In Memoriam: JS
Past and present wind like hawser strands: Morning at Bosigran; skylarks; the sea's Winking at a lusty sun and all the headlands Lying in a haze of sweet infinities. I put the day at hazard. Then evening at this hospice where a black zawn Is eating my gut. I'm scared and the knife Has failed, but a little irony is born. I suppose that I was profligate with life: Too late now to miser up my time. It's like the night we bivouacked upon the Dru. The stars went out and it got warm. I was frightened then. The lightning flew From top to top and we cowered through the storm: I feared its indifference the most. My consultant has no bedside manner. You feel he'd operate with a spanner, Then wipe his specs on his pure silk tie And say you've got three months to die. I simply can't believe him. I'd prefer that temple shaman in Ladakh Who danced with vipers. In piety or prayer He wound them up his arms and down his back And writhed a deadly pas-de-deux. But through this dare His god encouraged him to live. So I keep thinking of this route in Wales - Or was it Scotland? No matter. Facing the sun It dries out quickly, and entails Several pitches of Hard VS, and one That has the makings of a good E3. (And on the subject of extremes - this bloody pain: It's your fingers melting from the holds, When the muscles cramp and tighten and your brain - Sense and fear and pulse and logic - instantly unfolds Lists of extinguished possibilities.) But this route - I must be at the thinnest section Stretched out well beyond the last protection, Where the morphine and the runners have no place, Pumped on that god's imperturbable face: There's a bitter mercy in the dying fall. *** |
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Epithalamion
(for G and S)
Down in Sigford, in their cynical way,
You know they'll shake their heads and say
That choosing marriage for the avoidance of tax
Is like choosing the hangman in place of the axe.
You pay no mind to the state they're in,
But mount the scaffold with a rueful grin,
And bid all welcome , infirm or hearty,
That bring late-flowering garlands to your party.
***
(for G and S)
Down in Sigford, in their cynical way,
You know they'll shake their heads and say
That choosing marriage for the avoidance of tax
Is like choosing the hangman in place of the axe.
You pay no mind to the state they're in,
But mount the scaffold with a rueful grin,
And bid all welcome , infirm or hearty,
That bring late-flowering garlands to your party.
***
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