dancing to midnight
lonely meadow in black and white, oaks on the skyline,
this the cover of robert duncan's opening of the field,
money: almost seven dollars: one hundred and fifty yen
it cost me, and an old price sticker says from Maruzen
bookstore, dog-eared a little, and what does it yield
this paperback, other than poetry, there is a thumbprint
on the titlepage, especially designed by someone
called Jess, and otherwise it is in such good nick that
I felt drawn to it, as it stood up in a rack of verse
alongside Sylvia Plath, Hughes, Chaucer and Milton,
the woman smiled at me, I said to her it looked like rain,
and the
lonely meadow in black and white, oaks on the skyline,
no Kore, but curry, hills in the background, and I dance
to the sounds of Abba and soul, in a pub extension,
in which Al and I gatecrashed a local wedding reception,
eighteen, drunk, I dance in the words of the tabloid press,
I know of no Greeks, or of any Romans, and the Russians,
are not here, I dance to the words of soul and disco,
and in the corduroy turnups of my father a field of flowers
and plants awaits, as he sleeps in front of the television,
and my mother is in bed, as I dance with my imagination,
the bride has no face, forgotten, the uncles like stones,
while the
lonely meadow in black and white, oaks on the skyline,
Tony and I look for a trunk or part of a tree, a would-be
torso, and I walk the common, and the base of the hills
looking for the woman of the woods, desire of sculptor,
and in the art college, the lecturer used to pop pills,
chew gum like cows in the field, stare aimlessly at what?
and the blackbird did a dance, marc bolan crashed into
glamrock heaven, the hedgerows looked greener and sharp,
and then we found her, near a brook, trickling like piss,
I carved away, cut into the wood, but the quality was what?
decaying inside, knotted here and there, and covered with moss,
she disappeared, the dream, into shards and splinters of wet
wood, and so did the memories of the evenings I spent
on the meadows of songs, dancing alone until midnight.
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