In Memoriam, Manjusvara

1.Last Supper That Monday, swallows Scissored the threads of evening The sun lay warm on the wall. He suppered with friends A poem sweet on his speech Talked with his hands as usual As if sifting semi-quavers Or drawing a woman of mist A thunderclap of an eagle Gate crashed the gathering Opened its terrible talons Bore him off in a blink No time to pack Friends, books, all left behind, Travelling beyond The phrase The word The breath 2.Green Tara’s Son: Tune The Parting Glass There was a man went to the north Walked merry under the nesting eaves Brown frogs were hatching in the pond The evening, crowned by laurel leaves And there was summer all around And peace of the low humming kind With bird and beast he was at ease And he was dark and quick of mind But there appeared silver trout That sprang from some forgotten well And took him in its shining mouth Beyond the sound of bird or bell And where green Tara’s son had gone The rising moon she would not say The ferns bowed down a little while The lochan’s waves rolled clean away 3.A Different Midwife What you love most The gods will take away They took his hearing first The door to music closing, inch by inch His friend sat with him at the hospital As is the way at childbirth But this was leaving. Drips descended tubes The brain turned traitor Anointed itself with blood Replacing the hearing aids The friend said mantras Held the slack hand in his firm one That final push Requires a different midwife 4.Impermanence Woods close ranks. The towns are scything nearer Star shine, light years dead, illuminates Ghetto moorlands, enclaves of harebells Diminishing islands of meadows The death watch beetle nibbles at the heart of oaks Maypole ribbons are held by dancing skeletons Corpses pour their features into flowers From the alarming heavens, angels daily plunge into extinction Like drugged flies, dropping past oblivious office windows Along the Nile, Arabs play backgammon, Their curls like liquorice swirls on sticky brows Each self will burst like bubbles Boiling up in the hubba bubba pipe The searing sun falls from the scorching skies Bleaches the shifting sands of human bones Crushed by the might of mountains Doomed to crack and shudder into stones 5.The Bird Man in the Willow The bird man in the willow Looks down from his mossy perch His tune is the flute sob His breath is as reed bamboo Agile’s a mountain goat He nests outside of the box A moon-watcher A skimmer of lakes Courting the full attention Of wren and chaffinch 6.Keening Under the porch of the kirk The step is spattered with droppings Seven fledglings cheep in a nest The birds claim sanctuary by right of breeding The mother swoops with food Seven mouths like stars ajar A hungry generation and all need feeding In the long grass a pocket of skin Has emptied out its bones A tiny hatchling, its hold on the earth receding I think of the sons of egg, drunk by the crow Of fox’s furtive visits Of feathers, splayed and bleeding The loss of youth upsets the natural order Only the old should die. They are ripe for gleaning 7.Change Change is the face of a child hard-slapped Genocide ovens where people bake The crack of a twig with its resin sapped Change is the chime of a bell soft-tapped The hangman’s noose & the burning stake Rain forest deaths with their routes unmapped Change is Winter, when lips are chapped The blackboard sky and the chalky flake When to survive all things adapt Change is a man in irons strapped A juggernaut making a city shake A rearing boat with its rudder snapped Change is cream by a kitten lapped The churned mud round a trampled lake Change is a mountain, glacier capped Change is a lone performance, clapped Raising the hood of the ego-snake A racing horse with the bit unstrapped Change is a stone that’s ivy-wrapped Grass that can cause cement to break Change is a corpse that’s carrion-flapped A stag’s bright eye that’s maggot-cake