Thursday 26 September 2013

d i s t r a c t i o n s (wolf part nine)


Ardent again,
Bereft, alone,
yet still skilled,
He found some small part within
That kept despair at bay:
Called upon himself to occupy
These dark spaces with activity,
Hacking at his dead heartwood
with work’s numbing hatchett.

Became an actor first,
Then ran a troop,

 
Became happy in some odd state
Everyday a different place
No time to sit and cogitate

Roll up Roll up
Roll out roll down
One night here
Then another town

Telling himself he did not see
Her face in hay-bales, country lanes
In green of barley, fields or trees:
As summer heat fought icy pain.

Once in Awre, near Blakeney
( that place where the old Severn River
washed up bodies of the drowned:
salmon fishers, deceased
searchers for sturgeon,
Allis shad and grey mullet)

The river wind blew so cold
That a farmer’s wife took pity
Took all the actors to her kitchen,
And fed them all: (no mean feat),
Venison and pheasant stew,
home made cider poured from old oak,
and afters too, baked apples
Maisemore picked sweet pippins.
A wood fire blazed
With three year seasoned wood,
A dry heat that invited
Deeper thoughts than of mere pennies taken at the door.
Warm actors dozed at kitchen’s station
Wrapt in blissful cogitation.

After this moment of perfect time
Of flickering firelit frozen time
Perfect to all, the soubrette spoke
This is heaven , we’re cleansed of sins
All laughed, in hope ‘twas not a joke
But Ardent felt again that wind
Blown from half a world away
And thought
She is only half a world away,
Only half a world away.

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