#532 - something for trumpets

 

17.vi.21

532

2.165

something for trumpets

apostrophe

for Sarah St Vincent Welch

 

breath of any passer-by

comes back on such a shield

 

to tell the livelong blog admiring

(here I address the walls and sky)

 

no windows to shatter

   still

laid utterly waste

(why spare the oxen, spoil the sheep?)

but

in that far battle

I was someone else

(telling you)

all these ancestors mine

(hear me, mud!)

how gone and long since

I must be all they have

 

put to the sword

(of course all propaganda of the later age)

and if we don’t, they do

a tit for a tat

 

standing under

and look over this

something for pay attention now

 

masonry crumble

 

 tune, and call the hours

trumpet the favoured words

test them

                       trip to the tongue

(never far)

 

elephant of a future room

  me

in a woods, like hidden

     (believe me)

sad matter of facts upon these heads

show one word after another to bright

                            

sun shone through a leaf

ram’s horn could be -- this means you (!)

 

I came across this field and guess

met coming through -- was it gluten (?)

now naked to truth

guess again

meant to be

 

it’s the poem you walk past

makes this rest blessed

 

limits of my language

thefts of glancing

let me spell them out

 

why and if not here

 

the border was always a lie