Saturday 13 October 2012

Care


Three words fell from the tongue. It took
A lifetime of enunciation to get them right.
A flurry of fingers, detected a fight
It was war.
Within her own mind, affection evidently
An insomnia
Of some kind or other, she concluded
Chin at the wick of the candle
To watch the skin shiver.
She imagined herself
 Alight
Suspended in beauty
For an instant. Her rounded howl
Closed in on the night
 A Melancholic abstinence she dried
Through fear, every lock of her hair.
Why wonder, they told her
As withered flesh parted, envisaged
The chisel crunching the calcite
Wrapped round the heart.
Or even the needle, was good for her
Slipping the face shut beneath its black chiffon.

It was all part
A mad assembly, tinged with religion
For a minute, in the hours the historian will look back
And grimace. Open mouthed idiocy
At the last woman
And the love they tried to replace with dashboards and pistons.