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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Michael Sowl

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Benchmark

It was simple in those days to run stumbling reckless
  down hills unbelievably steep.
It was easy to eat hammer-squashed ants
   on hot weekday sidewalks.
                          They had a peppery taste.
And fun sometimes to climb high-limbed riverbank willows
  and hang bare ass over to shit bomb any unexpecting path-finders
                        Though none ever appeared, we bombed mightily.
Or without malice, to blow up frogs
  like little balloons and watch them float winddriven on the pond
  and then peg rocks to try and sink them.
On a bluff, summernight, to watch the wolves swim the river
  from their daytime island to the mainland, straight at us
  where we waited till the very last minute to run home
through woods dark with every beast that could be imagined.

In those days it was almost always summer.
Or school, with its tedious things to learn.
Its tedious rows of desks.

A stuffed owl, remarkably still in the dusty room,
begins to speak.
He says in Spanish that he is fluent in five languages.
He begins to sing a loud raucous Algonquin ditty
   and the man is closing the door quietly behind him
   stepping out into the streets of Bombay
   where thousands of virgins are being slaughtered
   to appease the drifting snow.
The mountains must still be marching down from the north.

 

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