AFTER ASH
is the title, begun in Hong Kong and continued in Türkiye, of a series, to a greater or lesser extent and more or less directly, in conversation with John Ash, reading whom over the past several months has proven very fruitful.
Some of the pieces collected for this series draw from his poetry more directly than others; some include a quotation of one or two of his lines, like the first, one, with the title ‘After Ash’; and, not that it explains anything, or not everything (under ash might have been a better title), The Anatolikon, The Branching Stairs, Disbelief and The Burnt Pages are the names of some of his books. These and others are available from the Caracanet Press. (see here)
— ST 18 November 2024
After Ash
Spelt similarly, as if it
were a name, but not the same,
he called out,
Sheer Chiffon!
Imagine the embarrassment
of his daughter
(of his daughter's daughter)
as it carried down the generations
to this afternoon tea.
The pants slipped off the manrobe
with a sigh
even the dog smiled, as it remembered
worrying at the bone
that was still attached.
We laughed about the sheep's skull
in Ephesus
beside the bright new marble blocks
intended, like brides,
for the restoration
of the ancient theatre.
Ash is ever after
the Burnt Pages, The
Branching Stairs, the Anatolikon,
to bring you
what you don't yet already have,
Disbelief
that the world is greater
or it has somehow diminished
since you left.
Death is the third person
the smoke
from his cigarette
makes a nimbus.
26 November 2024
In Hong Kong
it's like a scene from a dream
the architecture follows another logic
cars like in a display showroom
beside the lifts
There's a guy to direct you inside
to the lobby and checkin
a guy who opens the door
the ones you expect at reception,
where you notice the T-shirt,
of another race
a guy to show you into the lift
whose T-shirt reads Human
on the front and on the back
Progress.
Beyoğlu
the last line of John Ash's Anatolikon
At the bookshop opposite Pera Palace
they did not know him when I asked and
only grudgingly looked him up on my insistence
he lived for many years in Istanbul, an
English poet, what? Poet. Poetry. Where is your
poetry?
the Way is like this, lovely, as if there were
no death
the reconstruction (begun in İznik)
How often was everything destroyed
and how often were we told
it was not
was it each evening? every morning
we awoke and it was like 1910 all
over again. Rooms that were
built for our comfort now
had angles and we were left
nowhere to sit. Without
anywhere to settle we drift
-ed from room to room. The
windows would not open. And
the air was filtered as if
this is what ideology meant
not the air we breathe but
a certain colour,
certain smells were gone but
we were not told we should not
smell them and, they said,
ideology has ended ...
just like people we will
not see again
they had
been disappeared . In fact
each time — but how often? —
the timeline for destruction
was not withheld only
falsified — so often we
actually believed, bringing
about a change in human
character, as it was ad-
vertised to do, it happened
every generation. This
wasn't true except
that each generation should
take it up as if it were;
that is to take up the
cause of the reconstruction.
the timeline was deduced from
the passion of new makers
those it seemed who in some
collective dream had decided it
(and I am writing this from the
dire hotel in Antalya, I am, as
they say, far enough away) not
a programme but a dream.
and in that dream were collect-
ed dreams accommodating not
the slightest ambiguity, which
perhaps is a feature of the
waking world. The ones who
cared for power, who stroked
it like a cat, are forgotten,
reviled, wrongly, again as if
bad smells attached to the
cologne they wore, the rings
on their fingers, their
schools of thought; although
how can they be accused as
Epicureans, Cynics, both
at the same time? of decadance
and ruthlessness at once?
Being cold or hot the rest
I will spew out of my mouth
but these new ones don't go
by the book or any books, it
has come to a new destruction
of books and they are innocent
of ambiguity. In a spirit of
Innocence and longing, the
Spirit of those who want to be
Innocent and are as a result
Shameless. To catch the past
You can move slowly, chasing
Byzantium or even the Ottoman
Empire (not walk one-legged,
one-eyed through the civiliz-
ations of either the West or
the East); to catch the future
You must move very quickly And
they are quick to be offended
As if to be alive were to be
Offended And the destruction
of everything offensive is
adjured. but something
has gone wrong They
have not washed their feet,
they have not observed the
rituals and they have
no regard for what will do
just for now There
they go,
dragging their feet
through the wreckage, damp-
ening the hems of their coats
wiping the corners of their
eyes all bound for Morn-
ingtown, as if it were not
grit (and the Sandman rings
his bell) but sleep and all
this, who can say? the
prospect before them
destruction in broad daylight
neither Xanadu nor utopia, and
the strangest thing, the
old songs that keep on
coming back, is, pursued
by the young with new
vigour, it is all so old-
fashion. And the young
help the old from their
graves as if time were
just a building that
had fallen down each dec-
ade, was it? and the lib-
erals, you can see I'm
back, everything is so
luridly close, jealous
of the government, which
although reactionary,
like a dog on a leash,
finds power easy as a
walk in the park, not
wanting to know
they have been worried
about the wrong thing
keep their focus ent-
irely on something
very far away. Far a-
way, you have to be
asleep not to know
when your mother hugs
you it's because you
won't come back and
then, you are free
to leave and
not come back.
The country I have
returned to after
a long journey
spanning several
thousand years
is not like others
in this respect. Here
only the month of
September has passed
and already
everything has had
an upgrade.
#5
I think bees
more readily than any other species
would take to cellphone technology.
9 September 2024, the train from Eskişehir to Ankara
Konya
In Rumi's town.
Very dry.
He would be displeased.
