Aidan Semmens
Dead Souls
in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread
it’s no use being too clever
a man who works on the land
is purer, nobler, the factories
will come into being by themselves
I am afraid I shall move to the town
which ends in gambling and drunkenness
one may buy a library of books
and never read them a shadow
of gloomy black melancholy – here
the manuscript breaks off
for two pages a damp
dank cell reeking of soldiers’ boots
a voice echoing in hollow distance
Hut
nobody speaks
of what takes place
in the white hut
by the railway siding
the smell of old oil
and human waste
Aidan Semmens is the author of three poetry collections, A Stone Dog (Shearsman Books 2011), The Book of Isaac (Free Verse 2013) and Uncertain Measures (Shearsman 2014), and editor of the online magazine Molly Bloom. The three poems above come from his forthcoming collection Life Has Become More Cheerful, which will be published by Shearsman in October to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution.
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Dead Souls
in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread
it’s no use being too clever
a man who works on the land
is purer, nobler, the factories
will come into being by themselves
I am afraid I shall move to the town
which ends in gambling and drunkenness
one may buy a library of books
and never read them a shadow
of gloomy black melancholy – here
the manuscript breaks off
for two pages a damp
dank cell reeking of soldiers’ boots
a voice echoing in hollow distance
De Triomf van de Dood Pieter Bruegel the elder, 1562 starved, starving dogs of death scavenge on the flesh stripped from the dead and dying bent backed, intent on making what they will of folly’s bounty beneath the domes of the catacombs skeletons stacked awaiting resurrection monks and priests whose meat once adorned femurs, metatarsals and sockets heaped up in niche upon niche faith and distrust misplaced replacing theology with radioactivity sub-alpha particles with god the omniscient system that shapes eternal interlocking connections the dead will advance from the earth to cudgel and lash the living punish their squalid misery and sin the dead in shrouds and windingsheets regimented on horseback playing the hurdy-gurdy with dead-eyed rush-hour faces in rust brown fields with hose and snake and fire the naked man pursed by starving hounds the dying at their gaming board the dead tolling bells the ship of fools sailing from a smokesmeared horizon crows attending carrion on the gallows gaunt dogs nibble the babe at the dead mother’s fallen breast hellhounds, boneyard hounds, ossuary curs plagued by tumour and cancer cankers, lesions, rotting sores the dead whose heads protrude from their own arses the dead weighed in scales of injustice the dead clothed in nothing but their crowns and insignia the dead who once were glorious as you are now the emaciated dead beating kettledrums pouring lees from wineskins the skeletal dead triumphant waving banners over the field where broadsword and H-bomb halberd and napalm and agent orange sarin, scud and ballista rampage and crossbow have done their work on a land stripped bare of crop and dwelling as a coin is found in a field bearing the outward face of a forgotten tyrant of a forgotten dynasty and a people whose borders are become obscure while the lights and pyres the fuel rods and flares that forged this power continue to decay underground – you will say the soil in this garden is malnourished, unprepared for the weight of intent it must uphold but the songs and sounds of bush and scrub the sparse vegetable patch landscape scars and parched, toxic well must bear all the meanings we still have to face
Hut
nobody speaks
of what takes place
in the white hut
by the railway siding
the smell of old oil
and human waste
Aidan Semmens is the author of three poetry collections, A Stone Dog (Shearsman Books 2011), The Book of Isaac (Free Verse 2013) and Uncertain Measures (Shearsman 2014), and editor of the online magazine Molly Bloom. The three poems above come from his forthcoming collection Life Has Become More Cheerful, which will be published by Shearsman in October to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution.
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