Alchemisland

Did not sleep well last night

Great din, gungaless, from the parlor

Sherston’s mother communing with spirits

Young Hamo dead at Gallipoli

Did Eliott’s Aeschylus know him?

Severely annotated copy of Goodbye To All That

Melancholies of a fox-hunting man

By war, Men harden

Mars the sharpen

Bard birther Mary Arden in Angland since Domesday.

Harold hurried and harried North harrowing died

Housecarls tall as cedars carrying unwieldy polearms

Which weaker men could not budge, less swing with horse bisecting power

Force sufficient thunderous

Cleft plate crumbled, full of waves, pits and facets

Like a war geode.

Norman stock from France

Ardennes, old world forest

Damp moss mazes, trees crossed

Nauseous orange arches

Hirsute trunks spun between

Webs of wind spun lichen tight as braids

Latticed canopy zealed with light sealed it tight

Tumbling night sleepy night

Falling slow tonight, like a parachutist

Snow falling tonight, onto the parachutists

“Anything moves shoot it”

Mice moving through spread ballgown of abandoned parachute

Private Alan Chemy, chemist son

Demystified by the front

War which ends at unholy Second Sun

Licks his gold tooth for luck

After he is shot, dirty hands pry this from his gums

Hyperborean cold

Testing, ancient cold

Initiatory cold, proving cold

Called upon, Cald upon, Calderon

Trained shootist snow on steel cap shoe tip

Water bottle sealed shut, ice lock screw tip.

War: collected letters of Screwtape, read by Pan.

Shadowlings clinging every dark 

Hidden heathers briar bracken cracking underfoot

Every sound a fairy shot

Naked trees krakening toward the moon to be festooned by stars

Brendan the Navigator circling the Church on the Hill

Fear frenzy in the glade, of the glade.

Battle of the Bulge

Frost flanked tanks dashing downward through snow, iron horses

Tank tracks casting bandoliers on the snow’s surface

Bilgewater gathering there

Bodies bloated foul gasses fuel for swamp lights

Between Roman hills, rifles singing scales

Dampening against trees where frozen golems wait

Rising crescendos. Writhing, crashing endings. Storm and fire. 

Billowing bilious scents 

Winnowed on a widowmaking wind,

Widows waxing war medals

Rare sweet moment, never to reprise

Limp flags sag, empire of demise

Not even Patroclus’ death

Through visor grate his gurgled final breath

Will rekindle our war ardor

Empty nest with overstocked larder

Left a life in her, left your life with her, lost your life out there

Her bulging belly, embattled by loss

Child with dead Father

Mother’s terrible Janus

Smiling living remnant

Crushing living reminder

Life’s little rejoinder

What is the weight of the world? 

Only Atlas knows

Hillsides ignorant though pleasant

Not the ballast of this world

Balance and measure exist

Only in the human mind

The weight of the world

What this thing or that thing is called

Whatever Adam decides

Weight is the what of the world

Weight is the world of the what

Caught in Kent in Court the Clark’s keys clacking

Workman in illuminous jacket pulls Harry Clarke glasses from a skip

Acolyte in Xanthine robes acquires for his distillation chamber a rose hip

Life fruit, fruitful, death its pips

Let powers demonstrate themselves:

Fetch Pharaoh’s mages to ply their craft for Moses.

See whether vaunted power of belief

Trumps power of hunger,

I believe I am a great actor but have not the confidence to act on it

I believe that I will die of this hunger, and will kill to stave off it

Vowel-heavy utterance of oil requiring door

Creaking rope, taut twisting at the weight

Postmortem movements in dead opera