Alistair Noon & Giles Goodland
From SURVEYORS' RIDDLES
14
On the way back, I broke down.
On the way down, I broke up.
On the downs near Swindon
I brokered leverage on
The hedge I was building, pulled
In with black smoke tailing me
And while waiting for the AA
Sat on the grass behind the hard shoulder
Watched the traffic. Not one car
That was not driven at great speed
By drivers who did not stop to question
What is this thing that they so badly need.
GG
15
I saw the missiles roll past,
their drivers staring ahead,
their legs and bellies hidden,
rigid at their post.
“Comrades, I salute you,”
I called, as the surface vibrated
and the growling vehicles brought
their offerings to light.
Approaching, retreating, weaving
around us came May's first wasp.
I leaned over to Eduard and whispered,
“We can't go on like this. Keep waving.”
AN
16
If there is a secret message here
It may be in the wasp. If there
Is no secret message it will
Also be in the wasp.
When two people meet and a
Wasp passes them, it can
Signify a change of climate.
If the two people greet each other
And they are still wearing furs,
It means that problems will multiply,
States be overthrown, new brands
Of crisp be marketed upon us.
GG
17
It's thin and quickly gone
after its crackling sound.
Solid but subject to the mouth.
The Incas' repatented crop.
There are offers that you could win.
It comes in its different shades,
its feel and unique shapes
and flavours. Do you want one?
It's an anthill of letters, a swarm
one by one abandoning a hive,
the packet my father would buy me
from the buttons after our swim.
AN
18
The winter we buried our potatoes
in the dead of. The wind steppes
over the. We say they grow ‘eyes’
but to me they are more like legs
turfed out of the soil like so many
dead. I filled the trailer with them
and did not think of them again
until they were returned
like the starving, so thin
and brittle, so pale in their bright
plastic like the fertilizer-bag leggings
I wear in the fields of. Exhumed.
GG
19
Trowelling our way across the field
with a map from the seventeenth century,
we found their bodies, the limbs folded
one atop the other, about seventy.
We traced Individual H to Scotland
and gave him red hair in our reconstruction.
Dietary deficiencies since childhood, but his end
was a bullet and something blunt
from a lifetime of fighting and looting.
We ordered the earth's confusion
and under the lowest of lighting
laid them to rest in the museum.
AN
Copyright Alistair Noon & Giles Goodland 2013
Alistair Noon's first full-length collection is Earth Records from Nine Arches Press (2012), shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. The first 12 parts of this 87-poem collaboration with Giles Goodland, in classical enigmenga
form, are here. Further info at Archive of the Now.
Giles Goodland is a lexicographer and poet who lives in London and works in Oxford. He has had several book-length poems published over the last two decades. His last book was The Dumb Messengers from Salt.
form, are here. Further info at Archive of the Now.
Giles Goodland is a lexicographer and poet who lives in London and works in Oxford. He has had several book-length poems published over the last two decades. His last book was The Dumb Messengers from Salt.