Aniss of Biss
The
breakman with his horse neighing dance,
advancing with abundance dressed as an adorable plant,
streamed bloody acoustic manacles of sea filled gravel,
one, two, three score millions multiplying fast nets,
hordes of soldier encrusted choruses,
and crashing rock shape cries,
wolven, aggressive, winged strangers.
But, as he warned so many times before the blessed icy needles,
he raised his bare and scarred arm.
"Enter - thou wilt the ancient utter, and lay but one hand up on the mound"
(Mounting against
one - against the other.
Stand stopped - move silent knell.
No crude earth, no mottled chalk.
And look closely at the bloody horizon -
a pencil line, rust blurred, lead scorched, even crumbled aghast.
And a dreadful lack of that miraculous bird trill.)
Gazing quietly
upon the freshly coloured lee of a magnificent sombre cairn,
he saw with dreadful secret tears -
a well ordered fulling mill,
with strocking rill sedately oozing by,
massaging the playfully tinted stones,
who, in obedience to the sprites of the reedy tide,
sang a crabs song accompanied by a gang of wind blasted gulls.
The breakman bowed, smelling the silt - a wonderfully local odour,
(once smeared upon cackling skin,)
the olive liquor, a dramatic cream loved of armoured midge and razored fly,
echoed ancient hedges and fleshy leaves.
As he knelt, more by curiosity than homage,
he craned his red scarfed neck towards the dawn of an infantile cry,
sitting just behind a chiselled menhir -
the highest, barest, quietest stone,
straining against summit, wind, and magnetic sound.
He froze -
and with a particular ear
staring towards a threatening sky,
he called all his senses to pause as he lent against the ticking twin wire.
A third lament was not required -
all the ghosts and husky spirits were facing the now speechless peak.
"Black!" - whispering hag of grating jowl -
not slow -
or mute -
but hissing!