The Fleece
(for Denis Glover)

(MS-704/23.54)

Denis, the town was flat
As the week-end beer you kept in that
Giant glass flagon! At Sumner one wet day
I smashed the lightshade with your Navy sword;
You didn’t grumble much. A difficult peace
Kept us drinking till the grey
Light broke. You gave me bed and board
A hundred times. You seemed
The impossible Jason I had dreamed
About: a man who’d grabbed and baled the Golden Fleece

Simply by being tough. No myth
Is ever false. One winter Sunday with
You and Mary in the Austin, I,
Squeezed by hangover, found the Fleece Itself,
Through the green polled
Land of drenched willows, riverflats and farms,
Carried and cradled
In strong invisible arms.

Did you or I or neither see
Our talented destiny,
To clink in the world’s pocket till we die,
Then to be lifted and labelled to blaze in rows on the upper shelf?