Muse

The pool quivers and darkens. It has become moonless, midnight black The tilted sickle drowns, unhinged, upended The stars are orphaned waifs Normality's suspended Now is the reign of the heron's stilted stillness The corpses'clammy silence Uncannily, unaccountably, Unsought, unbought, untaught A stallion springs from the pot's dead centre On hooves of spray and ice- Marvellous, eldritch, a gleaming jetty jewel He snorts and stamps, my lovely liquid tempter On the banksof a poem's shivering, yawning pool His flanks are ripples of power, thus muse of mine My water-horse, my mentor He waits for me to mount his back and soar When we are joined and one Joined and one and dancing Into the depths of the dizzily dazzling linn We outpour streams of words Like flights of snow-white swans As we plunge into creation Into the ebony dream realm Under the slippery salmon's silver fin This dark lord is my shadow I do not fear him He gives tongue to the dumb, dead days Pray let me always hear him.