Читать книгу The Mirrormaker - Brian Laidlaw - Страница 9

I.

Echo’s Ailments

to call something harmless admits

a certain potential

for harm (love is not & neither

is unknowing)—

homes on dead-flats sink

into prairie sinks; gradations

from landslide to landfall

to rock-fall to rockabilly to rock-a-bye

bifurcate the county—

we watch half a mountain collapse

like a stroked face, then we

help the half that didn’t

collapse collapse

Hatches

tallnorthcountrygirl is the tallest

landmark

man looks up her skirt

madams too whistling

downtown

(she necessitates downtown)—I would like your eye

level, I would like a haystack to climb

your effervescence

tallnorthcountrygirl thrills

the bees of the brush

I love you so much I want you

to walk in a trench wheresoever

you walk

beside me

here

I’ll dig it

Iron Ironworker

the world’s largest handwritten promise, the world’s largesse

the largest choir of mouthless, of eyeless,

of coins in their eyes & mouths

the pale ground-dwellers sport

the world’s largest malfunctioning optic nerve

the world’s largest hollow red balloon

imitating a crater

made by the largest volcano the world’s ever imagined,

the world’s overlarge largesse

the world’s largest open pit

sore, the open mine shutting the world’s largest sunroof

the largest fall rollover ever viewed from the world’s largest

desk, the largest sun, & the darkest,

& the darkness that siphons the world’s largest sunroom

Twin Brothers Drowning in a Flooded Ore Pit

There were cliffs to get knocked unconscious stepping from, walls

a dinghy dashes apart against,

many-a-boy’s aqueous grave, the burdens

stirring below, a knot of metals

impressive as the world’s largest iron sculpture of a man sculpting iron.

Your bodies choke on behalf of your lungs, your hands are oars, dumbly, such

castoffs, such postconsumer finitude

in the pit ponds,

a cupid punchout astern—

I can’t tell if utility is always mutual (It isn’t)

I wish I were fine in layoffs (You’re never)

I think the shit of life settles out, the slick thermoclines—

I think hierarchy is romantic—

you become it, it becomes you.

The Sparrows

the sparrows dirty

the windows

with red

spreadeagle sparrow prints

they take turns committing

pretend suicides

striking the kite paper morning

like typewriter mallets

all Xs

they dance a dance

called formerness

Echo is them

Medicine Cabinet Inventory

the cigar man & the cigar box is one

the cigar man & the box & the boxcar

is one

the box guitar & the vox & the voice box &

the talkie is one

the echo is another

the coda in the corner the doorman the coatman the

eyeless fox &

his eyelets is one

the honey leaf cigar & the honey leaf

& the honey is one &

the echo is another

The Dinosaurs

//

the dinosaurs died

in a red cloud the kids learnt

in our good schools

our world class

approaches

I like to watch a hill unfurl to me

like a woman wearing a flag for a dress

this I like to happen

at all tempos—I am not hasty

I am not like a halogen light or a hydrogen bomb

& I am not crude like oil—

I am refined like oil

//

our good school’s children

came from monkeys

the dolomitic white earth is white with