Big Game
When the elephants drift in at dusk
like ghosts of ocean liners,
jostle their pale bulk gently round the waterhole,
you want them to stay there floodlit for ever,
can do nothing but grab a breath and hold on
as if releasing it might blow them away.
Somewhere around midnight
you blunder through the tents,
gnawed by anxiety in case
your torchlight, piercing the nylon walls,
should sear somebody else’s dream.
Noisier than soft-foot elephants, you’re clumsier
by far; full of the wonder of them.
Your breath snags on a memory:
the rumour of another watcher who
ignored the warnings, lost himself
in his elephant-trance
and was consumed by lions.
Pretty Poly
Snug in our 'urethaned houses
with our children, our lovers, our spouses,
we shower behind curtains of 'vinylchloride,
clean our teeth with bristles of polyamide.
We dress in it, walk on it,
ride in it, talk on it,
buy it as 'styrene and 'propylene
PS, PP, PVDC,
HIPS and PET
carted back home in 'ethylene.
We drink from it, cook with it,
shop with it, look with it,
sit at PCs made from ABS . . .
what we don't do with it's anyone's guess.
Pile upon pile
for mile after mile
we dump it, we kill with it,
do what we will with it,
hoard it and stash it
for all we're worth -
we pretty well trash it,
our once-pretty Earth.
Pretty plastic.
Pretty world, pretty mad,
pretty once, pretty sad.
Pretty drastic.
On a Dog
Smells lingering - suspicious, basic, tacky.
And things that hop and crawl
among the scabs and warts and tangles.
Tail-plume worthy of a bird.
A thrash, a jaunt, a droop - exotic sail
silver in the fat wheat's surging gold.
Dense hanging-garden ears
dangle barley seed, are cleaver-studded,
crisped at the tip with compost and hard core.
Nose whetted to a sharp shine - cold jet taw
fixed in a snout where nylon whiskers bead
with murky droplets from the nearest muckhole.
Eyes, two of them. Transparent.
Civilized. Receptive . . . Or blank, untouchable,
caught in a throwback, reaching far
towards some primitive Before.
Leather foot-pads, clacking claws,
one raw pink-flannel tongue,
one set of teeth - a shark-smile wielding clout
throughout the rabbit world.
All these are on a dog.
What's in a dog, what's gulped
incontinently down that hoovering maw . . .
you neither want nor need to know about.
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