GRAVEYARD ON A SPRING EVENING
The stone names never stop staring
even in thedark.
Half-light from a moon far above
not seeming to be far above
arrives cool from its fierce desert.
Closer above us
hard buds on sycamore twigs seem
they´ll never relent and unpack.
We step carefully.
We walk not on grass - on water
the most unmoving and deepest,
the massive blindness of the dead.
MIGRATIONS
Too scattered, too individual
to be a team, the tattered small clouds
are not lonely and keep decent speed
toward somewhere far north-east from here.
I imagine them as pillaged threads,
abused tissues ripped by the zealots
who couldn´t tolerate the wholeness
of the garment woven through and through.
At the harbour mouth: liquid ruffles,
nascent waves in a slithery mesh
none of them could hope to escape from,
small-frantic on the run from something
hounding them from a distant south-west.
I imagine them as many crowds,
each crowd a five thousand racing for
the loaves and fishes they´ll never find.
The stone names never stop staring
even in thedark.
Half-light from a moon far above
not seeming to be far above
arrives cool from its fierce desert.
Closer above us
hard buds on sycamore twigs seem
they´ll never relent and unpack.
We step carefully.
We walk not on grass - on water
the most unmoving and deepest,
the massive blindness of the dead.
MIGRATIONS
Too scattered, too individual
to be a team, the tattered small clouds
are not lonely and keep decent speed
toward somewhere far north-east from here.
I imagine them as pillaged threads,
abused tissues ripped by the zealots
who couldn´t tolerate the wholeness
of the garment woven through and through.
At the harbour mouth: liquid ruffles,
nascent waves in a slithery mesh
none of them could hope to escape from,
small-frantic on the run from something
hounding them from a distant south-west.
I imagine them as many crowds,
each crowd a five thousand racing for
the loaves and fishes they´ll never find.
Robin Fulton Macpherson