In The Fossil Hall by Duncan McGibbon (short story to read txt) 📕

IN THE FOSSIL HALL


To
Angus Somerville
‘Ut fiat unicum.’

 CONTENTS

1. Nocturnal pro Memoria Romano Guardini.7
2. Mignon.9
3.In the Fossil Hall, South Kensington.10
4. Letter to Angus Somerville.11
5. The Witnesses.12
6. Chanson de Toile.13
7. Serena. 15
8. Planh.16
9. The Narrative Rain.18
10.Litany.20

Nocturnal Pro Memoria Romano Guardini 

(1.10.68)

Quietly, unaided,
the true body’s
purple shadow
covers our troubled,
golden vessel.

Calmer at last we lie
under its deep silence.
At least our arms
bend naturally to the heart,
a rich boat
on dark waters.

Now the burning sun
sinks deeper
in blackened skies.
In this sad twilight
at last no victims burn
to ashes hidden
under golden palms.

Green starlight
from the past
bathes our wastes of pain.
The chosen wake at dusk
to meet the unknown.
Blue eyes have met.
Mother and child are one.

Mignon, Musee Rodin, Paris 1966.

Here hands have spoken to stone
on love.
Her lips, already still and his,
when clay,
will never meet in kisses to
consummate
his body's must, now stone
creation.


In the Fossil Hall, South Kensington.


Seams of measured ferns
are printed out in state
to celebrate the immortality
of once - lush instinct.

The ichthyosaur leers
through a sarcophagus of shale.
Its maw for ravaged shoals
now a void of ribs.

This city of hardened stone
celebrates a gross anatomy
of measured thought in scaffold wastes
where voiceless children died.


Letter to Angus Somerville


Though I might dare to live in this street
to lead a life, a line upon a map,
which converges to a point, space and time
will still confound its paper mind.


The Witnesses


Silvered skeins of light
merge with the blackening clouds,
suspended on the taloned sky.

Articulate horizon
the grey uneven roofs
of old brown houses
resent a passive involvement
in this rite;
an earth devoured by its sons.

Human eyes are turned away,
reaping the distances.
An old, suspicious couple
wait for the night’s next day.


Chanson de Toile

She speaks with no deception in her eyes
and the sun glows through the mute haze of a window.
Its rays are burning the soft hairs of her head
and her face becomes a shadow, haloed in light.

Incessantly, her hands are fluttering.
Aimless and distracted, they withdraw, unspeaking.
Perhaps they are ghosts, embarrassed
to reveal their true futility.

It is she who mentions love,
tilts back her troubled head.
What is it she sees reflected
in the ceiling’s vapid whiteness?

Yet always a fire is rustling
beneath the stillness of the sky
and nothing will magnify this moment
to consummate the power of my unspoken wish.


Serena

Peaceful it was to lie
in silence under green branches
to listen as the rustle of blackbirds
broke the stillness
of this tender season.
Far above, the soaring elms
slept in black silence
and the murmuring bees
reported of borders oblivious of time.


Planh

The day is turning
and the sky’s blue song dies down.
Already the roots of night
thrust shadows
into the ochre crown of day.

The fallow deer are sleeping
in the park.
The prowling stoat
is rustling the ferns
Here the night-jar broods.

Swallows wait,
sensing the darkness
for aphelion change
and wild ducks
point against outgoing clouds.

She is not here.
Nowhere among the pale leaves
in these remembered fields.
She does not walk
down these misted paths.


Razo:The Narrative Rain

The rain is falling
on undarkening trees,
pelting the skins
of unplucked fruit.
Pre-dawn the tapping
of this cosmic drummer
laces the orchard
with transparent fingers.
The sky is a mirror of stone,
reflecting your face
to my lonely eye.
The rain is falling,
a sad, dead seepage,
like echoes of
a far-off silent music
evoking the human rifts.
You go past into the past
while the sky still hardens,
the skin of a sculpted woman.
The rain is falling
and in its pace
I see the final movement
of your limbs.
The sky has been burnt-out,
a derelict stage,
where the sun is covered
with the canvass
of forgetfulness
while fading voices
still vibrate
on the larynx of memory.

Litany

It is a stubbled heath,
where harsh winds do blow free.
In this field there stands a tree.

It is a scrap of cloth.
Now ravens fly at gales.
In this tree there are three nails.

It is a tumbled house,
where ravens peck for food.
On these nails is vivid blood.

It is a flowing stream.
The raven takes a wife.
By this blood came all to life.

It is a meal shared out.
The raven flies at the sun,
to this life may all men come.

Publication Date: 12-17-2009

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