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Thursday, 20 April 2023

Gilmours Glistering (Draft/unfinished)

 


A chorus dawns the most essential feature to see a miscreant, 

abandoned as a baby swinging from a Union Jack? 

or a Cenotaph the horns of empty contusions, 

a now lawful ‘you’

hurt inside the jerking melting benches 

&later on the bonnet of a Jaguar car green emerald 

forming part of the Royal Convoy 

HM Berridge of The Vale of Catmose 

remedial policies, my voice now, yes 

a flightless young magpie tumbles to the ground, 

in Oakham veils of rain shining purple acetate.

The bird has now stopped moving. 

Crouches down in the gutter, & make no noise 

shivering from dehydration &perhaps fear too, 

airborne to jettison the runt. Multum in parvo liths, carva 

sprigs from veins of leadened hope 

drowned in magnetic scrunches &perhaps fear too, again 

if nature is allowed to run its course, 

it’ll probably be dead before the day is out.

Or hirelings would be wriggling: saluting their children

a / sorry three decades distant in time, 

a young jackdaw and life

tumbles from its nest in the steeple of a village church.

Steely-grey feathers, yellow beak, 

an injured wing dragging along the floor which pours

Jackdaws & Magpies share family ties. 

The crow family. Carrion kin. Stitched. 

Someone, stumbled across this injured young bird, 

boxed it up, and took it to the home of a local woman, 

an amateur animal healer. 

From there, the jackdaw found its way

into the hands of the man 

who would go on to become my father, now dead. 

O dusted guffaw O a sprawling pinny, with a body unmanageable 

I lay my head against the weir, the bottomless landscape 

my silent boring faith by my magpie’s side, 

I have a much greater understanding now

of the origins of my pain

its aching sills by the singing sires sometimes 

I wonder deeply of the talk about them, the mags murdering songbirds 

collapsing ecosystems, the alleged crimes of tearing out of eyes,

& anuses of lambs & that they even bear a spot of the devil’s blood 

under their tongues & refused to mourn for Christ,

all loaded with ancient scorn,

Old Mag, its rough chatter not matter!! guffaw

Not my Mag! Bougainvillaea the littering birthmark,,

my mag would never, most delicately

sorried the coffers to a summers bloom 

while the Pioneer Corps presided 

& brains ensconced fair-aired

base born whirligig, the sumptuary laws 

clump-forming, with whorls of ovate to lance shaped

pointed oh my bare flashing there to turning-blossom pink!

Everyone knows the rhyme, 

or a version of it: one magpie brings sorrow; 

two mirth; three a wedding; 

four a birth; five silver, six gold; and seven the devil, 

his own self alone!