A depression sinks
Thick teeth into my bay.
Brazen, sharply emblazoned
Within my beacon’s sleep,
One final action
Before the king of myself
Exiled himself in a fit of treason
To his most inhospitable island in
Far rough southern waters
Beyond starry St Helena and
Tar-deep lavas of
Tristan de Cunha,
And even beyond the other island
Of shimmering immateriality
And such impossible wealth,
With more lakes than land,
More puffins than people
And fathers’ mouths
Mastic with less teeth in number
Than they bequeathed children,
And statues of elders
Each chiselled with just one foot;
Well, he commissioned hundreds
Of such pitch-pots over
Coastal paths and marshland routes
To alert his nation’s duties
Towards resurgent armadas,
A thought-flotilla
With canons trained
On peace and seasons,
On woodlands and hope,
On fisheries and reasons,
I woke to an ocean of
Platitudes in old Spanish
And also Greek calligraphy.
Blood on my wrist,
Alpha is Omega
In this new script.
Why do I enjoy numerically
These blood-clot sensations,
These idyllic notions
Beyond posts of my death.
