Nessun Dorma

Monster moon, O monster moon
Let her be in my sight:
Her face maketh the fairies swoon
Who would not sleep a-night.
Bright as a meteor, soft as love,
Ruddy as the rose-cheeked Mars.
Proud as the lightning, praise be Jove,
Her name is a thousand stars.

Distance

Between us the ocean lies
Far furlongs for two pairs of eyes
To probe and peer.
Now the book is at its end
The tale is past its telling
Now the swallows southward wend
Where summer seeks her dwelling.
Now the season’s past her prime
Now the reason’s lost its rhyme
Now the gaping gulf of time
Shall grow each year.

The Black Lake

(...but does it make sense?)

I have heard, I have heard
The parable of the good shepherd
From tongues red and white.
And I have heard, I have heard
Tales more wondrous and true
Than sea and sky are blue
Or a lake blacker by night.
Tell me, is it not true
Your brother, friend all-weather
Eyes cerulean blue
Hands clung cold together
Porcelain white, to you
He reached, and crying said
‘Brother, bird of a feather
Am I among the dead?’
Did you not that once –
Though time like a river runs
Washing all before, behind –
Wish your eyes were blind
Wish your hands were guns
Did you not that once?
I have heard, I have heard
Tales in the sling of a song
Thawed in the melt of a throng
Naught to be learnt or said
All who are wise are dead
Cawed by an old blind bird
Naught remains but a word

Sitting with a distributor

Why should you fret, and why should I rage?
I’m trying to sell you something.
In the back of my mind are images you cannot see:
A skeletal ship upon the moonlit sea
A Saxon raiding skiff that time forgot.
I cannot see their faces, yet their eyes
Glitter like green diamonds in the mist.
A pair of lips half-opened, then the time
She slept with me for what I thought was love
And yet you rant, and half your words I hear
The other half, a Stuka engine roar
Above doomed London; now my cell phone rings
A porridgey voice tells me your cheques have bounced
So you can basically roll that order into a cigarette
And light it in your butt.

I
Diseased mind, why do you stray
The length of a mental holiday?
Be warm in your little box
Blanketed by travel plans
Warmed by remembrance of children’s hands
Fur lined boot and socks.
O do not think of breast or butt
Nor stare and strut
At bygone tarts and their appurtenances
But wallow in full room and board
Not thinking, when the lid is shut
Which Babylonian slut
Opened the gates to Persian horde.


II
How shall I look
Upon her face, O monster moon?
How shall I brook
Her seeming unaware?
Her glance would arrest
The sun in his flight
To steer in her sight
And swoon.

Better

I shared a flight with YSR once: he looked like an honest man; I am sad he died.
But a sage said, it is better to be a python’s prey than a rat’s:
To be devoured by death than nibbled alive, like those that have cancer, say –
But then who am I to judge
If he was right? Maybe it is better to die everyday by just little bits
And plan the afterlife, to have time for solace
In the smell of sticks, or the shadows inside
A church at dusk, with a nun in silence
Bent over the pages of her vast book.

Star to Mantua
...the vaulty heaven so high above our heads...

Not the trill of the lark
In her high hung heaven,
The darkling is ridden
With wasteful alarm:
But lie in the blackness
Of dream-dark tresses
And savour the sadness
Of farewelling arms.
O see not the awning
Aglow in the dawning
As the dappling of daylight
Unmakes the moon.
Unheeding its warning
Fickle fortune scorning
O dally, till the daybreak
Comes soon, too soon.