The dragon, ever at war with the elephant,
Is itself of so enormous a size,
As easily to overwhelm the elephant,
Seize it in its clutches and encircle
Its legs in its coils.
x
The contest is equally
Fatal to both. The elephant,
Vanquished, falls to the earth,
And by its weight, crushes the dragon
Doggedly knotted around it.
x
For this poem I am indebted to a brilliant post by Annone the Elephant on wordpress
x
One Buddha’s seven-headed cobra parasol
Also offers coils for his throne. The Princess and the Pea
Came to mind for somebody, one dry afternoon
x
When the long, refreshingly cool trunk of a python
Got wrapped around my shoulders as it tried to nose away,
As probably did the black snake of which I have no memory,
x
The snake my mum brought back, draped around me
When I was less than a year. Protestant faiths
Only have people to emulate while Shiva balances
x
On the Demon of Ignorance. Vishnu has his bull.
Out of Parvati, possibly sired by her lesser half, let’s say,
Ganesh’s super-stable howdah rides upon a rat.
x
Imagine plump Ganesha seated on his rat sideways
Like those nifty girls in tight skirts hitching a ride to Bangkok,
Except that he sits open wide, cementing together
x
The soles of his feet, fluid in his hips for all his weight.
Here though in the Land of Gold it’s rare to see him riding,
For Ganesh wears the Buddha’s cap, but do I want to direct my trek
x
To the rat temple that Andrea went to in Rajasthan?
The one you have to enter barefoot – as is the form for wats –
But rat-shit everywhere. What pests they are. The Western mind
x
Celebrates its terriers, and shudders at – for all that, the good rat
Can boast its swag-bag share of beady attributes.
Once, on the roof of one of Notre-Dame’s engargoyled towers,
x
There was a girl leant out, her pet rat peering from a shoulder.
In our village many rats in miniature are scattered near
Ganesh’s feet. From a poet’s point-of-view, you get a lot of rhymes.
x
x
Steep tracts of dry earth occasionally perplexed by roots
Proceed up the aisles of perpendicular cathedrals.
Bundled pillars of bamboo admit onto chapels of
The unkempt wild banana, larger than a mammoth by
Comparison to its pip-less and domesticated
Cousins. Blanched husks, both Saxon and Norman,
Vie with massive leaves for light’s attention.
Greenly broken leaves get repaired here
With a maze of golden seams as you get in Fittonia.
x
Lancet poison dart plants, bambino arrows and
A foliage plant named Bogner spring up under
Fronds raped by liana – which is spiralled by
Its own far younger strings. The rectilinear kapok
Soars up from its buttresses for vertiginous feet,
Breaking into orange powder right at the summit
Underneath the summit just above it: orange
As the domesticated cur seen near roadside stalls
Coloured the same as the feral dohle that terrorise
x
The hinds and their fawns at the wallow. It’s tricky for
Plantations here, when wild originals contaminate
The heifer versions of themselves with their rampant
Savagery. Monkeys, birds and insects can’t be taught that
Trespass is an offence. They smuggle in the holy
Spirits of the ancient breeds, just as the powerful cult
Of the child who will do one’s bidding generates
Rows kept without official sanction in the abbot’s audience room.
It’s thus that your banana eunuchs suddenly begin
x
To procreate. Crops castrated for the market
Unpeel auspiciously, only to be found with those unpalatable pips
Even the monkeys spit out and elephants shit.
Not quite as bad as the custard apple though
Enough to deter the Western appetite. You have to go
Back to the Bone Age, when there were wolves but
No Alsatians, when the poison arrow plant
Was still distilled for its point, the time of antler tines,
To worship at the waterfall’s chasm-haunted wat.
x
Khun Korn
The interrupted fall
Of each broad leaf
Is an event on the sun-deck
Where the skin drinks in the gel.
x
The season’s a sort of dry autumn.
It’s the heat that knocks off the leaves
Big as faces, warped,
And weathered brown.
x
The evergreen bushes
Store what the dew provides
In rind protecting bitter, sweet
Or peppery insides.
x
Jackfruit and tamarind
Compete against the lime.
The mango gets tested
By jade-breasted, jet-black tits.
x
Elsewhere everything is husks,
Shells of former selves:
A few dark pods
Clinging to the tree-tops.
x
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxChiang Rai, February, 2023
Not far from Chiang Rai, Northern Thailand. I’ve met my perfect match.
Here is the link to Three Thai Poems published now in The Fortnightly Review.
This old lady eyed me rather suspiciously as she chewed on some straw.
The Sunday market manifests an erudite philosophy.
All that may be done shall be done unto your titbits.
x
They shall be toasted wickedly, marinated, roasted.
