on the origin of old stone crosses of the Vale of Clwyd

the last stanza by Rev Elias Owen MA 1886

 

stop work down tools void bells book

a seat

at Radio City Music Hall

for an evening with Dead Can Dance

 

or a standup in a club that joker at the end of the bed prattling like the clappers, fading, fading

ghosts in alumni annals

play Sibelius's second where the horns burr or Brahms' first quoting the Cambridge chimes, d'ya like horns?

the script's not tight, the characters blurt lines that don't ring true, the actors embarrassed, like

 

when God made and Nature put

the scent of glue in that dark room

cardboard cutouts perspex towers, gates with pinholes focussing interior scenes on many walls, pearls in pools, mouths singing

no pets allowed

 

stop work down tools the moon rises over Gotham City

innocents abroad gasp

as the moonlight papers up the cracks between the skyscrapers and the tenements

and all is white and white and white and white

 

and on Shrove Tuesday

boys went about with two stones as clappers and when opposite a farm house

clapped away with all their might and received for their pains a gift

of eggs