Zero Gravity

SPIDER IN ABSINTHE (ABSINTHE SPIDER) and other poems

SPIDER IN ABSINTHE (ABSINTHE SPIDER)

A funky little spider

slipped into my absinthe

whereupon he emerged

with all the fervour or a holy convert

and,

washing his eight-legged self in my inkwell,

transcribed eight different octaves radiating out in

eight different directions.

Of course, given the (for him) perplexing geometry of the thing

it was when he came

to supply the sestets that

he got really stuck

until the

really got to him

set him on a different track

and, as sure-footed as

a Paul Verlaine or Mallamare,

he walked the walk of a pure prosody.

POEM FOR WILFRED OWEN

The kind old sun will know.

I burn

loudly

splinter into shell- pieces.

Suddenly incoming

tendril-like

death reaches out

its fingers worming through mud and clay.

No longer

will the sky, the clouds, the river,

the sea

let you speak on their behalf. Be

part and parcel of your manifesto

spreading out to

touch the stars

who watch with suspicion

as, circuitously, you edge towards them

wondering whether you

are down to

last reserves, have

any power, faith, ammunition,

to cross this total comprehending darkness,

infinite regression of no-man’s lands

Verse Blank (for Modiegi)

I yuzed to

laugh at that

'son of the soil' thang

until the

stuff in my surname

leaked out; was

swallowed into

Africa

became black. And

now that scary

Africa in all her

immensity lies

small and

beautiful in

my arms

like a Russian doll maybe something