Summer

Zdzislaw Beksinski (1972)

Open wide great jaws of time where laughter swallows gods divine
Blow your tune through trumpet stems and daffodil delirium
Drink the day in draughts that say the green has come to stay
Never hear the magpies squall behind the walls of hay
In penumbra veiled the colony failed to roll their Sisyphean rock
Past the meat-locker feast, that bipedal beast that slanders the afternoon clock

And crystal consonants don’t translate to capture the afternoon’s magnetic haze
Nor do vowels of earthenware and syntax candles the mystery erase
The background hum of metal made from piston paragraph
Waits at traffic lights to skin the rubber from the road
The octopus that inks this song on summer skyline scarf
Knows full well the consequence of doing things by half

Half made lies and half-life ties that knot the neck like noose
Half baked pies and half moon smiles the gap-toothed night let loose
Half a mile of bad road tiled with yellow-brick amnesia
Half a brain to wonder why we swallow this anaesthesia