Poems Omega Minus - Parts Three To Five
III
Kept out
kept out he was: muzzled and shut out
from mothering social approval
and the usual conning courtesies
Kept shut
Involuting in the hippo-lipped paranoïa
from the darling eyes of his deriding kinsfolk
from packed houses’ applauding mental aneamia.
The touch-me-not
pricking even in the withdrawing shyness
no middle way in the eight-fold path
piston-pummeled by the venom-limbed banyan
the unsuspecting aqua-anemone lashes
bludgeoned from the bandit-fish club
the unhailed conquering hero
without a hometown coming
bullied by the brass band’s
trumpeting forgetful brashness
He bound his house using unseverable streaky tissue
drained of the blood of lost causes
propped his wordy-walls up with nervous sinew
and for want of laughter
hung his loin-cloth up
high on the mast posts
of his fluttering shame
Something
In the nature of his coming to his senses
compelled
the inviting of contemptuous laughter
something of the brazen sea’s encroachment upon land.
Would that he had
in the Three Kingdom’s way been raised
he would
hoist his sorrows in the public’s jaws
and sport his ennui by pleading laws.
IV
It was a time of year too that mattered
not just the finite month
disgorging
it was the time of doing.
Into the empty mouth of his
scaling
he saw, not just wanted
the alien assault, the politicking manoeuvring mirth.
It was a time too for waiting all alone
for the luckless voices belted to cries.
They changed, not just moulting a tan
And dug and divided into splintering worms.
Was it the time of year now
he bowed
out and away
When the Chersonese
smote his pang’s worsted bile :
he lay there not daring to move
nor just faking
(the least he could do)
unfret
his ageing anger to work
his passion to a numb centre
and die there a shamed
and inglorious thing.
V
Once coming down from the mountain
to which he never went
there was no mountain
from the summit he never left
Once coming down the mountain
to which he never came
he stalked down the leeward
and said :
‘I am come from the mountain
which in me shows no pains
I am locked in the mountain
my feet dug in the plains.’
Can you hide a water-melon in a plate of rice
Or a mountain under the earth without a rise
There where the lowly land barely humps
I beseech you seek my nuke, my knees, my lumps.
(c) T. Wignesan, 1965 (from the collection: tell them i'm gone, 1983)
Copyright © T Wignesan | Year Posted 2012
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