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
…
v powerful
ReplyDeletereads 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
Thanks Kit, I could extend it!
ReplyDelete