I too would have liked
to write about fog but
the Big Boys intervened,
told me to shut up:
they’d been there,
seen it,
done the poems,
had the T-shirts printed.
So here I sit
quietly watching
a pale sun melt
what could’ve been
my poem – all fourteen
glorious fucking lines of it.
Oh but don’t touch him. This you may do:
let the auricle trap the ghostly filaments
of his dreams; let malleus, incus and stapes
deliver them into the cochlea’s sanctum.
Don’t speak to him. But this you may do:
Let the intangible particles of his slumber
be warmed by keen turbinates, let them
drop anchor in the olfactory epithelium.
Stay! Do not move. Though this you may do:
wave by invisible sine wave, let the heave
of his night hunt pierce the cornea, traverse
the bulbus oculi, and enter the retina.
Do not presume further. This must suffice –
there are lines which shall not be crossed,
lands which uninitiated feet may not tread.
Time itself will stop for an old dog asleep.
Some days
a cotton wool tide laps
the windowsill,
drops to reveal
the green valley, grey
limestone peaks,
then billows up
to smother window, view
and the house.
Amid the creak of
the rafters, the chimney’s
tinny commotion
I persevere.
Now you see it –
now you don’t.
A compact black Zen priest,
he sits in the exact centre
of a perfectly green field.
In the early morning mist,
in the blistering noon heat,
in the fading colours of dusk.
Master of alert meditation.
His body is humming with
the mantra of swift death.
Such innocence. Such faith.
They are long gone.
Long gone from the now tame valley of the Saane.
In olden times
they were abroad here, fleeing from storms
and sheer starvation:
the wild blond-bearded men dragging baggage
of tattered womenfolk
and meagre, filthy pigs and children; desperate
for shelter and a home
in our inhospitable, narrow mountain valleys.
They’re just a rumour now,
lost in a legend. Only some autumn nights,
when storms rage
all around the comfortable farmhouse
and the sturdy stable,
we keep the lantern burning in the kitchen
and huddle close, hearing
the harsh barbaric voices, hammering fists
on double-bolted doors,
dogs whimpering, the desperate lowing
of the cattle as
the seven thousand Friesians stare at us
from empty sockets
on their endless aimless journey in the dark.
