Emporium by Ian Pindar

A DOG ONE AFTERNOON
    I
            In a nearby exhibition hall
    Mr Ponsonby-Smythe demonstrates his new machine
    for winning back the Empire – there is blood
            all over his doeskin pantaloons.
            In a pagoda surrounded by bamboo
    Miss Grace Laluah serves coconut milk,
            bananas with honey and tropical fruits …
            But who is that girl in the wicker chair,
    her arm amputated at the elbow?
            Her copper hair and small breasts delight me:
    the standard lamp, the single bed, the curtained window.
            She looks
                                     sad
                                     anaemic
                                     telegenic.
            Her skin smells of pepper.
II
                     Alienated again.
                     In the doghouse.
                     I am a dog and I don’t even like dogs
                     (I’m a dog and I don’t even like them).
    Skulking through the streets like a dog.
    Licking old wounds like a dog.
                     Something’s missing.
                     Have you forgotten
                     anything?
    None of this was made for your
                      entertainment.
                      (So tired, so tired.
                      Work tomorrow …)
    First there was sleep, then waking
                      then making do, then sleep.
                      And when night falls
                      and the will fails,
                      when the will fails
                      and night falls,
                      all the poisons within me,
    all the poisons in which I am mired
                      accumulate in the marrow.

SOCIETY OF BLOOD
    They will be smiling as they did of old,
    keeping tradition in the blood
    and blood in the soil.
               Men of action, irrational,
    suspicious of intellect: all dissent
    is betrayal and betrayal death.
               Fear difference: the enemy
    within. If you are weak
    you will die, as Nature intended.
               And the people perish,
    reeling, staggering towards
    a ring of light on the horizon.

ANECDOTE OF THE CAR
    I drove a car to Chambourcy
    And left it there, without a thought.
    It hurt the owner of that car
    To think of it.
    The kindly Camboriciens
    Prayed for its soul at St Clothilde.
    The car was bound to play them false
    It was a wicked, wilful car.
    Its classic parts, so very rare,
    Were polished there with tender care.
    Its engine all of burnished gold
    It did not care for man or God.

MARC CHAGALL
THE POET RECLINING

    Time was when the poet lay in a green field.
    E ZRA P OUND
    O I once met a poet reclining
    For a pillow he had but a coat
    And I saw his green halo a-shining
    Green halo, green halo, he wrote.
                  Green halo
                 Green halo
    Alone at last in the country
    With a pig and a horse in a field
    With pine trees and woods all around me
    My heart at last shall be healed.
                 Green halo
                 Green halo
    Now I have no farmer’s wisdom
    And grow here nary a bean
    But the woodland makes me welcome
    And the grass my halo green.
                 Green halo
                 Green halo

PARABLE
    I
    Here they come, judging
    my parable,
    the one about the highway and
    the blackbird
    The distance
    between them
    always already
    expanding.
II
    (You can see the whole thing as
    a ceaseless, dynamic
    movement.)
III
    It is not solitude or the last
    physical delight that
    troubles you but night and its quick
    arrows – the
    fearful, the
    threatened, the
    miserable – but
    you are your own
    purpose,
    at ease with a