All Poets’ Day

Sitting ‘neath a drooping Sycamore
the river glistens, bellowing to the toothless
jaw of away.
Sitting ‘neath the teary arms
of Old Uncle Sycamore
as you always imagined Shelley,
scrawled forge on one arched knee,
pipe and locket in the other.
Sitting ‘neath the arcane groping
of the slack-jawed, sleep-eyed,
sad-songed, gap-toothed Sycamore,
home of the Poet’s fatigue
and sun-coated simile.

In my youth I danced a thousand words
as I tailored a smile,
sculpted the calmest of glances,
from iron tweed and soft-silk granite.
But now I sit with Shelley,
and we back slap in guffaws
and wrap arms around shoulders
in temple-tapped friendship and support,
the wood pigeon offers hollow expletives,
the wasp nervously teases at my wrist.
Shelley cannot stand the sun
and is just as cruelly cut
as generations have described,
deep sunk eyes alert and terrifying,
teeth like dying razorblades,
sad moist palms shrieking to history
that once pushed paper sails from the Kilns.
Inside these tired creases
lives a grinning battlefield,
hollering mud filled reaches.
He can spit at the skylark
and turn my pity to hew
in the blink of a bloodshot glance.
He can shave back the proud
insignia of the rolling Heaven’s West
with a little more than a prod
of his purple pulled tongue.
He offers his excuses and climbs
to his stain stocking legs, black
buckle feet catching Helios’ most
nervous of pint-stripe rays.
He is off to die at thirty,
off to teach the world of tragedy without pity,
and the garish insipidity of Old Uncle Sycamore
becomes a tired old song,
and he sings it well.

Propped pocket-handed on the mean
mantle of the Oakwood,
the sprawled glen downward flumes
to the thatched apron and thick
caked walkways.
Propped smoky and wheezy
at the Oak’s bark cracked feet,
thick shag grass blades fingering my bones.
Propped, fist clenched, summer-eyed,
at the myth folded old Oak tower,
the strong silent mischievous Vulcan
to which all brevity is callous.
and he stands there for Byron,
for blood, for battle, and love;
and Byron sobs at the old Oak muscle,
at the talons that rake
from root to breath.
He beats his naked fists
and swallows a long coarse swallow,
“I am no Poet”, he swears as the gods
bellow a laugh.
he proves his point by hyperventilating
a verse of marble,
stained granite and fools gold.
His headdress singes in the sun,
his bold brass features shepherd
all minds of foes and demons and damsels
to the lesser guilds of poetic ribaldry,
his eyes chatter with the cheering
of tankards
spilling roguish down his cheeks
to the quivered musket barrel of his mouth.
He kisses me on both cheeks
and we stand for a moment
looking at each other, at the glen
before he glides away without a sound.
He has a legend to leave,
a war to fight, an enigma to weave,
sword at side
lovers in eternity
fifty feet to grow
axes to fell.

Climbed breathless to the Cedar’s point,
warm coarse breezes on dusks’ tired nape,
the perpetual rolling of words,
from tip-toed moonlit etchings
to sprawl armed cackling
in the headdress of the leaf-fingered Jester.
And the torrential genius of a whirlwind
downpour – oh, to saturated be!
And the pimple drop stain in the branch girdle
grinning nonchalant to a patron’s nerve.

I will not raise a glass, or wave a wand,
or a call a prayer, dance a jig or shed a tear,
at the lean pale silhouette that approaches
within its own constant scribble.

For Keats is on horseback teetering
on the horizon’s stage of Hollywood myth.
Keats is all swashbuckling lingering glances,
soft hand-clasps and musty tavern conjecture.
Keats is all silences, all beauty.
Keats is all gritted teeth and exhausted hair
sunken back armchair sighs and glistening forehead,
impenetrable stares and thick forearms.

But up wanders this tailored newt
head bent to Georgic overtures,
sickly, sparing turf the offence of burden,
old shoulders, sea grey throat
belching out every moment of every
day of every song swept gale bellow.

And as dusk turns to the moon’s parade
Keats leans toy-like at the Cedar’s
smooth stout ribs and splutters a soft
tense cough into his palm, eyes raw,
lips pursed as antlers frame,
and there is no deception in the colour
as Vatican bells do chime,
and there is so much more to say.
But slowly chilled as I am on my perch
I wonder if God cares for us in ways
we can never understand
and if Keats was His errant right hand
and Byron His frosty starched lungs
and Shelley His proud cobbled thoroughfare
His sabre in a casket of quills.

Keats makes an awkward bow
and now I am alone.

© Gary Raymond, July 2005

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