Silent Landscape Poem by Thomas Henry Stephens

I paced silently in the useless landscape,
Where a white solo horse,
matured and immured in an Arabian souk,
is frantic and tantalisingly rampant.

The glistening chandeliers hung from the clouds,
Impartially,
And the sparkling immobile glass droplets,
rest heavy in the fog.

While the driving wind blew from the east in the night,
The dark satanic mills mashed bird and beasts alike.
Spinning insanely faster,
the incandescent glowing light bulbs,
burst with violent verdant black tulips.

With a hearty shout and a heavy heart the unlawful daughter,
hobbled delicately,
tidily plastering the Eskimo's chilblain with mustard.
The leather of her red shoes grew bulbous bunions in sympathy,
While the radio played Waltzing Matilda.

We follow the drums and the drums say die.
The flag's in rags, the dogs are dead,
Freezing in the burning snow,
Carving and sobbing swathes through drifts,
Leaving a plague of bile and spit.

I carved and constructed a blameless doll,
Who was gallant and honest to a fault but without a brain.
And the gentleman concurred that the topsy-turvy world,
Leaves our thin souls unnerved,
And our mouldy agnostic waterproof jackets green with envy.

The father said elephants with custard,
And we all fell in brotherly adoration into the greasy pudding.
The festering jelly was most abusive and pounced,
On the bloated paper Mache'Tintoretto painting,
pasting all parts into a corner,
with no escape.

How can we, without love and hope,
Pay the boatman for a journey to the unknown,
Without let or hindrance?
Tell us so we shall know.
Without prevarication.