Snaps its twig-tether — mounts — Free Dream-yanked up into vacuum Wings snickering. Another, in a shatter, hurls dodging away up. They career through tree-mazes Nearly uncontrollable love-weights. And now Temple-dancers, possessed, and steered By solemn powers Through insane stately convulsions. Porpoises Of dove-lust and blood-splendour With arcs And plungings, and spray-slow explosions. Now violently…
Sweeney Astray is a version of the Middle Irish tale, Buile Shuibhne, in which Sweeney, king of a small kingdom in north east Ulster, is cursed by a saint and transformed into a bird at the Battle of Moira. The bulk of the story is concerned with his subse quent life of frightened wandering and…
Although I am taking courses in the language of children, penguin socialization and creative writing, now, in my dotage — dotage, what a striking word — I find myself betrayed — betrayed — by what? Betrayed! That’s what it means to be human. First acceptance, then rage, then reiteration. Once dinner was always exactly at…
That plastic Buddha jars out a Karate screech Before the soft words with their spores The cosmetic breath of the gravestone Death invented the phone it looks like the altar of death Do not worship the telephone It drags its worshippers into actual graves With a variety of devices, through a variety of disguised voices…
We’d met by chance. Once. Late at night. Me, off the ship Pireus harbour, banging loudly on your door for entry, shouting in the dark: Fo Fo! Fo Fo! You in there not answering. Busy? A friend? Fo Fo! Open up. It’s only me Fo Fo. Finally the door opens a measure on its chain…
Trunk, branches, leaves — sere and blemished — I am not what I wanted. Dignity is a hindrance. I am weighted with notions and unbalanced by fear. Night sweats, vapours. Why am I frightened alone on the street? Nothing’s here — a pair of brown squirrels — a few fallen apples — These rococco grimaces,…
Stop looking like a purse. How could a purse squeeze under the rickety door and sit, full of satisfaction, in a man’s house? You clamber towards me on your four corners— right hand, left foot, left hand, right foot. I love you for being a toad, for crawling like a Japanese wrestler and for not…
He’s everywhere here; not as he looks in his photos but in his mind, habits — that elegantly refined, withdrawn decadence. I glimpse or pass him everywhere: at night walking quickly down a back alley close to the walls’ shadow, afternoons in a teahouse alone glancing over the edge of his foreign newspaper, the rims…
We drive up the winding road lined by graying sycamores, a blessing in the summer heat. At a small table, between the stones, a man and two women nibble crustless sandwiches, pour from a silver pot of tea. They have their arrangements: dour frigidity of gladioli, faded dresses, a musty gentility. We have brought a…
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