, pickled for the Winter.

This poem was Highly Commended in the 1997 Jersey Evening Post Writing Competition

Unscathed by love, we slept before we met.
A frozen Christmas, chill and Orthodox,
A quick-caught closeness never bettered yet:
She still recalls the colour of my socks.

The dark ignited snow-fires on that train,
My coldest, warmest love and paradox
Retaining cold and heat and peace and pain:
She still recalls the colour of my socks.

The night was icy, blank and blanketed
By snow. We huddled close against the ox-
y-acetylene cutting cold. She said
She still recalls the colour of my socks.

Congealed closeness with the snow-sparks flaring
Warms as my icebox memory unlocks.
I can't recall: what were we wearing?
She still recalls the colour of my socks.

In scathing sleep, no love unthawed our meeting,
No night is equal to that equinox
Rapt by that Christmas giftwrapped greeting:
She still recalls the colour of my socks.

And none could sense how skin could swoon so scented,
Nor tell the spices traded through that torso.
Nipples - apple-russet, rush-repented:
Rash Adam's ribald windfall, painted or so

Streaked with berry stain, we're taught red-handed,
Smeared with honey, cinnamon and nutmeg;
Juice-spattered by our pleasures, caught and branded
By clove-scented, cloven-hoofed lust. We but beg

A taste of flesh, fresh, fragrant, in flagrante
Lips brushing over moist chests; chaste and spicy
Tongues slaver, savouring each tingling scanty
Tang. Tongues flicker, lapping, licking, and entice me

To your cup's deep draught of pepper-perfumed liquor
Assaulted and head-butted by your readiness:
Red-headed hedonism laced with paprika.
Aromatic with your red-hot headiness,

Your body, muscular and marinated,
Pelops-pungent penetrates so piquantly
We're bouquet'd in a sweet pomander (grated
Ginger-coriander), sated frequently.

Liberation Acrostic

Liberation Acrostic

Liberation Acrostic

Raising me a freedman, manumitted,
Ashen as the cool, cruel water shocks my skin.
This salty font shall cleanse all faults committed:
Inebriated love and sober sin.

Orations prating slavery's frustration
No longer drown love's ebbing liberation.

I fall on grass and kiss this earth's imperfect turf.
Reciprocal, ribbed grass blades prick my skin.
A million snake tongues brand their serpent's supine serf
Superfluous. I slough self's sinful origin,

Newborn without identity in Eden, unknown
To all except the snakebite-sharp grass mattress
Whose dark coiled worm springs bear me up, and they alone
Know the ophidian mysteries. They are Atlas

Shoring up the world's sphere, cobalt and viridian.
They are myths and pythons twisted round our roots,
And I lie rooted as the globe's meridian
Bisects, dissects me, grafts me - and I set out shoots.

You! You! Take me and swathe me in your vodka'd joy!
And breathe hot, heady answers to my cri de coeur.
A drunken adult talking to a wondering boy,
Your words sweet, sugared, sticky like a new liqueur

Are breathed in hot gasps, answering my cri de coeur.
And, wreathed in benedictine halos, we entwine,
Combining in a sticky cocktail. No liqueur
Could be as rich and perfumed, no communion wine

As real as this benediction. We entwine
Our spirits and our drunken bodies blessedly,
Befuddled by rich perfumes and communion wine.
The blood within my veins has turned to eau-de-vie,

And you are drunk full-bodiedly and blessedly.
This, this is my body, and it thirsts for yours.
The blood within my veins has turned to eau-de-vie.
My head is swimming in the waterfall that pours

Life into this, my thirsting body, into yours,
Intoxicating with delirious descent.
My head is swimming as the living water pours,
I'm soaked in sweat and alcohol and merriment,

Intoxicated by my furious descent
Into your arms. As I lie next to you, I'm blessed,
Baptized in sweat and alcohol and merriment.
Dizzy, I'll fall unconscious. Consummatum est.

Your arms will hold me, limp and lifeless, bare and blessed.
I am a boy again, the time I first drank too
Much, and fell unconscious. Consummatum est.
Do not forsake me. All I have is you, you, you.

More near to me than I am to myself, you were
Illuminated by my candle's naked flame,
An icon-cover for your naked worshipper.
We had enlightenment; we know we are the same.

Your uncreated light has sparked my candle's flame.
Wax, soft and warm, is cradled in my reverent hold.
We are enlightened. We are one. We are the same:
Your love has kindled mine and melted me. Your gold

Has touched me. Midas-like, it gilds the faith I hold.
We're one in essence with the candles, soft and warm.
Your love's transfigured in hot wax and molten gold
And incense. Now there are no rituals to perform,

We're one in essence, consubstantial, soft and warm.
I'm chloroformed, I'm censed and senseless in your cloud
Of incense. If there are no rituals to perform,
We need no chaste and bearded priests, no virgin crowd

Of worshippers. Our senses penetrate the cloud,
Our lit candles pierce the darkness of unknowing.
I'm bearded, changed and chaste before the priest-like crowd.
The candle drips; the clear liquid wax is flowing.

You're my candle in the darkness of unknowing,
Chrismating me with the hot wax of devotion
Which covers my fingers. Still the wax is flowing
Over me, congealing like an old emotion,

Chrismating me with the hot wax of devotion.
The liquid spills across my fingers, then congeals,
Encrusting my fingers like an old emotion.
It used to scorch like kisses, now it cools and heals.

Spilling across my skin, your scorching love congeals
In trails of splashed white wax, emblazoning my skin,
Branding with scorch-like kisses. Now it cools and heals;
A miracle that's verified and genuine.

