the idea is not to strive
to be permeable to everything
to stand out of the shade and brave
the fullness of the sun
just as a fern conducting moisture
becomes the river
like a mother-whale on her four-thousand
mile transit
gives her body,
bones and all, to the calf
or petals thick and full like blushing faces
jaundiced by the sun
doing nothing
though remaining star-like
metaphors for beauty
forget the lilies, we say,
that’s only what the mystics know
fresh from eating locusts in the desert and speaking
with demons on some
allegorical hill
we’re harder people than that
knowledgable
about the sharp fructose
scent of cow-shit on the late planted
fields of barley, of wheat, and rape
if we don’t dig the lamb
from the snow
it freezes
and we must draw
water from the earth
or a child thirsts to death
forget what the ancients said
about the providence of things
this is reality; this
is the substance
living is made of
and yet,
like a film on our teeth,
there is still some residue of Rome,
and before, some glimmering
of Greece
the Iliad made, as it is,
of all its scrambled fuss
and now we cannot go a day
without working for our breath
now we are the captives of each hour
and yet
think of Patroclus, stealing the armour,
and how Achilles, capable and strong
as any in his time,
sat idly on that white Aegean shore
waiting for Thetis, his mother, to return
from the shambolic centre of the sea
bringing with her
a breastplate, a bronze-headed spear
and greaves with only half
the cover he required
