30. One Poem

Found Poem

(After R.F. Langley, Journals)

The eleventh tree is the ivy, then

on down through the guelder into the elder,

if Graves is at all to be trusted. Ivy

this morning, in sunlight, at Footherley,

umbels of pale green clubs. Slow wasps crawl there

with folded wings. One

__________________falls backwards and drops

onto a lower leaf. In the track, so

cold that dew is like seawater, and there

is the chilly smell of sweet

____________________rotting.

29. One Poem

Watching Nosferatu

It was the beginning, the purest map
of this cursed land, pock-marked in black-and-white,
scrying-field for a century severed

with gashes, drunk on blood. Schreck, starkly
carved as a hieroglyph, stone death's-head,
face of unnature, fingers teeming stalks.

I know well enough his blasted country:
gnarled passes, huddled villages, wind
whistling with a rattle of Schoenberg,

a land of phantoms, up to the castle
meeting the slate-grey sky alone. The eyes
of the Count, riven with hunger, drawing,

draining, ever-dark singularity.
The gesture - the sleeping flesh beneath him,
a dream-geometry of curves outlined

in linen, of curls framing kohl eyes, sweep,
pulse and yield of a neck, traced with the touch
of an exile. And, waiting to finish

the starved years, stone-hemmed days. Pooling crimson,
obsidian. The final acquisition.
I know
********that cold-sweating wish far too well.