Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-488

### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ## ## ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ## ####### ####### [ Eight poems ] [ By Robert J Berry ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ * THE MAKER * ISLAY * LIGHTHOUSES * AILSA CRAIG * CAVES * CYCLES * THE PIER * SNOW by Robert James Berry THE MAKER First I make a stark monochrome sketch Then throw the clay Turning my fingers To mould four senses Pedalling the treadle Last I hang the lips Hook the nose I am spattered with clay Flush with creation Overnight The head is put to rest under damp cloth I sleep with crossed fingers Today Cut from its pedestal The muscles have stiffened The mouth pouts Suddenly I have Gouged the eyes Brought my hands together and twisted the living thing into a slimy lump Again the wheel is turning With the whole of my hands Drawing the clay tall My feet under the spell I am remaking my head Not with faith But because I must ISLAY On her stomach's flat pan The otter cracks shellfish Then whiskers off To waterproof preen I turn to the unison strut of oystercatchers jabbing the strand and a horseshoe of basalt where seals snore You can catch their stink Morning is running now The mainland has unveiled Buoys on the swell in only a hat of cloud The winter light is beaten gold Brief ice The silence cogent As our ferry builds smoke noses into the sound I am stitching its wake into this sheet Feeling the patter of drizzle The gulls whirling LIGHTHOUSES The peat bricks and cleft wood burn lavender Tall Shadows permeate the solitude I continue to stoke the small blaze Lever the firetongs coax reticent wood to crackle A knot spits like a shooting star extinguishes at my ankles Out of the window Over the water are the rain-stained lights of another country The unaltering eye of the lighthouse crabbed to land's end In the condensation With my index finger I write your name Fascinated as the tall letters and arrowed heart drip When the fire grows flames The pane clouds and my other country is folded away under a wrapper of fog Your companionable blink put out I walk to my seat and sit with winter AILSA CRAIG A fang from the sea monstered floor of the straits Or the igneous hat of a wizard ruckling waves Grown in the swell's accent Fishermen mystify A moonwashed beacon in the spring tides In winter A gruff sea demon When gales utter guttural oaths and north atlantic booms This giant's toehold Slides under the world To become In evening calms A basalt pebble in the sea's playground In the geography of dream It is always inhabited A turret struck for birds A crag to cleave the sun in two On canvas Or off the rail of a ship It is what it always was Awesome Solemn CAVES Faith is secreted in caves Away from light Whooping like a pagan Here stones guard their most private grief Water drips from the vertigo With the virtue of patience Carved monstrances of rock The statuary of strange deities Daubed with the full stops of the world are fed shadow The dark is elephant-headed Silence has tongue Here faith Slays demons underfoot Calcifies fear as flues of stone Where bats are the only reverents men will block steps Cut out an auditorium of rock Bringing smoke music altars and assuaging gods Because man must banish forget The awful irreverence of death CYCLES Heat has mummified The flower's bells which shake like black castanets in the earth's drought oesphagus Over the graveyard Sun assaults the dead Dents crucifixes Cracks marble Chiselling its own epitaph White roofs that noon has charred clean Are like the waterless face of a clad woman stirring the dust with her sandals At her gate A pack dog is cannibalizing the blown stomach and muzzle of a brother Sight hobbles To lap a v-neck of sea between the land's blistered shoulders In another town Cloche the bells of a stricken god Thonged by light Soon sky is a torso of blood and Sun is humping its crooked back below the world Dusk stirs An acrimonious Chthonic god Dogs gather Man devours his mate Then the moon draws A narrow harelip and stars hang uncharitably From the noose of heaven THE PIER late afternoon is wet with light Two fishermen stroll the brawling surf A lizard decorates a sun-boiled stump Time has settled on the pier's dentistry of rotted timber its bicycles fishing pots and Stinking bait In the idle swell Sunburnt men dangle rods Two mating dragonflies hover Prehistorical as the horned monsters anglers pull in Reefed up below Are boats under black canvas and gulls lashed to the rocking water At the curve of the world Sun is a spitting apocalypse Stood close to pier's end A man scans the horizon for a morsel of sail and tosses a hissing butt in the heartbroken ocean Listening to the Slosh and amen of the sea SNOW Snow is Winter's linen Watch it print A white page Convert the firs and outlandish hills First snow is amnesia Lost memories eddying The flakes settle finally inducing sleep Its coma domes the world In the high country For cold clenched farmers The year is finished The nativity sheep are bodies to burn Our Father is a splinter of frost Against a snow cliff December dusk bleeds like a sacrifice Then overnight men feel an uncanny stillness The air is hoar wrought Snow utters silently From lungs of ice Morning From the timber church Bells toll like creation The thaw scrunches with life Children scream build The hills burn like bonfires in the blue skies Winter has gone out The world is white as sainthood --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #488 Underground eXperts United 1999 uXu #488 ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/texts/uxu/ 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