bilingual anthology of adam foulds' poems

8/10/2019 bilingual anthology of Adam Foulds' poems

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02 1 Dinner (1)

06 ( NIGHT FIRES(Extract1

08 ( NIGHT FIRES(Extract2

12 ( COMPOUND NINE(Extract1

18 ( COMPOUND NINE(Extract222 RAIN

24 FALLING ASLEEP(Extract

30 WHAT WAS HAPPENING(Extract

36 FACING NGAI(Extract

40 SCREENING (Extract


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Dinner (1)

Frank was dead and he was very tired.

Frank was dead, dishevelled in his chair,one ear falling away,nose tip and lower lip gone,dress shirt dyed plum.

Even through the thumps and ashesof his own attack Charles had heardwith peculiarly greater concernthe chit chit of panga bladesinto Franks back

before the servants had retreated.

Frank was dead and Charles was exhausted.Hed crawled up all the stairs,the slow, successive risers,gripping their tops,

pushing them down,the last few almost too tall to scale,to get to the shotgun under the bed.


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It felt as if his fringe kept coming loose but it was wide drips of bloodthat fell everywhere. His handswere syrupy with it,also the two pieces of gunthat wouldnt shut together.That catch . . . he couldnt:it needed a ngertip that was gone.

He had a terrible headache.Its massive pulse seemed outsideof him, one of them,shaking the room.Also the world had strangely blued,with a wizening rim.

He swivelled in his leakageand lay forwardsholding the two parts together in a straight line towards the door.


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NIGHT FIRES ( Extract1

Prior saw her, the pretty cropped head,the high breasts, the wide frightened eyes,and grabbed her by the forearm,the decision made in his body

before he had thought:to leave the men and their business,to grab and vanish with her.

He pulled her arm, starting to run.Quick, girl.Very dangerous here.Come on. Safer. Safer!


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NIGHT FIRES ( Extract2

Why had Tom thought theyd stopafter the rst kill, as though theyd done enough?Of course they didnt.Over the long night they killed two more,a modest tally by others standards.The second one Tom didnt shoot.He held his gun up while the others shot

and watched him fall.The third came after long hours,with splintery light through the trees.By now, trekking back,they could smell the burning villages everywhere.Toms legs itched horribly.His shirt sucked at his skin,rubbed a slow burn into his collar.There were bodies everywherein different attitudes:stunned, reaching, sleeping, tumbled.Then from behind something a man sprang upand Tom shot him.

Just like in a Western: the attacking Indian:Tom saw the man look straight at him,clownish with terror as he pulled the trigger,saw the bullet make a splashin the mans bare chest.Only the fall backwards was different,

looser and ugly, spastic, almost embarrassing.A Home Guard walked up sideways,slowly, and shot again the wriggling man.


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*


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*

Back at the vehicles, the men murmured, passing round a hip- ask.The sky was oppressively bright,acres of weightless gold above them.Prior saw Toms faceand walked over to him,

placed his hand on Toms shoulder.Youll be all right, old man.Chipper after some sleep.First time is always the worst.Tom turned, unable . . . to thank,

and held on to his wrist.


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COMPOUND NINE ( Extract1

So something had woken him.He looked: Baxter was delivering post.Baxter smiled, spoke cod-Irish for some reason:Tis news from the old country, to be sure.It was: the Queens pretty Victorian silhouetteunder an English postmark.He checked the back: Kate.

Dear Scruffbag. Hope youre well and all that.Hows life as a man of action? A constant sourceof astonishment to you, I should think.You didnt tell me much about it in your epistle. Is it all very Dornford Yatesand super hush-hush? As for me,Im perfectly safe and bored, bored, bored.

Shed looked up from her rst three linesat the rain-thickened kitchen window,

the blue daisy of gas ame under the soup.

