Lucy
The starlight frozen in the darkling lake
Hissed like a spangled snake beneath his skates.
‘Wordsworth!’ His boyish shout came ringing back
From all the snow-bound crags and struck at him
With a dead father’s scorn. What were they worth,
Wild words flung at those fells? And as cold blades
Cut necromantic scribings in the rime,
Emblazoning strange poetry graved in frost,
An old man’s eyes stared at him through the ice,
His blue lips mouthing verses not yet wrought.
Then hooded sky, veiled moon, relentless stars,
Grim, muttering rocks, motionless waterfalls,
Beaked branches of black, purgatorial trees,
The panoply of Law in heaven, on earth,
Calligraphy of God’s Apocalypse,
Of First and Last, omniscient, infinite,
The Power that Is, and ever more will Be,
Accused him; till he turned and fled for shore,
While voices howling in wind-driven snow,
Kept crying a girl’s name he did not know.
COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM
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