Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Kit Kelen #915b - long gloss in the riddling quality of others (after Les Murray's 'The Gods')


        915
        b
          long gloss in the riddling quality of others

after Les Murray's 'The Gods'

who are they, the ones we worship,
take for types, exemplary or otherwise?

I am a fox
you think there's a typical one of me, but it's just me, is it?

I'm the fox in question
smell what's all around me
leave my own mark saying

I went for a slide on some gravel
and looked up then questioning, and the question
I asked was - 'am I just playing?'
there was a human there I asked

the fact that the human wanted me dead
brought me into its imagination
and that's the place you get a soul
at least I got one next

now here's another scene we've got to
the way you dream or on a screen
who am I after all?
anyway we're there

it's a gully of the kind where you might look out for
just for for instance some chicken dinner

that's me looking out
and the soul I've been given
it has a life of its own

it sits up inside and because of that
this 'I' is speaking with you now
which is to say I am

and just then, so as not to be seen, so as not be heard
(humans, remember)

I stop dead still
that's to survive, to not be a target
it's by this means I am in a moment

moment is a kind of basking for the soul

and in that reverie
I can smell what's in the shadows
I can hear honey working up in the trees
in other words the finding of things is not how you could ever expect
because one thing is with another
because another leads there

you're not
but still I can try to make you understand

reverie leads to romance
there are other foxes, I won't say by name
(we don't have them anyway)

but trust me there's another fox,
attracting this one me, I'm with and we're quick
it's 'making love', do you say?
more nose than anything

and let me tell you now how any single smell has its own little history
a first whiff shatters into time, won't come back from there
but you do remember
the way you think of it is as if your skin were something you could think
as if that first sniff of the thing were settled with you, were yours
and light as your own fur
something you have with you I mean

it's night now and the humans have torches to find us
come down the gully with their awkward careful motion,
they are hunting for us with four-legs just like them
and closer and closer, the dog smells of gunshot
comes in a circle around me

that smell makes me sick, waves of it come over me
I am where the dog could see and so I make myself quite still
it's the ears alert that turn to point faster than a little bird

though I am proud
in order to live, I must play now at not living
at not existing at all
there's only my heartbeat any creature has
in other respects I'm not there
at least this is what I attempt
I have to live this tactic

have to be ambiguous
the way things are in words and dreams
spring is many
is season is verb made noun
but cannot pounce
or possibly the source is bung
but that is for example

I didn't get away with being otherwise than
or just myself invisible

I mean that they could smell me
or else it was something like seeing
and all that came from that was
I was already known
the way you know your hands
to use, hold and obey
or colours
we can call them

these are gods in the machine
we are


3 comments:

  1. odd indentation quite unintended

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh this is superb! I read this poem yesterday and it is ideally and beautifully telescoped but then the wrinkling skin balloons of interest occur in the right places. Nice one Kit

    ReplyDelete

  3. the fox
    smells smoke
    and starts to run

    ReplyDelete

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