the sister
who lies down
on the long stemmed wet grass under
rumbling steel bridges,
grateful after everything for he
who childishly plucked out her eye,
blinding her into buffalo hoofed sage scented
seeing,
tell me, princess of Babylon,
what would you have said,
had you been able, in that last moment
before the animal darkness,
to speak,
your brutal jewels flashing ornate in the naked
prairie sun,
and in what tongue, outliving for one flaming second
the devastating stages of your catastrophic
loves,
tell me, Gwendolyn,
how should I find my way
among these empty incantations,
these chipped white dishes on soap sudded oilcloth,
these nothing signs
among the walking dead,
the lilies sprouting tiger lips and rust,
the prairie struggling to rememberIn prison we ate rats
its dream wild partridge feathered feast, that exuberant
drumming?
Castle walk
after Alain Robbe-Grillet
Curses on she who asked to be
ordinary
among painted plates and cups
and bits of jam left on spoons,
willing to forget
fire flashing through
silver sheeted clouds,
her forehead bleeding,
her ragged torn heart.
In prison we ate rats after drying them in the sun. Every night God visited us in our cells, soothing or frightening us with his velvet hands and invisible dark sword.
Even now I could leap
off any shining parapet
at high noon
into the Devil’s arms
in search of that fire,
were it not for the garden warbler
nesting in the rhododendron,
pink and scarlet blossomed
under the Castle Walk,
the bluebells blazing
beside the sycamore.
The water at the bottom
of the well
remembers Queen Victoria,
Sir Wallace, and the numbers
of the dead.
Here in this red rock
overhanging the sweet path
tremble the memories
of cave dwellers,
shuddering their easy
ecstasy.
I cannot compute it.
Even on the windiest days,
the chorus of ancestors
full throated among the trees,
bits of severed limbs
float through the room,
the blue plastic thermos
in the window promises
black tea and landmines
halfway across the world.
The surface keeps slipping, Alain.
Somewhere deep inside us
the centre holds.
Say it is so, Chinua,
say it is so.
The poets visit the Rosewell Arms
Surprised to find,
on their country rambles,
how he singles her out
in every pub,
the ‘village drunk,’
proclaiming his love:
They don’t know, Robbie, they don’t know, the kinship of those who walk, as we have done, through living fire.
His friends clap him
on the back, laugh,
pour him another drink,
she turns back to the bar,
smiling, glass in hand,
discussing Yeats.
The floor rocks under
his sea legs, his skin burns.
Long ago he learned
to substitute drink
for touch, to hold
the terror in.
So many unrequited singers, Bobby. The fire made diamonds of your eyes. The breathing world cries, ‘I love you too.’
A modest proposal
This night I am haunted by your stray dogs, Frankie,
of Albert Street, their thin, eager love, abject,
you
