In the pub garden,
how I jumped at each clack
of that horse jaw!
I had defined
myself as some witch's
brat from the tale I
read long ago, intent
upon leaving no
record of my life,
but an absence that any
fool might occupy in
capricious play.
Find me by the dis-
placement I create: my
friends burnt in cages,
hanged or drowned
in shallow pools.
So much for the young
man who first walked
along the pink
roads of Lanarkshire,
under the gaze of the
buzzards in the wood,
to visit an idyll
conceived in anger.
Perhaps this or that
odd-looking girl
was my beloved:
eye paint to enable
clairvoyance, bead-net
dress over a sheath
dress, bead-net
dress with nipple cups.
A pallet sprinkled
with moth dust: by what
sympathetic magic
did one drop of
red show in the sperm in
the palm of the hand
open before me?
With thumb raised
to mouth, my ghosdt slid t
hrough drift, throug
h field, through
double current.
Even in pipistrelle light,
in summer, I hesitated
to enter that
labyrinth, in which
no game is forbidden.