Bedtime On Tramp - Part Two
He helped himself up to the wind's foremost blow
On a hillock where the moon searched his impecunious pockets,
Waking a flood in his eyes like swelled teats.
He opened wide to receive the Lady, this Endymion cheats,
No worm-wood virus but sweet philtre phials.
Finishing, he is a lover...
He sought the bosom of Erebus in her wildest glow.
He moved and with him, his bed
And time moved.
A scavenger cat clawing a bushman's billy-can
Some hard laid by in his work, purred with surveillance
In disgust over him turning tins over in the bin.
Together he cast the lid by to biltong and raisin:
The cat devours, he abandons the prandial dance.
Pausing, he is a server...
He ate them all like yams those starved seamen.
He moved and with him, his bed
And time moved.
Over the mellowy orchard, for a while he blotted,
Down the glen he skied on the mossy rock
And rubbed clean in the steamy fume of the fall.
Clambering on the paddock, the love-grass over him gall
His rag-patches, bee-combed, mock.
Swearing, he is a dreamer...
He tore tearfully through the palliasse of touch-me-not.
He moved and with him, his bed
And time moved.
Now upon the road of life, he chanced
And espied himself the mutest spectre dust,
Cruising his hour in the propelled sleep of night.
He saw himself waft from this mount to that bight
And saw it was not wont or just.
Laughing, he is a god...
But this infidel purpose of man be countenanced.
He moved and with him, his bed
And time moved.
(c) T. Wignesan - 1948 in Tracks of a Tramp. Singapore-Kuala Lumpur: Rayirath Publications, 1961.
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