Shards of sunlight touch me here
Shredded in willows. Through stained-glass
Fragments on the lake I sought to reach
A mind at silt-bed
The lake stayed cold
I swam in an October flush of dying leaves
The gardener’s labour flew in seasoned scrolls
Lettering the wind
Swept from painted craft
A mockery of waves remarked this idyll sham
I trod on acorns; each shell’s detonation
Aped the skull’s uniqueness.
Came sharper reckoning –
This favoured food of hogs cannot number high
As heads still harshly crop to whirlwinds
I have briefly fled
The oak rains a hundred more
A kind confusion to arithmetics of death:
Time to watch autumn the removal man
Dust down rare canvases
To let a loud resolve of passion
Fly to a squirrel, burnished light and copper fur
A distant stance without the lake’s churchwindows
And for a stranger, love.
A host of acorns fell, silent
As they are silenced all, whose laughter
Rose from such indifferent paths, oh God
They are not strangers all
Whose desecration mocks the word
Of peace – salaam aleikun – not strangers any
Brain of thousands pressed asleep to pig fodder –
Shun pork the unholy – cries the priest.
I borrow seasons of an alien land
In brotherhood of ill, pride of race around me
Strewn in sunlit shards. I borrow alien lands
To stay the season of a mind.
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