Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Robert Verdon, #386, Prometheus inbound

fossicking in the sunbeam

for dust and Jesus;

flakes of gold, flecks

yellow as bilirubin, as citronella;

banjo notes crackle and linger

mosquito-whining,

climbing where canary flocks of old precious

moments settle;

halfway between Devon and heaven

and an eternity of wasted mettle,

up and down at the same time,

spinning round the yolk at the centre

and what shall we do

with the drunken

silver dripping from the moon

like elephant tears or

a comet-tail cummerbund;

and what shall we do

with the pierrot night a star cornet

as we rankle in death

like the fungus on the dead shark

at the bottom of the sea?

the horizon is an Odyssean scar:

crave for meaning, start a

religion in a teaspoon

the sunset wears a sheriff’s badge

and hauls away the cold light

varnishing awareness

and letting us wriggle

like wriggler babies on a fish-hook

waiting like worms for the mouth

of throat-bone teeth

slippery dip of stunday

stirring the churchman in

his black cassock

fingering his blue chin with birdlike

curiosity

killing his sermon’s holy cleverness

as a rising salmon he craves for the tumultuous beard of meaning

and hauls away the cold dolorous night

the glory of God

shimmers in the boil-skin paper

like a ‘60s torch bulb one

we used to play with in more

innocent times of moon-walks which we thought

emblematised progress

beauty is plenitude but no panacea, a wine-dark cable

along which motes and beams dance

modes and beads, abacuses

scalded by history,

the ark sails off the edge to heaven here

along the straight path with Jacob and his dragons

who has his wings now, Mig-21 of Argonaut China,

trampling over the brief sewer of human

futility

Sing! Sing! Sing!

morass of wineglasses

pure and still as the Cloaca Maxima

breathing pig-skeins of lopped Appalachian hill-mist

and green Venus in the morning

catching a vein to the heart of the world

here is the golden I-beam along which

the angels descend

the souls ascend

the dead embrace the dead

alive again in all the balm and progress of the world

no desecration of the stones

in these forgotten lanes

found again

like lonechild streets

the star, the star, the star


twinkle, twinkle, like a diamond


spent

I light the taper, a recording angel

— fire is the little man’s private army —

as the mosquitoes

sing and burn

2 comments:

  1. v powerful
    reads like the beginning of an epic
    great ways in and out

    fossicking the sunbeam
    that's where I want to be
    on a blanket with my ba -- by ---ee

    ReplyDelete

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