Christopher Middleton

Now the dead button does not stick, Where should we put it? The rock face We hit, propellers feathering, off the map, Provided our skeletons, but first Sorrow, deep, no news, a lacuna cut out

In the air. Twenty-six I was, ships below. Our bombs away we headed for home. No home. Told it was under attack, we Deviated, where to, beneath us brown Rice-paddies, we supposed, then up

Soaring toward...

Little frogs why don’t I hear you any more?

This is your time of the year. It was your custom to croak.

All through the night, the throb. Spellbound, repetitive, too,

I was in the house, enslaved. A frog should croak in deep water.

Your creek was dry, you were frogs, not princes, I was never a slave.

Where are your needling, primordial contradictions? I heard them.

Your cry carved the...

Relatives with Latin names faces of hide and plume hands of leather and horn eyes like glass you can see through to the depth of evolution where the simple feelings live fear and longing old and dark shadows

Your gaze comes back from there changed by the journey strange it looks at you as if you had no part in it now

1

Now they stand quite still on level doorsteps, Outside the Drug Store and the Post Office.

A white sky, two buildings underneath it, Outside the buildings half a dozen people.

Across the dust like dice the buildings rolled, Stopped under the white sky.

Soon the people prised them open, clambered out. Here at last. Here, they said, is Dorrance.

2

Stiff, like effigies, almost, Made of...