epitaph on an epic
“There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.”― Harold Pinter
pack up your gun and pen, scratch the dying peonies
in a moment a sigh will muffle the world
treelight limbs silence as shadow knuckles
a florid white dipped in Winter’s score
names sing in fleshy drifts
caw caw caw
and the bluemoon homes whitebush
love and languor boot along in the snow
lace to thorn to crescent
no empire only obduration
as abeyance gingers in the gone grass, waiting
breath, blue from underneath
a bruised and hurt-broke word
the hours unbolt and take off boating
you and I and another
swalk beneath the snow
disenthrall some distant heart in the kitchen corner
chinwag patter bellows on the page in the wind,
in the wind,
the agnostic travail along the Ouse
as the just slumbers under flurry
galoshes gush later in the pantry when home
no gods, no masters, the long lims of time wrap on wrists
stripped bare the two of them snug at beauty and a sopping
intemperate pauses foreclose the night and unbutton
your teeth in the dry balm
mumbling in an inviolate jar, nothing
two spies stand up iridescence in the lost hills amid the clanking
a lambent blade throats an envelope,
dangling
young man, you too shall know by the color-cookoo of your children’s dreams
as the clock divests and all the rest
you dare not unwind, the heart
boning the cartilage of snow and berm
while a backshore tumbles a nation
and notebooks wash up in the sand
for: Wan-lin, Marc Nash, and my father
