The Horse, the Hate and the Hedgehog

Old Bill gripped his whip like a vice, 
Chupni ready in vasta.


Old mare reared and kicked at his breast,
Reared up ready to prasta.


Bill's eyes glistered, teeth eyes too,
Dands like yoks in the moonlight;


Whip-hand clenches, fire dry-blistered, 
Brass-end sunnakai-soft-light.


Chupni cracked at the cold of the blue, 
Chingered the sky like salo


Old mare's nostrils fired, like a yog 
In granfer's yoks for the galo.


Old Bill's rakli rovs for the mare, 
Hollers out "Atch Dad, atchess",


Old Dad pukkers his rakli nixes:  
Wind blows, calls kakkaratches.


One black and white bird cries, one and two more hollers;


Another one rovs to the moon, til the sixth one follows.


"Kak pogger the gry you dinlo, pudding for brain,


Dihk in the old mare's mui and you'll never more strain".


Old Bill diks at the magpie, mui wide open,


An Hotchi walks over his foot and he whistles, 
And Old Bill looks at the keen eyes under the
Bristles, and Hotchi says, "Mush, it's time you awoken,


"For this ain't the first time an hedgehog or magpie's spoken.


"So forget the old tales of men what lie in a house,


"For it's time you looked your old gry straight in the mouth."


Old Hotchi was breathed back into the moss, no sound,


'Til the old mare spat three sovereigns there on the ground.


Then gentle as snowfall, Bill's whip fell from his hand;


One silent word he said to his mare, and his daughter 
Knelt, and she kissed his blistered hand.

Berlin/London, 16th February 2012

Illiterati

You can read all writing about it, pal. The paper's ain't yet broke:

And perhaps that puts you ahead, in a sense, of a letterless nomad
Bloke, in a manner of

Writing: him be fire, you 

Smoke.

Given the flint-faced grannys in fifties pictures,

The squint-eyed, craggy-cut, clean shaved uncles and

Grandads, smoke-dried, whiskers a good mil thick like wire,

There's pathways to think they were nothing but chipped and knapped

Things, galleted shoulders, clod hearts, riveted leather

With everything soft and heathery, hay-rick sweet

Knocked off by the coldest snaps of the tintless winter.

You can sympathise, when looking in oil-dark eyes

(Pinning you sniper-keen from the pitiless past)

Why nobody tells old yarns of a Nan

Who, even in spite of a granite-hard life

That could snap any spineless mind like a plastic knife,

Knocks corners, hard bits, nail-ends off of her words

So swaddle-wrapped grandson gets all the sleep he deserves.

Who'd listen to that, when the verdict's paper mask

Is blacker and whiter than hers, and pressed for task?

A Gypsy who never read naink from the printed page

Was loftily scorning middle-men; un-suffering intermediaries. A mage,

A rerum magister, his distant sires and sons all secret khans,

He knew the tongue of the lark and ash, hedgehog and glistening greengage,

Eye and ear and nose and tongue and fingertip, and each

To its partner sense each softly 

Spoke.

The page, where tongue helps fingertip to eye to tongue to

Ear, is a bit of a Gypsy's

Joke.

November 2011 / January 2012

Wolf

When wolf comes nightly, splicing through the grey

To (indeterminably fast/through fog-lit frost) awake me,

I am concentrated (spirit; eye; aghast in cleft of a desk-edge)
Into wight-like slightness, glass
As strand-of-vapour; single; needle-thin:

His teeth see through me, hiss through mind wind,
Target. Pin me like tack-tack. Tussle mind drum taut,
Spin me out and out
And fleshed again into dimensions, fix and pin

And I begin.

Kennereski Dikkabins / Domestic Observations Romani / English

So shunnava me te divves
'Dray o Bory Gav?
Shunnava gavver-mushes, ticknes:
Jinnen len mi nav?

Beshava anda beshengrul
Te ker mi lav-o-lil,
Ajor shunnava mouse-mengrul
A-vel te chor mi kil.

O Bory Gav parela kak
Adral i bersha bory.
Dordi, si foshena 'dray mi nak
Ta tatcho 'pray mi kory.

Dikhess, parela rakli bittinès
Opray o puv,
Ta jel o shoon posh-rahti shookarnès
Ta raklis ruv.


-


What do I hear upon this day
In London town profane?
I hear policemen, little one,
But do they know my name?

I sit upon a sitting-thing
To write my page of words,
And so I hear a mouse a-creeping,
Come to steal my curds.

Old London town's not changed, I think
Through many an old September
(That may be false in terms of stink,
But true, upon my member).