Bacchanalian bits of things shall be peeled and pickled,
x
Battered, steamed or fried; garnished, peppered, grated.
The texture is to be considered just as much as taste,
x
Crispy, gooey, hard, releasing tart blends of smell,
Not a part from nose to tail shall ever go to waste.
x
And you can but admire how deftly she is dumpling
The pork ball with sesame, trickling fish-oil over the shoal
x
Of desiccated minnows while drizzling the crickets.
Delicious, unless not. Western taste-buds are easily
x
Shocked – or something gets caught in the back of the throat
And you fear that it may be your tonsils you’re swallowing
x
Rather than the intimate glands of some Himalayan goat.
Best of all are the dead man’s fingers, the crocodile tear shallots.
x
Let the market ransack your imagination, turning
Your stomach into your very own haggis.
x
Hope that the demon’s whiskers do not bring you out in spots.
Hot pants drop for cash. Now fallen spears change into silvery
Snakes of light plucked from each lake’s modernist whorls
That lead us where the bougainvillea bush bespoke
For each lakeside testifies to concave curves
And loggias on gated streets. As if it were a bird the fan
Thrives in the sky. Hot skins spreading apart,
Divas change into banana pants. Her billionaire Westerner
Has erected the terminal overpass. Jetlag filled red lights with meditation.
x
How to shift shape in a loop, keeping your daughters
Rich in silver. Hoardings induce trances.
Admire instead his apples of semen – or, if not, her cars
Instead of Western humps. Reptilian communities
Get too close to slip-roads while thorny trees present themselves
To blot out the airport overpass. Oh, but ever larger Nagas
Offer formidable barriers briefly tusked in steel skin.
Everything slows for rivals lit by that drop in culinary affairs.
x
We lighten the bow string later. A case of snakes reflected
Proof of the Divas origins. Smooth as angels pale as the locals
You string together a blue chain lengthening behind litter bins.
Here the gates erected changed to the more distant
Complexion of powders with the rising up they get for cash.
We branch off from the storm into a rival hood.
Taking off silk and their coils instead
Such harlot shores slip their five blue skins.
x
A fence slides away from trident rows along such fitted gates
And lanes beside men the gods look very like.
Divas shape the skin’s pastes – though skins are never rents.
On while away into rest. Time protects the fallen sentence
From the knowledge worms that dine on a god’s discarded phrases.
So how to cruise the angels with many heads.
Serpents such as your seven snakes go looping
Under corralled scaffolds, bushes. How to string the sentence
x
As if it were a bow. How to string concave phrases
Together in a chain of looping curves as if you were the bird
With that rising terminal. Ever larger hoardings go up.
They get erected on scaffolds, erected to blot out
The sky along the overpass from the airport. Now
We branch off, smooth as silk, taking slip-roads that lead us
In a loop under the overpass, off and away
To lakeside loggias, gated communities.
x
Here, where the bougainvillea thrives,
Everything slows for the humps. Oh, but such gates
Present themselves, bespoke for each billionaire:
Trident gates and tusked affairs, rows of thorny spears,
Modernist barriers and such, in blue steel or rich in silver whorls,
Keeping your five cars corralled – if not your seven daughters.
Never get too close to their bushes though
In case of snakes. Admire instead the fan bananas
x
Spreading apart behind a formidable fence.
Time slides into jetlag later as we dine beside lanes
Of reflected light lengthening away from culinary rivals
On each lake’s more distant shores. A hood with many heads
Protects a meditation from the storm.
Rival Nagas slip their skins and shift shape
Into gods or men. The gods rest on their coils.
Discarded skins are proof a shape has changed.
x
Of a silvery blue, the complexion of the Divas
Testifies to their reptilian origins. Snakes change into Divas
As Divas change into snakes, and serpents offer such apples
As induce trances plucked from trees of knowledge.
Skins filled with Western semen litter the bins
Lit by red lights. Pastes and powders lighten the skin,
So that the locals look very like fallen angels.
Fallen angels pale as worms cruise the harlot streets.
x
Her Westerner, his skin fitted, briefly rents her bush.
x
x
The bird with the rising terminal is the Gawow – which is the Thai cuckoo
x
I am reading with Naomi Foyle this Sunday (7.30) 18th December at the Torriano Meeting House.
Address: 99 Torriano Avenue, Kentish Town, London NW5 2RX
Directions: From Kentish Town tube station walk up Leighton Road for seven minutes
and turn left onto Torriano Avenue. Map
There are always readings from the floor.
Phone for enquiries: 0207 267 2751 / 0207 482 0044 / 07542891492 (Susan).
E-mail: Torriano Meeting House
anthonyhowelljournal 