Poetry
Road Accident in Idaho
Ova eyes are dust, and grime has vilified Our mouths. Acting our Robots we have been Outmetalled ; in our tangent taken the wrong guide, Encountering an unmapped machine.
Through the red haze I acknowledge distantly A gaping neck and squelching boots : my own. When I have put three fingers in at my throat And thinly sneered at salvage chances I realize that this is no unknown town.
Thousands of minute organisms multiply In my blood a millrace of delirium, While across the street gestures of Greta Garbo Exemplify the technique of a new Rome.
If my right arm hangs broken, I was
At any rate intending no salute.
Men have already squandered Golcondas In swashbuckling between Wallace and Butte.
No hands will piously brocade the surcease Of my Packard, no voices will pause To recall the grating 'of bumpers
In an antiphony of Elois.
I need now sight of cyclamen.
The counterpane haven and cottonwool shores Are an incubus, as once had been The fine, milled dust. But though I may come Eventually to eke out time with begonias.
I shall never be ambitious to reckon Over that sudden flare of blows on My head, or those brackish, enwombing hours.
RONALD BOTTRALL.
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