Though Lovers Be Lost

THOUGH LOVERS BE LOST

“Though lovers be lost,

love shall not;

and Death shall have no Dominion.”

Dylan Thomas

Dalí’s Clock

I have folded Dalí's clock,

draping time's dressing gown

over the foot of her bed.

An elephant with a cranefly's

spindly legs

stands on the bedside cabinet.

Is the human body

a chest of drawers

to be opened and closed

at will

and things removed?

On the operating table,

a sewing machine

and a bread knife

wait inside

a black umbrella

for their next

victim.

A hedgehog caught in the glare

of onrushing lights,

she has curled herself into a ball.

My words are wasted

movements:

lips, tongue, bared teeth.

Limp kites

with nothing to fill their paper sails,

they hang like abandoned bodies

on the old barbed wire

stretched between us.

A metallic sun

gashes harsh light.

The needles in her arm

throw an ever-plunging

sea of shadows:

bruised sunsets

on a purple horizon.

When I look at my watch:

time flies off my wrist

and flaps its hands

helplessly.

I taste the bitterness of bile,

squeezing each moment,

between finger and thumb,

rolling it about

like a breadcrumb

or a shred of label

stripped from an empty

bottle.

How long can I sit here,

staring her down

as she flourishes

then fades,

her eyelids closing

at day's end,

like flowers?

Daffodils gild

garden and hedgerow,

their yellow mouths

devouring April.

Sunshine so loud,

the hills and valleys

set ablaze.

Golden voices

raised in a floral

requiem.

In a distant ward,

an alarm bell rings.

White rabbit

with a syringe;

dark tunnel

down which

I must plunge;

bitter draught

I must drain

to change

my life

forever.

I wait for Dalí's giraffe

to burst into flame

and call me

with its voice

of fire.

I grasp

with fingers of gorse

at moon and stars.

Everything I touch

turns into gold.

Sleek

aureate plumage,

bright tiger's eye

of this yellowhammer

chipping at

his block of song.

When I lose it, whatever it is,

my fingers pick at seams,

tissues, skirts, shirts, jeans,

or strip a label from a bottle;

or they break bread, or

there are so many things I can do,

personal things.

On the table,

a vacant cereal bowl,

a silver teaspoon in a saucer,

an empty teacup

returning my round moon stare.

My hands terminate

in pointless needles.

They unpick stitches;

then try to knit them

back together again.

Building on Sand

Everywhere the afternoon

gropes steadily to night.

Some people have lit fires;

others read by candlelight.

Geese litter the river bank,

drifts of snow their whiteness,

stained with freshet mud;

or is it the black

of midnight's swift advance?

They walk on thin ice

at civilization's edge.

Around them,

the universe's clock

ticks slowly down.

Who forced that scream

through the needle's eye?

Gathering night,

the moon on the sea bed

magnified by water.

Inverted,

the big dipper,

hanging its question

from the sky's dark eye lid.

Ghosts of departed

constellations

walk the night.

Pale stars scythed

by moonlight

bob phosphorescent

flowers on the flood.

The flesh that bonds;

the bones that walk;

the shoulders and waist

on which I hang

my clothes.

Now they stand alone

beneath the moon

and listen at the water's edge

to the whispering trees.

They have caught the words

of snowflakes

strung at midnight

between the stars.

Moonlight is a liquor

running raw within them.

There are striations

in my heart, so deep,

a lizard could lie there,

unseen, and wait

for tomorrow's sun.

A knot of

sorrow in daylight's throat;

the heart a great stone

cast in placid water,

each ripple

knitted to its mate.

Timeless,

the worm at the apple's core

waiting for its world to end.

Seculae seculorum:

the centuries

rushing headlong.

Matins:

wide-eyed

this owl hooting

in the face of day.

Somewhere,

I remember

a table spread for two.

Breakfast.

An open door.

"Where are you going, dear?"

Something bright has fled the world.

The sun unfurls shadows.

The blood whirls stars

around the body.

"It has gone." she said. "The magic.

I no longer tremble at your touch."

You can drown now

in this liquid

silence.

Or you can rage against this slow snow

whitening the dark space

where yesterday

you placed your friend.

The silver birch wades

at dawn's bright edge.

Somewhere,

sunshine will break

a delphinium

into blossom.

Tight lips.

A blaze of anger.

