Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in Frost.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction Frost
Is also great
And would be boss.

This Is Just To Say

I have missed
the block
that was six dice
on the ball carrier

and which
you were probably
hoping
would win the game

Forgive me
they were all pushes
so sad
and so cold

This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegally thrown goblins appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
their bodies flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars--
planes, that is--the tinted ones:
Tzeentch going down, or Khorne,

or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.

Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an daemon nurgling
against the cliff behind the house.
The blood ran down. We saw the pair

of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.

The ancient owls' nest must have stunk.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!--a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry! O falling gob and piercing cry and panic,
and a weak mailed fist clenched ignorant against the sky!

Just when hope withers, the reroll is granted.
The door opens to a street like in the movies,
clean of people, of cats; except it is your street
you are leaving. A reroll has been granted,
"pushback"-a fretful word.
The windows you have closed behind
you are turning pink, doing what they do
every dawn. Here it's gray. The door
to the taxicab waits. This suitcase,
the saddest object in the world.
Well, the world's open. And now through
the windshield the sky begins to blush
as you did when your mother told you
what it took to be a woman in this life.

History has to live with what was here,
clutching and close to fumbling all we had--
it is so dull and gruesome how we die,
unlike writing, Blood Bowl never finishes.
Vindaloo was finished; death is not remote,
a flash-in-the-pan electrifies the skeptic,
his cows crowding like skulls against high-voltage wire,
his baby crying all night like a new machine.
As in our Rulebook, white-faced, predatory,
the beautiful, mist-drunken hunter's moon ascends--
a child could give it a face: two holes, two holes,
my eyes, my mouth, between them a skull's no-nose--
O there's a terrifying innocence in that face
drenched with the silver salvage of the mornfrost.

It is likely enough that lions and scorpions
Guard the end; life never was bonded to be endurable nor the
act of dying
Unpainful; the brain burning too often
Earns, though it held itself detached from the object, often a
burnt age.
No matter, I shall not shorten it by hand.
Incapable of body or unmoved of brain is no evil, one always
went envying
The quietness of stones. But if the striped blossom
Insanity spread lewd splendors and lightning terrors at the end
of the forest;
Or intolerable pain work its known miracle,
Exile the monarch soul, set Kryten's monkey in the office . . .
remember me
Entire and balanced when I was younger,
And could lift stones, and comprehend in the praises the cruelties
of random Shadowing.

In the last, far field, half-buried
In barberry bushes red-fruited, the thoroughbred
Lies dead, left foreleg shattered below knee,
A .30-30 in heart. In distance,
I now see gorged crows rise ragged in wind. The day
After death I had gone for farewell, and the eyes
Were already gone—that
The beneficent work of crows. Eyes gone,
The two-year-old could, of course, more readily see
Down the track of pure and eternal darkness.

A week later I couldn’t get close. The sweet stink
Had begun. That damned wagon mudhole
Hidden by leaves as we galloped—I found it.
Spat on it. As a child would. Next day
The buzzards. How beautiful in air!—carving
The slow, concentric, downward pattern of vortex, wing-glint
On wing-glint. From the house,
Now with glasses, I see
The squabble and pushing, the waggle of wattle-red heads.

At evening I watch the buzzards, the crows,
Arise. They swing black in nature’s flow and perfection,
High in sad carmine of sunset. Forgiveness
Is not indicated. It is superfluous. They are
What they are.

How long before I go back to see
That intricate piece of
Modern sculpture, white now,
Assuming in stasis
New beauty! Then,
A year later, I’ll see
The green twine of vine, each leaf
Heart-shaped, soft as velvet, beginning
Its benediction.

It thinks it is Nuffle.

Can you think of some ground on which that may be gainsaid?

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odour, crickets from the crowd.

And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave High Elf face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.

Elves were fleeing in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
Sleep in their blue yoke,
The fields having been
Picked clean, the prone players
Bound evenly and piled at the roadside
Among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
Of harvest or pestilence
And the wife leaning out the window
With her hand extended, as in payment,
And the seeds
Distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the dirty git creeps out of the tree.

WHISPERS of heavenly death, murmur'd I hear;
Labial gossip of night--sibilant chorals;
Footsteps gently ascending--mystical breezes, wafted soft and low;
Ripples of unseen rivers--tides of a current, flowing, forever
flowing;
(Or is it the plashing of RIPs? the measureless killing of snotlings?)

I see, just see, skyward, great cloud-masses;
Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing;
With, at times, a half-dimm'd, sadden'd, far-off star,
Appearing and disappearing.

(Some parturition, rather--some solemn, immortal birth: 10
On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,
Some Soul is passing over.)

Alright stop, emulsify and deep fry
Ice is back with the brand new meat guy
Something grabs a hold of the slicer
Flow like a harpoon knifin' tha nice herb.
"Will it ever stop?" Yo, I don't know
Turn off the lights, huh, and I'll grow
To the extreme, I rock a knife like a sous chef
Warm up some roux and save a kid like UNICEF
Chop, smash the garlic that blooms
I'm killing your brain like a poisonous mushroom
Deadly when I smash a dope sammy
Anything less than the best is a whammy
Love it or leave it, you better gangway
You better hit the bullseye, the chef don't play
And if there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it
Check out the books while my ogre resolves it

Empty are the ways,
Empty are the ways of this land
And the flowers
Bend over with heavy heads.
They bend in vain.
Empty are the ways of this land
Where Morg
Walked once, and now does not walk
But seems like a Star just gone.