The Anatomy of Scholarship

Peripatetic teachers, sophists and advocates, and lone scholars in wildernesses, private studies, prison cells, asylums, academies, monasteries, observatories, laboratories, hospitals and even naval vessels; scribes, learned judges, lettered persons and courtiers of renowned cities; calligraphers, illuminators of manuscripts, curators of scrolls and codices; translators and interpreters; governesses and tutors in private households, the hirelings of princes, senators, lords and ladies and gentlemen of quality; the parlours and taverns, and the guilds of alchemists and apothecaries, priests, astronomers, physicians and surgeons, masons and military engineers; schools and studios of artists, illustrators and engravers; printing presses and binderies, and all editors and publishers of inky periodicals, journals and newspapers, dictionaries, treatises, pamphlets, romances, novels and collections of verse; salons, coffee-houses and bookshops; libraries, galleries and museums, private and public; zoological and botanical gardens; not to mention the underground of doubters, atheists, heretics, apostates, dissenters and revolutionary vanguards; and parliaments, conservatories, theatres, gymnasia, auditoria, archives, servers, and the diverse faculties of universities. Ten times six years could not suffice to hear them. Grant Duncan 21 April 2012

A forest of swaying trees

A forest of swaying trees
leading the eye down to a shore
of threatening sea

swollen and given up to winds
and currents and the saline influences
that uphold the clouds in unbelievable motion

that one day could lift the opening off of time
display the working of our buildings
and make us say or scream

what lies or overblown proverbs fill up
this atmosphere that will not settle
that no storm can clean


Grant Duncan, 15.1.12

Someone called You

I’d call this distemper
that growls and wrangles on the line

almost canine
And I’m tied up all day

from unspeakable eye opening
until the silent light goes out

And you asked me my secret
so you wouldn’t have to know it

or to see what I do
Stirring words

Running the treadmill
Charming flavours

No need to call
Just inquire inside

and finger the words
They shiver shine and run

So call them up again
and stalk them in the streets

Loiter outside shops
until chance bumps and jumps a track

and labouring metaphors
shuttle jauntily down hills

people settle for trying on
something new

pay up
and wander off

almost forgetting that someone
called You


Grant Duncan, 18.12.11

Viaduct

Was it worth this
data in the wind?

We saw who counts
and were counted in our turn

to each one weight
as weighing’s all that matters

So gather up down there
Cry for all you’re worth

The trawlers don’t dock here anymore
The old produce hall’s been transformed

And a buzz of souls beckons
from the city that sleeps

to the city that wakes
till all that remains

between us
is data in the wind


Grant Duncan, 9.12.11

Lucky People

Knowing we were not there
and missed what happened

is the one thing we really share
All of those rooms that

neither of us ever occupied
and the acquaintances we have not made

are the figures making it possible
to live together

And there always was a fertile time
once when conversations overflowed

untrapped from the body of words
when pictures drew whole flourishes

when someone’s touch promised more glow
than you could get in the palm of your hand


Grant Duncan 27.02.11

The birth of pain

the hunter fallen and
the woman at labour

cried their hurts
in waves

but felt their pains
so differently

being impersonal
only to be suffered

like blows
from a careless god

whose dark face
saw also

that dogs
should copulate


Grant Duncan 18.10.10

That's her

I asked no-one
to point at me and say

That’s him
That’s the poet

But you are different
You walk right through me

from time to time
And if I hear your footsteps

your handmaidens
are never far behind

on the strand with
sea-breezes in their faces

or by that fountain
where anyone can be inconspicuous

or looking like a mother of two from Howick
at a buffet-breakfast

or supple limbs pulling her through
the clear blue of a swimming pool

They trade upon their special blend
of insecurity and seduction

a touch on the arm
an ambiguous diamond ring

and stories about the father of a child
or one who might father more

in a future that circles gaily
like a merry-go-round

So I sometimes hear your footsteps
as you pass on through

getting lighter and lighter
and further and further on


Grant Duncan 7.8.10

In paradise

In paradise
even the whores are honest

it’s like the united nations
but without the politics

and no-one understands
and yes the streets are

littered with cigarette butts
and darks things happen in alley-ways

and there is death even
in paradise


Grant Duncan 26.07.10