Sentinel
How beautiful the city:
like the mind
it wanders.Winter gardens walked through like
darkness on the map,blotched with loss.
(This biro,the sentinel of the world of sleep where
pushcarts passfilled with apples
green. The biro
knows. The biro understands.)Soon, hundreds of pigeons will
fly to your house
whose messages, attached to the foot, read ‘thank you’.
(Poems, talk).But first an update:
War.
I’m tired of that imperative
to fight. Blake’s ‘I shall not cease from
mental fight.’To find
strength to act from the well of my own humour.
Something powerful
happens when a poem contracts the universe. To harness lightlike oil? Clouds of burning oil
mass in the sky.This is Christmas. Pigeons dust themselves off and fly. At last I’m home
in the goldmine of time with no small thanks
to this lovely city
and to you. I once
was lost. And now, such grace,
to never mind.