SMOKE

Some mornings I wake up thinking

“The Egyptian was right! Heaven

Is surely made of smoke!” But then

I start wondering, After all, the Irishman

Saw a cold and rook delighting Heaven

While the Bible builds it of gold

And pearls, jasper and crystal –

A vast Faberge egg, lovely but not

Much use if you’re hungry. Perhaps

The American soldier had it right

Saying Heaven and Hell and Hoboken

Have much in common.

GEORGE III

George III knew the language of birds

But pretended not too. When a rook

Flying across the moon called out

“Beware! Your eldest son loves not you

Nor any man and will take your throne

While you still live!” the King

Did not pause in his conversation

With the gaudy Anatolian traveller

Busily spinning him a story

Concerning  dervishes and sinister eunuchs.

AMONG THE SAINTS

It is not that her name is lost

Just misplaced, set somewhere

And then books or a painted dish

Or a half-filled box of shadows

Set on top of it; maybe a rook

Flew off with it, hiding it away

Somewhere in cold Heaven.

It makes it hard to invoke her

Which may be just as well

Since she no longer remembers

Whose patron saint she is.

In the park on sunny days

Abandoned prayers, long turned feral,

Stare at her from the underbrush.

COLD

I had heard it might be; Heaven was cold last night.

Fortunately, when I rose from bed I had wrapped

A quilt about me and entered as a patchwork angel.

The place was filled with birds – rooks, for the most part;

I hope never to see a sight more miserable.

They huddled together, their black feathers puffed

Or flew in enormous clouds, trying to keep warm.

Two of them hopped to my shoulders and a third,

Larger than common, gripped the hair on my head.

“If, Stranger,,” he said, his  voice raw and grating,

“You should encounter God and fall into discourse

We ask this of you: tell Him he has been

Egregiously misled; we are not delighted.”

A MOMENT IN 1933

Most powerful, I’ve heard, the spell left undone;

Just one gesture more and a new world

Spins in our place. The wizard drops his hand

And we go on, unknowing, unthankful.

But I do not think that this is so.

On the Holyhead train in 1933 two men sit,

They do not speak (they’ve not been introduced)

The elder is white-haired, word-haunted, lean;

His fingers are too long; he half-shuts his eyes

And asks himself if the moment’s come.

When the train makes its halt, near island’s edge,

The youth is ten seconds older than his years

And remembers two things he never saw

A curlew calls in the sun by the water’s edge;

A rook flies against the dark at day’s end.