Skip to main content
Read page text
page 122
116 Before clash of clouds, thunder, Downpour, darkening, Quickly a robin dips To the table strewn with seed, No vegetarian, snatches One protein mite from pheasants That staidly can feast, supreme; At risk, because fearless, innately Knows all he needs to know For so little a life’s fulfilment. This morning with ultramarine To scarlet the eastern sky warned Shepherds who long have lain Where hopes and fears are void, Their weather-wise ways defunct. Shifted by sundown, reversed Against black above, matt greys, Wisps of bleakness, brightness More amply those lucent hues fade Foretelling confusion to come. Hamburger
page 123
Hamburger Late Love Of what use to the fierce art failing Were monkey glands transplanted? If passion it was he summoned First love’s it must be, subsumed, Or else the last, the larger and lighter, For counterpoise more potent Than silly sublimation, Nature again still – This urgent pull towards death, For counterpoint that silence. ‘Mere’ fondness? Immanent as the sun unseen, The blunderer’s gifts unsexed. A vapour now, no thrust, Risen to form a cloud That shines and glooms, drifting, All a life’s waters in it, to dissolve: Glacier, then torrent, then tide, Then cisterned, puddled, bogged down; Unravel, too, the doom Once a masked ball could knot, Here – a mock-springtime come – Scarlet mask the cock pheasant puts on. 117

Page Text

View plaintext

116

Before clash of clouds, thunder, Downpour, darkening, Quickly a robin dips To the table strewn with seed, No vegetarian, snatches One protein mite from pheasants That staidly can feast, supreme; At risk, because fearless, innately Knows all he needs to know For so little a life’s fulfilment.

This morning with ultramarine To scarlet the eastern sky warned Shepherds who long have lain Where hopes and fears are void, Their weather-wise ways defunct. Shifted by sundown, reversed Against black above, matt greys, Wisps of bleakness, brightness More amply those lucent hues fade Foretelling confusion to come.

Hamburger

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content