These fourteen poems were written on the Italian island of Procida in the Bay of Naples in the spring of 2001. It was here at the age of 33, having exhausted my own possibilities, I reached out to God (if he existed!), asking for help, and got an answer. The day I reached out was Maundy Thursday; I got an answer three days later, on Easter Sunday (see the poem “Sunday Afternoon”).

They are really the story of my adult conversion to Christianity and should be read in conjunction with the four poems I wrote on Rhodes two months later.

The poems were included in my poetry collection Even Though That (Sofia: Proxima-RP, 2004, with a parallel Bulgarian translation by Tsvetanka Elenkova and Rada Panchovska).

ESCAPE

I snorted

and rubbed my nose

and whirled my arm as a slinger would

and got up

and walked thither

and hither

and then I went down to the port

and up again,

pretending to smile,

though a grimace came,

and at the top I looked

and admired

and then I climbed the Stations of the Cross,

peeped in a church where others stood in flickering

electric candlelight…

but still I couldn’t get this heart well again.

* * *

THE SIESTA

I slept in the porch

(the alcove,

with its low ceiling and arched walls

and church gate lamp, complete with frosted

glass and cobwebs.

It is curtained off from the rest of the room.

Two single beds lie on either side

with a bedside table in between,

spinster sisters.

One is wrapped in a blanket,

the other is bare – dead? –

a pillow, two pink bedcovers and a blanket neatly

laid to rest),

I slept on the living one

the siesta.

I curl up in my clothes and boots

and dribble,

my head pushed back like a sweet

dispenser (you cock the head and it ejects

a tablet).

I dribble and dream of

far-flung places, people I love,

when I am brought back to the world I’m in.

It is cold

and fresh.

It was raining.

I feel well for a moment.

Am I in England?

Not yet, not yet.

*   *   *

THE DAY AFTER MY BIRTHDAY

Hung-over.

The day after my birthday,

which I celebrated by drinking four beers,

the last of which I don’t remember so well,

it sort of merges with the third,

and by eating a half-cooked sauce

on a bed of ironed-out pasta

(I couldn’t bring the water back to the boil,

the gas bottle was empty,

so instead I let the pasta sit

in the boiled water for ten minutes

like an unfranked stamp)

and by watching Titanic in Italian

on a two-inch screen,

having to get up to read the subtitles

of the Russian would-be passengers,

not that it mattered,

I’d seen the film before

(in English and also in Spanish,

the latter seated on a wooden deck-chair

on a requisitioned ball-court

in the Aragonese hills),

until the end,

which I refused to watch,

considering it stupid

to drop the Heart of the Ocean

back into the sea

(in fact, James Cameron came in for quite some invective

from my seat, for his romantic dream.

It’s not like that!).

The noise hasn’t stopped

of mopeds put-putting up the hill,

            of machines.

But reading Ted Hughes’ Birthday Letters

in this Italian port

under the strong afternoon sun,

with the territorial seagulls playing at being eagles

or Italian army aeroplanes,

and the clinking masts,

and Vivara curved like the husk of a Brazil nut at my feet,

            while I wished the noise would stop,

life could be worse.

*   *   *

BESIEGED

My romantic island is a torture.

I have been flung from the noise of the traffic clunking the drain-grate

to the noise of a sander rotating (for four hours now),

like a giant mosquito in the sky’s ear,

on the wood of a boat.

I came here to get away from it all.

For some peace and quiet.

But, running from the decoy,

I have run straight into the trap.

I am like a fly at the window.

The only option: to backtrack to life.

(Opening the window is not an option,

I think.)

*   *   *

COST

The coffee and pastry were 5,000,

the newspaper was 2,200.

And then there was the bottle of gas.

That was 50,000.

The lady had said she’d pay

– “I’ll pay” –

with a humble hand to her chest,

but 50,000 was a lot of money,

so I must pay that.

Then it seemed the telephone bill was due

and could I give back the 100,000

I’d been given, they needed it now.

I went into the house.

I barricaded myself in.

I only had 30,000!

*   *   *

MOMENTUM

As I am sitting in a side-street

for half an hour

(this side-street is at the end of a remote Italian island,

and it leads nowhere),

13 cars go past,

25 mopeds,

3 motor rickshaws,

8 bikes,

1 dog and a pram

(I don’t mind the bikes and the pram.

I’m not too keen on the dog).

I wonder

Where do they all go?

Where are they all going?

What would happen if we just stood still?

Would anything happen?

I’d like to stop

and lie in the shade of the trees

for a moment

(I’m working out their names).

The world is a frightened horse.

Some are in the saddle.

Some have control of the whip.

Some cling to the tail.

Some clasp the neck.

Some are hiding behind the blinkers.

Some are on the bit, I’m afraid.

I’ve got a hand on the reins.

The view’s good,

but the hold’s not secure.

The Rider has abdicated.

He’s (apparently)

looking on

with interest.

*   *   *

VIGIL (1)

It’s four in the morning.

I’m in no man’s land.