His eye skimmed down: news about an aunt,a pet bird going bald, a girl he didnt remember

but who remembered him, and then

Did I ever tell you what mummy told me about daddy in the war? I thought it might explain things a little.I dont remember the details butsomething about hearing a man


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trapped inside a tank that was on fire. Apparently daddy had a stammer for a few months! Awful. Anyway, scruffbag, be heroic and youll be famous: its in all the papers over here,with pinkos protesting and the like.

He folded the pages back into the envelope,

dropped it into his bedside drawer.He thought about the pet bird

becoming poultry with its patchesof pimpled bare skin, and

pouring a kettle of boiling waterdirectly onto them.

*

Another morning. Sunlight steepening.The prisoners cross-legged, being counted,then staring forward but ordered to watch.Tom watched for a bit. Hed grown a connoisseurof beatings: the rst blows stunning and accurate,with feints or not, and large, like sculpture.But quickly the prisoner couldnt focus,looked ridiculous, bewildered, lonely

before they blacked out completely and lay there. *

(The black ies, soft as hair as they landed on you,shivered half an inch

in any direction, bristly bodies throbbing, before setting down the delicate legof their mouthparts, and the smaller,hard-bodied ies that glittered like ordnanceand zzed around the buckets.


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Rapid, unconscious, blameless.

The ies landed on youand you waved them off, theycurved around your handlike water and landed againto sip at tear uid and saliva,to eat the dead skin, dirt, lay their eggsin the nutritious wetness of wounds.

There was no way to get rid of them,you just waved at their persistencefor hours, until you fell asleep.)

At least pay attention. At least look.


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COMPOUND NINE ( Extract2

The following prisoners are to be sent to Compound Nine for further interrogation.Stand up when your number is called.Prisoner 1435. Prisoner 2822.

They unfolded their legs and stood,so thin their knees looked big

as pulley blocks. Home Guardstrode across to tie their wrists.

Prisoner 4116. Prisoner 1607.

Prisoner 1607 began to moanand tipped over, writhing in the dust.(Another phrase Tom had learnedthe meaning of in the camp.Writhingin the dust. Hed watched men do it.)Home Guard rushed over to lift him

but he poured himself downover and over through their hands,

moaning, lolling his head,all his muscles refusing.When he was struckhis face cleared. His mouth setwith the angry assurance of the mad.He shouted: I give up the oath.Please. Please. I give up the oath.I am not Mau Mau, not rebel. Please.

And so his war ended.He was taken aside to go through the formsand then released to ndwhatever remained of his village.


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So few broke the oath these daysthat Johnson winked triumphantly at Tom.Those who would break had gonein the rst months.The remainingmen would rather die,their oaths preserved like crystalssomewhere inside their broken bodies.But why? Tom didnt understand.Why not just lie to get out

then carry on? Witchcraft, maybe. Leakey would know.

Two more numbers were called.The ve were led out,

past three prisoners up to their necksin the ground for a minor offence,their heads sticking up like croquet hoops.

*

Three weeks later two of the men came back,wordless and unsteady, heavily edited. Between them:nine ngers, two ears, three eyes, no testicles.

No good to anyone, they were let outto wander brie y as may ies

and die as a warning.


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RAIN

Freedom. Solitude. Rain.Infusions of books. Girls close by.Everything hidden. The people gentle,about their business, unprovoked.Shortening days, like a coat pulled tighter.


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FALLING ASLEEP ( Extract

Days. Bad nights.

He wrote her a letter full of wrangling and declaration,the dreadful phrases afterwardscircling in his mind like bitsof dirty paper in the ush.

And then the thought of when she reallyknew him he should just give up.After that he saw her in the streettalking with a friend, presumablythe Elizabeth shed mentioned.Well the bitch must knowall about him by now.Eleanor saw him and, still talking,took one step with her left leg,rounding her shoulder to keep him out.

Lack of sleep had him running

a mild fever, his skin papery,eyesight thick, joints achy.The silence of librariesa hissing sea-sound that sent himinto the briefest sleeps,head falling, jaw gone cretin-slack.Ridiculous: he was there, he was away,

but shed made it not enough.


