Thank you, Patrick
L
On 1 October 2014 18:23, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> Best of luck with the foul wastes P
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Lawrence Upton
> Sent: 01 October 2014 14:16
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Elidius
>
> I call it my cave, though it is not one;
>
> but piles of rock among intermixed boulders,
>
> oddly placed masses causing space to be
>
> held by mad windows big as doors; passages
>
> in which a man, even one of my height,
>
> must often bend. It's never warm; not safe.
>
> And I live in this dismal capacity,
>
> each pulse failing, as aging animals
>
> withdraw themselves to release meagre spirits
>
> into selfless generalising voids;
>
> or I'm a creature which found itself
>
> its true domain, hidden much of the time
>
> to emerge at half-light for the urgent needs:
>
> feeding, and emptying its body of foul wastes.
>
> They think I'm dead; but all they'd see's a ghost;
>
> or something unembodied, apparently shaped
>
> as a caricature gesticulating
>
>
>
> [Elidius is one of the names of one who may have lived at some time after
> the Roman period on Scilly, or, as it then seems to have been called,
> Ennor.
> There is no evidence of him apart from the earlier name of St Helen's
> island, where it is said he may have been buried, Insula Sancti Elidii. His
> feast day is 8th August. Until now he has had no hagiographer. ]
>
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