Trevor Joyce

peacocks
seem out
of place
and uneasy
here

large
rattling
tails
folded

eyes
all
neatly
stacked

like tenses
of some
complex
and irregular
verb tabled
in a grammar

could
should
would

or a hand
of cards

*

stone
human
sky

bedded
three-ply

colour
leaching
levels
down

air glows
diaphanous

sediments
obscure
as human
sentiment
grows
colourable
memory
is heavy
freight

sky
exalts
light

cold sumps
black out

the heart
is a chambered
habitat

*

uh oh
here they
come

they'll hound
you and pound
you and hammer
you flatter than
pemmican

they'll process
the meat
of your dreams

reconstitute
soul with
machines

and you'll never
see anything
brighter than
coal

*

workers
abandoned
work

athletes
left off
striving

the great
relaxed
their tyranny

men of leisure
stopped their
idleness

through corridors
and halls
and offices
state
functionaries
were arrested

and heard
the concrete
roaring

like
accelerated
water

*

always
different
isn't it?
even though
you sketch
the structure
beforehand

even after all
childhood
spent aloft
or dreaming
outbursts
of limbs

branching
surprises

and always
from the highest
twig
the redbreast
calls you
sweetly
up
...

Inside rooms I've never seen
an old man beats himself
at chess, the moon recurs
as a white dove in a child's dream,
a virgin leaves the glass
and, turning the light, retires;
as the mirror broods on itself.

Though the sun burns still through a vacant sky
frost thickens on the gates
and the moon grows up in the poplar's shade.

A girl waits, lonely, on the bridge.
can I tell her of remote roads
where love, not knowing the shock of loss,
has atrophied, and no-one sees
how, at the desolate junctions
the monuments of the old dead bleed
with the green ichors of bronze;

or there are streets,
icy now where pools contract,
where I have heard the ringing footfalls of a child
who will remember evenings
charged with light, fever
of strange games played
in the falling of the oblique sun;
the private hurt of times and words
not uttered yet.

And shall I tell the destitute
how I have found their misery
like the wardrobe of a suicide, where I
the living, recognize
only the faded linens, the frayed cloth,
the torn letters in an inside pocket,
extracts from an unintelligible
and unfinished history;

or tell the old of aging
and the inevitable death.
with dusk the rain comes;
the ice loosens and the expanding locks
respond and open. such time impedes
the passage of another fall
that drags through lengthening nights
into the season of its bitter end.
...

for George Hitching


As when a faded lock of woman's hair shall cause a man to cut his throat in a bedroom at five o'clock in the morning; or when Albany resounds with legislation, but a little henpecked judge in a dusty office at Herkimer or Johnstown sadly writes across the page the word ‘unconstitutional' - the glory of the Capitol has faded. — Benj. Paul Blood
Dear Sir, I was this morning straight
after the news and forecast
hanging from an old appletree in my garden
a small Japanese bell
when I received through the post your importunate
and quite misguided threats

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

An injunction, you say. An obstruction,
you say. You've a lot of chat for someone
that's not even clear who he's talking to.
Does this help: not only have I
not erected any obstruction
in the form of a barbed wire fence or otherwise

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

but I'm attempting today to rest and recover
from the effects of an obstruction in my own passages?
I have, it pains me to have to spit it out, a strangury,
and you've got the wrong man, chief,
I've better blockages to worry about
than the one at the back of some godforsaken hotel in Midleton

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

What's more, my bell is mute.
The inscribed slip that made its tongue
chime in the wind, flew off. It's not my day.
Far from putting up barbed wire fences,
I'd prefer, right now, to see one of those bright Byzantine
Christs come striding across from the opposite hills

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

fresh from baptizing Adam, vast and very masterful,
lugging a patriarch along with each arm no doubt
from some new-harrowed hell
and scattering from his feet a fine debris
of locks, bolts, spancels, cuffs, gyves, fetters, stocks,
and other miscellaneous hindrances

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

And what would our Neighbourhood Watch do then?
Put the polis on his tail, stay home, and watch that hooligan
as he'd come, breaking contracts, flattening fences
and leaving gates and prisons open behind him.
Yes, he's the man would soon break down
the calculus that stopped my flow

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

And not like a thief in the night,
but openly I'd have him
eliminate all limitations,
peel walls and roofs away like rind
and with his knife of stars
reveal what soft exotic fruit grew ripe within

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

unchain Prometheus from his rock
to stretch and scratch at last and fire
stones at that bloody bird,
allow Eurydice ascend
to feel the strange dew fall
chill through her faded dress

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

remove the ratchet from the clock, North
from the needle, run the many down to one. (Oh no,
hold on there, God, we can't have that!
I won't be one with our friend the illicit
erector of barbed wire barricades,
or this damned notary. Cut!)

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

It's evening now. The bell's transformed.
With a laurel leaf lashed to its tongue
it cries out clear in the wind.
I'll just sit tight till the Ipral sets me up
and I no longer pass blood,
or feel weak when I attempt to stand

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence

take idle note of that shrill song:
past flight and hot pursuit
terror passing cold restraint to come
then when I'm up to it again, forgetfully,
turn that stock still.
I trust this terminates our correspondence, Sir

and in this regard time shall be made of the essence
...

for Angela
true we may surmise
how a knife hatched
out of meat
should fledge

span with blade
then unexpectedly
take flight onto some sill
moult there with clutch

of fist falling from it
arm with balance
of muscles altering
to lift and lay

its murderous
intent and disturbed
dreams and brood
how everything broken

so they say points
to the unbroken
forgetful is it of what did
the breaking as I witness

my own loathing
and desire walk
through the dreaming
labyrinth of my child

while detailed depositions state
how further on
within the wood
whose skew bent

registers which wind
prevails itself perpetually
ragged and worn
from ocean breath

and sun and every flame
it quenched in its far
fetch the bright axe
blossom suddenly

the long bones lever
up from it like anthers
and beyond the startling
calyx of teeth

an avid buzzing perishable
fruit set thicken
and disintegrate
to load with sweet

secure deposits
of afflicting gold
their remote cells
and stipulate eventual

shelter from the fall
asylum from the edge
a luminous domain
unbounded

seldom they relate
why the innocent whose mouth
is like a bowl of blood
blurts words already

darkened with gods
and sacrifices how
I have the face of those
whose faces have rotted

and although whirring blades
have been observed
to crystallize spontaneously
throughout the native

rock and ramify
in gangs and casual crews
good companies exfoliate
pervasive and exotic dust

where tellers and their firm
controllers fight to reconcile
accounts and sound
is severed from the dogs throat

there is no further testimony
to the effect how in this
realm of agents deeds
and instruments

one sees at last displayed
an armoured beast whose
head a growth of flame
in the shadow of the ripening

clocks the river sames
destroys itself the jug
absconds leaving to the grasp
only a sustained bewilderment

like dice spinning
...