Saturday, February 4, 2012


“Rapunzel”
© Mike Absalom

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your long and golden
hair.
Let down your long and golden
hair.
Will you not take me up into
your walrus tower?

And where are you now?
Striding out along the dykes,
slender amongst the bulrushes
and yellow buttercup.
Down by the rusty river,
where brooks run in and rot
in the shifty backwaters,
and the frog legions croak
their gluttonous victory of flies.
High in the lupin minarets
“Allahu Akbar” echoes from
the buzzing bee muezzin,
Honey-tongued, praising his
God.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down, let down your long
and golden hair.
There is no staying longer.
You are too close to the
trumpets of the sky.
Come down to where the green
dog-grass snaps at your ankles
and leaps laughing in the
air,
beating time with its roots
in the earth.

You are too close to the sky.
Out of the blue, bolts of
lightening fall
with the inconsistency of
summer hail, striking your head.
It is that season.
The tide is high on the sun
and the full moon flaring.

Headstrong with impractical
sorcery, you shall bend spoons
and send eggs, unfertilised,
clucking across the road like old women.









And what and what and what
are little girls made of?
The scent of lemon nd the
smell of honeysuckle
and a whisper deep in the
poppy’s throat:
“Sleep, sleep,
sleep beneath my
spider-headed crown
in these arms,
silken, crimson, deadly,
till you awake to the harsh
screetch of an eagle
teaching its young to fly!”


Rapunzel, Rapunzel!
And whose is this encircling
embrace,
scarred like an old man’s
smile?
In rose-petal beds among the
green thorns of love
you have bled without
sighing.

In your windswept walrus
tower
your heart is all bleached
away
to hollow ivory.

Down by the restless river
crocodile logs rise and fall
in the shifting backwaters,
indifferent as mud,
oblivious even of sleep.
Only the dragon-fly,
dressed for dinner and
glittering like an opal,
hovers on the wings of
appetite,
all jaws, teeth and
expectancy,
lusting after sustenance.
And the frog legions croak their
monotonous history of flies,
beating their own drum.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
have you ever kissed a frog?

I am of that Amphibian Race.
Once I was noble.
Long ago, long, long ago
I put away my armour.
Only my body has rusted,
squeaking like an old gate.
Down by the rootless river
the frog legions creak
like the gates of Heaven,
which open only rarely, and
never for strangers.

Rapunzel,
I am but a frog.
I wear the badges all knights
covet,
but like my armour, I am out
of time, and long unused,
an accountant’s harp,
rusty and buckled on for the
occasion.

Rapunzel!
Let down your long and golden
hair.
Come down. Rake your long talons
across my thick amphibian
hide.
Wake me, wake me!
For I have dawdled away
winters
in the grey hibernal clay,
down in the deep,
dreaming I am a dragon.

And what and what and what
are little girls made of?
The scent of lemon and the
smell of honeysuckle,
and a whisper, deep in the
poppy’s throat:
“Sleep, sleep,
sleep beneath my
spider-headed crown,
in these arms,
silken, crimson, deadly,
till you awake
to the harsh screech of an
eagle
teaching its
young to fly”.

© Mike Absalom 2000

No comments:

Post a Comment