A challenge spat

in the wind's face.

High-pitched

the rabbit's grief

in its silver snare.

The midnight moon

deep in a trance.

If only I could kick away

this death's head,

this sow's bladder.

Full moon

drifting

high in a cloudless sky.

After heavy rain

the house shrinks.

Its mandibles close.

A crocodile peace

descends from the jaws of heaven.

I no longer fit my skin.

Iguana spots itch.

Walls encircle me,

hemming me in.

The I Ching sloughs my name:

each lottery ticket,

a bullet.

None with my number.

Late last night I thought

I had grasped the mystery:

but when I awoke

I clasped only shadows and sand.

Monet at Giverny

his lily pond

a mirror shattering

shards of clouds

flames beneath the lilies

fractured fish

the executioner stripes evening

a cross the sacrificed horizon

in blood we were born

in earth will we rest

our flesh turned to bread

empurpled this imperial wine

streaming with day's death

these troubled waters

green footprints the lily pads

a halo

this drowned man's beard

liquescent

like the gods

he dreamed

he walked dry over water

flowering goldfish

this thin line of cloud

maples flash ruby thoughts

ripples flowing outwards

as heavy as a stone at Stonehenge

this altar tumbling downwards

through a liquid sky

wisteria and his curly blue locks

Narcissus clad in an abyss of lilies

imperial his reflection and perilous

slowly he slides to sleep

merging into his imaged dream

a vaulted cathedral

his earthbound ribs

the blood space immaculate

night and day and sun and clouds

leapfrogging over water

something survives

sepia tints

dreaming on and on

exotic this sudden movement

Carassius auratus flowering

Clos Normand and the Grande Allée

closed to him now

folded his flowers

their petals tight at his nightfall

dark their colours

mourning for his mornings of light

fled far from him now

can we soften this sunstroke of brightness

le roi soleil threatening to blind us?

rey de oros

the sun glow braiding itself

an aureate palette

a susurration of leaves

the lady of the lake

holding out her hand

handing him an apple

l'offrande du coeur

a scarlet heart of flame

monochromatic this island

brown earth in a crimson lake

the world reborn in tulips

especially

when the dying sun

molten fire spreading

a limpid light

sky brimming over into pond

trapped in low clouds

a slash of colour here

and there a tree

a fountain of gold

the sun an apple

blushing

on a setting branch

silver-white the money plant

moonlight between fine-tuned fingers

its rattle of seeds

blunt the moon's bite

raked from water

gaunt its gesture

matched ripples

face to face

with the moon

upside down these clouds

bright in their winter boats

the night wind blows

clean dry bones

across the sky

fish aloft like birds

skimming wet sunshine

spring's first swallow

rising from the depths

to snatch a golden note

quivering in the air

thunder raises dark ripples

lightning a forked tongue

insinuated into paradise

an apple tossed away

caution thrown over the shoulder

as sharp as salt

winds of change

that first bite

too bitter to remember

timeless this tide

this ebb and flow

oh great pond-serpent

biting yourself

forever

House of Dreams

The clematis unfolds

bruised purple on the porch.

Jazz piano:

beneath the black

and white hammers

of ivory keys,

old wounds crack open.

A flight of feathered notes:

this dead heart

sacrificed on the lawn.

I wash fresh stains

from my fingers

with the garden hose.

The evening stretches out

a shadow hand.

I feel my heart

squeezed like an orange

by long, dark fingers.

Somewhere,

the whitethroat

trills its guillotine

of vertical notes.

I flap my hands in the air.

They float there,

white butterflies,

amputated

in sunlight's

net.

The light fails

fast, I hold up

shorn stumps

of flowers

for the night

wind to heal.

The pale magnolia

bleeds into summer:

white petals

melting on the lawn

like snow.

Sparrow sings

an afterlife

built of spring

branches.

Pressed between

the pages of my dream:

a lingering scent;

the death of last

year's delphiniums;

the tall tree

toppled in the yard;

a crab apple flower;

a shard of grass

as brittle

as a bitter tongue

at winter's

end.

A leaf lies down

in a broken

corner

and fills me

with a sudden silence.

I revise

our scrimshaw history

carving fresh tales

in the ivory

of new found bones.

A vixen

hunts for my heart.

She digs deep

at midnight

unearthing

the dry teeth

you buried

from my borrowed

head.