You see, a maiden's nature scarcely alters
On our sphere.
While onwards walks the moon, a maiden falters
With a tear.

Sastavarda Dikkabins / Observations by Train (Romani / English)

So dikkava mandi,
Dikkava drayda puv?
Jovv'anda sasta-varda,
Ta nastiss me te tuv.

Asar dikkava rukka
Ta, borydair, o vesh,
Akana grai, akana rai
Komenna tan te besh.

Gruvnys ta lenghi hobben,
Hord' anda bori mui,
Ta len asar kerenna les:
O kam, o char, e dui.

Ta chairusa ta wavver
Dikkava wavvernès:
Dikkava dray mi zi, mo pal
Pennava tatchanès.

Ta-anda zi jivenna
Mi jinnapens, avali;
Ta lensa jivela mi shei
Ta mullo-chals, chavaale.

Maw av atrasht o' Bakro Beng
Ta waffedi folkendis
Pe-so ti dandya si tut's
Ta jivvapen si mendi's.

In English (loosely, one might even say irresponsibly, translated):

What is it that I can see,

Can see in fields all ploughed?

(I'm journeying upon a train

And smoking's not allowed).

Now into view there comes a copse

And, greater now, a wood:

And here a horse, and there a lord

Would rest there, if they could.

Cattle I see there, and their food

In big old mouths they chew.

And them that operate this good:

The sun, the grass, the two.

And sometimes, and then others,

I see quite differently:

I stare into my heart, my brothers

(I say truthfully).

And in my heart are living

My knowledges, right so;

Alongside them my lady lives

And dead men's souls, boy-o.

Fear not Old Nick the Nannygoat

Nor wicked people's powers:

Because your teeth are yours alone

And life is all of ours.

Witchfinder

A film by Damian James Le Bas and Phillip Osborne
Witchfinder - Mike Rogers
Design and styling - Delaine Le Bas
Soundtrack by ERH, Klankbeeld, Section 13 (Rinkfern/Grimes)

Commissioned by Latitude Contemporary Art for Latitude Festival, 2011
as part of installation 'The World Turned Upside Down in the Cathedral of Erotic Misery (after Kurt Schwitters) by Delaine Le Bas

Rabbiting

“There's ever some young rabbits up that field

Where Lady and them two foals is”,
Grit-voiced, laden-eyed Omri my uncle says,
Aims, intentions smartly inward-folded.

His checked felt fisherman's hat dips down to the front
Like a cloche for the torque of his ranging mind
As it courses its tamped old tracks through counties
Counting for part-worlds, possibly counting for worlds
As it runnels its bracken-edged, massively finite footways.

Pipe-voiced, rivulet-iris eyed young Mushi
Is ten. His downy eyebrows flick as he checks his noiseless breath:

A twelvemonth's been and gone since the field and the rills,
The tracks, the Black Widow branded caddypults cocked for tracking
Them flitsome shushis. Mushi already knows kind of maybe how
He would twang the smoothest stones in ten yard, tail-off sickles of shallowest air

In a now
In again, in a now; how the best ones are hard, unyielding, heavy and certain and small,
Masquerading as quail eggs, yet could kill.

“We'll go up there on Friday, how about that?” said Omri,
Narrowing both eyes, pinching the prow of his hat.

-

Come this Friday, school will be longer; longer, collapsed and inane:
The words on the books might change and stretch
But the paper will look the same.

But come that twenty past three, and the rubberised creak
Of a hundred children's chairs on lino, marking the crash of the week
I'll belt up the side of the playing field furlongs, swinging
A hooked curve clean through the Y of the stile; and there

Will my uncle Omri be, and we
Will have more than a dying to aim at.

Selma: A Quiet Heart In The Night Time

A film by Tara Darby

Edited by Phillip Osborne and Damian Le Bas

Sound recording by JM Lapham : Colour by Touch Digital

Them Tribes

You ever thought about them tribes?

You know, them tribes?

Them rare tribes that's still out there in the jungle that shoots bows and arrows at the planes when they goes over? I think about them lot. I think about them lot a lot.

They can survive them fellas! Some of em can any way. You'd have to ask them how many survives cos I expect a fair few gets killed by the snakes and the different poisonous insects they got in the rainforest and that, and maybe they even still mors each other with little blow darts coated in poison they get off the back of they dear little poisonous frogs.

Sometimes I think about what will happen when they gets found. Well, they been found already ain't they. But when they gets disturbed out of the bit of peace and quiet what they've got, away from all the divvyness of the world.

They reckon most likely it'll be the mushes what sells the white powder that find em first, cos they're forever going deeper into the jungle to build these little tans where they make the drugs and that, and they even makes private runways for dear little planes they use to smuggle the drugs. It's true you know, just like any other businessmen really, or so they reckon.

