Made In England

I, round the brae of Howth in chalky light,
Lamented my lot more spent in sport than play.
There, land appeared disinterested and sight
Was a teary well.  Cold was the shivering day,
And my frame, a ghost of shadow, was erased, 
It receded like the fog.  Just then, overhead
I saw brave birds engaged, a raptor traced
A mourning dove’s faltering flight, how it fed
Its own shining sense of purpose, for not
Wanton sport or lordly state do falcons
So hunt, nor did the bird in peril belabour
His reason, rather he tried avoiding those talons.
A question answered itself within my breadth,
Survival resides in a pageantry of death.

I feel the shrug of the passing winds,
That gather beyond my solemn place,
Where indifferent birds fly to and from,
With only lost dreams, real as her face.

In my garden, feral and overgrown,
I bear with branchings of the apple,
Hunched and grey, laden with fallow
Fruits, the tired, knottted fingers die
Each year, under which are baubles
Of sourness and stray, poorly drawn
Circles of fodder even hungry deer
Will not graze upon.  The elder tree
Slowly casts itself into Bonsai stone.

Down a valley, in the grades of sun,
Lay a stand of madrones in redden
Fire, with deepest eyes of burnished
Green leaves, some immortal Gorgon
So beauteous, in form and branches
Divine, of Olympian flame, held, atop
Heavenly escarpments by the loving
Skies.  I see it for what it is, my love,
Your body and hair, so tawny, so fair,
Though, ever lost to me but in dream,
Are dearly those red branches, a fable,
Your eyes, green as sea, those leaves.

A hundred crows from all corners,
Flew into view, and whirled about,
As if the cracked earth set quaking,
As if the sky was tiding, sloe black,
What ominous undulations accrued,
What murderous tribulations due?
The very sound they made was tear,
Was tirade and all those black flecks;
Dark sparkles of sun, shadows of fear.

I tried to capture you
In the forests of Donegal,
Your bark of hair, red, so dark,
Was smear, camouflage, and window
Into a lost Fae world made as I was sinking
Without ever knowing, falling, without fear
Years later, you have long left and I still
Breathe in a wooden box of dream.

He shuffles his muffled way through cardboard aisles,
Oblivious, sheltered, speaking in a mumble of tongues,
His piecemeal truths search for all that is meaningless,
Where he carves a gravestone—arguments in the rows.

His hands ring in the upper classes.
There, in the morning light, his will
Is forged, bent, as truth, on ruling  
This place, underhand, underfoot.

With shuttered ears divining his voice
The dim pupils see only what is said.
The top hand schools, topples all words
Ringing hands sing the song of fools.

How Headmaster trains on the heel,  
A dagger strikes, the paper cuts
Exalted, his close minded hands,  
See a Czar in the stony swagger,

And the student body, submissively lies
With his feet.  Outside the college
The headmaster is heard. Grossly,
He is their dream and only shepherd.

Mourning dove, set on black wires above
The cool, garden lawn, looks down on cat,
Who is burning blithe birds in greenest eyes,
He tastes them as he chirps in trouncing trance
Fixating upon fixing them, his pious patience
Is job like, steadfast, gracious as lifted wings.
Early next day, all that is left of fallen mourning
Dove, are a bed of feathers strewn on the lawn.

There is something in life
That can break a man,
Asleep on the settee
With glasses of glee.
Gently snoring
Sometimes yawning
All the way to quarter to three.
The doting family
Oft dote too often
And from the bank doth withdrawal
Copious collateral.
That is natural is it not?
To gamble for apparel
And other wants and vices.
Perhaps if you had rolled
Different dices,
Those carefree vices
Could be yours.

Instead you dream
Fitfully
On embroidered cushion cloth.
Of backward clocks
And doors that knock,
Opening unto infinity.
Such solace you once had found,
Under the cloak of success, bound
And tethered tight.
A tea light in a tempest
Lost unto the night.

I hear echoes that have no voice,
Sad before the vaulted tongues
Over brimmed, who spill on shunted ears
The sour milk of pressed pictures
And sooted lights of lime
And the golden knobs taste
Jarring-dry to their saw dust toes.
Must the babe be chosen
By its mother?

The sea dirt is lined with woolen shawls
And the chasm shout shall dig our graves,
Throated hollow, to the abyss, we sink our six
And spade the dirt, call not them the spades.

I hear echoes that have no choice,
But to skim the moated land
And wash well eyes with leaven walls
That tease and prod the sum to crushing
Columns lifted shoulder 
High by zeros of kneeling numbers
Worming in bedded slumber.
Must the maker of builders
Be dismantled?

The sea dirt is lined with woolen shawls
And the chasm shout shall dig our graves,
Throated hollow, to the abyss, we sink our six
And spade the dirt, call not them the spades.