Suite Ste. Luce

Black backed gulls,

nature's alarm clocks,

waking the seaside

with their glaucous rattle.

High tide? Low tide?

We have drifted on our life raft

far from the grasping hands

of the city clocks.

Gulls dine on the beach.

Day's rhythm all at sea.

6 am? 7 am? 8 am?

What do they mean?

The planet's slow revolution?

This sun arc sketched in its stretch of sky?

Salt spray combing seaside fingers

through a young girl's hair.

A man in a red boat, fishing.

Bare toes grip

damp wrinkled sand.

Worms have written

runes in their arcane

wriggling script.

What do they tell us,

these secret messages?

Sunburnt now,

the bare beach itches

like tanned leather,

like salt on a fish skin

nailed drying to a frame.

The salt air drives its freshness,

needles knitting through my chest.

Slowed heartbeat of the dormant beach,

the tide's blood flowing,

in and out,

inflating, deflating

the beach's sandy lung.

Early morning mist:

a shadow heron

clacks its beak

at a ring of mobbing gulls.

When the mist clears,

heron draws

his neck into a bow

and fires

the arrow of his beak

into a fish.

The gulls run wild,

clawing up the sky

on a ladder of sound.

Seagull:

a coat-hanger, hanging from

a blue sky-rail,

white wings braced

against the flow of air.

Herring gulls hovering,

like doves

round the old man's head;

a halo

of clacking red-ringed beaks

livid against the sky.

Brazen voiced,

these peace doves,

mewling for their daily bread.

Black

cormorants pinning

their wings to dry

on the wind's

rough cross-beams.

The dead crab,

alive an eye blink ago:

body exit left

(with the black backed gull)

legs exeunt right

(with herring gull attendants).

Crowd scene:

a chorus

of crows-in-waiting.

The beach compacts

smaller and smaller.

The tide jostles

sand pipers

into a dwindling world:

this shrinking pocket

handkerchief

of sand.

Happy the kite's face

with its child

dangling far below.

Kite bounces up and down

on a tight-rope of air.

Below it, the child

walking the beach,

nose to the wind,

obedience on a leash.

The kite wags

its long, bright tail.

When the mist thickens,

it closes a window in the sky.

The church on the headland

steps plainly into sight,

and fades again.

The old man wraps himself

in a cloak of rain.

Suddenly, the sun

drapes itself,

like a golden sou'wester,

over his head.

Summer lies abandoned

under rain-soaked umbrellas.

Red bucket, bright blue spade.

Childhood,

cast like a pair of sandals

on this cold, damp sand.

Though Lovers Be Lost

Once,

you were a river,

flowing silver

beneath the moon.

High tide

in the salt marsh:

your body filled

with shadow and light.

I dipped my hands

in dappled water.

Eagle with a shattered wing,

my heart batters

against bars of white bone.

Or am I a killdeer,

trailing token promises

for some broken god to snatch?

Gulls float downstream.

They ride a nightmare

of half-remembered ice.

Trapped in my cage of flame,

I return my feathers to the sun.

Awake,

I lie anchored by

what pale visions of moths

fluttering on the horizon?

A sail

flaps canvas wings

speeding my way

backwards into night.

A feathered shadow

ghosts fingers over my face.

Butterflies

stutter against

shuttered windows.

Strange hands

reach out to grasp me

and again I am afraid

of the dark.

When was my future

carved in each sliver of bone?

A scratch of the iron pen

jerks the puppet's limbs

into prophesied motion.

Who mapped in runes

the ruins of this heart?

Above me,

a rag tag patch of cloud

drifts here and there,

shifting constantly;

like this body of water

in which I sail.

Eye of the peacock,

can you touch

what I see when

I close my eyelids

down for the night?

Black rock of the midnight

sun, rolled up the sky,

won't you release me

from my daily bondage?

Last night, the planet

quivered beneath my body

and I felt each footfall

of a transient god.

Thunder knocks

on the door of my dream

and I am afraid.

I no longer know my way

through night's dark wood.

Who bore her body

out in that rush of rain?

Could she still sense

the sigh of wet grass?

Could she still hear

the damp leaves whisper?

A finger of fog

trickles

a forgotten face

down the window.

The power of water,

of fire, of frost;

of wind, rain, snow,

and ice.

Incoming tide:

stark waters.

Rising.