vapor trails of the last

destroyers in dream:

I have seen the grey

underside of the moon

creep closer to earth ...

The Plain of Adoration

from the Irish, 11th century

Here was raised

a high idol of cruel fights:

the Cromm Cruaich –

the King Idol of Erin.

He was their Moloch,

this withered hump of mists,

hulking over every path,

refusing the eternal kingdom.

In a circle stood

four times three idols of stone:

to bitterly enslave his people,

the pivot figure was of gold.

In dark November,

when the two worlds near each other,

he glittered among his subjects,

blood-crusted, insatiable.

To him, without glory,

would they sacrifice their first-born;

with wailing and danger

pouring fresh blood for the Stooped One.

Under his shadow

they cried and mutilated their bodies;

from this worship of dolour

it is called the Plain of Adoration.

Well born Gaels lay prostrate

before his crooked shape until

gross and glittering as a cinema organ

he sank back into his earth.

The rifled honeycomb

of the high-rise hotel

where a wind tunnel moans.

While camouflaged troops

ransack the Falls, race

through huddled streets,

we lie awake, the wide

window washed with rain,

your oval face, and tide

of yellow hair luminous

as you turn to me again

seeking refuge as the

cave of night blooms

with fresh explosions.

All night spider webs

of nothing. Helpless

to help that helplessness.

Condemned to tread that

treadmill of bitterness.

Distended, drowning fish,

frogs with lions’ jaws.

A woman breasted butterfly

copulates with a dying bat.

A pomegranate bursts slowly

between her ladyship’s legs.

Her young peep out

with bared teeth:

the eggs of hell

fertilizing the abyss.

Shy skyscrapers incline

together like stilts.

Grain elevators melt.

Cities subside as liners

leave by themselves

all radios playing.

A friendly hand places

a warm bomb under

the community centre

where the last evacuees

are trying a hymn.

Still singing, they

part for limbo, still

trailing their blankets ...

Permit the little -

A land I did not seek

to enter. Pure terror.

Ice floes sail past

grandly as battleships.

Blue gashed arctic distances

ache the retina &

the silence grows to

a sparkle of starlight

like sharpened knives.

Lift up your telescope,

old colonel, and learn

to lurch with the penguins!

In the final place

a solitary being begins

its slow dance ...

Ratonnade

Godoi, godoi, godoi!

Our city bums & so did Troy,

Finic, Finic, marshbirds cry

As bricks assemble a new toy.

Godoi, etc.

Humble mousewives crouch in caves,

Monster rats lash their tails,

Cheese grows scarce in Kingdom Come,

Rodents leap to sound of drum.

Godoi, etc.

Civilization slips & slides when

Death sails past with ballroom glide:

Tangomaster of the skulls whose

Harvest lies in griefs & rues.

Godoi, etc.

On small hillsides darkens fire,

Wheel goes up, forgetting tyre,

Grudgery holds its winter court,

Smash and smithereens to report.

Godoi, etc.

Against such horrors hold a cry,

Sweetness mothers us to die,

Nicens digs its garden patch,

Silence lifts a silver latch.

Godoi, etc.

Mingle musk love-birds say,

Honey-hiving all the day,

Ears & lips & private parts,

Muffled as the sound of carts.

Godoi, etc.

Moral is of worsens hours,

Cripple twisting only flowers,

One arm lost, one leg found,

Sad men fall on common ground.

Godoi!