FIVE PIECES FOR FIVE PHOTOS

FIVE PIECES FOR FIVE PHOTOS

FIVE PIECES FOR FIVE PHOTOS

                                                           for Lou Esterman wherever he may be.



1. The Surveyor’s Office at the Custom House, Salem,
where Nathaniel Hawthorne worked 1846-1849.

It’s a dream, an escape of sorts that does work in its fashion – the solitary life, “peace”, and
no demands. A neat life, marred by an ageing fussiness, the fading of friendships, times of
undeniable loneliness. And yet those days when bright sunlight holds the room and there is
an indescribable quiet.

I know what is in every drawer, on each shelf. Inscribe in the ledger these details?    
Hesitant.     No, let it be.

Outside the door the sound of people running down the stairs


2. Packing OK Sauce at George Mason & Co. Ltd.,
Fulham, London, c1920.

It’s as though the war is over. The women stand around. A formal pause in their work. Not
rows of shell cases, but bottles of sauce to be lined up, boxed, dispatched. Their relaxed
beauty – not fooled but amused by this odd occasion, the photo of the workers, the busy
production line.

What a daydream. Not shells to be fired at the Hun. But brown sauce to be rocketed over the
priests of this small world of ours. All those self-appointed spiritual officials, gurus, shamans.
Who needs them and their elaborate power games? their prohibitions and idiot explanations?
We should gloop OK sauce over them when they’re in full flight. The women and men at the
OK Sauce factory would probably agree (or I dream they would) that’s the best solution.
We’d let those fools stew in their own foolishness. Though the OK workers would probably
be more charitable, and more indifferent, than me about all this.

In the factory – if this were Thessaloniki – we’d all sing rebetiko songs at the tops of our
voices, amongst the clatter of machines. What a real joy. Nena Venetsanou I dream of you. I
kiss your sauce flavoured fingertips.


3. View of Site Workers from Above.

                  The details of our “trade” and
                  the people we’ve worked with.

                  Who’ll know our histories?
                  the skills and terms as shadows grow.

                  Be ignorant of such knowledges,
                  details and procedures, at your peril.

                  What do you need to know?
                  To listen to what’s said,

                  understand the language
                  that makes things work.

                  Whether to install an emergency coupling
                  or work in a child protection unit.

                  The railwayman. The social worker.
                   “honouring their world” is the phrase.


Alternatively

“You’re working on the railways? You must be joking.”
said the grand lady, before returning to her Kent ‘estate’.


4. Sand Storm Sweeping Over Khartoum, 1906.

“It came out of nowhere,” they say. No, it didn’t. Nothing does.

Clouds suddenly cloak the mountains blown from somewhere, on a wavering spring day. If
we’d paid attention we’d have guessed it. “The Cloud of Unknowing”, we joke, working by
compass along a now featureless ridge.

But there are those who with clear eyes stare ahead, with some sort of certainty in the world.
T.E. Lawrence blue eyed (courtesy of Peter O’Toole), D.H. Lawrence brown eyed (I guess).
Knowing what they’re after through all the clouds and storms, sand or otherwise.

Such confidence is daunting.
Let them fight on. I’ll hunker down behind this rock, or if you like, for the sake of fiction, this
dune. Wait till it’s blown over, then continue. There’s room in this world for us crafty folk
too. Foxes aren’t daft, nor am I.


5. Mother and Child in a Restaurant Garden.

                  We smile at the children
                  absorbed and open in their world,
                  with warm hearts
                  watch them and their young parents.

                  We’re older, our bodies too –
                  your silken sagging breasts,
                  my scrawny arms.
                  Yet when we laugh together,
                  are happy in each other’s company,
                  touch, embrace, feel that love,
                  then . . .           All the tussles fade.
                  Moments of anger and estrangement
                  between couples, within families,
                  resentments, lies, and unfading scars,
                  disappear like rocks in the mist.
                  Blown pink roses hang on their stems
                  in the garden or hedgerow.
                  Their scent not powerful nor obvious
                  until you put your face in their petals.


There are dusty plateaux around Rudina in Hercegovina. Only the hardiest grasses can grow
in their near barren soil, fit only for flocks of goats and sheep. Of the few that live there most
families leave in the winter, unable to bear its hardships. It’s the embodiment of the
vukojebinje of south Slavic lore. This Serbo-Croat word translates as “the land where wolves
fuck”.

                  To come from there and make something
                  – is that a question or an exhortation?