Anyway, when they gets found, what'll happen to em? They'll see how everyone else lives won't they. Or they'll see bits and pieces of how everyone else lives through the different ways the drug dealers use to do what they're doing out there. I wonder what they'll think when they dik the motors and planes they steps out of, and when they gets out they'll see their different chokkers and that, the flash sunglasses and the flash clothes. I shouldn't think they'll smile when they see that. Maybe they'll just look.

Or maybe if the drug dealers has got poor chavvies working for em they'll see what they got first instead. The fear in their eyes. The desperation. Maybe they'll see a yogger if these fellas has got one. Which I aspect they would have. And the tribal mushes will see it. Will they smile? Will they jin what it is?

Whatever they diks though mush I should think after that when they goes back into the woods they'll dik back at their own bits a chokkers after that, if they even has any, tell you the truth I shouldn't think they have, but they'll look at their dear little bits a kenners what they kers in the woods and they'll see the raklis boiling a dear little monkey up for dinner and they shall have to think won't they, they shall have to think, “Is any of this old go gonna last my mate?” And when the stars come out that night and twinkle through the trees, will they be too ladged to roll over and whisper to their mollishas in the darkness, “Is the old job finished now my baby?” Maybe they shan't be able to sleep. And if they can't sleep I should think the stars will look different to em then.

And what's my grand chavvys gonna do when these mushes starts a fight with us and makes us jel back to their old country at some future date? Even if we plasties, what if we catches some bad old disease of these fellers and we has to go cap in hand to em to beg for the magic they got to sort it out? Even if that don't happen, they've got out here to us ain't they, a thousand miles of trees in your way whatever way you wants to come into us where we're stoppin at, and still they've got here and kerred into us, so won't they bring their wives and chavvys out to follow em, and take this place away from us? And being as we ain't like them, won't they get sick and tired of us and our old ways when they been here a while and we ain't changed to be like em? I'll be dead and gone. But me boys and girls won't, and after they're dead and gone, me grandboys and grandgirls won't. And what do they get then? What do they get if they can't blend in? What if they're too proud, and they won't?

Do they get told to jel on?

Do they get a cage?

Do they get beat?

Do they get

An hole in the ground?

(LAUGHS)

Dordi, you thought I was being serious didn't ya.

You did didn't ya.

But dik: te mandi kom te av tatcha serious-sa mi lavs, mandi'd pukker English chavvy, woon't I.

Kakka.

I couldn't be serious if you paid me.

See, I was brought up to take the piss mate,
Been taking it daily since I was a baby
(When they called me the Mush, “mushy 2”, and Daney and names like that.
And I never had no say in it, that was their way, see).

But, maybe, then, when the days was like years and I craved me bitta mashed up food like I now craves the beers and the cash that I has to unlock from the bottom of the tank that's topped with the stocks and the shares from the dares and the shocks of the markets, that I feed on like a Traveller and a bit like a catfish (I has to, it's cash that you block pave the drive to your death with),

Anyway,

And I fed on the fears of me family, the malt of the hops of the past while it lasted, the joys that September deployed from the hops that employed us before lager come and it blasted the trade of the hop and the old made beers: but {mimics Frank Sinatra} that's life, that's what aaaaaaaall the peopllllllle saaaaaay;

And I also remember the salt of the breeze from the sea and occasional tears

Well

Sometimes mostly just tears:

Anyway, maybe back then, I must've learnt something.

I learnt-

A fair few songs from the music of Marty Robbins, Jimmie Rodgers and the Highwaymen which tell you the truth was me favourites, more cos of Waylon and Kris Kristofferson and cos of the sand in they voices, cos they sung about the wide open space and the race for the West and the testing, embracing, betraying and breaking of races or ethnicities that “infest” it, except now a lot of em don't, cos the dead ones has left it (sorry about the tense present).

I learnt-

About me Uncle [name]'s phonebook. Or it might have been Uncle [name]'s. I wish I could still ask em.

They could read the phone numbers, but they couldn't read or write. They was all sharp men in the mind, razor sharp, they had to be, but they couldn't read or write. Except the phone numbers, which they could. You know what I mean. So they used to draw little pictures to show whose number it was. Uncle [name]'s [name] had a rake drawed next to his name for the tarmac. Me great granny had a bunch of flowers cos we sold flowers on all the markets, so her picture in the phone book was a bunch of flowers. And that meant all of us in that bit of the family, because she was the eldest out of us lot. She still is.

I learnt-

To have a laugh.

