THOUGH
LOVERS
BE LOST
A poem in six parts:
. . .
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.
2
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.
3
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.
4
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.
5
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.
6
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.
7
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.
