Identities, The lock & Romney
by Colin Honnor
[ poetry - october 09 ]
Identities
This bronze is cold as meltwater,
deceives
where it incises its struck truth,
yet shows you one name, fluid curves thinned
to a widow's peak eloquently inscribed
mute freezes a frost-broken half-moon
in the chilled sluice snaps clatters
plucking your vision with jagged rim
the glim has burst its lion and eagle
its dolphin and Victory with her wreath
breeding boys out of the hyacinths'
bulbs half-hidden in frost-ash, nudge
their bowl, here gaping helmet, there
thigh-bone morphs into rifle butt
eyes rooted to their clutch of nerves.
The lock
Chilled in the generous frosts
with the torn motto, everywhere
the windlass cracked secretly
its fracture like bells cracking
snapped chime in frost-hooded metal
dulled in the starving frosts
with its hard-ridden carillon
when all the world
has become ice-flowers
and the water hangs it its ponytail
dressed plaited ice
the echo sounds ringing from trees
rookeries' white toques turbanned
like flying scissors in the deadened air.
like flying scissors in the deadened air
the lock shoulders the pack ice
river wrenched against its icepick
snap-click of disused flash frames
in frozen blacks of fabled nightmares
its stamped myths of forged coin.
Romney
There are still places to commend
all this
considering life of seaweeds, shells
shuffled roar, sifted filter of tides
clasping systole to ventricle
the ocean's huge heart hammering
effable life of shells and seaweeds
sea's quicksilver slides
waves' million-mirrored fishscales flash
and are gone to emerge glittering
where the beach shifts
as it discomposes with its sweet stink
of cuttlefish bones, stare-dried-eyed cod
silvered light on the wet beach stones
in the flash of mirrors, clasping
aureole to ventricle, the pump
of silt and single, the shell's ear
amplifyies this unique transient music.
