AMANUENSIS
I am the
world of windswept sand, dance gyrating,
Invading, to hum in the intestines of machines.
A shroud, at the weekend
I suffocate metal
and rob the clangour
of steel
for my voice.
I hear it grind, halt and I whistle
A single rising harmony
Bearing down like a woman in childbirth.
We shall see a man rise up in the dirt;
On his head,chafing,a caul
And arrayed with a chord of chaos.
Hear now his voice
A new,low,long-held note
Astride the octaves of disaster and war...
"In
a crease, that runs across a page,
I will plot a course among words...
Words that are held sacred in a line,
A line without space,indentation or grammar;
A line that captured violence for its effect
And these letters I erase.
For they controlled minds, leashed like
dogs, in the hunt."
This release of time to time past
Will, irrevocable in its measure.
Castrate the rabid verbs
Of verse and chapter...
If a mouth is empty, stutters then,
Exposing the rancid milk of mothers,
Stored for centuries
In the bones of the teeth,
In the crevasse of
the deserted
singing sinus,
The eye-pits
And the swollen glands of the brain-stem,
Violent, rabid,
hounds will confront
The horror of silence......
Then shall emerge this low sound and echo
As the footsteps of the people in freedom,
As the voices trembling in the presence
Of the olive and the grain.
In the reservoirs acts mirrored
As the children whisper
Grasping hold of the stems
And the welcoming hands.
The stone will record this word
Drawn today from the fracture of reality
Locked in a line
Which curves now in the shape
of a blossom... A blossom bearing fruit forever
Where tender strong hands
With a knife cull the vine.
The herds shall recognise the pastures
Redeemed, and all pits shelter
Rootcrops
Swollen with the sap of growth for
the consumate winter.
This is the revenge of the word that was god...
The word that hid joy from generations of men and women,
When belief was that control was in death
As a hand with a weapon
A lock with a key,
A rusted vessel,
A chained dog,
A voice of command
That resonated in machines and halls...
Old
men, they stare now into young faces;
They stare, mesmerised by their loss,
powerless.....
Young
men and women are now
Forever out of their reach.
These old men cannot hear the howl they loved
Or witness the thrash of whips,
gunshot
or blood...
That fountain at which they worshipped and ruled.
And as Maxim Gorky foretold from a tale,
no-one shall ever take any more notice of them.
jocelyn braddell©
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