The Shadow of the Magnolia

The shadow of the Japanese magnolia

thins out now its purple buds

have fallen. High up, a cicada

whirrs fitfully. Gone is

the time of voices in unison,

Clizia, the time of the boundless god

Who devours and puts new blood into his faithful.

Expense of self was easier, death

at the first wingbeat, at the first encounter

with the enemy, a game. Now

the harder way begins: but not for you, wasted

by the sun and rooted, just a downy

fieldfare flying high over the cold

wharves of your river – not for you, frail

refugee to who zenith nadir cancer

capricorn were always much the same

for war to be in you and in who adores

the marks on you of your Bridegroom, the curling

shiver of frost… The others draw back

and bend. The file that finely

cuts will be silent, the empty husk

of who sang will turn straight to powered

glass underfoot, the shadow is blenched –

it is autumn, winter, it is the beyond

that lead you and into which I plunger, a mullet

high and dry at the new moon.