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Broken Ballad
FEBRUARY 1973
RAPHAEL RUDNIK
BROKEN BALLAD
The dock is gay with streamers, but the boat
Has not come or gone, never will be built.
On scum-laden water, crazy rainbows split.
Take it from me there's less to this than that.
An angel-headed dandelion has got
To break in wind, whenever the wind blows
The thing will fly in more ways than it knows.
Take it from me there's less to this than that.
There is a blue flower, on a hill hot
With yellow sunlight, below a black and white
Cathedral stained by immaculate light.
Take it from me there's less to this than that.
The brackish, feverish taste was not
Good, in that first kiss-far, deep from us, lips
Wandered, murmuring sibilants . . . polyps.
Take it from me there's less to this than that.
See, crystaled green tattering celebrate-
Presences of impersonal rage! Trees move
In slow, thoughtless insignias of our love...
Take it from me there's less to this than that.
A drunkard staggered rubber-legged, fell flat
In front of me. As I picked him up,
He screamed: "Pick me up you bastard, pick me up!"
Take it from me there's less to this than that.
No squad of strolling lovers has the state
Of blood-red roses-nor do they need hearts
To be true, like our anatomy-charts.
Take it from me there's more to this than that.
Your thighs, made of marvellous stuff-that
Bright, intrusive silk moving in deep light.
I wanted to touch until I touched that light.
Take it from me there's more to this than that.
Your body. A gold and white island. It
Was more naked than the skeleton
Of God. It seemed you were the only one.
Take it from me there's more to this than that.
You laughed at a clock, figuring us out:
"The hands move, hold nothing-yet, once or twice
Joy turned them back." The face was blank as ice.
Take it from me there's more to this than that.
Where did you get that deathless look set
Like what Marvell called glancing wheels that kill
Into my gaze before I looked my full?
Take it from me there's more to this than that.
There's more to this than that, or you or me,
For trees and boats are clocks, and flowers fall
In ways that drunkards do-through the light, all-
Cathedraling rainbows, broken like sea.