The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village Under the Sea Read Free Page B

side
of the world, bright satellite
to this fixed earth, my counterweight,
my twin, my necessary ghost.

Old, New, Borrowed, Blue
    The day we met. This unexpected envelope.
My San Francisco Mime Troupe T-shirt which you wore
     to potter in the flat, whose sleeve-trim matched
Your eyes.
    That sleepless night.
This sleepless night.
The face I’ll wear to shake your hand and wish you well.
The way I’ll feel when I do.
    “Paper Moon.” Our song.
“Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”
My
Ella Live at Montreux
which I hope he plays one night
     by accident and makes you cry.
This honky-tonk parade.

Dry Leaves
    Horace
Odes 1:25
    Young men stumbling home from parties
don’t throw pebbles at your windows now.
You sleep till dawn and that busy door
of yours now hugs the step. No one
    asks how you can sleep when they are dying
all night long for love of you. Times change.
You’re old and no one gives a damn.
You’ll weep at all the men who have deserted you
    as gales from Thrace roar down
that empty lane on moonless nights.
The hot lust which sends mares mad
will flare around your ulcerated heart
    and you’ll cry out at the young men
who love the ivy and the dark green myrtle
but who throw the dry leaves
into the East wind, that bride of winter.

Poets
    They are seldom racing cyclists
and are largely innocent
    of the workings of the petrol engine.
They are, however, comfortable in taxis.
    They are abroad in the small hours
and will seek out the caustic blue liqueur
    that you purchased in Majorca
for comedy reasons, and will rise late.
    There are whole streets
where their work is not known.
    Spectacles,
a father in the army
    and the distance to the next farm
made them solitary.
    Their pets
were given elaborate funerals.
    No one understands them.
They are inordinately proud of this
    for they have shunned
the brotherhood
    of the post room
and the hair salon.
    They write a word
and then another word.
    It is usually wrong.
Their crossings out are legion.
    They sit in trains
and pass through cotton towns at nightfall,
    conscious of the shape of cranes
on the violet sky
    and how the poured creamer
pleats and billows in their coffee,
    and how both of these things
whisper, softly, “Death.”

Silver Nitrate
    The dead seem so authentic, posing beside
traction engines in their practical jackets
with their folk-songs and their knowledge of mushrooms.
But they were just like us, vain about the trim
of their moustaches and their Sunday shoes.
They, too, had the dream about the dark house.
    Belonging is for horses. Home was always
in the past. The Labrador, baked puddings,
the long table in the orchard at Easter.
    Meanwhile, we’re stuck on this side
of the glass, watching dead leaves turn
slowly in the abandoned paddling pool,
remembering that winter when the snow
was so thick we built a cave
of blue light in the center of the lawn.

The Facts
    In truth, the dwarf worked in a betting shop
and wore an orthopedic shoe.
The ugly sisters were neither sisters nor, indeed, women,
nor were they remotely interested in the prince.
The plain librarian looked better with her glasses on,
the bomb had not been fitted with a clock
and when the requisitioned farm-truck shot
the as-yet-uncompleted bridge it nose-dived
into the ravine and blew up
killing both the handsome sheriff
and his lovable but stupid sidekick, Bob.

The House of the Four Winds
    A decimation of the novel by John Buchan
PROLOGUE
    Philosophic historian,
chronicle that bleak night,
the corncrakes, the explosives,
the exact condition of the owl.
Deliver judgement on the breakdown
of the soul of the general manager
and linger over that summer
in the penitentiary. Alison,
I have not forgotten the ginger
cigarettes and Maurice’s face
in repose. I was sick.
You civilised that solitude.
Fashion our private landscape
out of the world’s howl.
Write me a cure in poetry.
Go far. Go too far.
Find that glimpse.
CHAPTER 1—HEAT
    The inn at Beechen.
Hot rye-cheese and onion bread,
a