The Snake Charmer and the Hamadryad & Other Poems

For J. C. Alldridge

I

Piccolo and been-throated pibroch
Dilating dimpled hood
Spreading photometric darkroom eyes
Waxing waxing matching
Venomous lip to music's piping lip
O Queen of stung dragon-mouthed Po
Dancing girl of nuanceless ancient reliefs
The apotheosis Brahman curling on the neck
Must you now sink sink
Dread watched
Spineless
Into the winding womb wickerwork
Watching watching pipe-eyed watching
Until you slip
Over the sill of the pipe and the lip
Anathema! Amorphous piteous anathema!
Amulet of Siva!
Licking the boneless air companionless
Then slithering to lie on the trodden path
Must you have this one last lick
A lick that
Stills the
Unheeding
Child astray
Or ripple tailless
In the reedy gust
To the squat charmer's
Hypnotical pibroch

II

The Temple Drummer and Piper

Flagellant!
Flexor of the Temple's
Flexuous moulded walls
The high reliefs sallying through your
Flaunting fingers
Wrap the holy-comer with your
Invocatory maul
While word of Vedic prayer
Seeps from some steepening Brahmin wall

O stretched bowel of your potted paunch
In perspiration's puffing piped paean
Rivet the eyes of man and god
Outside the walls of priestly palaver

Monotonic bell and OM
OM and monotonic bell
OM OMM OM

III

The Gnat Nebula

Full pummelling fisticuffs
Stitch over stitch
In and out
Imperceptibly kaleidoscopic
Swirling from ear to ear
Sporadic
Thrumming mystical notes
Notes of whisper
Whisper in the ear
Now a bothered swish of clawing
Cleaving slipping fingers
Immalleable rolling universal ball

Microcosmic needle into
Macrocosmic wool all
Silently thudding kneading pulling
Sealing a sin all opened unforgiven
Eternally whispering to a few
And never really heard
Pummelling sewing the invisible centre
Round and round the darkless sun
Only the end that began

Only a scratch and a bother
What bother to scratch
For scratching bothers
Bothers a scratch

Scratch and not to bother
Scratch Scratch Scratch