And we did have a laugh on the flowers.

But sometimes bridges was burnt with the laughs that we had: peddling the rose and meddling with posies and pinks and stargazer lilies, it do make you hungry to paddle the prose just a bit, in the maze of the air, lacking ink and the leaf of a page: it was bad when you think: we never did sink too low and we'd never had drink (it was early wannit) but me mum's brother [name]'s got powers like magical powers when it comes to a laugh and a joke and a wink and the half of it is (I'm stopping soon cos I must have a smoke) like this time on the market you'll find I'm about to unwind, that when he's really having a laugh, he don't laugh.

He enjoys not laughing.

He was on the flower pitch once looking after it for me great grandad, he was bad see, bodily ill. An an old woman come up to him and said “Hello young man, is your grandad not here today then?” And me uncle says “No, I'm afraid not madam”, the old woman says “Why not?” He said “Well if you must know madam he's been ill, really bad”. She said “REALLY, my my what's wrong with him?” He said “Well I'm very sorry to tell you this madam but he's got all coreys up his back”.

Sure it was quiet for a minute, he thought the old woman knew see.

But she went, “Well I never, do you know I've been suffering with exactly the same thing myself!”

That was it then wannit. He said “Well I can see that madam, I bet you've had more coreys up your back than I've had hot dinners”.

She must have gone at some point the dear old woman. But my uncle never did laugh, or so I was told.

But he never meant any harm, see.

And when I think about why people don't like our lot, I think, maybe it's cos we can have a laugh, and not laugh.

It ain't normal, it ain't what people expect from their fellow human beings. Like the faces them tribes in the jungle might pull when the 4x4s and aeroplanes roll in from the city, they split trees, grit up the mud and choke up the jungle with smoke till it wakes up the snakes so another snake's waked by the coke that gets him out of his head when it's hectic in London and under the skin he's a skeptic about what the point is. There's a glint of all that in how capitalism works, and it ain't funny. The men cutting open the jungle ain't funny. And them tribes don't laugh either in front of people, them tribes.

Maybe it's the things they've seen.

--

Romani glossary for this piece

mors - endanger

divvyness - ideology

mushes - international drug dealers

tans - privately owned narcotics factories

dik - discover

chokkers - Prada loafers

chavvies - trafficked workers

yogger - military autogun

jin - be able to figure out

kenners - liana shelters

kers - assemble

raklis - unmarried young tribal women

ladged - suffering from pre-hubristic tension

mollishas - wives-of-20-years-or-more

dordi - In the name of Shiva, Hanuman, Black Sarah, Holy Mary and the Princes of the Geats!

kakker - Come gentlemen, let's forget about that and move on

mandi - any agentive consciousness analogous to the self

kom - intended to

te av - self-actuate

tatcha - perceptibly

mi lavs - ethereal vibrations

pukker - elect to communicate (in)

chavvy - Dear Reader!

coreys - reproductive aids

Angsty Gardener

Article 1.

Shoon akai: sar mushes, mollishas ta chavyaw's beenda yekinès avri stirapen, adray freeyimos; beenda yekinès kushti adray raiyipen. Ta lengi si a bori tastipen: te ker sar kushti kuvvas. Lengi's si a but kushti jinnimos ta jinnen tatchikanès anda zi sossi kushti te ker ta sossi bengla te ker, chavvi. Dordi! Sar jinnen asa lissi o tatcha drom: te ker mendi ta wavva foki kushti, pensa-dray a tatcha praliben.

A Royal Wedding

For the New Forest Gypsies

Between his face and his hand was swept
At the edge of the glade a mizzen-sail of mayflies, silver pollen,
Chance and vanishing vapour
Slowed to a dream-speed, very lazy waltz
In sunlight weave:

Finger and thumb holding the ring he bought for a second hand
At a bit of a distance,
Spying through the nothing heart of its empty centre

A green-walled shed, and green-roofed,

White wood shuttered and skirted;

Big enough, just, for the three
Of the one kind priest and pair;
In need
Of a proper cross above the narrow door; of a touch
Of paint; of haughtiness; perhaps
Some thin, unknowable inscription.

Standing about are mended caps and tweeds, and petticoats
All fixed in gratitude.
The clearing's tamped dirt floor will bear their eighty
Or ninety feet, some shod, some soft and trusting
Still to a summer's grace:

Ahead of his love, and in the light of her face
Shall be the lilac tint of the Hampshire dust

And in her work-lined hands his love will clutch,
String-bound, a tight and small bouquet

Of stocks, sweet peas and heather
Frilled with soap-wort's fragile stars
That the folk of houses call
Gypsophila.