Your white wax covers me. My fingers held your skin
More near to me than I am to myself. You were
A miracle that's verified and genuine,
An icon-cover for your naked worshipper.

The Summer's brightness and the warmth of breezes.
The outside scene seems dreamily to shimmer.
The season's soul does only what it pleases,
While my cool curtained shaded room grows dimmer.

The outside scene seems dreamily to shimmer.
Waves of Summer heat wash me and make me clean,
While my cool curtained shaded room grows dimmer,
Making me more loved than I have ever been.

Waves of Summer heat wash me and make me clean,
And I am bathed in clouds and sea and sand,
Making me more loved than I have ever been.
My eyes are blazing and my skin is tanned,

And I am bathed in clouds and sea and sand,
While I lie blessed and shrouded in my bed.
My eyes are blazing, and my skin is tanned
From sunbathing, stretched out like the dead.

While I lie blessed and shrouded in my bed,
My room anoints me with my fiery thoughts of joy
From sunbathing, stretched out like the dead
Where I have been a radiant and burning boy.

My room anoints me with my fiery thoughts of joy.
No dim, damp room can quench this Summer's fire.
Where I have been a radiant and burning boy
This hot and sandy love flames higher and higher.

No dim, damp room can quench this Summer's fire,
The Summer's brightness, and the warmth of breezes.
This hot and sandy love flames higher and higher;
The season's soul does only what it pleases.

And lying here I almost feel in love,
As though I'm being washed with sponge and towel.
Soaped, rubbed and massaged by the sky above
Until with pink and tingling skin, I howl

As though I'm being lashed with sponge and towel,
And love's deep heat strokes muscles with new fire
Until with flushed and blushing skin, I howl
"O God! O Jesu, joy of man's desir-

ing!" Love's deep heat strokes muscles with barbed wire,
And I am penetrated by your cross.
"O God! O God! O God!" My one desire
Is to regain my one regretted loss.

If I am penetrated by your cross,
Your flaming love will wash my redness white,
Returning me my one regretted loss.
My pallor's burnished in your brilliant light.

Your boiling love will bleach me, make me whit-
er, brighter than I've ever been before.
I'm incandescent with your brilliant light,
Denuded, stripped, whipped, burnt, bruised, aching, sore.

More hurt than I have ever been before,
And yet more loved. You tend the wounds you've made,
And where you stripped and whipped, you dress each sore
And bruise. Each sin is purged, each debt repaid.

I know I'm loved. I know each wound you've made.
I'm convalescing, nestling in your love.
My sins are purged, and all my debts repaid.
I'm bathed and massaged by the sky above,

And lying here, I almost feel in love.

There is no God, no God except this God. My faith
Daubs every image I perceive, with paint-filled brush,
Which makes it seem less real, more like a ghost or wraith
Dissolving into silence and eternal hush.

But each daubed image that receives my paint-filled brush
floats mistily before my memories of you,
And deafens with its silence and eternal hush.
I'm made insensible and senseless. Yes, it's true

That there are mists that veil my memories of you,
But you are not forgotten in my fevered prayers.
I'm indefensible and I'm defenceless. True
Ecstasy, I pray, will seize us unawares,

Making us forget ourselves, one in our prayers
Before the glowing icons, blessed and sanctified.
Ecstasy, today, will seize us unawares.
Tomorrow's gratitude is spurned, its thanks defied,

The stern and glowering icons, blessed and sanctified,
Stare down, impassive, customary, habitual,
As gratitude is spurned and shining thanks defied.
Their calm passivity performs a ritual,

Ordains our passion, customary, habitual,
Unites our all-too-solid bodies in one flesh.
Their calm passivity is more than ritual,
It sanctifies our inescapable obsess-

ion with our bodies; skin, bone, muscle, hair, teeth, flesh.
I cannot hold a memory, a ghost, a wraith.
Your body holds my body. This is my obsess-
ion: you. There is no one but you. You are my faith.

Much greater than the only Living Heart:
The arteries that link your dreams with mine
And wash the stripped anatomy of Art
(Écorché figures bathed in bright-red brine).

The arteries that link your dreams with mine
Pump body fluids over muscled shapes.
Écorché figures bathe in bright-red brine,
Evolving from the posture of the apes.

Pump body fluids over muscled shapes
And feed my tissues with the breath of life!
Raise humans from the stature of the apes,
Cut man from monkey with the surgeon's knife.

Anaesthetize me with the breath of life.
The wind blows where it wills - we hear its sound:
A screaming monkey with a surgeon's knife;
Écorché figures bathing, sinking, drowned.

The wind blows where it will - we hear its sound:
Blood rushes through my arteries and veins
And bathes écorché figures. I am drowned
In moist dreams and amino acid rains.

Come! Rushing through my arteries and veins
And bring your dreams: I cannot resist them.
Tides of blood and amino acid rains
Are forecast for my arterial system,

Scattering my dreams: I cannot resist them.
They are stronger than my transplanted heart.
Your dreams are rejected by my system:
Excised, washed, stripped, anaesthetized. Thou, Art,

Much greater than the only Living Heart

I kneel upon the damp resilient ground,
And take a cutting from a trailing stem.
The quick knife slices with a clean, crisp sound.
The plants nod silently. No sound from them.

They nod, though they're to be beheaded.
The wind intones their sentence through their leaves.
And they nod, agreeing to the dreaded
Knife, refusing all pardons or reprieves.

The wheelbarrow is a garden tumbril.
Each runner learns to love the falling knife.
What if their cells are green with chlorophyll?
No blood-filled veins could be as fond of life.