Pages

Thursday 11 October 2012

If I Were a Frog


If I were a frog
Sitting calm on my log
with its great collapsed moss
like conglomerate broth

And flat-fleecing the flies
riding up in my skies
and licking the air
of its angel sun-hair.

I would stare
at my lair

And say God of the bog!
Aren't they dizzy
those exceptionous humans
so busy?
so whizzy?
so fizzy?
so giddy?

Draining the streams
with pecunious dreams
they are liars
those triers
those fake anti-diers.
doing everything quick
what a trick, what a trick!
what a stab in the back
what a great brutus hack!
what a felo de se
what a plain bizarre way
to live
in the sieve
while their lives
flow quite plain
down the drain

and the faster they go
then the slower they move
kicking time off its groove
then those dead things, they lose.
what a ruse
what a schmooze
what a quick way to lose
when they crusise
on their shoes
of fiscal remove.
and they stamp out the lives
of the blossoms and hives.
with their shodding of gold
that they think will
keep them
all out of the cold.

Don't they know don't they know
there's a cold in their bones
and it beckons them back
to the blossoms and stone?

Don't they know don't they know
that the end is so slow
that it feels like winning
and soft green beginning?

Damn, God with your green face
who started that mad race
with conceivable end
clearly quite round the bend.

If I were a frog
I would swim in my bog
and stretch out my feet
brown and green and elite
- what a treat
to beat
at the fronds so sweet -
I am cold and heat
but my voice isn't mete.
And if I were a frog
Squat and tall on my log
I think I would weep
for the slaughter of sheep
in the field beyond
I'd dream I were tall
I were more, I were all
than a frog with a song
then I'd sing for more long
And I'd sing for more ears
and I'd say, you who hear
Please don't fear
to disappear
for your fractures of fear
make clots in my weir
and how will I know
the path to appear
if the moth and the mosh and the squash and
the marshes and pots
in the valleys are lost
in spoil.
and in oil.
and ridiculous toil.
Don't boil my soul.
Don't rubble my scrubble.
Don't plunder my mess
Don't take me for less
than the one at the end
who re-makes the beginning
I unmake the stopping
I release the dropping
of bodies and bones
I'm the grandeur of tombs
in my moss in my blossom
beginning is sudden
and quick like the sun
and however you run
you are frog, worm and the soil.
Head upper to tail
Wing upper to scale
Come, look to the sky
and learn how to die,
Come, stare at the sun
with its fury of light
equilibrious height
and up there where you run
in its endless of gold
is the pond -
black and old -
you come from.

But I'm just a frog
sitting calm on my log
and all that I do
and all that I knew
is the dive and the run
and the swim and the sun
and the pond – black and old
- you come from.