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When he saw her againthe street slurred around him,his peripheral vision smearedwith passing gowns, swish cars,and herself in the centre,arms folded, unsmiling,waiting for what he would say.Really he was almost too tired

to talk. Im sorry, about the other day.Hrrr. Im, ah, sorry . . .What could he say, mouth dry,and everything hed done?Just wanting to climb inside her,to crawl into the darknessof her body and fall asleep.

But then she spoke. Tom.His name in her voice,softening through him.Tom, I was hoping Id see you.


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Yes?

Yes. I think, she smiled, well,Ive been missing you.

Really?

You sound surprised. Look,its just, well, if you want

things to . . . progress, usually young men start looking, you know, do I have to spell it out? In jewellers windows.


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WHAT WAS HAPPENING ( Extract

Home. The door swings inward.His fathernot mother,or servant, or sister his father, small eyes wet with joyit seemed, and then the shock of the unaccustomed pointsof his face against Toms

for a second-long embrace,then backing away, bowing,Come in, come in.

Sipping the fragrant blue acidof a gin and toniche watched the room de ate

behind his talking father.Distended with imaginingwhen he came init became ordinary, actual, too quicklywhile his father spoke too quicklyof cousins, small matters, prices.

His sister enteredcarrying one of the cats.She poured it outonto heavy front pawsand an inconvenienced trotto hold her brother lightly

by the shoulders and kiss

mouth screwed up, the soft collisionof her cheekbone against his.


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How are you, Kate? Mm, she said, holding his gaze.Wheres Mum? She hiding? Shes out, Kate answered, out in the fields.Mum is? His father crossed his legs.Yes. Kate held his gaze.Ive bought a little telescope,his father said, for the stars. Like to see? Defo. In a minute. I must...refresh.Right-oh.

A servant closed the door behind him; receded.Tom stood a moment, half outof focus with fatigue, and confused.He walked towards the bathroomand, passing, glanced into his fathers study.

Books were piled; so now his father read.He stepped in, heard his own voice,as another cat, out of nowhere,suddenly went.He picked one up. Tennyson:an old school prize.Desk drawers were open.And there was the new telescopeon its three legs, staring at the oor.What was happening?This, and the train, And therewas that old daubIn its place on the wall,


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an eighteenth-century family thing,a hunting scene,its arrested motion like stopped clockwork which had bothered him as a child

birds stuck in a cream-cheese sky,drab trees, reeds, grey water, curveof a dog, the hunter trudging homewith his heavy bag.


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FACING NGAI ( Extract

Mid-morning after rain.Mountains owing rapidly under clouds.The valley paths a freshened redwith yellow puddles, glittering weeds.

Tom walked between the linesof coffee for half a mile,

knocking fragmentsof water onto his sleeves little bubble lensesthat ampli ed the weavethen broke, darkening in.He walked to within earshotand no further.

A surprisingly dull sound of ceremonyone voice then many voices,one voice then many voices,that recalled school chapelalthough probably they were spared hymns.Tom remembered the hymns,the light, weakly coloured by the windows,falling on the boys opposite,standing, opening their mouths;and the hymn books,the recurrent pages greyish,worn hollow life agstones

with pressure of thumbs, over years,years of terms, the books staying alwayson their dark shelves in the pews.The days he wanted to stay

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all day alone in the pretty, scholarlychapel.

And then over the voices,another sound.Faintly, from behind the house,Kate practicing with a pistol,its faint, dry thwacksa y butting against a window pane.


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SCREENING ( Extract

Outside the sun was just down and the horizon, past distant burnt-out tree shapes, was black.The air was clear. The sky looked scienti c,a clear demonstration, its archgrading through unseeable fractions of colour from damp eye-blue to the wide western red.He breathed.

He paced the fence,resting his hands on his ri e.


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Jeffrey Yang


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Nadav Kander

Minsheng Art Museum

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bilingual anthology of adam foulds' poems

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