By Alan Jude Moore.
Steppe
I left her waiting in international radio waves.
A voice drifting between Western Siberia and Peking.
Minus nine but spring will come;
you will ditch your great coat and famous automatic
for music and dip a toe in the water again.
Someone’s secret code has been broken on the wall
between the mountains and the palace.
Tiny taps of a finger shocked into motion
like the hooves of horses tracking back along the steppe.
I left the compound radiator sleeping
and dragged through shadows of birds and dogs.
Above the wind the incomprehensible speech of satellites.
It is no-one’s fault if we do not make our way home.
The mountain goats and bears leave footprints on Ararat
and disappear; the sailors climb over oceans
revamped by electricity.
Karl Marx
Karl Marx was right:
the world is full of networks and history
moves forward like death.
Anything like religion will do
as the opium of the people.
Accountants and corporate presidents administer the stuff
like priests in the administration of souls.
But they leave the boys and girls to their own devices.
The TV sighs like a sacred cow,
the automatic doors don’t let you out
and the elevator hangs between the moon and Las Vegas.
The man at the back of the room
in the desirable suit,
says his network falls apart almost every week.
Almost every week he starts back into it again.
Beside Caravaggio’s “The Taking of Christ”
The woman leaning on a doorway, descending into art herself.
Slight veils suspended between them.
Pinned to the stars as if waiting for something
like the leaves changing in October, then to reveal
her world to His; the end of summer broken on the rooftops
and the sky a burning city.
Leaning on a doorway, bending towards the eyes
of her picture Christ. Both of them captured by unnatural light.
Her longing for a devastated saviour,
suspended on the wall,
hanging
forever
between us.
Dublin, 6th June 2007
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Jude Moore was born in Dublin. His poetry has been widely published in Europe and America and his fiction has been twice short-listed for the Hennessy Literary Award for New Irish Writing. His work has been translated into Italian and Russian. Two collections of poetry, Black State Cars (2004) and Lost Republics (2008), are published by Salmon Poetry.
