Canto XII – Salterne

“Ancient work devised with skill

….. bent under crusts of mud.

A mind grew keen, swift purpose drew,

resolute in rings…”

-        The Ruin

There is blood in the sea.

It muddles and oscillates

in an oblong haze, pulling the russet silt

which seeps from a soul riddled by revolution;

an infant Mantel, milk-haired and indignant,

poised upon the bluffs and glimpsed a ghost

of greater safety – seeding future visions

of a pebbled paradise. She left and learnt

to seek delineations in the tempest

of a scribbled sea and sky – that crooked mirror;

that primal light – and tasted dust of dust

upon her tongue. Exhaustive, extracting

every detail – those finite gasps – clasping

a dead man’s soul between needle, nail

and thumb like a sick oracle

gluing antiquity’s debris.

Enriched at last

through that Anglican appetite for roses

and wolves, she returned to Salterne

and teased her steps across

those shingled shores – each pebble squirming

under the heel of a mind which holds

the crystal truth: history is squalid

and trumped and mean

and honesty in the annals is a gift

won through wars of dirty hands

ransacking time

to puppet rotting corpse fingers

and pitch pretty shadows on the wall.

Now the sea looms impoverished

and the gulls wheedle their dirge,

mocking mourning for such a treasured wit –

that fluent pithy cup; a lip and a pen

which demanded the departed

shake their rust,

collect their spittle,

and now and forever

get up.

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