Looking At My Fingernails

Another poem in syllabics. I see in this one that I adopted one of those systems used by W.H. Auden and others to make their task more difficult - or shall we say, interesting; i.e. apart from the regular pattern of syllable count, all contiguous vowels or vowels separated by certain consonants, in this case 'h' and 'w', are counted as one. In fact, I recall that rather than make the task greatly more difficult it helped by forcing one to define more clearly and succintly what one wanted to say. Of course, whether the final poem is any good is another matter.
   I also note that in a stroke of early ecumenical endeavour I moved beyond my usual Classical-Christian thought world and made a nod to the god, Shiva. The hymn, 'Lord of the Dance' was very popular at the time and may have had something to do with it.  I cannot recall doing such a thing in any other of my poems. I wouldn't do it again: it's a question of where the truth lies.

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I sit at my window studying
   My fingernails, their half-moons
As pale as morning mist. A dull unease
   Inhabits the mocha light,

Issuing in newscasts and the death

   Of Innocents. November
Takes hold, mulching the soil to a stony
   Paste, killing each primary

Colour. Wrapped in a miasma of warm

   Clothes and cigarette smoke I wait
For the New Year, content to doodle
   With problems, ignoring the

Screams that infiltrate with the hissing wind. On

   All Saints’ Day I thought of the
Corpses collapsed in self-dug graves, their
   Open eyes dishonoured by

 The scattered, indifferent earth. Now,

   As Advent approaches, I
Might stir myself, but the tepid air
   In my lungs gasps at the effort,

Grateful for the grey, cold sleep of the

   Year. If only a tinsel
Innocence would suffice, would redeem the brute
   Facts of this world! But Man, born

In blood, always encounters the tough

   Fabric of the universe, and his
Own wayward temper, urging him to
   Attack. When I focus my

Mind I see aggregates of atoms that

   Issue in poisonous Saturn,
A meteorite cluster or a
   Falling tree, and vulnerable

 Man, a complex of molecules sheathed

   In saliva, gingerly
Sniffing his way through the sciences,
   Getting hurt time and again. But

Sometimes, deep in the flux of things, I

   See the Dancing Lord Shiva,
Dancing out his intricate patterns,
   Bestowing consciousness with the

 Tap of his drum, his arm raised in a

   Potent gesture of friendship. If,
Somehow, our destiny is to dance as one
   With the Lord of Life it will be

With the scars of experience etched on

   Our skin, our hearts aching that
We acquiesced in so many deaths. I
   Am sleek and trim, fondling my

 Fingernails and breathing on them with

   A mist of condescension.
Between now and Christmas men will be shot,
   The unjust will dab their lips with

A napkin, and each day the dusk will

   Fall, incapable of caring.
I sit on, swaddled in my comfort,
   As vulnerable as a birth.

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© November 1981