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In honorem César Vallejo: Twelve Poems Stephen Hart 1. Palace of Pain Vallejo from me this chalice take Vallejo the true Vallejo the fake Vallejo Peruvian palace of pain Vallejo trill Vallejo say Vallejo trapped in Georgette's skies books and hair the great disguise Vallejo still Vallejo wise

2. Walking on the Snake Thames, O my Thames I cry dry tears into thee Thames, O my Thames I cry dry tears into thee. Grey-dark dragon eeling to the sea Mother sweet, mother fear On London Bridge, on Waterloo Your styx, your surge, your ethnic hue Umbilicius of us all Slowly, gently, still you crawl Racial memories racing past Mother soft, mother fast Thames O my Thames Dry tears I cry into thee Thames O my Thames Dry tears I cry into thee

3. Outdonne Can't shake those spears like Will Shakespeare Can't do my sums like John Donne Can't feel the emotion of Andrew Motion Or the 'so soon, so soon' of Paul Muldoon Can't deal with the aftermath of Sylvia Plath or the mannish ruse of Ted Hughes Think I saw waving not drowning in Winchmore Hill I'm mist, I'm grist to other poets' mill

4. Kepler's Law Equidistant from my birth equidistant from my death careering forward easting westward snared by my sex mawled by my mind aching to catch a glimpse of my cortex in the mirror in the hall Ellipsis always equidistant from my future from my past

5. Five Tears In this tower of mud and metal Inhaling exhaling boxes of steel Itinerant belly where the wind is not air blown by angels but by despair I think of you my fair your hazel eyes your sexy thighs your lies and your sighs I think of you my dear and shed five tears

6. Untitled Genetically wilder curiously castrated our working class eddies forwards shudders backwards eeling downwards soaring skywards caught in councils of confusion media mumbo in profusion shouting strangely silent

7. A Clash of Personalities Poetry, I hate you now, when once I loved you. I told you my problems you always listened a blank face sure enough but at least you absorbed my inken misery. Now you just stare back.

8. Irish woman screaming There's an Irish woman screaming in my hair I lean forward she scratches the air I lie back she's trapped beneath her nails the blood sails down my back beneath her nails Irish woman screaming in my hair

9. The ninefold enigma flesh wrapped in bone sin woven in salt face dressed in body spirit wrapped in flesh Christ woven in stone sex dressed in sweat water wrapped in gravity air woven in substance mind dressed in matter

10. A Dream for Lent Painterly gray grafted with stone emerging from a glade of green bursting Ely Cathedral from the fens I standing there in the dream behind my eyes looking at you smell of watery iron in the air men pay their debts in wergild a tarmac road with yellow lines squatting on the corn of a Roman way I looking with longing across the watery expanse of tar and water and iron now in my eyes and I no longer me but now looking with longing at the green grass pierced and warm and red like Christ's body pierced by a phone box And the tears aflowing from the past to the present And the tears aflowing from the past to the present

11. If If there were no light then light's older brother would us all defile within a sooty, satanic smile. If there were no time, then the numbers of philosophy and poetree would nonsense make. If there were no sea then fish would our hands in church on Sunday shake. But if there were no love Yet still I would love thee.

12. Word-weaver Today I turn my back on the past in front of me. Today I become the word-weaver, the spectrum of human need, your lover and your beloved, the daily breed of human disaster.