The Booming Moon
John Lavery
There came the eager Slavic,
the hot-eyed Spanish don,
there came the glinting helot-black
of black and ghosted bonds.
There came the Saxon reasoners,
the blowing Celtic main,
there came the solemn heathen
over combat-quiet plains.
There came the Norman riders,
there came the Catalan,
there came the Eastern spider
enamelled in the sun.
Without design or destiny,
the many, quested west,
they, the crested,
edgeless, they
crush the glass soil
they
“Straddle the hollering derrick!”
There is no undangerous time there.
Collar aloud comfort.
Time the bullion boys and the cutelings.
Summon the dimpled bells.
I have seen my wrists
clasped by the moist
tendrils of victory
Work the effervescent-burly drills.
Wheel the raucous vehicles.
I have seen the octupine
ink begin to breathe
Rifle the yellow drawers of powder and shells,
flute the yellow-dancing villagers,
the hollander sun
relinquishes the
archive of sky
the booming moon
nettles the night
through quills of trance
and I as ever
the growing person
the hardware of a rose
tell of
the headlong-fiddled
gantry-coopers and masons,
sitters, loop-stitchers, girls of the
daylight-air of winter orchards,
necklace-new now, arm-in-armed,
big-riggers, rangers,
barrel-picked and bar-pickled
both, the car-jockeys high-
beamish and blonde, salesladies
shopping, as casual as asses, cosmetic
as stars, captains, musclers,
the tasty lot all-dressed as always darting
through oil-smells, smoke, tugging their
overcoats, nurses, simple-eaters, unaged
so oddly, wistful, stiff, and lookers, and
side-winders dreaming banal into bane, managers,
stenos, girlfriends, agents, loudmen all and all
among bantering span-shadows
light-jawing dollar- and air-talk this night to be or
to beach this, night they match up the eye-dance
and music that musts this, night grin the glassmen
their mirror-charms melting the stomachs grow bombast
the faces go stub this, night the noise-makers filling
dark spaces with crackling bitumen this, night
the crackers their six-faces fanning
the day-stalkers breaking this, night
breaking by undersound sea-like
and knowing its uproar its own this,
night the clap-laughers laughing
to be made to be made to be un-
remembered this, night
brewn and burden
broken and only
only in tumultitude
silent
as silent, healthy
teeth are with blood
glued
to broken knuckles
to the tunes
of eary grins in glasses
the silent stud fizzles
inside the by now bored belly
of a chummy lady
whose breasts are
beginning to chafe
o zingatious tchukee-tchukee
o how that
pesky apocalypse
speckles my lips
silent
as feather spines might skim in air
as elm seeds might touch land
as the red bat might recoil from all solid sounds
as the offing carol, say
as the headland anthem
as the rain-chinned clown might breathe onto our egg-salted faces
and
as your hair speckles my lips
silent
and spring-wrapped
in ribbanded serpentine
the tongue-tight lovers
quiet, closed now,
breakfasted on the once forest
odours of new-cut wood,
along jostle-good and small
verandas and porches,
so-longing, a-waving, blood-
and tear-shot in gaudy
sadness as though through
early snow, as though
through blowing papers
until, as ever,
the hollander sun
comes to reclaim
the archive
of sky
THE END