My heart has been stolen
By a prancing puff of a boy,
Its tendons cut like moorings,
Its thick meat squeezed
Like a lump of clay -
It throbs, desperately,
Like a rabbit’s hide in the fist of a noose.
What am I left with? A lad
Clutching a sore ankle,
And a man who dreams of horses,
Of wombs
And of one-eyed monsters.
The heart took my words from me,
Left me nothing to mould,
Only stark comparisons.
Now I have lost me, lost my tongue,
My name now a long convulsion,
A chatting of flint on slate -
Aga-mem-non -
Then washed away, eroded, forgotten.
All that remains is a basin,
A roaring of seas, of briney waves
On scree, a steely water to spit
Like Demosthenes .
Most men have wives to return to,
A Home the feet will find
With eyes closed –
What am I left with?
Maps, constellations,
The wandering fires of stars
In the far off