--- grasshopper <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:


---------------------------------
  The Alchemist'sOmelette
If he tracesthree more arcs, he will make a cat--
not a common striped creature like Arnolfini's
ginger tom--but an incandescent beast

with onyx eyes.Nim pauses, his horn-nib suspended
over the page, then inscribes two arcs
at the proper declension.The third curve tries

to draw itself.He hears the thin hiss as it sucks
at the Chinese ink, and then it crouches,
frustrated and invisible, a long quiver

in the airwaiting for a weight of colour.
Around Nim, flickers prowl and growl
in unfinished flourishes, designs and devices

all requiringjust one more touch suddenly
to be, to leap from some tangled dimension
into the simple now. If he closes his eyes

he can seescattered points of light.
They burrow beneath his lids and prickle
against the skin of his sight. He knows

eyes peel likeonions, burst like ripe grapes.
Space, busy with nearly-but-not-quite,
presses around him with an undercurrent

of insectvibration. The sound grows louder,
breaks, concentrates into a small beat, tac 
tac, the eggtooth of an unhatched chick

trying to crackits shell. The egg, that symbol
of perfection, which hangs above Piero's Madonna.
He curls his fingers around the smooth, cool concept

and smellsincense. Once you are, he whispers,
you will die. Time has stronger magic than mine.
Without the last stroke, you have Forever.

The unpersuadedair tensions between chair and chair,
chair and table, like cittern strings. His mouth
becomes
the hole in a sound-box, rounded by surprise

as four clawsrip through incompletion like knives
through a curtain. A woman, with long chestnut hair
and skin as blue as gentian bells, is the first.
She leads a great lynx on a golden cord.


 
     M.A,Griffiths


Well I do like this very much
I had to look cittern up in the dictionary
but note it is medieaval stringed instrument.

I wondered about
flickers
but my dictionary gives its third meaning [as a noun]
as "momentary flash[es] of light"
so that's fine
[2nd meaning is apparently a North American
woodpecker!]

so now my only wonder is if you've got the right
articles in
THE hole in A sound-box
the right way round.

nice one

yours
Gerald

Gerald England
New Hope International, Haiku Talk
poetry, reviews, travel photography and more
http://www.geraldengland.co.uk/
http://hydedailyphoto.blogspot.com/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com