Helsinki Drift - Douglas Burnet Smith

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DEPARTURE

      (i) Eleventh-Century Japanese Body Armour, Heathrow Airport

      Jets taxi

      the tarmac

      like slugs.

      In a smeared display

      case, dragons

      swirl on a jade breastplate,

      spew clouds over Fujiyama—

      black, thick, etched

      smoke swallowing

      plum trees,

      surprised farmers.

      Jaded passengers

      scurry, purchase

      flight insurance,

      carry-on bags filled

      with the end

      of the twentieth century.

      (ii) Bodhidarma Crossing the Blue River on a Reed (Chinese, Eighth Century, Artist Unknown)

       each act

      a cloud inconceivable

       not to be

       emptied

       out of so

       float

       on the fiction

       of the current

       destinations

       ricochet

       over the red

       shoulder bag

       no one claims

      Mountain grosbeaks scorch early apple boughs;

      Culvert echoes drown a rumbling train;

      Snow asks forgiveness all the way to clouds—

      And the kettle on the stove has the nerve to complain!

      tubercular,

      they crave

      the blood-drawn sunset

      that pales

      like a crazed face

      Black medick, sea beet, spear thistle,

      pellitory of the wall—the wind

      comes up from the Channel wild over cliffs

      and pushes these flowers

      flat.

      Lean

      into the wind. Step over

      mole barrows, tawny mole pebbles.

      Hope for the ghost of the poet

      to waddle into view

      like some swan

      in a black cape,

      walking stick,

      prim nurse beside him

      bustling in furbelows.

      But there’s just a cross, a cold, useless

      iron fence around it, far off

      a black freighter going grey.

       Isle of wight

      At the edge of it,

      you find the one small stone

      that has been there since

      smoothness won—

      a bracelet’s pink barn,

      a polished steeple.

      Walking into it,

      ice-fiery currents peel

      your knees.

      Grace

      deepens with every numbing step.

       Kintyre

      Who,

      tired of surface, tied

      that white boat, left it

      to float by the spiderleg pier?

      Only dark birds

      know who let it rot

      over itself, mirror its

      oarlessness and the one thin seam

      that suddenly

      like a mouth

      opened to allow everything

      oceanic in.

       Gigha

      Bring me a candle, Brown, and let me see this blood.

      —February 3, 1820

      A little swoon

      by a lilac

      and a screen

      of Victorian trees, laurel

      and yew

      is given over

      to his low fence,

      the hedge of laurustinus

      and China roses,

      mulberry shade.

      A paltry nightingale,

      coughing words,

      a dark-spotted

      handkerchief:

      “sitting and sobbing”

      at the end

      of Well Walk.

      Words like

      baleful and timbral seem to write themselves

      on thick paper

      he used for travel

      notes, silhouettes,

      coughing anguished

      slang. Surgery

      of the wind

      squeaking

      out his lung,

      the one still

      responding—

      dark pendant,

      eloquent membrane

      exhaling candlelit

      letters into the air.

      Sky the romantic amber of postcards.

      Glassed-in

      tour boats churn the canals,

      scouring sepia hotels

      with glaring spotlights.

      Then

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