AN OUNCE OF WIT
TO A POUND OF CLERGY
Let's begin our panegyric: weft of wool
and warp of cotton. Tow a drogue at your stern
so you won't broach to. Abandon your tails
and cheek pouches. For loft, for distance
put the baffy back in your bag.
.
Who wants this mush of meat and fat: poets
of the pemmican (dried and pounded) school -
with bugger the berry to give it some taste?
Where it's grind me to powders, and cankering
creeds - with never a blink of primrose banks
never a hint of beech woods building.
.
Strip off your rags and bend the bow.
Get your ordinance full and flowing.
.
And scrape me rather some pepperpots of potency:
the grains of Paradise, the cubeb, the chili
the cayenne of Guinea, the pods of Sichuan.
.
Put worms to work, and moles to mark them.
.
I'd have us smile like a parcel of seraphs.
Not lolloping loose; not dying duckies.
.
Ladies in sable, come up, come in -
take the weight off your feet, take ease
of all your rasping parts.
Warty newts and fire-bellied toads
continue your aquatic and sociable ways.
Natterjacks of heathland and dunes (your loud
rolling call like a ratchet). Corncrake
of bogland and grasses; fugitive, invisible.
.
Aspect of all aslip and aslither: things
that tremble, things athwart. Come gastropods
come snails and limpets - sallow, blanch
and black-avisèd.
.
Things that scuttle, that squeal, or puff
themselves up, or launch themselves through
the air at intruders.
.
Take root all sprouts of pseudoplatanus.
Protophytes and protomorphs, let's get a move on.
With hooks and burrs and green helicopters.
.
Set with ardour bright and clear
beams, jambs, lintel and moulding:
an architrave of red-hot promise.
.
Eager and apt we bristle, we burgeon.
The hand of the glazier puts putty to the frame.
The pastry-cook pounds out his faintest concoction.
.
Knit up the bones of computation.
Let like kiss like.
Let bright affinity walk
in anklets of amber, in fillets
of silver.
.
Not ten go, but twenty posts out of your way.
.
Cool and open and tempting the vista.
The spiral of the condor vast and leisurely.
The bat at noon (anomalous) in twittering loops.
.
Let all things fused
transparent, opaque
enjoy diversity.
Snaps and scraps of quick allurement.
.
Stone-crop in succulent rosettes
of yellow-pink and crimson-green.
.
Penetration of the optic:
when all the down-draft of wintry webs
is wafted away.
.
O, the women in dove-grey
swimming suits!
the roundel windows
admitting the light of day.
