Crow’s Fall
When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.
He decided it glared much too whitely.
He decided to attack it and defeat it.
He got his strength flush and in full glitter.
He clawed and fluffed his rage up.
He aimed his beak direct at the sun’s centre.
He laughed himself to the centre of himself
And attacked.
At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,
Shadows flattened.
But the sun brightened –
It brightened, and Crow returned charred black.
He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.
‘Up there,’ he managed,
‘Where white is black and black is white, I won.’
Crow and the Birds
When the eagle soared clear through a dawn distilling of emerald.
When the curlew trawled in seadusk through a chime of wineglasses
When the swallow swooped through a woman’s song in a cavern
And the swift flicked through the breath of a violet
When the owl sailed clear of tomorrow’s conscience
And the sparrow preened himself of yesterday’s promise
And the heron laboured clear of the Bessemer upglare
And the bluetit zipped clear of lace panties
And the woodpecker drummed clear of the rotovator and the rose-farm
And the peewit tumbled clear of the laundromat
While the bullfinch plumped in the apple bud
And the goldfinch bulbed in the sun
And the wryneck crooked in the moon
And the dipper peered from the dewball
Crow spraddled head-down in the beach-garbage, guzzling a dropped ice-cream.
Crow on the Beach
Hearing shingle explode, seeing it skip,
Crow sucked his tongue.
Seeing sea-grey mash a mountain of itself
Crow tightened his goose-pimples.
Feeling spray from the sea’s root nothinged on his crest
Crow’s toes gripped the wet pebbles.
When the smell of the whale’s den, the gulfing of the crab’s last prayer,
Gimletted in his nostril
He grasped he was on earth.
He knew he grasped
Something fleeting
Of the sea’s ogreish outcry and convulsion.
He knew he was the wrong listener unwanted
To understand or help –
His utmost gaping of brain in his tiny skull
Was just enough to wonder, about the sea,
What could be hurting so much?
The Contender
There was this man and he was the strongest
Of the strong.
He gritted his teeth like a cliff.
Though his body was sweeling away like a torrent on a cliff
Smoking towards dark gorges
There he nailed himself with nails of nothing
All the women in the world could not move him
They came their mouths deformed against stone
They came and their tears salted his nail-holes
Only adding their embitterment
To his effort
He abandoned his grin to them his grimace
In his face upwards body he lay face downwards
As a dead man adamant
His sandals could not move him they burst their thongs
And rotted from his fixture
All the men in the world could not move him
They wore at him with their shadows and little sounds
Their arguments were a relief
Like heather flowers
His belt could not endure the siege – it burst
And lay broken
He grinned
Little children came in chorus to move him
But he glanced at them out of his eye-corners
Over the edge of his grin
And they lost their courage for life
Oak forests came and went with the hawk’s wing
Mountains rose and fell
He lay crucified with all his strength
On the earth
Grinning towards the sun
Through the tiny holes of his eyes
And towards the moon
And towards the whole paraphernalia of the heavens
Through the seams of his face
With the strings of his lips
Grinning through his atoms and decay
Grinning into the black
Into the ringing nothing
Through the bones of his teeth
Sometimes with eyes closed
In his senseless trial of strength.
Crow’s Vanity
Looking close in the evil mirror Crow saw
Mistings of civilizations towers gardens
Battles he wiped the glass but there came
Mistings of skyscrapers webs of cities
Steaming the glass he wiped it there came
Spread of swampferns fronded on the mistings
A trickling spider he wiped the glass he peered
For a glimpse of the usual grinning face
But it was no good he was breathing too heavy
And too hot and space was too cold
And here came the misty ballerinas
The burning gulfs the hanging gardens it was eerie
A Horrible Religious Error
When the serpent emerged, earth-bowel brown,
From the hatched atom
With its alibi self twisted around it
Lifting a long neck
And balancing that deaf and mineral stare
The sphinx of the final fact
And flexing on that double flameflicker tongue
A syllable like the rustling of the spheres
God’s grimace writhed, a leaf in the furnace
And man’s and woman’s knees melted, they collapsed
Their neck-muscles melted, their brows bumped the ground
Their tears evacuated visibly
They whispered ‘Your will is our peace.’
But Crow only peered.
