(in memoriam R.S. Thomas, 1913-2000)
Beam-scorched under the equinox, bones
laid end to end and directing stragglers
to what? Some quarrel come too late for
retreat. Some sudden battery at the
loud oasis, humans mocked as gourd-
heads, pumpkin-hearts.
Earlier than the hunt, much earlier than
the raid, hunger with its leonine growl,
the rave of crows tossed upward like a
hatching net. Moon and star had stuck
together, holding against a third, that
disc of blazing light.
In these earliest hours the gods are
nameless, and more’s the pity, needful
believers at the mercy of every condor-winged
pretender, whispering the one, the many,
all trails running feral into desert,
moonladen and lonely.
A rumor about the yawning cave, an
unattended bonfire sparked from nothing,
in a rainstorm even, the wolf-bride speaking
with a murderer’s seductive voice, eyes
painted on eyelids to keep the cannibals
spear-length and at bay.
Gods in a puff, dandelion souls sailing
on the wind, the nut-brown paraclete
mushroom-clumsy and unsheathed.
With no eyewitness it may as well be
made up, no fantasy starves for lack
of naked fantasist.
Cock crew and no one to delight or
shiver deeper into stinking fur, not now
for ages. A tribe with yellow cheeks
and noses, moss-green hair and genitals
caked in crack-lined blue, trailing
single file and silent.
Up and out of the crater, a flourish of marsh gas
westerly across the stubblefield, announcing
this leg nearly done. Incisors rainbow under
the magnifying glass, the coy wire taps
and extracts, dawn takes off her clothes to
tease the frozen light.
Melancholy baby, arranged for false teeth and
smoker’s stump, graduated lenses like beveled
suns atop the formican mudslide. Jacketed
in ash, the roasted spuds shook loose an
ancient fanfare for digestion, mammoths keeling
to the suck of tar-pits.
The fleshy passport stamped with leprous
time, lover of idols and content to be
forgotten, crowned with lettuce like a
god of fools, the luxury of rains to
drown a fever, fingering a sciatic twitch
in apelike wonder.
Prisoners of the valley’s magic grew sick
and disenchanted, the wells gawped pus
and blackened the ringing grass. Birdsong
drew some beyond the ridge. The others
waited, listing in the shade, afraid of
the hopeful call.
The party of birders tramped back and forth
as instructed, their disturbance of the
ashes and assembled flints unreadable
from a distance. The mice reviewed
their escape-routes, nests bewitched
in flowers and smoke.
Nothing now remains of either strain of
fear, the creepers-out, the hiders-in.
Symptoms will betray it all in the end,
flashing like foresight the wounds on
as-yet-unblemished skin, the sundial’s
useless jet.
A winter’s dream, were it not seen, and
crows in flight and cry, seen, heard,
constellation of black stars aghast the
middle distance. The guide dips into
his witch’s bag and fishes homemade pills
to offer round.
Give an arrow or two for crow country,
winter light gathering up the shore,
foghorns at play where the ells meet.
This homely haunt includes the woods,
ruled by lords and numbers,
gracious in defeat.
Give back those hours of wild idleness,
bog-Narcissus holding his poolside breath
till his eyes turn blue as water.
Pan, dying slowly and alone, hairy red
topography sniffed over by foxes
downwind their den.