Compass

A Good Talking To

The sun burns my ears
as though it had been speaking of me
to avatars slow strolling
far over mythical fields
of a past-rhapsodic.

Now it thrums to fill with sleepy ease
hollow beings of suffering,

to plunge deep beneath sky-roots,
and never mind the dreams
that strain you in their rakes
and beach you once more at the days
of her leaving
the concatenation of a corridor
of doors closing.

How long have you sat like a clod,
winched slowly out of inner dark
by the pigeons long haulage

(the Chapter-house of pigeons
open now for sooth-soothing):

"Another two should see him through.
One, two. Move, move."

when there before you
on each thorn twig
between the wicked lances
                                                  (to unsight straight
or mockingly replay through widening horns
the Bakelite record of a mourning morning)

such incipience of buds?