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Last PostAuthor(s): James SimmonsSource: Irish University Review, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 220-221Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25477719 .
Accessed: 14/06/2014 14:24
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IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW
grow and decline, endure and fail.
The female seeks
and suffers from the male.
Be honest, love, this Autumn, and be kind.
Winter is coming,
Spring is far behind.
LAST POST
Now, just before I died, I was aware
of a draught of thin air
behind me. I turned inside
for the first time
to find what must be abandoned.
Grotesque contraptions, lungs,
heart, arteries, fallible gadgets,
flapping and swelling, limp and stretched
and silent. Flesh that defended me
it seemed I had defended
till something like a trumpet sounded
and I surrendered.
Stare out my firing slits
once more, stroke the moist tongue
at rest in its hangar of shadows, observe no air-news in my nose,
no noise descending whorled
ear-corridors to definition.
Upstairs the writers and recorders, denied juice, stop. Glass
office-doors darken and lock.
220
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TWO POEMS
Oh comrades. Oh equipment. I could a tale unfold of constancy,
unspoken compact kept. So what?
Occasion called SHOP,
responsibility sprang up behind the counter. Now
as fart or bubble self will go POP,
recording its own smell at last
as the imagined sphincter relaxes. No relief.
Much thanks.
Imagine the ending long expected :
yelling hordes closing to attack,
undermining, bombarding it.
This turns to spoil, to scrap and all is theirs. COME ON,
YOU BASTARDS. The light at the firing slits
is out. The defender is gone.
August 1967?June 1974
221
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