Show me the order of the world,the hard-edge light of this-is-soprior to all experienceand common to both world and thought,no model, but the truth itself.Language is not a perfect game,and if it were, how could we play?The world’s more than the sum of thingslike moon, sky, centre, body, bed,as all the singing masters know.Picture two…
Paddocks rest in the sea’s arm.Swamphens race through spiky grass.A wire fence leans, a crazy stavewith sticks for barlines, wind for song.Over use, interweaving lightwith air and substance, ride the gulls.Words in our undemanding speechhover and blend with things observed.Syllables flow in the tide’s pulse.My earliest memory turns in air:Eclipse. Cocks crow, as if at…
Resumes his treetop, darts belowhis acid-bright, corrosive glances.In the hushed corridors of sleepProfessor Eisenbart plots treason.Caretaker mind prepares to sweepthe dusty offices of reason.Eisenbart mutters, wakes in rageBecause crow’s jarring c-a-a-r-k-s distress him.His mistress grins, refers to ageand other matters which oppress him.He scowls purse-lipped. She yawns, and throwsHer arms in scarecrow crucifixion.Clear of the…
from his planned choir, lolled, slouched and kepttheir tone, their pitch, their meaning crude;huddled in cliches; when pursuedturned with mock elegance to croakhis rival’s tunes. They would not sing.The scene that nagged his sleep awayflashed clear again: the local kingof verse, loose-collared and loose-lipped.read from a sodden manuscript,drinking with anyone who’d pay,drunk, in the critic’s…
he’ll ease his gripes or fingerpaintin heartsblood on a public page.The ordinary world must bealtered to circumvent his rage.He’ll tell, with stylish Angst of course,the inmost secrets of our bed.Words are far worse than drugs; there isno hope of surfeit or remorse.The world lies wide, and warm. No kiss,no child, no prayer will keep him…
how to drink pain, and live?I look, and the glass showsthe truth, fine as a hair,of the scalpel’s wounding care.A round reproach to allthat’s warped, uncertain, clouded,the sun climbs. On the wall,by the racked body shroudedin pain, is a shadow thrown;simple, unchanged, my own.Body, on whom the claimsof spirit fall to inspireand terrify, there flamesat…
a glass jar in the reeling sunhoping to keep, when day was doneand all the sun’s disciples cloakedin dream and darkness from his passion fled,this host, this pulse of light beside his bed.Wrapped in a scarf his monstrance stoodready to bless, to exorcizemonsters that whispering would risenightly from the intricate woodthat ringed his bed, to…
eyes against shoulder keeptheir blood-black curtains tight.Body rolls back like a stone, and risenspirit walks to Easter light;away from its tomb of bone,away from the guardian tentsof eyesight, walking aloneto unbearable light with angelicgestures. The fallen instrumentsof its passion lie in the relicdarkness of sleep and love.And heart from its prison criesto the spirit walking…
into consubstantial dusk.A snow wind flosses the bleak rocks,strips from the gums their rags of bark,and spins the coil of winter tightround our last meeting as we walkthe littoral zone of day and night,light’s turncoat margin: rocks and treesdissolve in nightfall-eddying waters;tumbling whorls of cloud disclosethe cold eyes of the sea-god’s daughters.We tread the wrack…
A horny fiend, I creptout with my father’s gun.Let him dream of a childobedient, angel-mind-old no-sayer, robbed of powerby sleep. I knew my prizewho swooped home at this hourwith day-light riddled eyesto his place on a high beamin our old stables, to dreamlight’s useless time away.I stood, holding my breath,in urine-scented hay,master of life and…
