A postcard that fell from a book about writing books
of history
bent double a beautiful man
who handing it back to me said,
“Here’s one for you:
as a child I had no reason
not to believe my mother
when she claimed it was she
alone could ignite the flames
inside the cat’s eyes
that with faultless timing
unblinded the country lanes
we rolled dimly through
from swimming practice home.”
(o)
Google retrieved: a bad band’s mp3s;
videos of cats on fire,
of a cat being thrown through a window
on fire; photographs of angry-looking cats
doctored to make them look
like they are angry
because they are on fire;
and somewhere down the second page
a passage from Sir James George Frazer’s Golden Bough (1922)
in which he writes,
“In the department of the Ardennes cats were flung
into the bonfires kindled on the first Sunday in Lent;
sometimes, by a refinement of cruelty,
they were hung over the fire
from the end of a pole and roasted alive.”
As late
as the seventeenth-century,
Parisians collected the embers and ashes
of the cats
and took them home,
believing or not
that they would bring good luck.
(o)
The night before we met courtesy of the postcard, the man
had been tired
curled around his laptop
with a bottle of warm beer
on the floor, photographs
of a holiday in Poland.
Declining the offer
of plum brandy
from the man dragged kicking
by his own smile out
of the woods each afternoon.
Cool in the stream.
China cats
in the ex-pat’s cottage
with a funny line embroidered
and pinned to the wall:
“The only thing a cat has to fear
is fur itself.”
(o)
The author of the book, a Polish reporter, one evening
on a balcony
in Dar es-Salaam
drained by hungry mosquitoes
copied into his notebook
a passage from The Histories by Herodotus
who had heard
that when a house is on fire
the Egyptians don’t run for water
but position themselves at intervals around it
to get in the way of the cats
that slip between them,
jump over them even
to dash into the fire.
The reporter was shocked.
There had been no cats in The Histories before.
One must open great books again
he reminds us
if one is to catch
falling from between their pages
their hidden cats
dashing into their hidden fires.
(o)
The librarian held a book between the trolley and the shelf
as the man went on,
“I imagined cats buried
up to their eyes
in the tarmac. With each
burble of the wheels
I dug my nails deeper
into my arm.
Of course I didn’t believe
cats were really
entombed.
But the dry sting
of chlorine will always
bring to mind
the cracked heads
of hidden cats
and my arm in red and blue.”
(o)
On the postcard was a black-and-white photograph
of sorry houses
of tarpaulin and string
and corrugated iron
on the slide of a hill.
It was beautiful too
but difficult
to enjoy
so when we got home
I slipped it
behind a framed photograph
in which it looks like
I am cupping the Taj Mahal
in my hand
for safe keeping.
(o)
A thin Polish cat’s clumsy young were close enough
for her to sleep
on the bank rising
to the cottage.
“I lay there naked
with her,” he said,
wagging my penis
like it was
a teacher’s finger.
According to Herodotus,
when the female cats of Egypt
are distracted by their young
from the habit
of going to the males,
the males
remove the kittens secretly
or by force.
It is a creature extremely fond
of its young
and must replace them.
“What else to do but
return to
your bloody mate?”
(o)
When the Ardennes cats burned in burning wicker cages
their screams were accompanied
by boiling skin’s syncopated popping
and the crowd was delighted
to be rid of witches.
When a cat died a natural death
in ancient Egypt
the people of its household
would shave off their eyebrows
in mourning. When
I fell asleep that night I had a dream.
In the dream, there was a fire.
Through a door in the fire
was a country lane.
In the middle of the lane
an envelope. On the envelope:
“For the present”;
and in smaller letters below:
“No cheating.”
I opened it
and there was the beautiful man
in a frame. I had the feeling
I was being unfaithful
to him
with him
but he assured me the water he swam in
would protect my house
from fire.
I didn’t believe it
but hung it on a nail
above the door
anyway.
(o)
When the following morning we were woken by each other
the man reported
he had not been able to sleep
in a stranger’s bed.
He had tried a modern kind
of counting sheep,
clicking one-by-one
through Google images
looking for but not
hoping to find
the postcard’s slums.
Instead
he said
he had come across a poem
called “Hot Demolition”
that had a sickening footnote:
“This term refers to the contemporary practice
of some Filipino landlords
who will douse a cat with kerosene,
set it alight, then direct it
into tindery shanties.
It is a cheap way of clearing the land,
which can then be relet.”
He said he didn’t really need
to read the poem
after that.
(o)
When later in the morning we trotted arm-in-arm
through the shopping centre
we got some looks.
He thought he heard
a group of women spill
something about being
put to the stake.
“That’s Birmingham for you,”
I said rolling my eyes but
was scared and started
talking any old rubbish.
“You know how cat
means girlfriend . . .
and a cat on fire
is a hard-on
in need of
attention . . . well
they can’t both be cats
can they,
let alone on fire,
when one is inside
the other?!” He laughed
but said nothing
for a while.
(o)
As far as I can see, there are two basic flame-types.
Nasty slight quick
ones grasping
everything they can
and slow
lush choosy ones
so cool they look
thirst-quenching.
Does fire look
the same
everywhere?
What if you are Polish
and in Africa?
(o)
Before his “first moult,” he eventually replied, he avoided
anyone he suspected
of being a fairy.
When once a friend was
masturbating,
proposing,
he joined
because he knew
then the friend
could not really
want him
like that.
“I saw some photos
the other day,” he sighed, raising
his chin
for a dramatic pause,
“turns out he’s a great big bear.”
(o)
When we had said goodbye, him not kissing back so much
as I was kissing, but
promising to message
soon,
I wanted to write the poem
the man had not been able
to bring himself
to read
in my bed
without bringing myself
to read it either.
It seemed romantic to remember
for both of us
what neither of us
had seen.
I reopened
the book by the Polish reporter
but nothing fell out.
I would have to begin
on my own
with embers,
the same
if the fire started
in an accident
during kerosene-lit work
to pay for the children’s school uniforms
and if it started
with a cat
running away
from its fur ablaze.
