luka
Well-known member
Crown
The hours are taken slowly out of the
city and its upturned faces - a rising fountain
quite slim and unflowering as it
is drawn off. The arrangements of work
swell obscurely around the base of the
Interior Mountain, in the pale house with
its parody of stairs. The air is cold; a
pale sunlight is nothing within the con-
strictions of trust in the throat, in
the market-place. Or the silver police
station, the golden shops, all holy in this
place where the sound of false shouts too
much does reconcile the face and hands.
Yet the feet tread about in the dust, cash slides
and crashes into the registers, the slopes
rise unseen with the week and can still
burn a man up. Each face a purging
of venom, an absent coin, oh why as the
hours pass and are drawn off do the
shoulders break, down to their possessions,
when at moments and for days the city
is achieved at a glance - inwards, across
the Interior Mountain with its cliffs
pale under frost. And the question rises
like helium in its lightness, not held down
by any hands, followed by the faces dis-
owned by the shoes and overcoat settling in
behind the wheel and pulling the door shut.
Thus the soul's discursive fire
veers with the wind; the love
of any man is turned
by the mere and cunning front:
No hand then but to coin, no
face further than
needs be, the sounds fall
quickly into the gutters:
And from this the waters thin into their
ascendent vapour, the pillar of cloud; it
stands over the afternoon, already half-
dark. No one is fearful, I see them all
stop to look into the sky and my famished
avowels cast the final petals. It is the
Arabian flower of the century, the question
returned upon itself; the action of month and
hour is warm with cinnamon & clear water,
the first slopes gently at our feet.
The hours are taken slowly out of the
city and its upturned faces - a rising fountain
quite slim and unflowering as it
is drawn off. The arrangements of work
swell obscurely around the base of the
Interior Mountain, in the pale house with
its parody of stairs. The air is cold; a
pale sunlight is nothing within the con-
strictions of trust in the throat, in
the market-place. Or the silver police
station, the golden shops, all holy in this
place where the sound of false shouts too
much does reconcile the face and hands.
Yet the feet tread about in the dust, cash slides
and crashes into the registers, the slopes
rise unseen with the week and can still
burn a man up. Each face a purging
of venom, an absent coin, oh why as the
hours pass and are drawn off do the
shoulders break, down to their possessions,
when at moments and for days the city
is achieved at a glance - inwards, across
the Interior Mountain with its cliffs
pale under frost. And the question rises
like helium in its lightness, not held down
by any hands, followed by the faces dis-
owned by the shoes and overcoat settling in
behind the wheel and pulling the door shut.
Thus the soul's discursive fire
veers with the wind; the love
of any man is turned
by the mere and cunning front:
No hand then but to coin, no
face further than
needs be, the sounds fall
quickly into the gutters:
And from this the waters thin into their
ascendent vapour, the pillar of cloud; it
stands over the afternoon, already half-
dark. No one is fearful, I see them all
stop to look into the sky and my famished
avowels cast the final petals. It is the
Arabian flower of the century, the question
returned upon itself; the action of month and
hour is warm with cinnamon & clear water,
the first slopes gently at our feet.
