#1111 - three poems - deepest secret fear, ah wallaby & 1111

16.i.23

1111

4.16

deepest secret fear

 

days I wish that words would leave me

 

briefer and briefer I must be

 

struck loose

 

have wasted my time as far as here

 

but you still find me

 

it’s into the picture go to be lost

 

where the wind flips pages, together, apart

 

fallen things of which day consists

 

dreams make the improbable true –

the man in the boot to wrestle out

how did he drive here?

 

it’s often with such questions wake

 

I am upright at the lain wall

pointing into the mirror

 

blown about last light

inwardly still

 

there are no angels here to sing

we manage the best that we can

ah wallaby

the fresh green shoots

good seasons!

fearless of me, close

at dinner, haunching

 

favourite in this spot

where pumpkin once

no memory of drought

 

how lean! how tight!

in skin belonging

 

o great mouthfuls grass

o world attending

handsome in the undercarriage

fleeced for all weather

 

rotating of the ears

lost to my words

and still conversant

 

who, through fences

comes and goes

under and over

 

tentative from

sixty thousand years of

my kind want to eat you

 

before that you were bigger too

 

but now you’re here

and I with you

we stand the moment still

 

 

 

1111

 

in this year

the Battle of Shaizar

 

the crusader king, Baldwin I, besieges Tyre

but has no ships supporting

and is cut off from supplies

 

Sintra conquered by the Almoravids

Coimbra sacked

 

this is what makes it into the books

 

trial by ordeal – gurgle or fire

so many nameless put to the sword

 

we’re working up to the Inquisition

 

the Donglin Academy is established in Wuxi

 

it was an Iron Tiger Year

it was 4831 years since Creation

 

John Bent’s plough broke

Roger repaired it

 

Pope Pascal crowned King Henry

 

Domnall Ua Briain became King of the Hebrides and the Isle of Man

because that was what the people of Munster wanted

 

so many places yet to be named had weather events of their own

 

some starvation, procreant joys

many fell victim

 

obesity a rare affliction

pox, black death not yet

 

how glorious the sun shine though

after seeming weeks of rain

 

every town had its own calendar then

no mention of human rights

 

Abelard yet to meet Heloise

but it won’t be long now

 

there was limited mutual awareness of these events at the time

still, I thought you might like to know