And I feel desperate.

I want an answer to the question

“Why?”.

It doesn’t seem that difficult

to

me.

And instead all I get is

the sea breathing deeply,

the jetty’s whine,

the wind lashing her hair (hailstones in it),

the church bells marking time.

I am at that stage

where if I had to say something

I would only be able to think it.

A storm’s up.

It’s Maundy Thursday.

I hope to make it to morning

since I can’t undo this.

*   *   *

VIGIL (2)

LOST: one night’s sleep.

MISSING: six hours’ restorative rest.

It was the dustcart

that woke me

still with traces of beer,

and not dehydration,

which tells you you’re still on this side,

you’ve not crossed over.

I’d slept for an hour and a half.

That’s a nap.

I’ve had siestas longer!

The moon is hiding

behind a cloud-map of Europe,

a child hiding behind a bush, peeping through the leaves,

seeking the same response.

Remnants of the storm flicker

as when a train changes tracks.

Someone draws off water for the morning.

The sea showers in a tub, washing away the lather

with a cup.

The sun’s late,

but I think it’s morning.

*   *   *

DOMENICO

for Domenico Lubrano Lavadera

Domenico has a tub of net in the hallway.

He worked nineteen years in the engine-room of a merchant ship.

But he’s really a fisherman.

He sits in the day and darns.

I’m never sure if he has advanced,

because the net always looks the same.

It seems to have no end or beginning,

like the coils of a snake up a tree.

He darns in the day.

He sings while he picks at the thread.

They are songs of heart-stopping beauty that

I do not understand, but I think they have to do

with memory, and I understand.

I listen as the coffee bubbles through the smoke-hole of the pot,

molten copper,

I listen to the strands

of centuries.

*   *   *

“MISTER GEGE”

The rich man had a boat.

He felt around in the rain for something.

I don’t know, an electric cable or something.

Perhaps so that he and his rather glamorous wife

could watch the afternoon film

(it was raining out).

Perhaps so that they could get a bit of warmth.

Unbeknown to them,

the ducks pecked at the underside of the boat.

There was food down there,

encrusted barnacles and the like, seaweed.

The ducks made off soon after.

I saw the man.

He was fixing a heater for his wife and him.

She arranged the cutlery.

The rich man had a cellar by the back door of his boat,

a seat like a piano stool,

a wine bunker.

He fetched a bottle of white to have with the dinner

in front of the afternoon film,

nice and warm, while outside

the rain poured down.

*   *   *

RUEING AN OPPORTUNITY

I almost made a photograph

reading a book

in my hands

on a beach with sand

nagged by the sea’s waves.

I almost made a photograph

but I got to the page

I wanted to,

and then I turned around.

The lady with the camera to her eye

darted it to her side,

caught in flagrante.

As if she’d been doing something shameful.

So I’m writing this poem

in the hope that

she’ll get a different photograph,

a new photograph,

of a man

writing on a piece of paper

clamped in his hands

on a beach with sand

knowing that if it moved

            the wind would have it.

*   *   *

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

for A. H.

This death was affecting me,

it had me in tears last night,

and the bells resounding in the stagnant afternoon

propelled me on to a figure of Christ crucified

with flowers and a light.

Those bells, they echoed inside my bones,

columns of the church I inhabit

and which I shall leave behind, a ruin,

when I move on

and the bells, like applause,

die away,

leaving only warmth, new life,

and that breeze.

*   *   *

VIVARA BRIDGE

Vivara is an islet to the west of Procida,

joined by a bridge.

(They are joined, also, under the sea.)

Opposite Vivara is St Margaret’s,

Procida’s heel.

You can pass over the bridge for years

and not realise

that Vivara and St Margaret’s are two sides

of a crater,

the north and south of which are missing.

Brackets of land around a water-capped range of space.

Today I stood on the bridge, on the north side of the water.

I put out my arms

and I joined Vivara and St Margaret’s

with my fingertips.

I became the north side of a crater!

I looked south, as I began to rise,

to Capri, fishing boats on the shortened horizon.

The water was deep, deep,

where the lava had flowed.

*   *   *

TRAFFIC

On Procida, people own houses,

have dogs to guard them,

gates to protect them,

walls to keep out prying eyes.

Everyone drives a car.

There are no pavements,

so you have to walk in the road.

Some people slow down,

but most don’t.

The only quiet places

are the bridge to Vivara

and the cemetery.

Here,

you can hear the birds sing.

The traffic worries me.

It scares me, if I’m honest.

The drivers are blissfully unaware.

They think I am the madman.

Sometimes I process slowly down the middle

(the road is too narrow to pass)

as if I were deaf, had not heard

the crunch of tyres, the driver’s breath revving.

When I’m going in the opposite direction,

I scowl at the drivers,

I scowl with hatred in my heart.

I open the way for them

with a sweep of my arm.

            Toro!

They fume, I perspire.

Other times, I splay against the wall

in mock horror

like a starfish.

They think I am the madman.

I don’t know how else to behave.