THE GHOST OF THE COCK 1964

Gustav Mahler

Brummagem buttons and fingernails of the freak

Warder thunderstorm in old jail of time,

The scowling bass, the tingling sky’s rhetoric

As the ribald yellow scrawl

On a grubby public wall;

And innocence weaving a song of the earth, to climb

Out of these shabby quarters of man’s will,

Wizened impulsive faces, ungainly passion,

Ungainly hour and minute. Say, genius, shall

The bastille of the clock

Decompose, tock and tock,

Before your trauermarsch sunken in creation?

For time was the towering maternal golden toy:

Sunwalls wattled with slumbers, tea-times, play

Converged on the conquered inquisitive Jewish boy;

Last post of nostalgic trumpet

But raised a new neighbourly rampart—

The barefaced prison to pocket you on a day.

In time and town, starless, you would be trembling,

Singing. Brother, do you sleep, do you move?

Bells of morning sounding, schedules tumbling:

Peers the white calculus

At his certain opera of grass:

We shall graze on and gather born and buried love.

What can the time be? In sacramental mist

Of silence our huge shoulders rise and turn;

We slaver wonder at the touch and taste

Of your green swaying themes;

Again we may taste dreams

Of the timeless and living and galactic Vine.