Daye 70 / The Midnight Verses

i am living for the last time
it's a typical december morning
dark miserable damp
8.30am on my back
gazing upwards through the window
and into the cloud
downstairs the telephone is ringing
i know it's st.b
'cos the phone always rings twice as urgently
whenever he's at the other end
and i know why he's ringing
is there some way that my music could be important
and my life happy at the same time?
he will ask
same sane question as he will always ask
this morning i'm too tired to answer
i'm falling backwards into a dream
and ghgggsus o is a beautiful city
i haven't been back for some while
the light is eerie
the evening has a strange lustre
the streets look really narrow
everything is smaller than i remember
the stars have thrown new constellations
the wood gives off a mysterious perfume
i meet a dreamer sent from where the water is dappled
where the lusty underground river comes up for air
she answers my questionings
and i answer hers
the waterbirds no longer dwell at the lake
they have fled the firs the white ash and the haze
the lake ladye speaks aloud
i clear my throat as we walk through the tartrazine forest
i am a carrier of the great green pain
the city has been overtaken by drifts of thorny flowers and thorny things
the corpse queen's white arms are dreamily upon her breast crossed
the whole of this cosmos is lost
the glaciers move in silence down from the pole
the air hovers frozen and still over our heads
the keys on my piano have no sustain
their pretty notes are stillborn on the air
a forgotten dream is awakened
the rampant lionesses which once lined the petroglyph roads
have been broken up and removed
the twin-suns have dimmed
the king has sinned
we're interrupted by the telephone
nagging
i close my eyes
try to return
but i know i can never get back
i can't make the jump again so soon
so i go downstairs
pick up the phone
the voice at the other end of the line sounds like the north wind
the buzzer goes on my front door
and i can see two hunched figures through the frosted glass
nicky and mex are on my doorstep
nicky is red-eyed
and mex's words have already stopped making sense
these are the midnight verses
where i get up to sleep