Poems by John Mateer

The Auteur
for João César Monteiro
 
Never an auteur, though sometimes ‘a João,’
of God, His Eye.
 
Yet — A confession! — on my deathbed,
my last sentence will, probably, begin,
 
“I …”

 
 
When He Suggested She Should Have Read the Story on a More Natural Voice —
 
“No utterance of the daemonic is unnatural.”

Self-Portrait as a Camel Conjured by Daemons,
— a Persian carpet not in the Museu Gulbenkian
 
I’m afraid, a camel, luminous,
loping panicked away from the voice
asking: Your monster?
Me? Or that grinning demon
who leapt up on my hump,
who is twisting a malnourished snake
into a halter? Suddenly around me
the trees are a cage, pomegranates
pocked moons, faces zoological or bestial,
voices, that cacophony.

 
Question for António Damásio
 
Doesn’t all European thought
disappear into the Void
between Spinoza and Pessoa,
that cornucopia
of nerves and that Tibetan
skull-cup?

What Should, Perhaps, Be Corrected
 
The only voice to whom I’m open
is that — GHOST — between
the Spoken.

These poems previously appeared in a collection of poems titled The Azanians, published as a limited edition broadside/poster by Tea for One in Lisbon, Portugal, 2010.