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John Gimblett - Selected Poems 1992-2000 FOR OCTAVIO.
There are dustings of layers of broken leaves extant; coiled, weedy red bed springs panting at the surface of this chameleon turf. In a dim, dry summer, we tread shadows upon shadows, double darkness seemingly coupled; horizontal slivers of light like a sari of silver fishes. The meal of seasoned bones I dribbled from a hard hand has melted to the roots. Stare as I could, there were no ribs in the powder; nothing to give life from. But the beech, sallow in the surf of a low sea of leaves, peeps through the shoal, pins brittle medallions of veined copper to the gree heart of this new garden. Before the skin of the field was spread, I also took in the same hand a flagon of brandlings: threw them in a broad arc of some pretty wave, as if life could in itself fertilize through life. The raked soil moved, wriggling as if already verdant. The cap of grass plunged them into darkness. CALCUTTA STREETSCENE. The man on the pavement - slap-hand flat on the phlegm crusted square slab of sidewalk, has become one of the stones. You have to stare: it's a game: there's a surplus of body. Or what seems so. His mouth is open, his eyes two mongoose- stuffed sacks, and he's hungry. Drop him two coins and he'll weep. Set him down three and he'll smile, maybe. Stare and star- mis-shapen limbs will introduce themselves. One cheek is pressed to a kerb, pulling up footsteps. His knees bend outwards. Sucking the last square of chocolate, passing him by he dribbles, crying. His tongue looks healthy. |
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Gujarat Poems MONKEY
Perhaps it ends here, in Rajkot, with a gentle, loose step into tree tops. Facing the temple, perhaps it ends with the loving tug of Tirthankars, pulling me to earth. The warm air, whistling with the green shrieks of parakeets, bloody with a dusk sun, would support me if I fell. If I fall, will I fly? The white temple, and the black cloud, hold me still. Perhaps it ends with the spiralling twist of falling into the canopy of tamarinds, perhaps it ends with the leaves like green feathers holding me, folding me up into earth? PARABLE A buffalo and egret stood by the rail: one ink black and one milk-pale. Buffalo walked with his face in the earth, egret squawked with an attitude of mirth. Hidden in a field by a gleaming water pipe stood a bathing woman, half-peeled, sun-ripe. The buffalo and egret with a glance sauntered past, buffalo black and listless, egret lively; last. The train passed palms, small villages, a farm; a small green pond when the buffalo swam. The egret flew above them all, light and dark, and the sun shone down like a matchless spark. |
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Miscellaneous Poems A DREAM.
"Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems." -- Walt Whitman. naked we twist tumbling and sleeping, we dream angels. holding you, breath singularly falls, rises, falls and distance is non existent. to touch we caress darkness bring it down like still fire, we swim. CAPRI. Wind rallied likethe massed last gasps of the thrown, from the Villa Jovis. Rattling the terracotta bricks of the vats, crumbling the very limestone of the island with its cyclonic footfalls, we almost hear the falling throats of the ditched and the deposed. Tiberius stood here, staring out at clouds, at the black hump of Ischia back towards Naples. Stood in the shadow of Vesuvius, a generation away from explosion. Bay leaves rustled near the path, their roots pinning Jovis to Capri, lest the whole place should rise like banshees, propelled or drawn irresistibly into the sea. POMPEII The man sat, as if thinking, yet he was stone, through and through. But a core, a pith of bone burned, like lava in an attempt at escape. His face, contorted, a mis-shapen spring fought to right the originality; the flesh of suitability to his species. And I thought of lizards: plastered with a second skin of stone, burned as if sprung, fire from the street. Running, slow against the flow, 60 m.p.h. Perhaps to be undiscovered, the seed in a kernal of rock, feet splayed, spreading the mud. The ash dropping, grey specks dotting the reptile, who'd become subject to volcanic pointillism. I saw a body, lying, like it was caught in sleep by a sublime dream. The man stretched his limbs, took on the wherewithal of an astute, scared gecko. |
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