Circle Game Read Free

floor
    maroon green purple
brittle fronds and hard
petals
    It makes the sea
accessible
as I stretch out with these
convoluted gardens
at eyelevel,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â the sun
filtering down through the windows
of this housetop aquarium
    and in the green halflight
I drift down past the
marginal orchards branched
colourful
    feathered
               and overfilled
with giving
    into the long iceage
    Â Â Â Â Â Â the pressures
    of winter
    the snowfall endless in the sea
    ii
    But not
rocked not cradled not forgetful:
there are no
sunken kingdoms no
edens in the waste ocean
    among the shattered
memories of battles
    only the cold jewelled symmetries
of the voracious eater
the voracious eaten
    the dream creatures that glow
sulphurous in darkness or
flash like neurons
are blind, insatiable, all
gaping jaws and famine
    and here
to be aware is
to know total
    Â Â Â Â Â fear.
    iii
    Gunshot
    outside the window
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â nine o’clock
    Somehow I sit up
breaking the membrane of water
    Emerged and
beached on the carpet
breathing this air once more
I stare
    at the sackful of scales and
    my fisted
hand
    Â Â Â Â my skin
holds
    remnants of ancestors
    fossil bones and fangs
    acknowledgement:
    I was born
    Â Â Â Â dredged up from time
and harboured
the night these wars began.

Playing Cards
    In this room we are always in:
    tired with all the other games
we get out cards and play
at double
solitaire:
the only thing
either of us might win.
    There’s a queen.
Or rather two of them
joined at the waist, or near
(you can’t tell where
exactly, under the thick
brocaded costume)
or is it one
woman with two heads?
Each has hair drawn back
made of lines
and a half-smile that is part
of a set pattern.
    Each holds a golden flower
with five petals, ordered
and unwilting.
    Outside there is a lake
or this time is it a street
    There’s a king (or kings)
too, with a beard to show
he is a man
and something abstract
in his hand
that might be either
a sceptre or a sword.
    The colour doesn’t matter,
black or red:
there’s little choice between
heart and spade.
The important things
are the flowers and the swords;
but they stay flat,
are cardboard.
    Outside there is a truck
or possibly a motorboat
    and in this lighted room
across the table, we
confront each other
    wearing no costumes.
    You have nothing
that serves the function of a sceptre
and I have
certainly
no flowers.

Man with a Hook
    This man I
know (about a year
ago, when he was young) blew
his arm off in the cellar
making bombs
to explode the robins
on the lawns.
    Now he has a hook
instead of hand;
    It is an ingenious
gadget, and comes
with various attachments:
knife for meals,
pink plastic hand for everyday
handshakes, black stuffed leather glove
for social functions.
    I attempt pity
    But, Look, he says, glittering
like a fanatic, My hook
is an improvement:
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â and to demonstrate
lowers his arm: the steel questionmark turns and opens,
and from his burning
cigarette
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â unscrews
and holds the delicate
ash: a thing
precise
my clumsy tenderskinned pink fingers
couldn’t do.

The City Planners
    Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
    But though the driveways neatly
sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things;
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a