They come and go like coloured birds migrating
with maps of other countries in their brain.
You are a tree in which they pause, awaiting
an inner signal to set off again.
You stop, you listen, straining to decipher
the simultaneous songs that they intone,
knowing that so many men would die for
the chance to hear just one of them alone.
Summated, though, their singing’s but a jangle
of jarring chords and rampant dissonance,
the chaos that’s passed on from age to age.
And in a daze you dare to disentangle
a single thread of perfect eloquence
and tease it free and lay it on the page.

They snore in turn: a soft antiphony
of hoarse vibrations, left, a dull Darth Vader,
and right, though sometimes slipping off the radar,
a tremolando shudder. Stiff, uneven,
a third threads in a slow polyphony,
divisions on a ground that swell or fade, or
pause, then unexpectedly cascade, a
purred glissando, an epiphany
of coarse cadenzas. Soon an overwhelming
sadness percolates from other realms
where yellow stains an ocean’s perfect white
and who can say how many hours to go
till, rallentando, pianissimo,
the music is dissolved into the night.

Five times a day upon his coloured mat
he bends himself. The nurses come and go,
spectres in a slow procession that’s
caught in a loop, where only
the names change (ours too are abandoned for
the new ones we receive upon on arrival:
‘faking it’ or ‘non-cooperative’ or ‘terminal’ or
‘crash survival’).
It’s not their fault they eye him curiously.
They know he’s just a Turk. They’re different. He
gives not a sod
but prostrate on the disinfected floor
he offers, counting beads to keep the score,
his soul to God.

AMBIGRAM VIII

Recto:

Yesterday was Christmas, and the days
already start to grow a little longer.
In our hand, the new year‘s fledgling, stronger
though more fragile too in many ways

than this bedraggled, aging crow, its song a
a sad, repeated phrase among the blackened
trees along a river. So sit back and
raise your glasses to it, do the conga,

auld lang syne, then hit the sack. And black and
white explode, a throng of rainbows—gaze!
You‘ll see it, wakened in  the morning haze,
ascending as the tethering s?tring is slackened:

Verso:

Yesterday was Christmas, and
the days already start to grow
a little longer. In our hand,

the new year‘s fledgling, stronger  though
more fragile too in many ways
than this bedraggled, aging crow,

its song a sad, repeated phrase
among the blackened trees along a
river. So sit back and raise

your glasses to it, do the conga,
auld lang syne, then hit the sack. And
And black and white explode, a throng of

rainbows—gaze! You‘ll see it, wakened
in the morning haze, ascend-
ing as the tethering string is slackened.






















































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AMBIGRAM
­
Recto:

Yesterday was Christmas, and the days
already start to grow a little longer.
In our hand, the new year‘s fledgling, stronger
though more fragile too in many ways

than this bedraggled, aging crow, its song a
a sad, repeated phrase among the blackened
trees along a river. So sit back and
raise your glasses to it, do the conga,

auld lang syne, then hit the sack. And black and
white explode, a throng of rainbows—gaze!
You‘ll see it, wakened in  the morning haze,
ascending as the tethering s?tring is slackened:

Verso:

Yesterday was Christmas, and
the days already start to grow
a little longer. In our hand,

the new year‘s fledgling, stronger  though
more fragile too in many ways
than this bedraggled, aging crow,

its song a sad, repeated phrase
among the blackened trees along a
river. So sit back and raise

your glasses to it, do the conga,
auld lang syne, then hit the sack. And
And black and white explode, a throng of

rainbows—gaze! You‘ll see it, wakened
in the morning haze, ascend-
ing as the tethering string is slackened.






















































­
































































­
































































­
































































­































































A­MBIGRAM

Recto:

Yesterday was Christmas, and the days
already start to grow a little longer.
In our hand, the new year‘s fledgling, stronger
though more fragile too in many ways

than this bedraggled, aging crow, its song a
a sad, repeated phrase among the blackened
trees along a river. So sit back and
raise your glasses to it, do the conga,

auld lang syne, then hit the sack. And black and
white explode, a throng of rainbows—gaze!
You‘ll see it, wakened in  the morning haze,
ascending as the tethering s?tring is slackened:

Verso:

Yesterday was Christmas, and
the days already start to grow
a little longer. In our hand,

the new year‘s fledgling, stronger  though
more fragile too in many ways
than this bedraggled, aging crow,

its song a sad, repeated phrase
among the blackened trees along a
river. So sit back and raise

your glasses to it, do the conga,
auld lang syne, then hit the sack. And
And black and white explode, a throng of

rainbows—gaze! You‘ll see it, wakened
in the morning haze, ascend-
ing as the tethering string is slackened.






















































­
































































­
































































­
































































­
































































­
































































­
































































­



























































AMBIG­RAM

Recto:

Yesterday was Christmas, and the days
already start to grow a little longer.
In our hand, the new year‘s fledgling, stronger
though more fragile too in many ways

than this bedraggled, aging crow, its song a
a sad, repeated phrase among the blackened
trees along a river. So sit back and
raise your glasses to it, do the conga,

auld lang syne, then hit the sack. And black and
white explode, a throng of rainbows—gaze!
You‘ll see it, wakened in  the morning haze,
ascending as the tethering s?tring is slackened:

Verso:

Yesterday was Christmas, and
the days already start to grow
a little longer. In our hand,

the new year‘s fledgling, stronger  though
more fragile too in many ways
than this bedraggled, aging crow,

its song a sad, repeated phrase
among the blackened trees along a
river. So sit back and raise

your glasses to it, do the conga,
auld lang syne, then hit the sack. And
And black and white explode, a throng of

rainbows—gaze! You‘ll see it, wakened
in the morning haze, ascend-
ing as the tethering string is slackened.

AMBIGRAM VII

Recto:

This thorny hedgehog world is rolled into
oblivious winter sleep, where fierce dreams
have clawed a hold and block the probing beams
that keep on seeking for a passage through—

a sleep so heavy and so deep it seems
the sleep of someone who had dared to go
to all extremes, had nothing left to know
or do. As winter ices up the streams

and blizzards howl and hurtle snow on snow,
the  narrow valley teems with soldiers who
must face the foe upon the frontier to
that cold new country where we all shall go.

Verso:

This thorny hedgehog world is rolled
into oblivious winter sleep,
where fierce dreams have clawed a hold

and block the probing beams that keep
on seeking for a passage through—
a sleep so heavy and so deep

it seems the sleep of someone who
had dared to go to all extremes,
had nothing left to know or do.

As winter ices up the streams
and blizzards howl and hurtle snow
on snow, the narrow valley teems

with soldiers who must face the foe
upon the frontier to that cold
new country where we all shall go.