12 September 2024
"It was Rumi who proclaimed
that 'being sober is not living,' and wrote ecstatically
of 'the simple wine that makes me loose and free.'"
— John Ash, A Byzantine Journey, 1995, p. 153
a note on the toilet (İzmir)
I've only just got used
to the cold jet of water
hitting directly my anus. Some
come provisioned with a
nozzle so that you can alter
the position of the jet.
For women I imagine this is
particularly important.
Men have only to cope, there's
a tap and you can control
the throttle, with the cold jet
hitting the back of one's
ballsack. From a Western point
of view, it's curious,
a civilisation that invented
plumbing discourages the
flushing of paper, as we are
so used to doing, and
provides a lidded rubbish tin
for the collection
of soiled paper, which has here
anyway a drying and a wadding
purpose, not a cleaning and a
rubbing one, but is not
for all of that of higher quality
and, disposed of in thick wet
soggy wads, has, when it comes to
lifting the lid of the rubbish
bin, usually fitted with a useless
pedal (the cack left hand and
clean right, the watering can
of the crouch toilet, being
familiar to everyone) its own
difficulties of handling.
Postcard from Berlin
And she said,
I also had a cold last week
although I am much better now
my left ear is still blocked
When I speak
I hear my voice inside my head
I imagined the apartment we stayed
at when we were in Berlin the
time Dora's head was a bobble
in a too-big helmet
on the back of Lisa's bike
and Quack got nits (not there!
I added in mock horror)
while hearing about the painting
in the new apartment and bickering
over who was responsible for the
painters painting with acrylic paint
over oil. Something, Lisa said,
impractical as I am, even I
know about. And the paint
she made a spidery
gesture (was creeping)
I imagined the
distressed walls of where they lived
the time we rode down Karl Marx
Allee. We might go there today.
Wassili paid the bill. I'm Greek! he said
more Greek than ever, with his
philosophical demeanour and his
beautifully coiffured beard. We
never thought he'd amount to
anything, said Lisa. Now
he heads production for
Netflix for the German-
speaking world And she
spoke of herself,
wondering how when
all her peers from dance
school no longer danced she
had managed to I must be spoilt
she said. She wondered what by the
choices she and Wassili had made
would be left for the childen Love,
said Wassili. We too wonder on these
things. And reflecting on it later
asked ourselves who outside the circle of
her friends and colleagues, who could
afford to now she still a dancer at 60
was no threat, who outside of us, might
give to her the recognition that she,
a New Zealand dancer, was due? As
always in these discussions and
we should know better there is
no answer!
The curfew on the noise-making outdoor tables
had come down. The staff politely asked us to
leave and leaving La La (I'd recommend
the octopus), kissing each other
Keep on doing what you are doing
small fugue or three-part canon
I.
this 'we' of
we always
we'll never
we have to
is not even
you and I
II.
the test of
who we is
is, say it
to a small child.
III.
war and civilization
go together like
hope and frustration
an open window and
defenestration
late Beethoven quartets
and mass incineration
a cat and its next meal
a spirit and its
manifestation
like a story
and a child who listens
in fascination.
22 October 2024
7.11.2024 (USA)
His hands were orange play dough
and they crumbled
His face somehow constricted,
and his crown shall be a wig of orange feathers,
a pig in an orange-feathered crown, his
great
sounded a lament, his mouth said O o o
a plangent cadence, his great,
again, he was somehow defeated, he had
conceded his humble carcass
to a great and epic fate, in a
large room full of love, in
a great and humble suit, his gown,
this great humbly-suited clown
His critics became biblical
and he wore a paste of faeces, his face
somehow constricted
and his mouth said O o o
In a large room full of love there is
a rapist in the White House
and his hands were made of orange play dough
they made an OK and an arsehole
not a steeple for the people
can anybody else do that? he asked them
and his epithet for them was Elon and his
song was of a child,
a song that they repeated
fell from his mouth shaped like an anus
it filled their minds with thoughts
of borders and back pockets and sticky little
fingers, the words that they repeated
were golden, they were the best words, yet
any talk that touched them turned to shit-talk, Elon,
he called out, is one of the smart ones
we don't have many, and the sun shone on
Jordan and on Joe
it came out on the weave, now she concedes
she lays down and his orange play-dough hands
crumble as he grabs her pussy
all he can say has been said nine hundred, nine
hundred and one times, more than all the oil
in Saudi-Arabia and it is dusk, he promises
the sun will shine somehow on us
and in the heavy scent
of his self-centre, lit only by the solar-anused
Musk, he stumbles
leans on his dwarf, a sportsman and his vice,
a predator, his inheritor, and Bob, his sword, and
his staff somehow is embarrassed for him and ashamed
Can anybody else do that? I'll spank the arse of anyone
who tries, says Joe, his lips met on the microphone
with a sucking sound,
he left his general on the telephone, Elon
he calls out, can China? can Russia? and the rocket
it came down and it came down
but it was not defeated and because
his hands were orange play dough and they
crumbled and his mouth went O o o, he took it in
his arms
like a baby.
11.11.2024
*
Look at the clouds
feeling their way
through currents and strata
which we cannot discern
writing their thoughts
as impermanently as ours
and with no greater freedom as
carefully choosing their words.
The book of the sky or Climate Science 1
is the result of two years of practical research,
Yes,
Look at the clouds
feeling their way
through currents and strata
which we cannot discern
writing their thoughts
as impermanently as ours
and with no greater freedom as
carefully choosing their words.
*Waiheke Isl.
