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AN END TO ENDS

From hands impatient, skeletal, a trellis grew,
Fountain of youth
Its ward and saviour, sprightly spite
To quench a thirst, it could not quite.
Winter at last held fast its water alchemized as stone
Whilst, stay-at-home,
A sleeping wizard let his genie groan.

Clay, untended, shaped as chance assigned
And greybeard woke
Astonished at his frankenstein:
"Imperfect phantom, false creation – not my son!"
But tirades echoed, "What's begun's begun."
The past is perfect, future fiction yet,
So to relate the present our methuselah begets

In mime the touchstone artistry from honeyed tongues,
Its course outrun,
Surrenders Spirit but to Shape,
Unleashing fate to monstrous rape ...
On, ever on, perpetuates the architect's design
Yet groping, blind,
Envelopes chaos, casts its vines behind.

Between the present metaphors of carcass steel
Reel and un-reel
Extravaganza churns its cogs
And feeds its purpose to the dogs,
Grind and unwind some complicated passage of the plot.
Regret me not –
For I'm the maker, my machine forgot.
(1975)
Fontana delle Naiadi
composite by Stephen Alsford
adapting photos by Gabriel Seah (Atlas), Stephen Alsford (cityscape, globe, cat),
Harold Villaflor (fireworks), The Hubble Heritage Team AURA/ STScI/ NASA (star cluster).

Created: November 17, 2014. © Stephen Alsford