stanza five had me puzzled and outsside the poem, Colin.
a good poem in there - trying to get out?
SallyE
on 22/12/04 9:51 pm, Colin dewar at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Drinking Tale
>
>
>
> Whether Bonnie Prince Charlie actually drank from it
> we'll never know.
>
> "It could be apocryphal."
> my father began the story
> that his father and his mother's father told.
>
> At least it's old.
> 1737 is the date on what looks like a label,
> moulded from the cave-green glass of the bottle.
>
> What struggle to blow it
> shows in the thickness and the shape,
> less round than an oval sagged by its weight.
>
> Artefacts. Where do they end?
> This is a piece of bark
> from a tree in a wood
> that John Bull once looked at,
> allegedly.
>
> Through the opening,
> much dust on the summit
> of the generous false bottom.
>
> About a quart of air.
> Is it all?
> No message, clear as my grandmothers'
> "Things are seldom as they seem"?
>
> Has it a Jacobean genie?
> Shall I lift it in anger,
> find bloody finger prints
> and rub till the glass glows warm in my hand?
>
> We need a bigger house.
> Dolls wave from the bookcase
> and my son billets bey-blades in the dresser.
> He remembers them all: Black Dronzer, Survival Wolf, Dragoon.
>
> Space is the thing.
> but I can't just drop this vessel in the bank for old bottles.
> Much easier to pass it on when the time comes
> with familiar words in passing.
>
> Colin
>
> QUESTION:
>
> Is S5, the bit about artefacts an irritating distraction or welcome humour?
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