Aubade (sans le soleil)

AUBADE (sans le soleil)



Wrapped futilely
in the realm of beauty sleep –
dawn rarely dawns on me.

Long after the appointed hour,
the room is thunder-black -
draw back the curtains.

The sky has lost
its breathing space –
choked by the clouds,

voluptuously hanging
in their mourning drapes –
symbolic of a troubled world.

I sigh, and seek
the duvet’s solace –

for me the day
has not yet quite begun.




Malcolm Evison
26 October 2006

EMBRACE

EMBRACE


Wrapped in each other
we break illusions
of our separateness.

As bodies merge
we lose location
finding our place

in vaster schemes.
Thanksgiving, sanctified
with each embrace,

transmits a joy
beyond our reckonings.
Today

love knows no bounds.



Malcolm Evison
22 October 2006

Her Book

HER BOOK

Loose pages from time
collated and combined
to form a seal. ‘Fidelity’

italicized, illumined
on the manuscript –
an idol or ideal

once thought immutable.
Priestess enfleshed
as traditor, she stumbles

on her many tentacled
equivocation –
recalls the ritual

rending of the veil.
No longer able to maintain
her former love’s sectarian claim

she riffles through the pages
of her life. A few words
underlined, her youth transcribed

on parchment; genial memories
transformed into mysteries –

a facile binding
of a former liberty.



Malcolm Evison

NIGHT SHIFTS

NIGHT SHIFTS


Aimlessly walking through
the quiet town, an echo
painlessly affirms belonging.

Night falls;
the day disintegrates -
all reference fails.

I cannot wrap this world
in meaning. Slowly it burns
out the old images, the worn

words, the soiled. This is
the turning point; the nights
calm trodden underfoot.

Hold out your hands;
capture a fragment
of the neon-splintered

sky. A window brightly
shouts its wares.
Stares

into darkness
and reveals
its own banality.



Malcolm Evison (1978)