Here melted the ice-age assassin’s
weapon leaving only
its glacier’s dross to point
the promontory’s finger of gritstone.
Here sea and shore grew impacted
like a sideways-on tooth,
the very rocks capricious, erratic.
I have lost all perspective.
Only the green sea’s heave could turn
these crosshatched cliffs to a plumb-line.
There is no telling how far down
the screaming gannets will dive.
The Roman signal station on the point
has seen the hordes coming.
Its fires are out. There is no
time for escape. Its rodent bones
are owl pellets, barbarian mice
gnawing at the ablative absolute.
Razorbills and guillemots in their dozens
have fallen dead out of the sky,
propped eyeless in rockpools.
I trace the clotheshorse folds
of their wings, hung out to dry.
Their breasts and wings are untouched.
Only their cause of death takes flight,
and the sewage outflow’s sunken capstan
gushing through scarves of loo-roll
steers our ship of fools
safely onto the rocks.
A group fans out on a shelf.
They are scattering ashes.
Sheen for sheen the brightness
missing from a dead auk’s eye
but all around me catches the waves’
green surge, is thrown upwards
with them, breaks on nothing
weapon leaving only
its glacier’s dross to point
the promontory’s finger of gritstone.
Here sea and shore grew impacted
like a sideways-on tooth,
the very rocks capricious, erratic.
I have lost all perspective.
Only the green sea’s heave could turn
these crosshatched cliffs to a plumb-line.
There is no telling how far down
the screaming gannets will dive.
The Roman signal station on the point
has seen the hordes coming.
Its fires are out. There is no
time for escape. Its rodent bones
are owl pellets, barbarian mice
gnawing at the ablative absolute.
Razorbills and guillemots in their dozens
have fallen dead out of the sky,
propped eyeless in rockpools.
I trace the clotheshorse folds
of their wings, hung out to dry.
Their breasts and wings are untouched.
Only their cause of death takes flight,
and the sewage outflow’s sunken capstan
gushing through scarves of loo-roll
steers our ship of fools
safely onto the rocks.
A group fans out on a shelf.
They are scattering ashes.
Sheen for sheen the brightness
missing from a dead auk’s eye
but all around me catches the waves’
green surge, is thrown upwards
with them, breaks on nothing
at all and scatters like ashes.
{Ends}
Little auk found here.
Great site and very enjoyable content... have added it to my RSS!Intelligent and picturesque! the poem also gave me much food for thought. Regards!
ReplyDeleteI like the poem. One thing. Do you (or does the persona) HAVE to say 'loo-roll'? Maybe it's just me, but that polite, high-pitched double vowel always sets my teeth on edge. What about 'bog-roll' or (if that's too landscapy) just 'toilet-roll'?
ReplyDeleteEm... bog-roll is bog-roll, and a toilet is never, ever the loo, and yet... it just came out as loo-roll. What are the sewage outflow gutters of East Yorkshire trying to tell me?
ReplyDeleteWell done wheatley, excellent spin, and in the spirit of Creation i find myself unable to resist rinsing it through my own lay-bore mind, in the art's hole as ow yay ow yay ooh yah play, in which highly specific soporific under-tow and lucid selkie tones lure the eye to peel back the pith of grammatically lit syntactical prepositions of clause and object arranged subjectively into one long rolling wave of play-away man posted hoary arl whorls spiralling owt...controlled response to immensley imaginative irish minds: the sidhe nor more mine than yours, ours on the other side of here and there...larkin 'bout wiv jazzers who comment for free, deposit upon the ridge and ranged topography, viewed all four cycles in one poetic seasonal vista in which all the gods rolled owt yiz wunt, lapping the over-loud lore of worreva use it wuz larh:
ReplyDelete~~~
Hear the assassin melt ice
weaponary left only aged
droll its glacier, the point
promontory’s stone grit surf
thundering roar the sea shore
heard, grew impacting sideways,
like a the very rocks’ tooth,
and the very rocks erratic
perspective lost.
Know the new green
sea only we see can
heave churning, hatched
in across plumb cliffs
this line telling there
turn far the gannet
screaming how to dive
screaming down to a well
at the original point
of a romantic signal
station the hordes who
sit on points do not
see.
Have the coming horde
out of the ordinance
for gravitas to fire
inscape their there out
where it is no escape,
four time boned dented
tow pallets of mice
barbarian wine gnawing
absolute.
Bill, the ablative
guillemot razor
in their frozen dozens
dead end sky fallen out
propped up in the pool
eyes that trace rocking
horse cloth, their wings,
folded out and hanging
too dry; untouched breast
and their wings touch
only the flight death
takes, the stone-age
cause flowed sunken into
fiefdom hushing hips
carved through rudder
Lugh steers, the ship
follying safely onto
rock fans group-love,
fawning fans scattering
ashen faced, bright
not from a dead EFC,
missing England fuax
cant screen eye, all
but bound to all lives
rounded by waves
breaking into a green
moss surging upwards,
thrown catch nothing
broke on them until
nothing at all is broken
England’s ashes scatter
like Desmond’s words
deserved Caoimhghin bold
aul kevin beautifully
found born here.