|
Ink Slinger
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: australia
Posts: 4,431
|
Hadrian’s Wall (edit 2)
Hadrian’s Wall
In the time before
paved roads brought sandals
and sword, we ran,
shared thoughts through knuckles not reed,
sang in the winter and the summer,
hunted berry, pooled fish meat
and knew no master
bar the Lady of lilies, her voice
rippled the mind, made it
bowed grass before the storm.
I
The first stone laid before the light in eyes
was ever made by ties that bind the years,
colour hair, shape ears, spread ten fingers
to grip ancestral gears; mother wrote songs!
Water existed
before stone, birthed boulders
and rock
by forcing earth to separate;
divorced them
from the essence of self.
Before water - tears; spirals
blown by wind, shed
in the time before words
confirmed us, forced the tribe
into this global village.
II
The second stone set when parents first met
at a dance - twice. He asked, she said yes
then the kiss and me only five other children
before – I slipped rather than was born!
Feet stomped in dance halls, the dust
made reference to the fields, the earth
scattered like seeds, voices
calling - each a star, a spark, an idea
of life before living
was properly constructed.
In the dark before the bulb,
hands touched, nails, blackened
and dyed, scratched the surface,
revealed dreams and fears
of fur and claw and tooth.
Death cannot hold sway
when the floor beneath the canopy of leaf
is filled
with dancing feet,
when man and woman
seek an embrace
before the music succumbs to Time’s still beat.
III
The stones took form in adolescent spurts,
polished pain from a head turned away, lust
after a breast or thigh; the loss of her lips, her
eyes, loneliness a well only a wall could contain.
Behind sheds, loitering at playgrounds, holding cigarettes
and moonbeams, fingers
frantic to understand the measures needed
to unlace desire, bind the urge
in a cage as flimsy as wicker,
the bonfires
burn before fuel is emptied in the womb -
Consequence left to the dawn.
Sometime in the morning as the mist
gathers like a thought,
and ears hear pounding heart
as if a thousand thousand writhing bodies, naked,
intent and filled with the sweat of need
and envy,
sweep down from the heights of dreams
into the valley of what really is,
the adolescent must face the eyes
of parents knowing
what lies behind the skull
cannot be secured nor revealed;
unmoored
the child thing drifts into adulthood.
IV
Stones spread from mind to neck, down
the spine, block by wind and rain borne block;
separate the wild beast from the man I
should become, husband, worker, father, son.
We take on roles, actors all, hiding deep
the truth of the skull, the grave,
the secret Bardic words,
‘alas poor me, I knew me well,
better than most, greater than any’,
lost behind the mask presented
that allows daylight fabric to be weaved
into a shawl of being.
Beneath the pungent smell of wool, despite
the burrs and seeds, and resident oil, thoughts
other than the mask still live, gather
together like tribes in the hills, come
in force every so often when the moon
is bright and the length of days
draws its longest breath.
V
The wall sets in motion me as centurion, I pace
beneath its shadow, gladius sharp, sometimes stare
across ramparts, set to defend against the woad
and wishes that attack from the other side’s grasses.
Somedays I sit in the chariot
in the driveway, imagine my desk alight,
the papers burning, floating up
and away, the smoke
moved beneath a blanket, in a purpose
we all understand.
VI
My barbarous Lady dwells
in the mist that hides
the other side of the divide;
her languid hand brushes stone,
causes old toes to curl like crisp leaves,
sends a shiver through my feet,
sets off a clench in my muscles,
balls ache, soft as the blown sound
of hollowed ram's horn
let loose in the untouched forest.
Her touch travels up spine into mind;
I explode into words and images. She smiles,
always, even when I rant and run wild,
face and fingers painted with blue ink, hair
wild and tangled in thoughts and a voice
louder than any remembrance plot.
In the feral hours of night, before dreams
cast me back to time before the wall,
before Hadrian warred against the Pict,
before words shaped into points, prick
the safety in numbers stone provides;
She helps me remember the child, the ache,
the soft flesh humanity that existed
in the singularity before the silent
civilized sentence of the great divide.
VII
Alone, my face captured
and framed
by the window behind
the screen,
the quill layed low, the pen
lost to the money men, the keyboard
supreme,
charity absent
and the children asleep -
walking their own paths to a place
only words can now take me
as they force, separate, unravel the wrinkle, the habit
the longing -
all that is lost lives still
in the word,
shimmers in the light behind the screen,
flashes as bright as sunlight
upon fish scales
at the bottom of a small boat
rowed slowly back to a shore
as distant
as Rome itself.
Last edited by dannyboy : 06-17-2008 at 07:02 AM.
|
