Up On The Round

They were burning the churches in the town,

The day we parted.

The smoke and medieval noise swept over the cobbles, 

Up the steps and through the cracks of your nicotine stained walls.

…And crept with cats feet round your bed,

Where you’d kept me chained,

For a while. 

 

 I fell coughing along the street.  

Clouds the color of soot, from some sooty miner’s town

Raced by, drunk and homeward bound,

And I sat in the park, as the bums hurried off to their warming grates,

While Barry’s fountain was drained.

Dragon’s breath rolled down the canal, ochre and rust, 

Smelling of burning timbers, of sweat,

Eddying among the rotten leaves,

Worrisome things, snapping memories, curling about my feet.

*

We were children once,

And when you called after twenty years,

You said, Do you remember?

Pink Lake up on the round,

Orphans, merry days, you and me-

All the unread books, tangerines and sandwiches,

The mad races round tree trunks

With oddly clouds high on summer’s sky.

 

Yes, of course, I remember, I said: 

Children with Tonka trucks and heaps of sand, 

Squabbling like swallows,

Chasing each other up and round. 

I loved you then,

When we were young,

Orphans, merry days, you and me.

 

 The night you called me,

There was a storm and you appeared from round the fountain, 

In flicker frames of black and white.

You rushed in with feline, clever touches,

Thence retreating, once you had me,

With that famous, strobe light smile. 

 

I remember, too, in sepia tones (half tempo now),

The trip we took, the one you paid for.

Dawn’s doped up morning glory dreams,

Listening to the cockerel crow,

With you beside me bathed in orange light,

On the coast at Nayarit.

I surrounded you with petal flowers,

And you smelled of lemon tea.

 

You had to leave. 

I’m dying, you said, and I’d like to repent.

But they’re burning the churches here,

And besides, I’m tired of the mewling,

From under the bed.

*

 The clock tower struck five across the city,

Mingled with the bells, and the fires crimson above the trees.

And I watched the lamplights across the canal rise like moons,

And wondered all the while what not to do. 

So sat Jupiter, out there in the darkness,

Glowering at his girls,

Io, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa,

As the afternoon glommed into night. 

 

At six, ash from the burning churches,

Fell like snow across the park.

It had the stale, mothball smell of your rooms,

And of you.

I’d collected in my pocket the dust of your skin,

So that I can remember how I loved you,

When we were young, 

Orphans, merry days, you and me.