Robert Verdon, #27, Halcyon

but I am sick of fairy tales

the child dead in the womb

all life pointless

as a stray bird

the fairy tale is familiar

once upon a time

on a far telegraph pole

a dirty pigeon alighted

and no one noticed

in the beginning was a waterfall

a Fra Angelico dove caught like a sunbeam

in its spindrift

down by the brutalist hypermart

under brown clouds which moulted snow

bent like hens in a meadow

a-flutter like fish shedding scales

the wordless wind ringing like a cash register:

halcyon day, halcyon child

grey as a grave-wall

it

the golden idea

escaped death

in choking leaves that pile

round a child’s

casket destined

to echo

like a burnt-out city

led by a sparrow,

soaring over grave-walls and dead oceans on cyborg wings

led by the preserved brain of the weakest creature

per ardua ad astra

who said:

when I grow up, I will build a city,

unknown to tapestries and Hephaestan shields,

and thread my magnetic needle with a waterfall

of shimmering quicksilver

its simmering time will not be measured by the clock

or clepsydra or the age of ancient parents,

or the multitude of spider-webs in the noon-day sun,

on plates lubricated by magma

its lilac roads will run forever

it will be lifted

with the gold dove

on the blast of history

out of all flood

and fire and decay

the halcyon child,

never born,

never dies

but I am sick of fairy tales

the child, not, in the womb

all life without dimensions

like the stray bird

once upon a time

on a far telegraph pole

a dirty pigeon alights

and no one notices