5.The Terror - Duncan McGibbon (book club books txt) 📗

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Sunset and the river’s patter
whisper to the sea.
A dark red ball,
the yolk of a herring gull,
settles low over a derelict tower.

Sunstrands rake us, as we walk
by a lichened sea-wall,
here, among stone houses,
neither the just nor the unjust
could throw down.

The dimming flares filter
behind voices of the river now
and now of boys with their priest,
at football.

Here at the narrow point
of a deserted lookout,
which the sun, a host,
has raised in elevation,
as the city fills with its light,
crows rise to remember
the courage of the dead.

I turn at the touch of your hair,
a smoky, eel-trap black.
You pull it back,
furled round the Corrib’s arms.

Daylight ends in circlets
Here in this crumbling stone,
flaring so late,
as the river argues with the night,
we beg the Lord to fill the cellars
and close our arms
around each other’s wine.
We drink and burn
in darkness, as the city falls.


Arran

The trout’s red gill,
the arch of the sun,
which burns each filament
down to the skirteen’s wick.
The light burns and
the trees burn,
as flame to the wick.
Your hair, unloosening,
is a pleated mass.
Loosened,
your trailing hair,
smokes black,
wrapped around the granite port

I speak of warmth.
I am the fire
become an orange ball.
You do not listen.
I burn on you.
You hold your head near
to concur on your silence
and you burn on
the strands of my heart.


At Castle Minard

Will-hindered one, you, wearied of heather,
remember the dusk-mellowed
brow, the rain-folded cliffs we climbed,
the fern-encrusted sky we shouldered.

The shore's haul and shore had called us
enthrall our thirsting eyes
and left us lost in its clutch, footless
in a grey thrall of stones

Then they unhatched, hammering the sand
in a welter of water and rock,
washed by waves which sliced
smooth under their lumbering piles.

Numbed near night, our limbs ran down
from the sea, to scan our sounding life.
We left it to take the lane home,
hearing the havoc of wings as we walked. 


Nuptial


Nuptial

Your skin is a land of autumn,
under a sad régime.
Your eyes are those of a rebel,
whose mirth has been outlawed.
Your contours are tender fields
awed by prayers of sunlight,
whose crops have not yet opened.
into the riot of their gold.
Your brows have the colour of branches
which shield their blushing fruit.
Each shoulder bears a shadow
where the autocrat has placed his arms.
Your breasts are populations
ready to swell in local joy, against
the terror of the satrap’s heart.
Your head is bowed to the burden
of its ruler’s melancholy parks,
where the tresses of your hair
are smoking fires,
which burn forbidden leaves.
Your hips are the ripeness
of a landscape, swelling
at the fire of your cheeks.
Your thighs are the fruiting hillsides,
which promise a harvest of love
and the fear of a tyrant torn
asunder at the sign of your joy.


Communicantes

1.
By this way,
you left us pure where we lay.
Anointed
in the warmth that had us wrapped.
You heal us
no more from fresh fear. In dust
You leave us.
We weep for the breath of the sender.
We call out,
in coupled restlessness, shout.

2.
By this road
you tend no more to our rose.
Only sleep
can comfort the absence we seek.
Side by side
we lie. One who, unknown, chides
the other’s
needs, which, without meaning melt.
You leave us
to equal each other’s warmth.

3.
By this way,
the other, who, unsaying
has been wound
in words that glibly tore
her sworn rose,
in the hidden garden that grows.
Dawn may find
our hushed embracing kind,
side by side
-close in slumber outside mind.

4.
By this road
dark clouds mass to balance stone.
In the storm,
her sworn rose is ripped by thorns.
New blindness
makes a whole of heaviness.
written whole
our names are hollowed, told.
Hallowed breath
can utter them cleft.

5.
By this way,
why do You lead us away?
New blindness
of our skins cannot contrive
smooth grammars,
which shield the day’s glamours.
Kindly You
feed us the taste of wastage
which fills us
in the hollow leaves we share.


6.
By this road
is the path of drifting snow.
Why do you
tear us from our suit?
Night cautions
a stupor of buoyant thoughts.
Eyes at dawn
will thrill at our nakedness
Why do you
breathe on our passion’s view?

7.
By this way,
where trackless, You pass. We stray.
We sieve clouds,
where, flightless, your love abounds.
Eyes at dawn
could not mourn the still spaces,
where soundless,
where there is no air. You bless
in kindness
that flays our orphaned senses.

8.
By this road
You cut down to our bone.
We clutch pain
at the stripped wounds closed eyelids.
Yet rainfall
washes at each turn our
standing stones,
written whole from mud that massed,
where soundless,
the Sender’s breath mends our depths.


A Ballad of My Lady in the Light.

Sister of rivers, you weep
and streams burst their banks.
Mistress of winds, you search
and weathervanes spin.
Keeper of paths, you walk
and roads are laid bare.
Befriender of breath, you sing
and every wall is tumbled.

