Hungering The voice of David Kessel

The horizon holds her unutterable need,
Listless terraces her loneliness,
Inward sailing to fearless continents.
The piano scatters wide her mournful seed.



EmilyBronte
1970

Stone-head straight up
in the flower-bed
Quarry-man to the
Adoration
of purple and yellow
Too long turned-in
under the rocky-hearted soil

Orange
Weeps into flowers
that she only,
Between the lonely sky and the cold earth
Stands with it
Within the grey quarry-stone
Burning

Stone-age dreading stone
Cries out for colour,
Come wind and thunder
one by one
Tear petals asunder.
Seeds of raped flowers
down through the soil of centuries
Plundering

Pity the grey-axed wind
for the yellow-brained sun's sake.
Pity the grey stone
for the purple-hearted violet's sake.

For the sake of the seeding of orange
in the grey soil suffering
the stony poetless grows,
In a tomb
within a people
whose violets
Flourish
Only in its graveyard



Hungering
1981

Whilst I awkwardly roll a fag
a robin sings from a holly tree.

It is we who fence ourselves in.
Like foxes we hunger underground.

The rowan thrives in fierce winds.
The wind brings it rain, bears its leaves and fruit.

I pick a blackberry and find a worm.
I leave the worm to eat the flesh
so the pips may lie naked on the ground.

I turn my female god naturally
into the beetle in my hand.
Then with love I can watch it.
I'll go on making such magic till I die.

On harsh and bitter ground
nettles grow abundantly tall.
Cows make sweet milk from them.

In a sacred wood I dream
of life's conception.

This hawk in a tree hungers for life.
This jet-fighter for death.

If we were really like sheep
we would not kill one another
nor slaughter other animals.

I listen to an owl's ironic hooting.
It knows well its strength
but kills only what it needs.
Thus I will survive life's harshest winter.

To be a sea-trout seeking a mate
at the stream's head

I would live with her as wagtails
independently do by the stream.

The rain is falling into our valley of life and death,
falling on mankind's disintegration of cruelty.

The path becomes a muddy stream.
This is the way I see a woman I love
moving in her freedom with the dark purity of the earth.

Sometimes I feel like the bare sky
longing for the earth.

I have climbed this hill to learn how to take care.

Coming-down amongst an allotment
I find myself amongst children playing.



The Vixen
1997

A vixen long through the killing night
Hungers in our covert, duplicitous suburbs
For stale, dirty chips, a wounded rat.
In her earthy womb an iron litter
Pulsing for moonlight across a June field.
Bitter her eyes, rusty her saliva,
She eats her menses and placenta.
Sing for her a Romany lament in an alleyway
Beneath the wintry Plough's seven stars.
Oh starved outcast citizen you are alive
Beyond all perception of illuded impatient people.



Life Against Death
1999

The east wind of high summer.
Old men with cider bottles,
And I suddenly an old man.

Through the slums with Jesus,
Black, broken hearted, golden Grace.
The whistling Cockney gives
His heart away at street corners
To the young alci: cursing, skint.

Bengali dawn
On the Whitechapel waste.

The Gestapo will pass -
There shall be silence
Broken by cawing crows
And the vixen's cry.

Strong as our pain is strong,
Our children are.

A savage peace,
The rain over Stepney.



Summer Rain
2000

Summer rain on Stepney streets.
Dying to oneself on dirty pavments
When clouds part and sunlight floods a courtyard.
A sufi song, as ruthful as the rain.
Shit jobs for shit wages, the cockney's curse.
On their faces, a ravaged wonderful earth.



Hillside, Llangattock
2000

We think with our shoulders.
Scraggy sheep bleating.
A disused Baptist chapel.
The blood of quarrymen and hill farmers;
Resistance of pain in the chest
...................and spat gob.
The language of hunger;
....an alcoholic's lack.
Hardship on this hillside
Riven by lime and bracken,
.......thistle and scree.
Living for tomorrow.
Men pray with their stomachs.
Springtime in the valley
......and the hawthorn blooming.

If you think that I you have caught within a maze: Be amazed. You too could be a poem and escape. Whatever life's tricks, and, wherever you roam, you are never far from home

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The poems on this page were all written by David Kessel. Most are reproduced from his collected works The Ivy, Collected Poems 1970-1994 or from Outsider Poems by John Zammit, David Kessel and David Amery. A few are published here for the first time.