Reign of the Quisling-Rodents

DEAD END

21 At the source where waterflukes Stick their suckers forever; this bare Dried-out channel where only a few sunsets ago A river gently flowed; that part Of my mother’s naked body Which water never touches Whenever she takes her careless, childish shower I am he who has been In that pack Of migratory birds on a one-way flight Fleeing the black rainy seasons of home To nest in other foliages thinner than the mahogany’s; That part of my mother’s naked body Where the sponge never reaches Whenever she takes her hurried, childish shower And if, by any chance, You see a tender petal Of the flower of Mary Crushed underfoot And bleeding Under the greedy tread Of country wayfarers gone blind, Then you’ve found me Inside a brave new world DEAD END (Hinterland) Wooden shack… Smoke rises… And lying scantily – in a battered, cupped aluminium 22 Shunned by disposal – are twenty or so seeds of beans Boiled in salt… Breakfast At lunchtime Sulking dancers move in time To the rumbling music of famished bowels, carved grimaces On sun-dried concrete faces. And how can misery-hardened cheeks Ever hold a smile to you? Come dusk, when seven or eight locust abdomens Shall roast in the dying embers Of decaying coconut peelings, It shall be suppertime again; Suppertime for them; lean beneficiaries Of a usurped bequest; the rib-caged inheritors Of a pilfered legacy CITY OF LONGINGS In the streets My head splits from The ventriloquist noon’s mimicry – In quadruple-pitch monotone – Of cars, machines, birds and man Underfoot, the market road Vibrates to the sonorous, grains-of-sand numberlessness Of human cackling in greed Ceaseless travails ...