Most of winter
The meanness of snow
tangles in your soul.
The rancour of brambles,
not resurrection,
takes root in my skull.
Decomposing in the black earth of the bone yard behind,
The saints can't save such fat souls as us.
Eternity, deaf to our clamour of bells,
To all those bland good byes cut into the
Monumental cradles of the dead,
Is stubborn, abstinent as this wind.
For such a cruel season,
I want fire, and the loud yowl of god,
Not my evening candle
Guttering in its own tawdry sorrow,
An idiot stump of light.
Surround me with miracle.
I don't want this snow!
NOCTURNE
This land describes a long sand curve
Towards eternity.
Coast, that waves have thought over
And wiped clean,
Where no one walks
Save a seldom, strenuous seabird.
Look inland. That world is a pool of ink.
On the nocturnal shoulders of the world,
Black firs observe an everlasting silence.
Safer is our fishing town that clings to the shore,
like a young marsupial to its mother.
From the green beacon that is the harbour light,
A shag is hanging two pterodactyl wings to dry,
Grey sentry, dishevelled seafarer,
Watching the night drop anchor.
Away on the seaboard
Squid boats burn like vesper candles,
Gone to fish a wide school of stars,
Sailing the telescope of a sea-
captain sharp as a skerry,
Stood at the bow windows of the retired sailors' home,
A poet who plays with creation
As he paints the ocean indigo,
Building the dark like a cairn.
CLOUDS
have many tales to tell
To the lime-edged indigo hills
They spread their stories
They say in summer
The Sun burns like a Cyclops eye
and the sky is brash as zinc
Their season is winter
When they swell like the crania of gods
Filling the horizon
Scud like royal galleons in their own empire
Blotting out the sun
Some clouds scowl and grumble
Hurl lightning like the ancients, pent with anger
Throw sleet hard as marble
or cry a river
Others are quiet as philosophers guarding their secret
The sky's lambs
Certain and unfolding
Various as the stars
Clouds stir forgotten senses
Like the smell of frangipani
or the ocean's salt taste
Conceived where seahorses sire great waves
Their young race up from the gulf
Grown tall as Goliaths
Ready for war
When no breezes blow
They are patient
As our parents were
The sky is their hammock
But always when summer comes
They mourn a lost paradise
and are aloof and cool as cirrus
Their noses high in the sky
PRECIOUS STONES
Cold islands entice me,
like carved stone cathedrals.
Their single mountains are the
Exalted white saviours of our continent.
Fallen devils in winter.
Go South, where long archipelagoes
Follow the land's evolution,
Isles like shed, splintered tails in the sea,
Giant's vertebrae planted for war.
This is a horizon smudged by storm and salt.
The furnace of tropical islands evokes
other memories. Wild orchids swaying slowly.
Heavy, fragrant, ocean-scented fruit. Taut sails
in emerald twilight. The purge and bloodbath
of sunset.
Yet the old whale tooth amulet,
and the bright scarlet flower of the flame tree
Are essentially one. Only latitudes change.
Looked for on the horizon,
Islands lodge in sleep, conceive myths,
Are emeralds in all the world's languages.
CHURCH MUSIC
The mellow grief of darkened altar-pieces
Jangles its witchery of gifts.
Candles waver under the raised fist of the pulpit
and all the stones are sufficiently changed.
Sabbath flowers, still virile with colour
Wait at the confessional boxes, imitating tarnished frowns.
Outside, the street's loneliness roars uneasily.
I cast my grave stained shadow
across the sad hands of time.
Above me,
Mother Mary's perpetual help
Thickens with dust,
With the raw pledges of the wounded,
Who have now forgot her.
Should God lean down from the organ loft,
Lit by a hung moon,
And walk, maestoso, among the dry dirge of the traffic