Compass

Stubs

1

Stubs

The axle will not break,
formed from our stubbornness,
as real until we die
as any round of stars
(set them up as you may)
night after day,
after night after day.

Stub a toe; define yourself as pain.
Stub out a cigarette (I used to long ago.)
Stub. Stub. Stub and press. Press the last glow
out of the furthest West,

again.

Exist a stub of former self and say,
'I'm fine. Leave me alone.'

The edged breeze blows a page of my Yeats
over from the sedge to the rose.
Two wings of pages flap, though
the book flies nowhere
(but straight to the heart).

.................

2

Fill my Cup

My mind is full of the rhythms of famous lines
(so it was neither birds nor shrouds I heard
whispering of imperfection's ragged home)
the long waves and the ribbed cross-wakes
the wind-frost of their breath on black water
and their riding out with the scythed cars
to the horizon, peripheral, circling -
__________________________the slip
between cup and lip, the clumsy
fall of hemlock goblet, clang,
tintinnabulation ringing into stillness -
patio flagstones under sun-jacked leaves
so virid singing,
that blue might be a deep
scattering of welcome for the blinding,
in an afternoon poised to sigh,
____________________I close my wounded eyes,
dozing in hiss and whine of being alive,
incoherence trundling through
barrows of a somnolence.

.....................

3

'Should Lanterns Shine....'

In a corner of the car park
under sun-candled maples, winged,
golden beings of light are dancing.

Enraptured, I blunder towards them
into deep shadow,
(Faugh!) to find myself in a cloud of midges.

.................