Harris Coverley 138

Harris Coverley

Poetry

Clean, Serene, Selene

that moon is a shape-shifter

rising out of a swamp one minute

striped with clouds the next

wearing a veil of space

a phantom’s half-mask of blackness

pulling out of the ocean

of the sky

naked as a saucer of milk

he dripped down onto the pavement

a few nights ago

making himself a banana smile

“don’t tempt me,” I said

and stepped across him

“I said nothing,” he replied

“so keep it that way.”

“but don’t you want to know?”

he asked

“know? know what?”

“why, when you’re in your car

in the evening,

and you have no place to go to,

why you can’t help but keep driving

towards me, staring at me…like

you’re trying to reach me…”

“off with you!” I shouted

and rushed back to my house

where I closed the curtains

turned on all the lights

and brightened the TV

until it was digital mush

I will not be seduced again

and my drivings are mine alone

and no celestial body’s

no transformer’s

no seducer’s

no watcher’s

no mystery place’s

no light that’s there

in the darkness’s

Paper Boats No More Durable than We

to Czesław Miłosz

I dreamed last night that a few hundred

metres away on the old football pitch there

was not a football pitch but a concentration

camp, the council estate surrounding it

replaced by burnt out shells long vacated

by their poor inhabitants. But I dreamed not

just of one concentration camp within that

space but two, one wherein I was a guard,

and another wherein I was a prisoner. As a

guard, I was cruel and sadistic and loved my

work, not because it was “nice” but because it

was good to punish those who needed to be

punished only through constant hard labour,

and constant turmoil, and constant beatings

and hits around the head, neck, and chest. As

a prisoner I was meek and totally submissive.

I never smiled, and only aimed to please my

guards in order not to have my body taken under

foot. At night my guard self retired to a hut by

the entrance to the camp, and drank heavily

and sang drinking songs and played cards with

the other guards, before tucking himself into

a comfy bed and falling asleep dreaming of

home. My prisoner self, fighting against the

cold coming in through the cracks in the

decaying sheds they labelled quarters, held

his thin itchy blanket in his cot as close to his

withering frame as he could, and stared at the

mouldy ceiling, his thoughts free at last from

the harsh tedium of loathsome slaving, and able

to think of higher things. While my guard self

slumbered in drunken miasma, my prisoner

self looked at that ceiling and thought back to

his readings and his studies. He had not read a

novel for two years, nor seen a film, nor an

episode of television, nor even eaten a meal

that was not lukewarm or cold or stale or nearly

rotten. He had not written a thing since he signed

his own name when he arrived at the camp. So he

lay and in his mind wrote his own novel, one

chapter a night, compiling and editing it until

it was just right, and when it was published he

put his master copy on a bookshelf, and as the

months passed that bookshelf filled to its end

with original and stunning works that nobody

but him would ever read. And when he was not

in the mood for writing novels he would write

short stories, and when he was not in the mood

for writing short stories, he would write poetry,

and when the day’s work and beating had been

too much, he would lie sore and famished, and

think of a good little aphorism to try to amuse

himself to a better sleep. And at times he would

even create and direct entire TV dramas and

sitcoms, the tightest hours and half-hours in

programming you could ever hope to view (and

which you never would view). Both guard and

prisoner would awake at dawn, and interact as

you would expect. Bowed heads from the boiler

suits, stern looks from the grey caps. What was

most interesting about the dream is that, although

they were supposedly separate realities, the two

camps would sometimes come together, and my

two selves would interact with each other. My

guard self would bark orders at my prisoner self,

the latter exhausted from the pointless six hour

exercise of continuously digging and refilling pits.

Once my guard looked at my prisoner self with

such hatred, for he saw himself, and saw how easy

it could have been for things to have gone the

other way—and for being so pitiful and wretchful,

my guard self took his club and hit my prisoner

self in the head until he collapsed to the floor,

but my guard self continued to hit and hit and hit

until my prisoner self cried out: “Why? Why are

you doing this?!” My guard self, continuing to

hit down and down, replied: “Because…!” But

he never did finish his reply. I woke up in

darkness as cold as my prisoner self, pulled my

duvet closer to my body, rubbing my freezing

feet against each other. It would take a long

time for me to get back to sleep, so I stood up,

looked out the window and saw that the council

estate was fine, but that the future might not be…

Moon Maiden

Forged to her

Steel to steel

Chained in spirit

Submission all my own

To her light I hold my sword up high

And swear my deepest fealty

My devotion worn as armour

Under armour of iron

At night I feel her:

The Moon Maiden’s glare

From all angles

Reflecting off the trees and clay

The unholy flesh of the other goddess

Oh, the magic of her!

The single boundless white eye—

Moon Maiden!

Master of my heart!

As I spill the rival blood

And work through the bodies

Towards the promised land…

The tranquil seas ahead…

The Fishlass