Am meisten gelesen ▸
Dave Bonta
working a kite
the burden of power in my hand
almost out but easily
brought to again
her body like a peak invites me
to teem rather than fall
news came last night
of a fever for land
a mad thing
the business of selling places
stones to keep for rarity
in the mouth
my son’s old kite
I put on my velvet coat
to go to town
A man with feathers was in quest
of a kite, but through want of time
was taken up by joy.
High words would have been better,
but all the company was dancing
and tumbling, vexed about joy.
In the story of my childhood I am
usually elsewhere, a thin presence to myself,
mumbling from a script of my own devising.
It never occurs to me to wonder
how my opposite number the hero
might really feel: Hey, it’s hot up here!
I’m tired of coming to the rescue of girls
you’re too scared to say one word to.
And how can you call yourself a pacifist
& expect me to avenge all wrongs
with my infallible fists?
Of unscripted moments, I remember few.
I wreck every kite I ever try to fly
in the mountaintop’s sideways wind.
Late summer of my 40th year, I catch
an echo of my childhood in the nightly
The eerie fingers of the rain
All day have stroked my window-pane,
While all the day and all the night
Elves have been grinding, keen and bright,
Weird, tiny knives of nerves and wits.
Upon my heart an Elf-king sits ...
A cruel, Lilliputian mite ...
And by my breath he flies a kite
Of hope in life or hope in death.
He tugs and scowls with all his might ...
The kite depends on my frail breath.
I watch the earthly colours bright,
Painted upon that fluttering kite.
Little boys fly gay kites
And play with marbles ...
Little boys laugh and shout
The buzzards wheel slowly
In wide circles, in a sky
Faintly hazed as from dust from the road.
And a wind sweeps through the pasture where I lie
Beating the grass into long waves.
My kite is above the wind,
Though now and then it wobbles,
Like a man shaking his shoulders;
And the tail streams out momentarily,
Then sinks to rest.
And the buzzards wheel and wheel,
Sweeping the zenith with wide circles
Above my kite. And the hills sleep.
And a farm house, white as snow,
Peeps from green trees—far away.
And I watch my kite,
WISHES left on your lips
The mark of their wings.
Regrets fly kites in your eyes.
Over the shop where silk is sold
Still the dragon kites are flying.