Wolves & Avalanches

 After the wolves and avalanche subsided,

After some man was found encased in ice,

A quill clasped in his hand, a bowler hat,

Crown up, between his legs, there wasn’t much

To do but lay new shingles on the roof.

The goats were glad the wolves were gone, the dogs

Looked sheepish, and the bowler hat was blessed

By Father Tom, the light of rectitude.

We thought, though, that the corpse might be a poet,

One speechless as a Popsicle, and stiff

As Abelard’s one poem would have been,

An Orpheus of footless harmonies.

He wasn’t, it seems. The only one we had,

One Paul Verlaine, was eaten by a bear.

Not even the local Rambo made it good

By blood vengeance, monosyllabic death,

Or dada verse aboard a drunken sleigh.

As for the wolves, perhaps they have moved on—

No verse, no point, so late their country seat.

Good Morning, Betws-y-Coed

  

Here is the world on fire,
Sun or flames at morning,
Roofs ignited dawning,
Cries in bedrooms, smoke
At short-order breakfast windows.
Pity the children, widows,
The crippled aunts with one hand free,
And the anxious dogs barking, Liar! Liar!
And the diving ducks breaking the lake.
All the new men aflame,
Nothing the sun will see
Set them aboil and aburn.
Look, from laburnum and briar
Smoke is getting away,
And the sun clears the jacketed hills,
And the wild aunts concluding their tea
Pray for rain and cull their banished yards.

The railway is escaping.
The broken chapel rooftop, sleeping
Doves enough for level spirits,
Shines as good as gold.
Water is on the move.
The aunts are dressing, according to their merits,
And the roadway coils into the wood,
At least as good as gold and old
Enough for kestrels born to love
A tamed town, a tired, to remove
The sun with drapes and scrub the singing floor.
You hear, the slam of every door,
And the aunts march, visiting the cold.

The Complete Henriad

 This appeared in Angle.

Henry has disappeared, a man who mowed,

Unleaved the gutters, recovered falling trim,

Unturned no stone, and left no hole behind.

Everything takes his place, whose clothes were grit

And grass, and there is sun enough for all.

Hence scant despair.  The Henriad is made

Curtal; the solo myth of sorts is saved

And spent on robins, maybe, and the brown

Spinners who walked out of his new-trimmed bush,

Patient and outraged, made to start again.

The past has passed.  They spin a yarn so fine,

Henry may be inside, in visible

Distress.  He's moved.  Or Henry is just gone.

I Thought of Mr Pickwick

  

Just then the phone rang. It was Tiny Tim,

Tiptoeing through the snowdrops for a goose

The size of Uncle Scrooge. He had a heart

As big as individual distress

In every house and hovel. He had news

Of trials and sponging houses, and his dad

Had totted up the reckoning at last.

I thought of Mr Pickwick, who redeemed

A condominium in Venice Beach,

Where all the sunny blondes were wearing smiles

For Michaelmas. He beamed benignantly.

Remember Mr Fezziwig? he asked.

His claret was to die for, and he sent

Jacktars around the globe and back again.

He died in chains and stalks the streets at night.