Drew Milne
IMAGE OF MARX VANDALIZED
We are comrades of sangfroid, here at the Villa Hegel
and Prime Minister Modi has forced us to address the people of Brexit
to tell them how bitterly disappointed we are in Lexiteers
and in the fate of German dialectic, diremption and critical mass
though our pessimism and our dedication to material analysis
puts us in a class without climate justice
‘for in this iron cage of financial services’
— nearly umpteen years since Max Weber, just think, oh Brexit,
is this now a more peaceful backwater, ‘a place for innovation
and impact?’
Herr Volkswagen, ‘vorsprung durch technik’ among Engineers
remember our byword, Shrimad Rajchandra, and recoil from death by countless particulates
We don’t mind standing in for sundry subject positions, Prof Ghosh!
against the drones purring outward over Pakistan and Syria and Afghanistan
figurines, Harappa to Rangpur Lothal, Rupare, Maheswhwar,
Mohenjo-Daro in the south, seal ornaments and baked bricks
blade and fine chert, Larkana, Bijapur, Bhagatrav, Bet Dwarka Villa Hegel!
Anglo-Indus trade will come calling after Maastricht and Lisbon colonialism
trashed now the Iron Curtain’s come down on Soviet virtues
and the flagship stores of IKEA are ‘flat packs’ on the pull
though academy schools and hybrid cars are to come, flee flee oh Brexit
we are not the lords of the dance
and unlike the folkster vanguard
Frankfurt’s higher criticism boys now embrace Euro-trash
which is joy all round, cue the terror
and optimism of the bill
PORTLANDIA
A lost summer or band practice
data bodies
the dream of the 90s alive after grunge
porch vinyl and beers
a question of value
before the crunch, crash, recession whatever
to occupy or scales of employment falling
onwards into re-education
ah Dell
still wearing that pink wig in Keynes Hall
the great swirl and scribbling installations
while I
my lichen tendencies have led me
to the Aurora Borealis of damage limitation
and resilience
palpable choices triumphant
in the contrast between ensuing Dark Ages
which sleeplessness figures as the screaming
and posset and worse
and the local mosque
pops up on the news, Finsbury Park nexus
to Glasgow
when the Gower was summer
we washed in rains, drank wine from a box
in a tent
starry skies of the broken
brochure
when the kids are fantastic there
is nothing that’s not possible, even Linear A
will be deciphered
and we don’t need to
be children because of our little Buddha
and we have ze big dog
Ursula le Guin
and I, Muriel Spark, took to Stoke on Trent
and now
I recall you and a giggling corridor
Brian Catling messing with the British Library
but we are here, still, a crinoline on the wall
in league with moths
but hear me
listening to you writing in the darkness
SUBURBAN
Detached on Glisson Road
stairway to interstellar overdrive? cream
of streets tuned out of Syd Barrett’s dark side
under rock bottom in ladders of property envy
your poison is kinder, your plane tree a telegraph pole
the net dividends from the myth of growth
who’s quids in
or mortgaged to the decline of social housing
the middle class enclave (the street beach, cat litter)
while everywhere prices are gathering interest
like a subway linking property with property
the south-bound banking on north-bound slave routes
oh sprawling wheelie bins and the dirt, too, of engines
where is the downtown tower of capital hereabouts
the lookout lighthouse over the cricket grounds and moss
as pollution’s tracery decorates garden rookeries, pickets
pillars nevertheless aspiring to school milk and social care
when I see a neighbour I know they’re thinking of selling up
or imagining Peter Zinovieff with a shed load of VCS3s
Putneys and Synthis welcoming the machine or Roxy Music
now but a simulacrum on dongles in the smog of software
the eyes have it, wincing amid fresh intakes of brake dust
a sight of construction cranes from the top bedroom
cat’s cradles sprinkling the horizon with insect string
but no sign of the low flying doughnut of Astra Zeneca
I’m calling panthers to taxi the youth section to an opening
and the Turkish driver tells me about a half million apartment
‘where you can’t keep a cat or a dog even if you own the flat
nevermind the scam of unaffordable affordable housing’
no, it’s some developer’s gag, well, that’s the hedge fund
just the typical umbrella of stock and glazed portfolios
come coffee table chat doubling down on endowments
you zone out as and when but keep abreast with pained curiosity
as if the register of interests in an executive apartment were glued
to the prospect that public intellectuals could be caught napping
when you should be fighting fire like firemen going into Grenfell
just as public private finance initiatives tender out people to flames
that is what you know and remember and conspire to be meaningful
on the way to work through a road you can only imagine camping in
parallel to your overpriced terrace house between streets eating light
we never imagined this was the west end
though life is short (life expectancy isn’t what it was)
nodding off on a care home sofa in College deleting email
in the toxic marketisation of every ancient plague centre
Brexit is on us and the remaining remainers must flee
is Ulster forever a part of England? do we all belong
to some imperium set on covering up landed interests
We are comrades of sangfroid, here at the Villa Hegel
and Prime Minister Modi has forced us to address the people of Brexit
to tell them how bitterly disappointed we are in Lexiteers
and in the fate of German dialectic, diremption and critical mass
though our pessimism and our dedication to material analysis
puts us in a class without climate justice
‘for in this iron cage of financial services’
— nearly umpteen years since Max Weber, just think, oh Brexit,
is this now a more peaceful backwater, ‘a place for innovation
and impact?’
