Martell Overture Part I: 'Where She Watches Over Babylon' Poem by Ross Mackay

The night will bite like fingers on an egg,
leave a tang on the tongue like old coffee.
The holy neophyte with cat like tread
and wading through the elm heartwood
which were her eyes, I went to the widow.
The Babylon Lady in her glow descends,
the thousand acres become the great oasis.
Now in the sun and moon- the spring lambent,
the trinkle turning daisies of a flashlight,
the hour has the bulb climb the water walls.
She is musing- porcelain behind marble.
Descending, she treads as finely as the sonnet,
the whispers of her threads like heavy fog,
with her hand she'll touch the angels, and
with her eyes she'll keep the Eden gate open.
Soon they'll be kneeling in brandy rivers,
drunk as fallen timber- the common guardsmen.
We should watch them, and laugh.

How beautifully blue the sky,
the stars are trapped, the moon is high.
Now the clouds so green, so why,
are they turning in the mountain sky.

Icicles rest about her in great curls of sleep.
We're floating from planet to planet-
Our dream is loose on the rock.
The lights are off.
Waking.
The lights are on.
She walks through a snakepit.
Sandy apples appear and disappear-
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight.

Sweet dream of night had passed away
Young silent tyrant, by a swift decay
If I should lay my soul to earth:
I could lie as I did at birth
The time in which we could run has passed.
The waters climbing over the mountains,
leaning from the castle walls- dawn in eyes.
Olive daydreams and morning fantasies-
the tearooms, the beamed walls and marching tunes,
as we watch from the window, fires bloom.

Have you come to watch returning carriages?
Have you come to watch the dawn of winter?
Have you come to watch dying early spring?
Have you come to watch the birth of a nation?

On the rooftops of the half-sprung houses
Thus descends the cloud of empty soldiers,
signal sirens whistle wards in chancery
to come out to play, succumb and be swallowed.
Maybe they'll let us sit in chains, we can weep,
and have the work set us free and my home
can set fire to my eyes.
On the hill, her linen of one guinea,
Guiding the ghosts home and lying down thin
with her arms stretched out and smiling brightly,
she gives into the air.
- the nymph of the Nimrod tower,
- the tealight eyes of her face
- she flies.
And descending from the covenant mountain,
have they not heard that God is dead?
Half squeezed, the tables are like rocks-
counters under the Ararat lowlands.
Misfortune brings a winter too early.
In our tents we'd talk until morning-
the lost nights sat up in the rain
with our hollow conclusions and cry
at our unfinished portraits of women.
All day long it was gently leading,
the troubled hands holding me-
come closer to the fire.

Winter's tales told me how

raindrops could be counted

and scattered hayward now

and there'd be rhapsody too

in green as fire was blue.

I am young enough now
to sit hollow-eyed,
drunk as maidens
on a willow day.
Climbing too
far for beggars
to reach.
Heaven-
weary.
…..............

The Babylon Lady touches the ground- soft like her skin under the milk wood. The great crates of battleships will parade, the armies will kneel and spin heaven hayward. She will shine as bright as fire and she'll ride far and near over a world she can hold in her hands.

I have heard the clock.

The black mist now a wanderer white,
the shake of snow for those who stare
at the wanderer groping bog green.
I love these last days of wanderer dew.



Now in Carthage they come,
like the cooing birds they burn,
burn
burn
Now my girl far and near, cherries as pairs,
just the coarseness of my hand, just a touch.