6

NIGHT

i

Impaled

on a spire, dust-furred, the sun

bleeds in water.

Sunken lamps flame. Shadows

on crimson panes

flutter and shrill, and

drabs sag over smoking pans

on greasy stoves.

Between yellowed façades

zigzagged with fire escapes

a lonely man wanders and wheedles

hey

in the dank night,

hot for the rolling and play,

the thrust into buttock flesh.

A lamp

slithers on stones.

A blind cat stumbles. Lit

faeces, heaped, glaze

by a gully trap.

Inside a black pane, sagging

nailed on the wall,

a Christ bleeds

gilt and mildew. In a dish

stiff fish leak, gold-plated

under the webbed lamp.

Dogs’ jets hiss,

flutter on to cold walls. Black

puddles frill.

Lamps dwindle. The moon

hoists high its yellow bladder,

swells, spills

shrivelling over black water.

Windows are lit.

ii

In the black river, stars

wallow and split.

Squealing, the last birds loop

the lamps, twig-webbed,

gold in the still street.

Tramlines glint. Golden

smoke drifts over jars of salty mussels.

Under the dusty lamps

old seamen sag and

sip rank tea.

River lights rock on the dim pane.

Gilded, a spider stilts.

A shadow on the wharf

squirts a silver arch

spattering

coiling

stars and lamps.

A dark ship trails past lit, tangled spars

through sinking chains of light

down the slow tide.

Wharf lamps heave and drip.

Hidden gulls, squalling, flop

in golden flakes of water.

The tufty bog

wheezes and flits. Slow black waves

bulge, toss

tasselled pods of mussels. Froth

sprawls up the sodden piles.

iii

I loll, firelit,

sipping burnt rum

and sucking oranges

scarlet against the lamp.

I bare my knobbled

hairy legs, and squat.

Warm urine spurts

in the chamber pot.

Scarlet glow

the teats of my long breasts

that my hair curtains.

The lamp

burns in the honey jar.

I coil a rope

of heavy honey.

The brass bedstead.

barred and baubled, glints

gold, shadowed

on the wall. Corded,

my lucent hands

stroke perfume over me

in my gold bed.

A tar siren brays.

A tram grinds,

clanks.

A mosquito

of copper wire props

on brass

her red glass belly.

In my dark mirror I wait lamplit,

firelit, my tawny teated globes

and downed belly.

My grooved back glows.

Between my thighs

I have gold-bearded lips.

iv

By the kitchen fire

a fetid hag still huddles. Down

a black cat leaps,

prowls,

snuffles in tawny shards of beer bottles,

fire-eyed.

Fire gilds us here,

flares on my breasts

and cloven buttocks. Rimmed,

my fan-boned hand’s blood

floods scarlet

against the flames.

Amber are his eyes,

amber the knobs of his taut back. Hairs

in tufts ring

his lidded horn. Clamped

heavy in my thighs

he prods, splits the dark lips, spurting,

then glutted, sags

and sleeps.

An orange full

of webbed juice glows cold.

I munch, spitting pips

in my rumpled palm,

shadowed in deep glass: gold

breasts, and a gold ball.

Water gushes and

glitters in the grimed tub. Far

lamps flit.

At the lit pane

flaps hair-legged

a gilt moth.

v

The lit lamp

rusts at the blue deep window.

Shadows drift, lap

our hazed flesh waking

gold

in the dusty glass.

Lamps

spangle the stiff trees.

A black stone church,

veined windows cowled,

crouches, burly.

Curtains

of golden rooms

float on the sea wind.

Empty,

A yellow-lit dim tram

flashes and clatters,

clanks under webbed wires,

and the twilit milk mare,

hairy-hoofed,

clops jangling by.

A gold-eyed hen squats whooping,

white-plumed,

in a sodden yard.

Roosters squall.

Puddles, oil-opalled,

burn and slide.

Then the morning sea –

blue jellyfish billowing,

slow water ruffled, rustled, mirroring –

suddenly gold-flashed

and tracked,

lassoes the sun.

Shelley I. Nonne.