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