Embrace Me II - by
sometimes what I’d love
is to put an end to poems
sometimes what I’d love
is to put an end to poems
Great smouldering barque, your figurehead sings
into the dark, the death song of queens, of kings,
over sea birds that circle like faint rings of smoke
They took our birlinn, stem and stern-postsHigh as a Venetian gondola’s, and up-turned it.Every tide in the bladder-wracked sea-tongue its keel Bridged, swam the eel-currentRaces that tracked South and NorthInto and out of the Atlantic. And theyDocked our tongues, every man’s that daredGive out a taste of his father’s banter,Effortless sound-shapes an islander’s born to. […]
Now over the map that took ten million years
/ Of rain and sun to crust like boiler-slag,
/ The lines of fighting men…
He went directly and unhurried and scanned the smattering.
/
/ Wingbit snagskin throatlap furthew clawlid eyespit oarfire.
/ Oarfire? No, that’s just dreams talking.
In a dream / I saw a ticket booth / at a bus stop where / birds’ feathers were sold…
Times
/ In the quiet and dusk of
/ Night, I have wakened
/ Inside a dream of neutral languor,
/ Confessing (with a smile) that my years
/ Point…
Last night I dreamt of Mama’s house
/ But mama wasn’t there
/ Still her essence wafted through
/ As carried on the air
/ Her windows they…
Today I dreamed all day. I dreamed
/ I drove round Bukhara. I dreamed
/ dizzy minarets, I dreamed
/ rosegardens skimmed my shoes.
/ I dreamed I…
The pack of wild colts went smoking by,
/ muzzles ferocious, hides hirsute,
/ manes swept out stiff, bold, like thick staves;
/ they came through…
When the call of the hudud,
/ Echoes through the palm fronds
/ Carrying in their mists,
/ Visions, memories:
/
/ Caravans of high spirited steads,
/ Crisscrossing the endless…
Last night I dreamt in Chinese.
/ Eating Yankee shredded wheat
/ I said it in English
/ To a friend who answered
/ In monosyllables:
/ All of which…
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