A. The Dawn Sky.

On the horizon, shadowing the sky,
A single cloud is plastered to the east,
Waiting like a black glove to catch
The sun and steal the morning.
But the warning glow that comes is not from Sol,
Muted by the darkness.
It comes to set the atmosphere burning,
Crimson fires paint seagulls red,
Turning them as they fly to flames.
Sweeping the air towards the cloud,
They circle round it, reflecting in it colours
That try to mold and match their own.
Compassing its fringe in gold
Burnished like lightning, frozen solid,
Recreating clouds in the round.


B. The Landscape.

The sea, tideless and untouchable,
Calmly and tirelessly reflecting the winds
Back, returning them to the sky.
Palms upright, olive in the dawn,
Undersided images shimmered and shuffling
With the slightest wave, streaked like marble
Merging into the immaterial sands,
Green fused to glass. Giant seaweeds, skulking
In their submarine, forever floating life,
Fight and mount against the shore
Red and brown, imagining ivy. On dunes,
More trees dance, lifeless and leaflessly
Silhouetted against the ground, posturing
Across the wind like the shades
Of gloomy, long dead soldiers.


C. The Corpse.

Duplicating the island, unmoving in the centre
Of an emerald captured plain of crystal,
Waiting for the resurrection:
The corpse lies, buried in death
Six feet higher than decency requires,
Body scrubbed by high tide’s sweeping, washed
And whitened by low tide sun blaze, perpetuated
By atmospheric isotopes. Bent
Into a pose, foetus-like, in wistful
Resignation, bloated by starvation
And contagion; a crab has crept
Into it like a hermit, lies in its asylum
In fear of an equal passing, immobile
In the inert, incoherent desert.


D. Whisperings Of The Dead.

Silent as a pyramid, the ghost stands guard.
At attention, watching over its evacuated body,
Defending it with mumbled obscenities
And unhallowed incantations, it chants
And chatters like an unhinged minister.
His memories, unerased, hover above the ground.
Multifaceted, multifactual mirages, manifesting 
To molest the unwary. Diseased
And leprous wanderings of desperation,
Inescapable disgrace.
Listen to his contentions, muttered profanitiesies
Of button pushers and colonels, bemusing
Them as if his own unrelinquished apathy
Had not assassinated another atoll
More so than their releasing
Of uncontrolled infinities.


E. Sunset At Ground Zero.

Red clouds in the west,
Dust discharged by destructions
Continuing in electric response
To unmanned and ill-mannered computers;
False dawn glowing in a mirror image world,
Reflections of the East in mushrooms.

                                       1976