Augustus Young       light verse, poetry and prose
a webzine of new and unpublished work


The Cut-down (1973)

 

House
sheltered by trees.
 
Each year
a blackbird sang from the tallest.
 
Evergreens,
they were your pride.
 
In a storm last year
we roped one back
 
from falling
on the house:
 
they had begun
to go from the inside.
 
We started cutting them down.
Meanwhile your bones
 
were quietly breaking
one by one.
 
We chopped
the branches, then the boles,
 
exposing the bare
bones of the house,
 
and kept it
from you.  
 
Family Picture (1975)
 
Reflected in your
study window,
 
Two brothers.
Short pants, bracers,
 
no shirts. Red Indians
from the raspberry bed.
 
You an abstract
father
 
In an armchair,
unaware,
 
a writing-pad
on your knee.
 
Pasha Poet Primping (1976)
 
 
A turban on my head
the pipe I smoke is not
for other men to puff,
unless they serve to swat
the flies, and breathe my breath,
and give me right of love.
 
I stand for my portrait
beside myself with pride
against a canvass of blue;
the artists I’ve tried
sketch my image with hate
and with wonder too.
 
I stamp into the mud
the shadows that have grown
behind me. It is clear
sand is the grain I’ve sown,
only anonymous scrub
can take root here. 
 
 
The Despair of Angels (1974)
   
After Josef Jelen
 
Divided between
the vulgarity of men, the delicacy
of women,
we make a habit of words;
and take pride in
the shame which is unspeakably
eloquent.   
 
We stick in the infinite with spittle.
And draw ourselves out to resemble
the wing of an angel.
 
Our constant disappointment
cannot be compared with the despair
of angels who wish to be
human.
 
 
A Tuscan Riddle (1976)
 
 
Too many hills for the ground to hold
hang in the air, nothing manifold
can move it. And the passing of death,
an aftertaste of grape in the breath.
 
The landscape has a life of its own,
drawn to life and to scale by unknown
masters of nature as artefact:
It weathers where the paint has cracked.
 
Stop here once and your passage is clear:
What passes in the distance is near.
Speak and your tongue is bound to be divers
(words in their echo are survivors).
 
Though voices are lost in winding ways,
meaning is not. The precarious stays. 
 
 
Hearing Your Voice (1973)
 
I am ringing for you,
fingering the code
with half-moons.
 
Ring
a thousand miles
of tangled line.
 
Pick me up,
you, thread
between us.
 
But your room echoes
only itself, it being empty
of you. It is a tinkle
 
of silver in my palm
that betray nobody.
Nothing as lonely
 
as me unfaithful
with myself, holding on
in the hollow silence
 
of two rooms,
hoping you voice
will answer mine.
 
8 Shots at a Portrait (1979)
 
Mr Van Gogh
sat on a chair
with a pipe in his hand
(shot 1)
and taking
an everlasting match
from behind his ear
(shot 2)
stuck
a sunflower
between his legs
(shot 3)
A huge
flame
(shot 4)
obliterates one eye
(shot 5)
Sucking on the stem
(shot 6)
a white cloud
(shot 7)
obliterates the other
(shot 8)
Well, if it isn’t
James Joyce
 himself.
 
The Immortals  (1979)
 
Models in shop windows are
most intimate. They breathe
on one another, almost touch
in affectionate positions, hear
mutual intimations of ad-
miration. One notices them
between fashions, before designs
are put on them, when they are bald
and clean-limbed. Their eyes reach out
but do not see. Neither do they compare
price-tabs. The change of dress doesn’t change them.
Not for sale, they are free
to remain together as long as plastic. 
 
 
The Civil Master (1983)
 
 
Order is what I say and others do.
My presence is the link between the two.
I often wonder was there ever one
before my time. Without me nothing’s done.
 
Nothing escapes me: day-to-day detail
filed in my brain: my dreams are next day’s mail.
All work is work and play is only play.
The fulcrum of the world is my in-tray.
 
A system to myself for fifty-two
weeks in the years, and less than that won’t do,
 I’m early in and always working late.
The art of doing’s not to delegate.
 
These many years I’ve worked without a break,
except for Christmas. For decorum’s sake  
I leave my desk for three days, coming back
each night of course so I won’t lose the knack.
 
My wife respects this dedication, not
like my office colleagues, who play a lot
even in working hours, when I’m not there.
Our marriage keeps me from total despair.     
 
Last night, my third night, going through the mess
of office parties. I found a wedding dress
minced in the shredder. Nothing is sacred.
I felt as though my constant spouse was dead,
 
And taxied home, a luxury for me,
and find a note, ‘It’s as you thought. I’m free’.  
 
 
Portrait of Mr Pulp of the Bahamas (1965)
 
 
His eyes once belladonna-drunk, contract
into the Hope Diamond. But demi-mondes
don’t mind. Although his lips have shrunk,
his ears are outstanding.
No hairs on his cranial vault, over
a stout cortex the broadway of his neck
slums to a thorax. And below deck
the Mexican Gulf of his abdomen.
 
If you cracked an egg on him
undoubtedly it would fry, his skin
red-hot; lobster pot; as on the inside, I imagine.
He swims: a sizzle on the Pan-
American ocean, salt appetizes his fat
(what’s cooking?). O if your charity is Christian
you’d pour an ice-bucket of champagne
over his unoriginal skin.   
 
 
Schubert’s Farewell (1982)
 
 
The last movement
is surely a scherzo
 
as the notes take note
of one another
 
and the joke is heard –
 
two hands pick out
chords where there are none,
 
there is only a tune,
treble or base, for one
 
finger, a descending scale
 
till both hands are dead.
 
 
The House of Pain (1976)
From Don’t Dance on my Crumbs
 
Mornings I wake
despair sets in:
At once I take
a pill called green.
 
Breakfast for four.
They’re off. I’m down.
can’t take anymore.
A pill called brown.
 
It builds me up
to get me through
till lunch. I slurp
a pill called pink.
 
The kids return
from school, half-dead.
We all have earned
a pill called red.
 
My husband’s where?
When he gets back
he’ll slump in a chair.
A pill called black.
 
Bedtime, can’t sleep.
The pills within reach
All look the same..
Take one of each.