Sport 43: 2015
Bernadette Hall
Bernadette Hall
Actaeon
he gives a little yelp of excitement when he sees her
walking quickly over the gravel track
across the boardwalk around the lagoon that’s called
Mimi Moto, the Little Pissing-hole,
he sees the hare spring up in the blackberry tangle
how it leaps among the lupins and over
the tall grasses, he sees how the clouds drift,
the cloud-rack, cloud-burst, cloud-scape, cloudberry,
he’s in a cloud-castle, he’s in cloud-cuckoo-land,
he’s cloudy and cloudless, poor boy, and all
at the very same time so it must be love and he whistles
to his dogs but they don’t know him anymore
and they take him for the hare, for he has seen her
naked and she’s set them onto him, his own dogs, poor boy
the seafarer
an itching of the leg portending a journey
an itching of the ring-finger portending a change of bed
an itching of the eyelid portending tears
an itching of the lips portending a kiss
and should it be my turn for weeping
may I take heart from the noisy-footed goose harvest
and the dazzling cloud-flame and the eye downcast
for landing, if it is ever a question of landing