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answers
on a post-card please
the cathedral bell left like a cat yawning
a
sunken city
the walls are
moon-wash
I believe you there has been no rain today
though May is the month for rain not April
the songs are wrong and is that comforting
if you take this and divide it appropriately
you are left with I am glad that the weather
is unseasonal
it's majestic and lots of other
unreasonable words meaning sleep is disturbed
and yet
if I'm honest it's somewhere in-between
this and the dream I had I had to rescue you
from a hospital because there was an insomnia epidemic
at the prison
the only way to reach you was through the cafe
but 'they' were reluctant I suppose it could become less
possible
considering
what I want now is to be able
to say 'I love you' and not be laughed out of form
for writing a sonnet could things get more referential
let's take the ego out of it and yet
knowing
'this' is the way 'forward' if you're
listening
guess the quote marks there is a great calm
fins pop out of
'I'm taking away the compliments now
don't bother me' why do you always hate them
what else am I supposed to do how to appear green
and be really innocent which this is I'm not joking
I've followed 'this' and I'm in pain 'have a drink'
'no thank you'
'no'
I think I need
to understand
you'll move some of your anatomy
maybe all of it
which at least is beyond
the bells have a colour all of their own copper
left out in deep snow more brittle than green
and they're trying to juxtapose something without committing robbery
it makes them weep which is private when no one is
about
who is certain
(it's about time I remembered
not to tell you I care you don't like it)
above your room the fallacy of the cat let upstairs
is tinkering with 'her' canaries 'she' is in
a position of power we lack the glossy element of
primary colour
'the bells'
or are
we shooting today if so it makes
no difference
I'm off duty and forgive me do
you
understand
do I
do
perhaps I shouldn't take this
much further
I must be trying your indulgence
with my patience forgetting lines 35 and 36 the moon is
simply aching
and 'something' upstairs has been hit by 'somebody' advancing
but because your grateful palace is so tender
there are no tramps holy in the street tonight
which is naive
possibly offensive
but you sleep so quietly you are almost a picture
and still time passes there is no 'now to this'
without a concerted effort to be learning
my faith in such quietness may be dismissed as ignorance
as a shell is still and empty sounding in this tidal river is it
too late now
to take back the consequences or a drink ' and is that
not humble'
it's pompous to talk this way
when the stars are making their enquiries round the streetlamps
a little matter of
moth-man-ship that can seem terribly important
through the window rolling and knocking like bone
dice
on a solid table curtain-blind and not at all
opaque
perhaps you can't answer why it is you're so quiet
and so not absent yet 'present' is not right
in this distant shadow of the cathedral maybe
you could believe that love and so but yet
a charcoal parcelled drawing of 'the night' too
I don't need the answer but 'want' is a different word
in the Profound Dictionary of Happiness and 'enough'
is 'complete' and 'satisfied' which is really not ironic
''I
want' and yet 'I am complete' in the smallness of your breath'
I will make sure nothing can harm your happiness
with its whispered wing-beats
because I can really say
'I am happy'
or
'my heart skips' and there's not anything
silly about it or broken the lucky footsteps in the street
follow mine about on the pavement maybe the 2nd wise
man's shadow
but it is no threat as the light enters and several hours
of missed bells with the substitute dawn chorus of canaries
(it
seems we shall have to get a new cat a better one)
there are secrets to tell and your eyes not even open yet
to know
why is there still an ache do I have
a condition
it is 'enough' and 'all I want is'
that you are happy no questions nothing
gilded except mischief
but not like wars or terrorists or even nuisancists
stealing the bangs out of Christmas crackers there's no need
for any of that
just our sonnet-like flexibility
and protracted unprotracted unity under your unfeasibly late mistletoe
all we need and
all
we want is...
but maybe I am thinking for you turning us into a tourist trap
and this is not a brochure which is kind of problematic
I think it's time now but pigeons are always welcome
I like
their morning messages they sound of you
first morning
last morning it's really good that you're here
the
waters are simply amazing this spring 'so opulently wine-like'
'here'
you too take some hold our
hands
please
be our guest
Exeter,
May 2007. Source: Lee Harwood, Love in the Organ Loft.
sonnet
for a book about stained glass
how
to understand the concluding 'god
the immaculate puller of heart-strings'
but yes
I'm with you
as with the longed
out of bed breaking bread in the morning
did you read in the newspaper last night
ten men at least dreamed in this town alone
among them
I found you (not obstinate
as such)
I guess
just lucky nine heteronyms
also found you
making up the number
performing its shape greenly 'among the hills
surfed by motes under astonished eyelids' 'you're
great'
they shout 'as one astonished disciple'
which
calculated religiously leaves
room so 'not frightened (apart
from)
I'm yours'
Bread and Cherries
Many
animals I believed in have proved to be fictitious.
My study became an aeroplane. I could hardly see for love.
Because I have never liked porcelain
I am often given porcelain ornaments for my birthday by people I mistrust
or have insulted. From above these take on shapes such as 'nightfall
in Merseyside' and wander through my imagination in cherry-trim galoshes.
But my representative for tomorrow is not as bleak as you might think.
He is happy to ransack the cold corner of my room for upturned elephants
that chink their fruit-machine eyes in graveyards like fish-bones in butter.
'To be happy alone with your own footprints may be sagacious,' he says,
'out of hospital. But think. Who smoothes your rare bed-sheets
when it is raining? Who glues you back together like a manticore?'
The self-help manual from which he taught me is a great comfort at the bottom
of the sea,
where everything might be so fantastical now that he is gone.
In his honour I build a porcelain bestiary around my doorway,
articulate only as powder under a microscope.
© Nathan Thompson 2008
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