Spring and autumn do deprive us:-
summer deeps her green Elysium;
winter scrapes her white erasure -
sufficient oblivion at the solstices
when little ruffles the circadian
beyond phases of moon, planets
wandering, as Tycho Brahe logged.
But changing days wring out
hopes or despairs
where memories
seem streaming alterniverses
as if a party-popper burst out
scents upon the air, scattergun
instinct sought a hydra form
all serpent necks to follow,
quite dissolving us in reveries
(or as hell-raised cenobites*
had torn us quite apart) all
the pieces seeking each other
as the moon longs to reform
its swan barge in broken water
but many other boats pass down.
One genus hides in suits of another:
diamonds club; hearts do spadework,
dig up broken pipes.
Daffodils hold up
shaking locks at wayside feasts;
loco letters illegible with passion
spin on chestnut leaf-lobes down.
Our dreams are pierced with urgent
parables, parabolas of arrows
loosed where arrows lost themselves
in grimpens* buzzing with biting flies
pinning as we sink - then jerk awake
clutching the metaphor heart.
Give me sufficient oblivion,
winter-locked in your arms
to drift through narrows of the white and grey,
bare set of wires that rake,
that scarify us clean -
bury down deep in January,
cache ourselves for later.
.................
*Grimpen was a word for a marsh invented by Sir Arther Conan Doyle in 'Hound of the Baskervilles and used by T S Eliot in the 'Quartet', 'East Coker'.
*Cenobites refers to the rending monsters in 'Hellraiser' a film by Clive Barker
