My World Is Pyramid
I Half of the fellow father as he doubles His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk, Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles To-morrow's diver in her horny milk, Bisected shadows on the thunder's bone Bolt for the salt unborn. The fellow half was frozen as it bubbled Corrosive spring out of the iceberg's crop, The fellow seed and shadow as it babbled The swing of milk was tufted in the pap, For half of love was planted in the lost, And the unplanted ghost. The broken halves are fellowed in a cripple, The crutch that marrow taps upon their sleep, Limp in the street of sea, among the rabble Of tide-tongued heads and bladders in the deep, And stake the sleepers in the savage grave That the vampire laugh. The patchwork halves were cloven as they scudded The wild pigs' wood, and slime upon the trees, Sucking the dark, kissed on the cyanide, And loosed the braiding adders from their hairs, Rotating halves are horning as they drill The arterial angel. What colour is glory? death's feather? tremble The halves that pierce the pin's point in the air, And prick the thumb-stained heaven through the thimble. The ghost is dumb that stammered in the straw, The ghost that hatched his havoc as he flew Blinds their cloud-tracking eye. II My world is pyramid. The padded mummer Weeps on the desert ochre and the salt Incising summer. My Egypt's armour buckling in its sheet, I scrape through resin to a starry bone And a blood parhelion. My world is cypress, and an English valley. I piece my flesh that rattled on the yards Red in an Austrian volley. I hear, through dead men's drums, the riddled lads, Screwing their bowels from a hill of bones, Cry Eloi to the guns. My grave is watered by the crossing Jordan. The Arctic scut, and basin of the South, Drip on my dead house garden. Who seek me landward, marking in my mouth The straws of Asia, lose me as I turn Through the Atlantic corn. The fellow halves that, cloven as they swivel On casting tides, are tangled in the shells, Bearding the unborn devil, Bleed from my burning fork and smell my heels. The tongue's of heaven gossip as I glide Binding my angel's hood. Who blows death's feather? What glory is colour? I blow the stammel feather in the vein. The loin is glory in a working pallor. My clay unsuckled and my salt unborn, The secret child, I sift about the sea Dry in the half-tracked thigh. |