Black and sleek and quick as fire,
Lively as electric wire;
Sparking in the sun.
Leaps and walks the towering fence;
Imperious, in every sense
Queen of her garden.
Creatures cower, become her game;
Lazily she earns the name:
Dispassionate killer.
Yet time escapes her wicked claws,
Never feigns death in her jaws -
And slowly takes her.
Angular bones in a moulting sack,
Matted fur on her bent, ridged back -
Frightened eyes plead to me.
Slowly struggles to her feet,
Anytime is time to eat -
Always, always hungry.
Today she’s too tired to be fed,
Stumbles back into her bed
Pleads again, fights to breathe.
Weeping flesh and sores that run,
Time to sleep, my darling one -
Goodbye, Jess. Forgive me, please.
Who will send the spinning stones
Across the chaos of the road
To tumble through the slotted jaws of hell?
And who, with perfect measured stride,
Will step upon the other side
Before the killer crow can pass the post
And cast his dread satanic spell?
Who'll enumerate the railings' bars,
Approximate the speed of cars
By counting seconds till they disappear?
Whose finger-snap will always coincide
With kettle switch and - if they've tried -
Old Big Ben's chimes? Who'll conjure rhymes
That split her face from ear to ear?
Who'll tally bricks and estimate
A buildings volume and its weight
And time a rock's descent into the sea?
And who will check the altitude of birds and planes,
The height of trees and weather-vanes
If not me? There's a vacancy...
Oh, and they'll need
A needle eye to unpick the random tapestry
And sew her silhouette into their memory -
A stitch in time saves one -
And a pearly shell to catch her observations,
Gleaming drops of conversation,
Fresh as dew, transparent, true...
Who'll do these things when I am gone?
I did my bit to oil the tongue
And make it an informal one,
But if I’d known what I’d begun
I never would have started.
The ‘wi’ from I’ll, the ‘o’ from aren’t
Are AWOL with the ‘no’ from can’t
And e’er again I know I sha’n’t
See letters that departed.
,
The ‘v’ from ne’er gesticulates
And ‘ha’ from they’ve laughs in my face,
While I - that’s me - hang in their place,
A stitch between incisions.
The b’s’n on the fo’c’s’le stands,
A pile of letters in his hands,
Perplexing lubbers on the land
With five extreme omissions.
,
The Hilton houses ‘i’ from it’s
While ‘i’ from he’s hides in the Ritz;
I pull together all the bits
They readily deserted.
A crescent moon in lettered sky,
A prick in alphabetty pie,
I turn away, a winking eye
And chaos is averted.
,
I scratch then scribe the sheet to show
Where absent letters used to go
And thus let everybody know
That something’s missing for my pains.
Contractions brought about my birth,
‘twixt font and grave I’ve shown my worth:
To scatter symbols o’er the Earth
And free them from their paper chains.
