Norman Levine
Cape Cornwall
Undressed by water, the land Homeric
As any legend bald with age,
Combed with stone the green fields smooth-saddled,
Pulled taut on that back and pinned down by these.
The underwhite belly of the animal
Houses fields of folded arms, and knuckles
Jagged of bone stretch as stone-shelter
Soon to love and twin with larger landscape.
All must follow that land's journey
And walk into the sea.
Even those funnelled fingers erect with smoke
Once, the many phallus of an impotent god,
Now are hollow as shafts slipping into silence,
A few bricks turning to dust.
Funeral pyres pulling cold from the earth
Stand lonelier than any lighthouse.
The animal landscape swallowed these
Memorial ruins of that disease.
Now burnt, now hammered,
It flies overhead,
And with stiff steel arms
Waves a progress kiss to a pilgrim land.
The child turns tail on its monster parent.
Stumbling to the water that animal land
Leaves behind her coloured saddles,
Leaves behind decayed teeth,
And by the waterside discarded clothes.
O virile sea
Undress me.
For that last time.
Inward companion.
Page(s) 27
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