Then took a step or two forward,
Grabbed this creature by the slackskin nape,
Beat the hell out of it, and ate it.
In Laughter
Cars collide and erupt luggage and babies
In laughter
The steamer upends and goes under saluting like a Stuntman
In laughter
The nosediving aircraft concludes with a boom
In laughter
People’s arms and legs fly off and fly on again
In laughter
The haggard mask on the bed rediscovers its pang
In laughter, in laughter
The meteorite crashes
With extraordinarily ill-luck on the pram
The ears and eyes are bundled up
Are folded up in the hair,
Wrapped in the carpet, the wallpaper, tied with the lampflex
Only the teeth work on
And the heart, dancing on in its open cave
Helpless on the strings of laughter
While the tears are nickel-plated and come through doors with a bang
And the wails stun with fear
And the bones
Jump from the torment flesh has to stay for
Stagger some distance and fall in full view
Still laughter scampers around on centipede boots
Still it runs all over on caterpillar tread
And rolls back onto the mattress, legs in the air
But it’s only human
And finally it’s had enough – enough!
And slowly sits up, exhausted,
And slowly starts to fasten buttons,
With long pauses,
Like somebody the police have come for.
Robin Song
I am the hunted king
Of the frost and big icicles
And
the
bogey
cold
With
its
wind
boots.
I am the uncrowned
Of the rainworld
Hunted
by
lightning
and
thunder
And
rivers.
I am the lost child
Of the wind
Who
goes
through
me
looking
for
something
else
Who
can’t
recognize
me
though
I
cry.
I am the maker
Of the world
That
rolls
to
crush
And
silence
my
knowledge.
Conjuring in Heaven
So finally there was nothing.
It was put inside nothing.
Nothing was added to it
And to prove it didn’t exist
Squashed flat as nothing with nothing.
Chopped up with a nothing
Shaken in a nothing
Turned completely inside out
And scattered over nothing –
So everybody saw that it was nothing
And that nothing more could be done with it
And so it was dropped. Prolonged applause in Heaven.
It hit the ground and broke open –
There lay Crow, cataleptic.
Owl’s Song
He sang
How the swan blanched forever
How the wolf threw away its telltale heart
And the stars dropped their pretence
The air gave up appearances
Water went deliberately numb
The rock surrendered its last hope
And cold died beyond knowledge
He sang
How everything had nothing more to lose
Then sat still with fear
Seeing the clawtrack of star
Hearing the wingbeat of rock
And his own singing
Crow’s Elephant Totem Song
Once upon a time
God made this Elephant.
Then it was delicate and small
It was not freakish at all
Or melancholy
The Hyenas sang in the scrub: You are beautiful –
They showed their scorched heads and grinning expressions
Like the half-rotted stumps of amputations –
We envy your grace
Waltzing through the thorny growth
O take us with you to the Land of Peaceful
O ageless eyes of innocence and kindliness
Lift us from the furnaces
And furies of our blackened faces
Within these hells we writhe
Shut in behind the bars of our teeth
In hourly battle with a death
The size of the earth
Having the strength of the earth.
So the Hyenas ran under the Elephant’s tail
As like a lithe and rubber oval
He strolled gladly around inside his ease
But he was not God no it was not his
To correct the damned
In rage in madness then they lit their mouths
They tore out his entrails
They divided him among their several hells
To cry all his separate pieces
Swallowed and inflamed
Amidst paradings of infernal laughter.
At the Resurrection
The Elephant got himself together with correction
Deadfall feet and toothproof body and bulldozing bones
And completely altered brains
Behind aged eyes, that were wicked and wise.
So through the orange blaze and blue shadow
Of the afterlife, effortless and immense,
The Elephant goes his own way, a walking sixth sense,
And opposite and parallel
The sleepless Hyenas go
Along a leafless skyline trembling like an oven roof
With a whipped run
Their shame-flags tucked hard down
Over the gutsacks
Crammed with putrefying laughter
Blotched black with the leakage and seepings
And they sing: ‘Ours is the land
Of loveliness and beautiful
Is the putrid mouth of the leopard
And the graves of fever
Because it is all we have –’
And they vomit their laughter.
And the Elephant sings deep in the forest-maze
About a star of deathless and painless peace
But no astronomer can find where it is.