Father Dada

For Tom Stoppard

Molten cheese dripping from a carbuncular sky,
Weeping lizards and men with hairy clock faces,
None of whom know their way to Stalybridge.
Beneath the cryptic bridge with alligator clip ties
A morose anchovy salesman, broken about the knees,
Holds up the variegated nozzle to a Czechoslovakian hose
(Three eighths diameter, not an inch over a whistler’s thumb)
And wonders if it will ever pump muesli again into Bratislava.

Meanwhile Bogart stands in line beneath a pelican sky
Rubber jowl, simian brow, hazy smoke percolates
In steady circuit from mouth to nostril, twitch lipped
And freak ready to break bone. That other word
Men say, ‘do’, is to exist where adult is all that
I remember from those liquid soap absolutions
In the choir each night: ten boys playing poker,
Pollination of the flame breasted candles,
Running with unctuous self-congratulation.

(C) Grayson Ellis, 1989
‘Confessions’
Reprinted with permission.