XI: ZIGZAGGEDNESS


   In the pub garden,
how I jumped at each clack
   of that horse jaw!
      I had defined
   myself as some witch's
brat from the tale I
   read long ago, intent
      upon leaving no
   record of my life,
but an absence that any
   fool might occupy in
      capricious play.
   Find me by the dis-
placement I create: my
   friends burnt in cages,
      hanged or drowned
   in shallow pools.
So much for the young
   man who first walked
      along the pink
   roads of Lanarkshire,
under the gaze of the
   buzzards in the wood,
      to visit an idyll
   conceived in anger.
Perhaps this or that
   odd-looking girl
      was my beloved:
   eye paint to enable
clairvoyance, bead-net
   dress over a sheath
      dress, bead-net
   dress with nipple cups.
A pallet sprinkled
   with moth dust: by what
      sympathetic magic
   did one drop of
red show in the sperm in
   the palm of the hand
      open before me?
   With thumb raised
to mouth, my ghosdt slid t
   hrough drift, throug
      h field, through
   double current.
Even in pipistrelle light,
   in summer, I hesitated
      to enter that
   labyrinth, in which
no game is forbidden.