We were alone. We were passing on fires,
but I kindled smoke’s thickness.
You said, “It sours my lips.”

I wept
and you crossed the stream’s borders.
I searched
and you scattered rust in my heart.
I walked
and you led me to ditches.
My tongue could never sing
and you let the stones freeze.

We were together, making ready a land,
but I cleared a burnt hollow.
You said, “I am fairer than that.”

I wept
and you dislodged the stepping stones.
I searched
and you thralled the compasses.
My arms could never swing
and you chilled the dew.

We were curing, bathing a wounded mouth,
but I held it still.
You said “Why comfort its silence?”
My eyes were never clear
and you immersed them in the night.

We were covered, hovered over by massive wings,
but I dug into the earth.
You said “My branches have leafed.”
“Do not look on the cheek for sorrow,”
you said, “The springline is purer.”
We opened them up and we wept.
“Do not listen in the heart for the need.”
You said, “The winds are wanting.”
We steered by our trust and we searched,
“Do not feel in the arm for the will.”
You summoned snow for our tracks and we walked.
“Do not taste in the mouth for the coal.”
you said, “Our words are not strangers here.”
You loosen the stones and we sing.

A Ballad of the Thief

It’s nearly day right now,
here, in the house of breath you gave me,
but the dawn
has been dismantled. You tell me that hours
have gone missing and you
search alone
for daylight that was once
ours to own.

Friends warned us of thieves.
This one must be clever, though,
shadow-loves,
a cover for crooks , would be blown by the breeze,
but the wind has been stilled and trees came out to
support doves.
Only the branches uphold a strange leafage,
looking like gloves.

So silent a thief,
the knife would have sickened at
every ruse.
The crowbar would have blushed at the window frames.
How was my fortune counted so well?
What I had to lose
I never knew, until you told me it was lumber
and had no use.

Over there, it’s evening
in the brooding den I gave you.
I knock
and laughter dies in the brick. I look for lips I say were stolen
and I find your glancing eyes under cornered words.
You mock,
The rooms seem emptier and you never stir, except to admit my shadow,
turn the lock.

A thief, like no other.
Your house would have shuddered, but
It settled
a debt with the clay. That pious hammer
must be bruised by the glass. Sincere fingers
nettled
at the touch of a felon’s gear, would clench white,
metalled.

In the daylight house
you gave me. From the doormat to the yard
of you to me,
the place is glutted with the loot of no more.
An alchemy
reversed? What happened to the years we made shine?
To the glances we fused with a glass blower’s throw?
Whose infamy?

I know where the thief hangs out.
A dove sleeps in those branching hands. That house lies still
in the clay .
Where are the lips that cured the restless shadows?
Where are the mornings we took from the skies?
Make to-day
a time to unbare the discontented one,
I say.

It is now I will catch you
with a red-handed nail, and a polished lash.
With a gloved fist
to plunder together the house of ourselves
and if the neighbourhood watch
should insist,
we’ll make examples of ourselves
now we’ve kissed.


A Chanson of the House

Who stole the fruit tree’s secret?
Crows have gone there,
but only to peck at the flesh.
They could not steal,
whose beaks are never dry.

Who rusted the gate at its hinges?
Hawks have flown through there,
but only to claw at the wood.
They could not close it,
whose claws are not blunt.

Who tangled the path to the orchard?
Owls have shrieked by there,
but only to tell of their prey.
They could not tangle it,
whose crops are not bare.

Who sullied the footprint, which lay in the dust?
Sparrows hopped by there
but only to bathe in the earth.
They would not sully it,
whose wings are not wet.

Who pelted the windows with tears?
No other bird has come by this house.
Only the crows,
who spoke of His flesh.
Only the hawks,
who spoke of His blood.
Only the owls,
who spoke of His death.
Only the sparrows,
who spoke of His thirst.
He does not want the fruit we betrayed.
Let your mouth be moist.
He does not want the gate we closed.
Let your hands stir.
He does not need the pathway we lost.
Let your body yearn.
He does not want the dust we scattered.
Let your eyes thaw.


A Chanson of Her Pleasure

In a stupor of seasons you go down the path.
You leave me to loosen the taps of the year.
In shops of the tongue, such cunning concerns,
they sell you short words from hungering shelves.
You weigh up the wastage with arms that are strained.
I store them away in the drifts of the hours.
The bailiffs arrive to call in their loans
from the boards of the flesh they claim their rebate.
You kneel on the floor to show them the minutes
you grew in the silence. They argue, then take them and go.
You open up boxes of minutes we dried. You spill them.
I lose them in hands that my anger has numbed.
Heavy of eyelids, you cook in my tears.
I stir in seconds which burst from their shells.
We swallow the hours and their spillage of speech,
yet we leaf from a shoot of the future we ate.


A Chanson of the Flower

Do not tell me of sadness
in the tear that was never shed.

Do not tell