| TIME
Dug from the freezer
Remains three thousand years old:
A Scythian nomad and his horse.
The red-tressed hun is
mummified to his mount.
Permafrost has
perfectly preserved his
embroidered trousers highboots furs
and the large elk that is tattooed
across his back
and chest.
ISLAND
Yes someone's cleared the corpse off the track
But I still see,
Its print of fur
The fat flies and the eyes blown
Smell the reek off the drains
Dung standing on the street
The whole stench something trod in
And rolled in,
My new place.
Night's randy bawl coming on now
Toms, taking their testicles out walking
Evening swish of the herdsman's stick
Three holy ladies chaperoned to bed
And yes God is here:
His temple bells are calling.
STATUE
I am carving a statue
Age seated in her backyard
tearing feathers off a live fowl
I concentrate
Climb into her hands
Watch the red wart on her face rising
The rock ridge of her nose
Sharpen for the kill
Blood
but behind her eyes run
other tides coasts
This chisel sights follows
Here the tails whales are lashing the waters
They shall be my statue.
FINGERPRINTS
Evening bleeds red
Into the skin the pores of the sky
Night's head is bent towards the slow wash of the sea
Her feet moving over the gravel
The Channel bills the land
The tide turns a shingled hand over the
Blue chin and black stubble of the sand
The salt grass old thorny bushes
and sudden crimson flowers
of the dunes
Then damp scrub
Houses built here
Dark peat and kindle backed up
Driftwood burning acrid
spitting
In all our homes
The heavy animal sound of the ocean's rollers
smothers us.
If I press with my fingers in the dark
They shall leave no mark.
NO RAIN
(for Ahila)
Day sets
Again and again the sun spills her fury
The long blemished hands of the years
Wear their marks of caste blood belonging
Sit on in the silence
Feel the old friend breathe
Rising to greet the dried voices, the
Pictures framed in shadow gold dust
That will fall like snow
Night is sudden
The pavements swept clear of people
There is the stomach of the black to turn in
and dream that rain beats on the windowboards
on the brown stalks and
sand graves of
Three months withered flowers |