Reading 48 - The Arc of Beauty
The Arc of Beauty
1.
Top of the metal frame, steeled, I squeal
Geronimo! - wild-winged across the wide monkey bars,
I'm singing a cappella, as the ancient air washes my laughing lungs;
Fighting the warm weight of a fellow on my chest,
My schoolboy shoulders pinned to the soft summer field,
I'm spitting the teasing grass from my wetting mouth;
2.
Clamber the brachs and chrones of joyful boulders!
Shine lightly! winsome balefire of my soul!
Hope, my witch of Agnessi,
The rope that turns a sail, my bride!
Rose or rosetta, come! oh my rhodonea!
Stripling spiders, dark vested, inked and jinked
Link my arms; along the ringing lightenment
We drink and think; In the higher powers
Lines loop, roll and coast; time warps the summer night,
Dancing madly, as though mayfly, we celebrate the one-day;
Falcon-flash; abstract of green, breath and dale-field stretching,
Exultant eye; mind-receding, the drunken deluge of wind and sky,
Teardrop; ouzel reeling and distant plover's cry;
3.
Precocious peacocks, in glossy folds, fan their fickle tails;
In paroxysms of power, jerkwater ministers, spout and spume;
At the cemetery gates, the wealthy shrews, weasel-minded chew;
Now at my table, crusted-salt and sour-vinegar seeping,
I'm strapped to the brutalist hand of the Old Gang clock,
The ledgers and accounts fact-filled and filed,
I'm battered fen-flat, keening in their cramped winter-camp;
Held in a hammerlock, snapped in a scissor-trap,
Like drifting grey wrack, I'm soul-wrecked, pirate-pitted;
In cold claustrophobia, the rictus of inaction
Binds me, the press pressing, I'm pressed;
4.
Grave as the closing gates grate,
I maintain a dim claw-hold,
On the granite of my youth;
By the faint line of Altrui,
Anchorstone my heart, I train to teach;
My first lesson in the chemistry lab,
The test for hydrogen gas,
That high-pitched explosive squeak,
Like a mouse, driving them wild with delight,
Fearing the shock, frightened to put the match;
In the curlyheaded classroom I try,
Lemniscate, conchoid, limaçon,
Curves - to set my generation free!