Herr Volkswagen, ‘vorsprung durch technik’ among Engineers
remember our byword, Shrimad Rajchandra, and recoil from death by countless particulates
We don’t mind standing in for sundry subject positions, Prof Ghosh!
against the drones purring outward over Pakistan and Syria and Afghanistan
figurines, Harappa to Rangpur Lothal, Rupare, Maheswhwar,
Mohenjo-Daro in the south, seal ornaments and baked bricks
blade and fine chert, Larkana, Bijapur, Bhagatrav, Bet Dwarka Villa Hegel!
Anglo-Indus trade will come calling after Maastricht and Lisbon colonialism
trashed now the Iron Curtain’s come down on Soviet virtues
and the flagship stores of IKEA are ‘flat packs’ on the pull
though academy schools and hybrid cars are to come, flee flee oh Brexit
we are not the lords of the dance
and unlike the folkster vanguard
Frankfurt’s higher criticism boys now embrace Euro-trash
which is joy all round, cue the terror
and optimism of the bill
PORTLANDIA
A lost summer or band practice
data bodies
the dream of the 90s alive after grunge
porch vinyl and beers
a question of value
before the crunch, crash, recession whatever
to occupy or scales of employment falling
onwards into re-education
ah Dell
still wearing that pink wig in Keynes Hall
the great swirl and scribbling installations
while I
my lichen tendencies have led me
to the Aurora Borealis of damage limitation
and resilience
palpable choices triumphant
in the contrast between ensuing Dark Ages
which sleeplessness figures as the screaming
and posset and worse
and the local mosque
pops up on the news, Finsbury Park nexus
to Glasgow
when the Gower was summer
we washed in rains, drank wine from a box
in a tent
starry skies of the broken
brochure
when the kids are fantastic there
is nothing that’s not possible, even Linear A
will be deciphered
and we don’t need to
be children because of our little Buddha
and we have ze big dog
Ursula le Guin
and I, Muriel Spark, took to Stoke on Trent
and now
I recall you and a giggling corridor
Brian Catling messing with the British Library
but we are here, still, a crinoline on the wall
in league with moths
but hear me
listening to you writing in the darkness
SUBURBAN
Detached on Glisson Road
stairway to interstellar overdrive? cream
of streets tuned out of Syd Barrett’s dark side
under rock bottom in ladders of property envy
your poison is kinder, your plane tree a telegraph pole
the net dividends from the myth of growth
who’s quids in
or mortgaged to the decline of social housing
the middle class enclave (the street beach, cat litter)
while everywhere prices are gathering interest
like a subway linking property with property
the south-bound banking on north-bound slave routes
oh sprawling wheelie bins and the dirt, too, of engines
where is the downtown tower of capital hereabouts
the lookout lighthouse over the cricket grounds and moss
as pollution’s tracery decorates garden rookeries, pickets
pillars nevertheless aspiring to school milk and social care
when I see a neighbour I know they’re thinking of selling up
or imagining Peter Zinovieff with a shed load of VCS3s
Putneys and Synthis welcoming the machine or Roxy Music
now but a simulacrum on dongles in the smog of software
the eyes have it, wincing amid fresh intakes of brake dust
a sight of construction cranes from the top bedroom
cat’s cradles sprinkling the horizon with insect string
but no sign of the low flying doughnut of Astra Zeneca
I’m calling panthers to taxi the youth section to an opening
and the Turkish driver tells me about a half million apartment
‘where you can’t keep a cat or a dog even if you own the flat
nevermind the scam of unaffordable affordable housing’
no, it’s some developer’s gag, well, that’s the hedge fund
just the typical umbrella of stock and glazed portfolios
come coffee table chat doubling down on endowments
you zone out as and when but keep abreast with pained curiosity
as if the register of interests in an executive apartment were glued
to the prospect that public intellectuals could be caught napping
when you should be fighting fire like firemen going into Grenfell
just as public private finance initiatives tender out people to flames
that is what you know and remember and conspire to be meaningful
on the way to work through a road you can only imagine camping in
parallel to your overpriced terrace house between streets eating light
we never imagined this was the west end
though life is short (life expectancy isn’t what it was)
nodding off on a care home sofa in College deleting email
in the toxic marketisation of every ancient plague centre
Brexit is on us and the remaining remainers must flee
is Ulster forever a part of England? do we all belong
to some imperium set on covering up landed interests
Copyright © Drew Milne 2019
Drew Milne's collected poems, entitled In Darkest Capital, were published by Carcanet in 2017. Recent chapbooks include Earthworks (Equipage, 2018), and Lichens in Antarctica (Institute of Electric Crinolines, 2019). Third Nature is forthcoming from Dostoevsky Wannabe. His work previously appeared in Molly Bloom 16.
