92
PARTISAN REVIEW
Poem
The aborigines wore masks of old men's heads,
Stuck noses, skins of plasticine and circling beards.
These dream disguises hid the original face,
Were monstrous, topped a pygmy nakedness.
Their conquerors' mime was more direct; the hairless voice
Of commerce spoke as loud as pistols, trading vice,
Left lungs to explode, freak births, a bloody moon
Destroyed the indifference of man to man.
This was the crisis of living, not another such
Figured the long, collective memory of the race.
Tradition would not serve, a wilder dance
Began to tap and gesture in their brains.
The pole of stamping braves in one night threw the charges
Across their changing destiny's uncultured ages,
Beyond the invaders: under the antique features
Each eye was infinite mirror of their futures.
Black Trust
Rhondda belches across mind,
Stone play, out of smoke, set,
Fibre of industrial mess.
Moratorium raises signal hand,
-Coal, product, ships, met.
Leaves canker of hate in mass.
Tynesider
Clydesider
Cagewheel, crane on slipway,
Mind is tom, as others
Soot settles
/
in distance.
Lament
~
Triumph
R.
B.
FuLLER
KEIDRYCH RHYS
When the women who mourn
in
my head with tears
That tip my lids like mistletoe, are Joy's birds
Nuzzling in the feathery nests of my cars,
Or when the heart's beat has its line of words,
