Variations On A Theme By Ezra Pound
(The only poem on 'Numinous Magazanthus')
1.
The roads of the sky knoweth my body,
Cradled child by a lamp
Lulling his mother to sleep.
White birds, gulls at the window,
To seek shelter from the storm
In the green lap of the domicile.
I peck the glass,
Wind-smashed bones
In detritus dreams.
2.
Even the child knoweth the sky
And its dark secret message.
His mother, green from death,
Stares glassily mad,
As the song of cancer
Croaks its last deep riddle.
Even the child, even he, knoweth
That his body exists.
His blood will change.
His horizons will disappear.
The lamp will flunk
In the last bitter chaos.
3.
Air and body
Share a body
Of sin and love.
Child and mother,
Each a lover,
Each a doll
Teach a gull
To enter
The centre
Of their solitude.
4.
The winds are rude,
I’m bitten, brushed,
Caught, returned,
On wings of bone,
Scattered bird-meat,
Whitening the centre
Of the sky
Where a cross
Towers over all who loved
Their mother for her child.
(written 1967, published 'Eavesdropper' 1990)
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