It is summer elsewhere, perhaps in Rometown London
Which I am far from
Further flung even from where I redoubt; house within a house
‘Haps without drab isle they glad sun, in Sumer
Tired of this world’s crab guile, I recline sighing
Sights of mind undying, pliant as desire wills
Brushed as if by fingertips
A whiff, a swift whizzing past
Enough to lift a hem, drifting a second on air, alas
None abound here save myself, cannot save myself, a-ha
Again frisked, braced and faced with faceless glaiving
Something I cannot see which bids me it’s, claiming
With clasps spectral, my livery lasooed aside
Hasp of my fashion distended, bulbed, as if a hand there fastened
Clasping, gathering bulk to bulb, five seconds perhaps it lasted
Before cloth fashioned in that fashion relaxed, collapsing
Whatever seizure seized at me elapsed, falling like an asp
From a dead lover’s colding hand. Whiskey kicks like an ass
I toss it back, windlassing head and hair of collar freeing
Affecting though fleeting, ink flees, bleeding into freizes
A mind diseased by glimpses of a queer Empyrean
Seen in obscene dreams, rising o’er burntflesh seas
About my folio, exorcising notes which hold in waking throat
Whims whisk me, questing on a megrim to granges grim
Raining with humid air, one knows not what to wear
Staring out my streaking window, with antique image flood’d.
Wondering suddenly did Odysseus wander Ogygia
Hence highted by title Éireann’s Island, which Britain
Smited ayinbite, tithed and confined tightly in fist mailed
But failed to destroy that thing foremost yet frailest
Something unnamable, unscalable, unsaying, unassailable
Some ever-valent reservoir, drawn pale like a moonhit basin.
Did Ithaca’s finest general stride lanes abutting virgin hillocks
Where neither plough nor roving ox broke clod
High banked beds petalled with shining emeralds, verdant heralds
Land of scribes and errols
Had he, forlorn, faith floundering at length
Delayed seeing from shore cyclopean form above forests
Rising as they must have in orbed glory.
Did pédila’d feet put sure at Troy
Delight visiting druid cities four
Did those feet so quick to sprint
Ever-squinting fox always hunted
Scrape Murias’ marble floors
Where faith leaders practised healing
Under bestial frieze’d ceilings
To Polyphemus pronounces himself Outis.
Athena-kissed owlwise mind, befitting swift-lipped prince
Eclipsed by callipygian Calypso, bewitching nymph
Resident in crown-resplendent brow of indigent Ithacan king
Calcifying once-uprighted Osiris brazier blazing, he is her thing
For seven rings of the solar disc living where monks untonsure
And justice seekers visit a tholsel
Where in old tongues survive old gospels.
Here, where one is anonymous
Enormous stone mounds moss-sewn
Intern eponymous occupants not seen
Since Partholon’s feet tattooed headbeach
Sleeping heroes slain by arrows, lain along jewel and chariot
Tarot knights, chary and hairy
Who seeing yon misted isle from tides arising, Keats’ peak in Darien
Came here with reaving and harrowing.
Lovelooking Endymion simmering in impotence
Perfect instance away slipped, here by cruel pretence
He is her creature fixed, thickened thieves
Maize man stick-slung crows to quicken
Fingers features mixing away in a moving mirror
Gloomy pool removing eternally
Feels internally burning emasculate incapacity
Fastness of smile-painted mask
Doomed to oblivion
Cruel goddess’ minion.
Time here lost and anomalous
Hovels like models of misery
A two bedspread fitting three, all mammals therein placed equally
Lacking bowls mound steaming stew into hungry trencher holes
All day sweating in the field
Guttering smoke upward fluttering cough inducting
Drifting at sightline the occupants moling a lifetime.
Outside a muttering, oppressive silence
Unhappy hill valleys kept alive by spite alone, stained with old violence
Rinsed red heathertops, where aurochs flocked in clockless time
Darkline beach dividing, marking tide’s furthest headway
Gathering cockles and mussels alive alive o
Molly Malone was never alone like this
Frosted frigid fringes, bailed fist fingertips far from head and heart
Hearth smokeblacked, sacred heart picture languishing cracked lintel
Golden organ by anguish splintered , redemption of life on this planet
Here where they are barely alive alive o, unslaked, praying taking.
Fatless, unflappably faithful and desperately unhappy
Heath alive with thriving thrumming humming insect life
Firescutted brightbugs like light motes as float through our atmosphere
Byre silhouettes like churches made from churned, wet paper
Leafstrewn house gutterless
Holed roof, generations under it
Pigeons and starlings fluttering
Butter churn like a giant’s quiver
A yellow man sicklivered with bellowsblack hands
Clasped at lap having relinquished dram, a flagon, and fag end
Unhacked mountainside back scarcely fits inside delivers a lovely tune
Resounding shivers, grounding songs
Recalling famed now-nameless empires
Tonguelong thronging throatcoating stirs pale oak embers tender to touch.
Nothing can be lost which was to song confessed
They hear not names and amazing deeds but feel living breath
Presence of ages-dead ancestors there in the hovel
Folklore records dead loved ones’ spirits returning as redbreast robins
Before which claudicated knees grovel
What to mind drags sluggish to breast hastens
Timbers with sweat shimmering in the heated room
Exhaust spinning like fortune’s wheel, sidling out
Exeunt through roof at slowboat speed
Accompanied by winged steed, Pegasus’ seed
And scene.
Rafters which could would wood talk spattered with laughter
God god forever, man man for a while, something else after
Resident spiders many-eyed frightening
Hiding from light like a Marut
Itsy bitsy pretty liars silkshitting tender webs damhan alla.
Fearing above all arms tamerlane’s touch
They hiss, mutter and fuss at nails in doorframes, which them bay
Dying if struck
Baying atop hay bales, close as dare they
Three eyeless, glassy marbles sky-containing constrained by needless eyelids
In hellheaven’s highest towers a nook redolent of flowers, hive of words
Curate’s eggs laid Halcyon bird
Headdress dearthed Stymphalian feathers
Seated Homer, needling Joyce and fretting Milton dictating books simultaneously
Sweating amaneunsis, melting chained to lecterns pelting pages with strange vocabularies.
Beautiful alien face
Not of this race, this place
Her hands standard ascribed to
A scribe’s desire
Canon praxitelean
Shielded chameleon.
He was not half-pissed
Admitted wetting whistle
Quarter cut, not half
Swear be de Epistles
Swing chair on decking, evening
No electric light, had everything ended
Sightless linnets wheeling in schizophrene darkness
Parts of things alarming outside their frames
Tree arms jutting from darkness into moonlight’s arms
Shapes: headless shark flukes
Pantagruel’s stout blackthorn
Ohing mouth of plenty’s horn
Scornful fingers bodiless forming
Suddenly halfway down bán dresser doors
Skittering maliciously like ghost spiders
Gliding across the arm of a roughtouch old dressing gown therehung
Strung up like a wrongdoer.
Feet lift, electing to let swing the seat
Himself a pipe whittled
To find the right equipment
Hacked back thistle
Thwacked machete shedding green gristle
Whistling through humid air like a missile
Scraping pipe dottle into a box
Dislodging its stalk.
Alchemisland 
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