The Bee Hut by Dorothy Porter Page A

flesh-lambent poetry
    because. because. because.
    nothing lasts
    not Forster. not Cavafy’s eloquent doomed mediocrities. not you.
    Now your aimless, wandering imagination
    is shivering with the memory germ’s fever
    caught for the rest of your life
    from this mercilessly contagious
    imaginary city.

PLEASURE
    After the Cleopatra exhibition, British Museum
    Is it the bite
    of a sighing crocodile?
    All your voluptuous
    bleeding incense
    come at once?
    I have travelled its Silk Road
    with my curtains drawn,
    hearing
    its lurching mirages
    shiver among the stones
    and nettles
    of its gorgeous desert.

WINE
    Scorched through the journey of every slow sip
    is the intimate memory
    of Calvary.
    The sponge dipped
    in rough red
    at the end of a spear.
    That gift
    from strangers
    before they thoughtfully break your legs.
    You must learn from dying gods
    and gracefully render to the comfort
    of intoxication.
    Even the gibbering homicidal troll
    under every life’s bridge
    can be stalled with a drink.

HEAD OF ASTARTE
    Goddess in the London antiquities shop window,
    whose starry name once soared,
    how can your null and void terracotta head
    shore me against my ruin?
    I want to steal you from the underworld,
    graft you like a juicy cutting of Orpheus
    graft you like a seeding amulet
    to the strings of my right hand.
    Guide me through this bloody desert
    of parching modernity.
    Let’s blow down the old straw god
    draped in pious brutality.
    Instead of adoring you like this
    in furtive powerless bliss.

AENEAS REMEMBERS DOMESTIC BLISS
    We were never married, Dido.
    Cease weeping, let me leave and agree
    we both knew real spouses.
    Even as the ghost of my precious wife passed
    through my clutching arms like mist
    I swear on my soul I could taste her.
    O the scorch of lost Trojan mornings
    in our rumpled bed with bread, figs
    and, yes, honey!
    I could taste honey
    as if every bee in Troy
    had made her phantom its swarming hive.
    Of course I will miss you.
    But release us both from this futile tar-pit
    and accept we were never married
    yes, my divided heart rears for you
    mourning already the smell of your flushed skin
    and the sting of your green fire eyes
    but we were never married
    and your ghost – such threats! –
    will keep its roost and never come
    looking for me through
    my next awful war, next sacked city
    to flood my drought mouth in honey – or poison.
    We were never married, Dido.
    Believe me, I’m sad too that you can’t
    sweeten me and I can’t comfort you.

THE LOVELY NIGHT. THE ROTTING SHIP
    After Yannis Ritsos
    The night they brought the aged Argo
    back to Corinth.
    Torches. The procession
    through the nocturnal whispers
    of spring flowers.
    The lovely night. The rotting ship.
    An owl hoots
    across the derelict deck
    across the hallowed place
    (eaten through. rowlock lost)
    where Orpheus sat and sang.
    The temple. The priests chanting
    to miraculous memories.
    The sleek young men dance
    with the hairless grace
    of mincing boys
    who’ve never raised an oar
    or a sweat.
    An old sailor’s rusty remembering
    back
    squeaks like a baleful bat.
    He spits at the ground.
    Then moves off
    to piss behind
    a black tree.

WALKING ON WATER
    From one memory
    the murk clears –
    the nettles and rubbish
    and low tide stench
    of the Sea of Galilee
    bathed in powdery glare
    then glimpsed on a balcony
    in a derelict building
    a grubby solitary monk –
    was he drunk or demented?
    At eighteen
    I made these judgements wildly
    with a wincing lack
    of charity –
    but I remember clearly
    the monk clattering about
    in a suspicious mess
    of empty bottles.
    I was already at the alluring
    beginning
    of giving up religion
    for a solemn and selfish
    sense
    of my own vocation –
    I was glad to leave
    the monk behind me.
    I knew. I believed
    ahead somewhere
    in that white smelly morning
    was the rippling shadow
    of a fresh young god –
    walking on water.

CAESAREA
    The Mediterranean lifts
    its