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Peter Redgrove

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Clowns

Electric fires scattered about to redirect
The draughts, wrinkles travel
Hither and thither with smiles trapped in them
In the Old Folks’ Home full of grey hair
And gossamer wrinkles like the spider’s den
So I cannot tell one from the other
Face, they are inscrutable, where’s my Grannie?

Grey hair, pale faces, frost everywhere
Like spirit photos, like the powdery masks of clowns
Happy in makeup who achieve
Their Second Mind in makeup, Clowns who enter
With a particular walk through
A special door to show they are dead,
Materialising in outrageous checks and buttons
Huge as their white face
And Mussulman trousers, coming in
For the exchange of ludicrous and harmless
Catastrophes with friends,
Of waterfalls of paint,
Of cars bursting to bits,
Of faces exploded to custards,
Of eyes crossed out;

And the scarlet ringmaster in his hunting coat
Dodges our hoses, and there is
A spangled clown in suit of lights
Not subject to accidents, who never slips in paint,
Who knows none better how to duck, and plies
His silver cornet in his starry glitter
Who smiles with ruby lips and bone-white face
While the old folk laugh
Falling down all around him
Caught in their wrinkles, tripped up,
And the children laugh
And the old people clap hands delighted, laughing
Because the children laugh, as in a mirror.

 

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