Read Online Collected Poems by Alan; Sillitoe - Free Book Online Page A

that his Fall was liberation.

HYMN TO LUCIFER
    Lucifer is the True God:
    Not the God of Man
    Or the God of God
    But the God of Light.
    Luminous of eyes
    Limitless of sight
    A thousand million miles
    Are his to roam.
    Ice is no prison
    Fire no opposite,
    The sun a cool exit
    To spaces beyond.
    The earth’s inferno-centre
    Cannot hold him,
    Nor galactic spaces
    Lose him.

LUCIFER’S REPORT
    Newton did not go to church;
    He hardly ever went to chapel:
    He read Maimonides in bed
    And pondered on the fallen apple.
    The Board of Admirals agreed
    That the first chronometer of Harrison
    Was in spite of its complexity and size
    Accurate beyond comparison.
    Enigmatic Einstein vowed
    He’d see the hardy atom burst:
    The world would shrivel to a cell
    If Germany achieved it first.
    God concurred, yet did not know
    What the first flash would do to Him.
    Lucifer hoped that God might die
    When that smoke-hill hit the sky.

THE LAST CHANCE
    Lucifer’s simple scheme was to kill God
    And create another
    And after mutual annihilation
    Crow the victor from their ashes –
    Once they cooled.
    Every plotter is naive, every planner blind:
    On a calm and August morning
    The boil burst.
    The sea was in it and the sky
    The centre of the earth took part
    The sun and moon looked on
    And thus participated. A particle
    Of every man woman child
    And other creature
    That had been on earth since earth began
    Will be remembered for connivance –
    Lucifer made sure of that.
    The sun went cool to let
    This fiery flood of Lucifer-vomit
    Like a cauliflower fist
    Deal a belly-blow to God.
    Scorched and broken
    Lucifer fell back,
    And wept.

LUCIFER AND JOB
    Lucifer met Job.
    He saw flame
    He touched fire
    But could not get close.
    Endurance is a herb
    The flame protects.
    The sun comes
    The sun goes –
    Job spoke:
    A flame lives on
    In darkness.
    Nor is it extinguished
    By the sun.

LUCIFER AND NOAH
    Noah believed,
    Built his boat
    Called his creatures
    Two by two;
    Lucifer watched
    The floating city
    On the flood,
    Could not help
    Hands whose fingers
    Spread before they sank.
    The void world
    Was life for Lucifer.
    He ruled a sea of corpses –
    Yet welcomed Noah
    Ashore at Ararat.

LUCIFER AND DANIEL
    Seven famished lions
    Circled Daniel
    In Babylon’s oblivion-hole;
    Eyes in darkness
    Were the king’s prisoners
    And only Daniel’s
    Emitted light.
    Your eyes hunger
    Daniel spoke
    But my hunger
    Is greater.
    The lions paced, bewildered,
    As if Daniel’s flesh was bitter
    And God his fearlessness.
    Since his Fall
    Lucifer had never been so close.

LUCIFER IN SINAI – 1
    Lucifer tramped from sea to sea,
    Burning grit pained every step
    An island moving through the land
    From Carmel to the Mount of Moses.
    Lucifer paid his forty days,
    His flesh bled gravel
    In the sleepless cool of the night,
    Gypsum and alabaster glowed at the moon:
    Although I fell
    Although you threw me to the heathens
    Although you scattered me among
    The far stars of the universe;
    Moulded me in ice, let heat dissolve me,
    Melted me in fire, let ice find me,
    My day is at hand, and the effect of every vision.
    Say to me where my sanctuary is,
    Scatter me back up the galactic chimney of the Fall.
    Lucifer walked between crimson cliffs
    Found garnets in the soil that matched
    The stone embedded in his forehead
    Scooped them to the foldings of his cloak
    And walked another forty days.
    Granite islands glistened in vast seas of sand.
    The mountains of Arabia were blue:
    The effect of every vision was at hand.
    The Sinaitic wind beyond Ophir
    Cleaned shattered tanks and guns.
    Lucifer pressed the metal that his fire had holed and melted,
    A camel rooted thorns between the wheels.
    When dark drew on to Egypt
    The effect of every vision was at hand.

LUCIFER IN SINAI – 4
    Lucifer was the mirror of God’s pride
    Until his vanity
    Created
    Infamous
    Fractures
    Ending his reign yet marking his
    Return to God.
    Infamy
    Stems
    From believing pride