Cradlesong

Pram and Scottie season now:

Afternoon, the saunter hour,

Through the shade the mothers wheel

In osier cab the human flower,

On lawn and perfect garden see

The clipper tearing at the tree,

Hear from plaza lean and cool

Gardeners with the iron tool.

Plants are menaced with hard art,

Brutal scissor, rope, and hoe.

Why? What coiling daffodil

Ever stung the shepherd's toe?

Or what rose with glowing briar

Grinned to set the house afire?

Or lewd lilac after dark

Threatened schoolgirls in the park?

Catalogue and packet tell

'What the deacon bushes breed.

Query: how foretell the fruit

Of the voodoo human seed?

Alpha to great senate grows;

Beta, little quisling, crows;

Rho will raid the foreign base;

Kappa slap his mother's face.

All tomorrow's evil now

Cherished in a cradle cries:

Moron hounded at the hedge

Where a moaning virgin lies;

Workers hungry; towns afire;

Stranglers with piano wire;

Pewter milk, oppressive rent;

Law to some percentage bent.

Could the caliper and scale

Show the fatal infant then,

Mother, with your holy hands

You could save the race of men:

Come with hard and surgeon eyes

Where the little virus lies,

Use an icepick, not a kiss

(Auntie would object to this).

Eastward, on fiesta land

Would a sherry dawn arise,

Carnival on every quay

(Mothers with their haunted eyes);

Tubs of beer and never flat;

Olive on the captain's hat.

Then the nations would be bright

And your darling safe at night. ~

Pardon for the crazy dream.

Cradles tick and sway; above

Still the fierce madonnas prowl

(Jungle at the heart of love),

In the.twisted femur see

Articles of majesty,

In the feature sour and blue

Rare illumination too.

Better than a great machine

Is the little human dope,

In whose eye the planet truth

Is a wild kaleidoscope.

On the dark and random land

He shall lift a human hand;

Lonely on the sands of brain

Wrestle with the dervish pain.

Let the sprig of ancient sin

Wind a rash and eerie way,

Twining devils in the night,

Chartres and Parthenon by day

Roving mothers, puma-lean,

Keep the human headlands green,

Let the buggy's omen hood

Prosper in the social wood.