Unearthly Toys

Poems and Masks

Ned Denny

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781784105396
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Shortlisted for the 2019 Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize.

Ned Denny's Unearthly Toys are treacherous playthings, as rigorously structured as they are thematically unsettling, a 'rhapsody of rags gathered from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toys and fopperies confusedly tumbled about' (as Robert Burton dubbed his Anatomy of Melancholy ).

The collection opens on a twilit, numinous world of exotic drugs, subterranean drums and visionary apprehension in which - to quote Twin Peaks, a recurrent leitmotif - 'the woods are wondrous... but strange'. Interspersed with original poems in a variety of complex forms is a series of illuminated and darkly erotic remakes of other poets work, from the Old English classic The Wanderer to late Baudelaire via Goethe, Cavalcanti, Li Po, enigmatic troubadour lyrics, and the medieval abbess Hildegard von Bingen. Politics are never far away: modern man's severance from the earth, the sacred, and his own inner self has grave consequences.

1

House Music

HOUSE MUSIC

Consider the architecture of the fire,

this radiant palace receiving in turn

the great bare mouth of the smallest creature

and the mirrored, steel-cored tower

of your pride; consider that soon

that grim ember

resembling the face we all fear or desire

will be the perch where you sing and do not burn,

peace be within thee, vigilant preacher

of the mind-consuming hour

each undergoes and what the moon

must dismember;

and consider while these agile days climb higher,

witchlike as flame – as the stuttering intern

is fanned to a tall and brilliant teacher –

how to step into that power,

that breathing room, the killer tune

you’ll remember.

WHO’S SHE

after Arnaut Daniel

Sweet precision

of the mind-manifesting

voice of the birds, the luminous argot

blown from tree to tree just as we implore

those whom love makes us see more and less clearly,

you inspire me – whose perverted soul sways true,

straight in its windings – to conceive the finest

call, a chirp with no bum note or word astray.

Indecision,

that luxury! No dithering

could touch me when I first breached the snow

of her smooth ramparts, the girl I thirst for

with a wild intensity that is nearly

unendurable, the shining one, she who

has hands whose omniscience exceeds the rest

as surely as love’s gentlest caress bests a

circumcision.

She clocked me, my discerning

between the real deal and the fake – we know

how true gold’s hidden by the lead uproar

of our toys – and as our tongues moved sincerely

she drew her dark cloak of constellated blue

so the boys that speak in the snake’s interest

couldn’t leer at what all babble fails to say.

No spring vision

(birds interpret as they sing)

of flowers limning the unguarded flow

of heaven is fresher; without her, L’Or

gives skin no glow nor JPMorgan’s yearly

profits; within her high castle’s living pew

our seeming leaders might be less possessed,

all who exchange her presence for the Devil’s pay.

God’s elision

in life’s book of our killing –

that only sin – our joy with our sorrow

surely bodes well for his setting some store

by holy communion, wherein we’ll merely

look and kiss and laugh along each bared sinew

as I measure the lovely weight of a breast

where the light, the embodied light, swells its ray.

Ah, derision

for my own solemn honking

bites once more – sound in which we think we go

about the gardens of an emperor,

dreamt court in which we whisper cavalierly

as his money man – and I’d be a fool to

mouth her name and put love to the test:

no saint protects those whose chatter keeps the dawn at bay.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• 1: House Music
• 2: Ventriloquise
• 3: The Sun
• 4: Where We Are the Dead
• 5: Flagrant Stamen
• Copyright