Last Poems, Last Lesson of the Afternoon
for DHL
Do you lean listening at the door?
Do you frown at their stumbling
over the names of the gods?
I have brought them The Sailing of Dionysos
‘with grapevines up the mast and dolphins leaping’
(a small plate bought from a street stall in Rhodes town
the year a man with an archaic beard and glistening body
kindled little fires on my distant shores).
As if it was enough.
As if it was clear as day.
And I don’t know what to do
about the man in the corner
who has noticed that it is not
and is writing down the fact that it is not
in detail on a pink form in the correct box.
I cast words like manna -
annunciation,
life,
death,
numinous -
like flying-fish, like skimming-stones.
What do I care
if the girl by the window
is painting her nails blue?
What will it matter
when tomorrow unfolds
on the lake in the autumnal purity
and the slim prow of my canoe
cuts silently through the wake
of the pleasure craft,
when my arms dip and the spermy water
of the dove-pale lake spills from my wrists.
What do you say?
That I should break the plate
over his head?
Page(s) 26-27
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
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- Lamport Court
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