Plagues of Swans

The Plague of Swans

I saw a white scratch - a swan in a scrap heap,
paddling in circles, plucking dust from its back;
a proud, dissected figure of eight in a valley
of blasted televisions and crooked sofas hog-backed with springs.
As if it were a solemn druid, in solitude proceeding
between junk cairns.

Wan, suave, don't jape.
This is the sophisticated ethereal,
an origami Frankenstein.
Wedding cake white. Meringue wings shaped
like an upturned crab's legs
or a feathered rib cage. Explosive majesty,
a bleached scratch, a quartz crown in a scrap heap.

Tonight it is Easter Sunday, and the late trains are playing
their stage for attention, hooting and grappling horns.
A street lamp's sheen on alabaster thighs
where muscles undulate, like sheets being beaten clean.
Freed from dust. Amber glints on pumping hooves that shake the
rails
and dwindle in the twilight.

A red brick pub is snug against the rail embankments.
Inside, the throng of young swans sweat, and boast,
each cherishing lager alone.
Magenta spotlights slice the smoke,
and all heads bob to the beat and the notes
of the record, like the hammers
of a typewriter at work:
up, down, continual receding -
continual recoiling.

Cloudy Sabbath, comfort me with your disillusion.

She learnt to dance before she learnt to walk.

I AM THE LORD OF THE DANCE SAID HE I AM THE LORD.
OH LORD OH LORD, WHERE ARE MY STEPS AND SWEEPING RHYTHM FEET?
OH NO MY LORD, THEIR EYES ARE OPALS. WHISK ME AWAY
TO HIGH HEAVEN, I AM HERE ON THE MOUNTAIN,
HERE I AM GROANING ON HOREB BUT
I THINK THAT I KNOW THAT I'M FULL OF HOPE.

a plague of swans

I saw a swan - a white scratch in a scrap heap.
I kissed the Son, lest he were angry.
Straight-faced poker with a pack of lies.
And the sky was a faded ache-grey above me.

Spot the Wandering Jew
when he pauses, his stare flung past you in your high street,
eyeballing a horizon that continually recedes from him.
He twists his flat cap, a chequered ignition key, and he deeply
breathes
the paraffin air, hair in locks of white runner beans, or jellyfish
legs, or
swan necks.

A windsock in turmoil:
her neck.

Oh tubular throat of honeycomb, your turn is over.
All your wasted wonders, all your hexagons filled
with pig meal, inhabited
with swaggering hornets,
with hijackers of senses and phrases I constructed
good pirate, gold pirate, good pirate forgive me and please don't
persecute me oh swan of mosaics of opals,
when will you leave me in sweet silver peace?
underneath the earth.

Like trout pushing through clear waters,
a coal shade shoal of swans drove
through vacuous sky.
Yes, but they are black swans, he said, red beaked,
perhaps red eyed.
Yes but they have red beaks:
Baked red, maybe.
Red eyed.

Let's risk a picnic by the river,
down where the bull swans threaten the children
by spreading magnolia wings - porcelain petals - croaking:
I am the angel of death, and where is your protection?
You are the firstborn, you are the firstborn.

Let's hide this sharpened bowie knife
between my thermos and your sandwich,
and slit the swan necks once for all
or wring them like a wet towel, dripping scarlet,
and be a pair of martyrs for it (though it amounts
to chewing fox, or swatting crane fly,
to draping our doors in lamb's blood).

Male poison.
There is no need for numbers now.

a plague of swans

I glimpsed a white scratch on a golden goblet;
the ghoulish lion, the perilous flamboyance
of the alabaster arctic horse; the unicorn and it's ridiculous
horn;
a stretched sea-shell; inedible silver parsnip.
gouged he was gouged he was
gouged.

Gentle swan slip back and forth beneath your bridge.
Gentle swan, here playing pooh sticks with your own self,
your spoilt feather flesh, your dinky black boots.
Gentle swan, ruthless in pursuit of beauty.
Gentle swan, so evidently cursed when,
screaming from the riverbank, a bowie knife attacks,
a slash of virgin white.

The bloodied River Wye past Tintern Abbey's ruins slides.
I watch rivulets squeeze into his girth.
Each grated effort of water red, his loyal rapids marching to
drums.

a plague of swans

I saw a scratch - a white scrap of a swan, heaped
upon the bank. A crow gobbled strands of its insides,
a magpie toiled for its teddy bear eyes, its bill
a flaming coal, it's beak an orange oyster when

I came looking for pearls, I said, white pearls.

I am young, I said, and I am here at last.

The sea detonated on the steeps.
Were these but worled, salt water balls,
thrown through the air in distemper?
Or all the pearls that all the divers every sunk for,
throughout all history?
Scattering like a necklace,
breaking on the navel of the sea.

MOSES PLEASE MOSES, WE ARE STILL IN THE RIVER.
THE ROYAL SWANS ARE STAINED AND OH MOSES
THEY ARE THE KING'S, THOSE OF THE LORD OF LORDS,
OF AMON RA, OSIRIS, HORUS AND OH
FOR THE SEA, FOR MY PATCH OF GREEN GRASS ON GREEK ISLANDS
AND EVEN THOUGH (OH MOSES)
HERE ON PATMOS
THE DIRT MOLES ITS WAY BENEATH MY TOE-NAILS OH MOSES
PLEASE MOSES THE SAND IN MY EYES THEY'RE LOCUSTS THESE SWANS
THEY'RE HORNETS MY CHILD MY SOFT AND ONLY CHILD BUT
I THINK
I KNOW
I'M FULL OF HOPE.

a plague of swans

I saw a swan - a scratch in a scrap heap,
greyed by the gritty shadow of dump trucks
poisoned by rust, claws doused in oil,
wings clogged with sludge.

And,
I saw a man -
a neon vest -

thumb
scratching at a lighter flint.
He said:

I will make the nations your inheritance,
even the cusps of the earth your possessions,
and you will command with a staff forged from iron
and dash them to pieces, like pottery.

Friend. Be my Friend. I've creased my cartoon grin.