A holiday tradition!
-----Original Message-----
>From: Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Dec 24, 2011 8:10 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: By way of the season
>
>Ah yes that happy disembowelling!!!!
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: British & Irish poets [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mark Weiss
>Sent: 23 December 2011 17:37
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: By way of the season
>
>My only seasonal poem, now 5 years old.
>
>
>BY WAY OF THE SEASON
>
>
>1
>
>After its struggle the gazelle
>surrenders to the lion's grip, useless
>to fight. Does it think then, does it think
>'if only I'd dodged to the right. If only.
>Maybe next time.'
>As the cat disembowels it and begins to feed.
>
>Farewell to the hills
>farewell to the herd
>farewell to water hole and tender grasses
>and the joy of the young at the teat.
>
>2
>
>At moments when the consequences of choice are upon us we say
>'this can't be all there is,' but it can. Regret, nostalgia and longing,
>on the other hand, are ready gifts, one can live
>as if there were choices with no consequences, as if
>the life could be unlived
>and lived again.
>
>3
>
>Day before Christmas in the supermarket the Stones are singing ?Can't get no
>satisfaction,? but we try & we try & we try & and we try
>and we buy something.
>
>4
>
>No way no way
>elusive as wind.
>
>5
>
>Stories and the stories of stories.
>A vocabulary of places gathered and left.
>Putting death aside, one wonders whether to climb that distant hill, as in
>the conservation of matter.
>There are so many windows to look through.
>Opposite, a building seems to wear as a crown the trees
>beyond it. Close one eye or the other
>to recover its true flatness. If I say
>'rock dove' do you see 'pigeon?'
>
>6
>
>No gull rests now on the cross above the church's triangular facade, but
>it's apparently a perch
>reserved for gulls to take turns at.
>So much for religion. One prays
>to invest oneself in the known and unknown places,
>the simplicity of the abandoned and the immanence of ruins.
>Ghost-whispers.
>
>'I am the demon that whimpers at night,'
>he said, and the pigeons
>(or doves) ride even the steepest wires. The oblique
>is granted them. Across the street
>in front of the travel agency
>a gruff Santa makes Christmas noises
>in Caribbean Spanish. For a moment I thought it the ghost
>rising through the radiator from the apartment below.
>He dances now to ?The Entertainer? played on a portable keyboard.
>Ragtime Spanish Santa from the Dominican Republic.
>And what would Dominic have made of this? 'Church
>of the Immaculate Deception,' he might have said. As in
>'I bring you pestilence'
>he might have said.
>It was an epidemic of grace.
>
>7
>
>That year three virgins bore sons.
>
>Zeus the King displayed his thunderbolts.
>Chango fell as a shower of gold.
>And Chac arrived as rain.
>
>Where you find it bring joy.
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