Collected Poems in English and French Read Free Page A

tangerine the harpy is past caring
    the condor likewise in his mangy boa
    they stare out across monkey-hill the elephants
    Ireland
    the light creeps down their old home canyon
    sucks me aloof to that old reliable
    the burning btm of George the drill
    ah across the way a adder
    broaches her rat
    white as snow
    in her dazzling oven strom of peristalsis
    limae labor

    ah father father that art in heaven

    I find me taking the Crystal Palace
    for the Blessed Isles from Primrose Hill
    alas I must be that kind of person
    hence in Ken Wood who shall find me
    my breath held in the midst of thickets
    none but the most quarried lovers

    I surprise me moved by the many a funnel hinged
    for the obeisance to Tower Bridge
    the viper's curtsy to and from the City
    till in the dusk a lighter
    blind with pride
    tosses aside the scarf of the bascules
    then in the grey hold of the ambulance
    throbbing on the brink ebb of sighs
    then I hug me below among the canaille
    until a guttersnipe blast his cernèd eyes
    demanding 'ave I done with the Mirror
    I stump off in a fearful rage under Married Men's Quarters
    Bloody Tower
    and afar off at all speed screw me up Wren's giant bully
    and curse the day caged panting on the platform
    under the flaring urn
    I was not born Defoe

    but in Ken Wood
    who shall find me

    my brother the fly
    the common housefly
    sidling out of darkness into light
    fastens on his place in the sun
    whets his six legs
    revels in his planes his poisers
    it is the autumn of his life
    he could not serve typhoid and mammon

Serena II
    this clonic earth

    see-saw she is blurred in sleep
    she is fat half dead the rest is free-wheeling
    part the black shag the pelt
    is ashen woad
    snarl and howl in the wood wake all the birds
    hound the harlots out of the ferns
    this damfool twilight threshing in the brake
    bleating to be bloodied
    this crapulent hush
    tear its heart out

    in her dreams she trembles again
    way back in the dark old days panting
    in the claws of the Pins in the stress of her hour
    the bag writhes she thinks she is dying
    the light fails it is time to lie down
    Clew Bay vat of xanthic flowers
    Croagh Patrick waned Hindu to spite a pilgrim
    she is ready she has lain down above all the islands of glory
    straining now this Sabbath evening of garlands
    with a yo-heave-ho of able-bodied swans
    out from the doomed land their reefs of tresses
    in a hag she drops her young
    the whales in Blacksod Bay are dancing
    the asphodels come running the flags after
    she thinks she is dying she is ashamed

    she took me up on to a watershed
    whence like the rubrics of a childhood
    behold Meath shining through a chink in the hills
    posses of larches there is no going back on
    a rout of tracks and streams fleeing to the sea
    kindergartens of steeples and then the harbour
    like a woman making to cover her breasts
    and left me

    with whatever trust of panic we went out
    with so much shall we return
    there shall be no loss of panic between a man and his dog
    bitch though he be

    sodden packet of Churchman
    muzzling the cairn
    it is worse than dream
    the light randy slut can't be easy
    this clonic earth
    all these phantoms shuddering out of focus
    it is useless to close the eyes
    all the chords of the earth broken like a woman pianist's
    the toads abroad again on their rounds
    sidling up to their snares
    the fairy-tales of Meath ended
    so say your prayers now and go to bed
    your prayers before the lamps start to sing behind the larches
    here at these knees of stone
    then to bye-bye on the bones

Serena III
    fix this pothook of beauty on this palette
    you never know it might be final

    or leave her she is paradise and then
    plush hymens on your eyeballs

    or on Butt Bridge blush for shame
    the mixed declension of those mammae
    cock up thy moon thine and thine only
    up up up to the star of evening
    swoon upon the arch-gasometer
    on Misery Hill brand-new carnation
    swoon upon the little purple
    house of prayer
    something heart of Mary
    the Bull and