ISIS

You kept looking behind you,

Over your spare rib,
Over your back-fat,
Over your question-mark tail.
Was Death following you,
He who had nabbed your mummy
And your mummy’s mummy
And your mummy’s mummy’s mummy
And so on,
In pretty damn quick succession? 

Something black and suspirating was chasing, peeping,

Shuffling, snuffling, running?
Was it Death chasing you all round the caves?
Did he peep at you through the telamons’ legs,
Smiling at the thought of  butchers’
Knives and hooks?.
Did he shuffle through the burning sand behind you?
Did his hot breath snuffle at your rubber bum?
Did Death run in your question-mark tail’s shadow?

Well, no actually. 

It wasn’t Death and Death didn’t.
It was the blessed Widow’s little black,
Archaic milch cow.

Meet Isis, Tony,
After the goddess, not the Caliphate.

Good name for a milch cow, Monica.
She’s half a gaur, Tony.
Half a gaur is better than none, Monica.
She did not smile.
Funny how my Isis follows your little Piggles all over.
She said.

I could tell that you did not find it funny.

You, in your pig-ignorance,
Did not distinguish
Death
From
That little, snuffling, shuffling,
Black, archaic milch cow.

REMISSION

Sometimes, kiddo,

Things get just a little too serious,

Don’t you find?

Life and Death and all that,

Well, I know they’re both important

And not always fun.

Times like that I’m glad I’ve got you to talk to

Even posthumously and

Postprandially.

Believe me! It really does help.

Back at The Hermitage, the Devil came by with some more visions

I could have done without.

The tempting fiend, diobolically transmogrified

Into a monkey-fingered Indian cook,

Curried favour and you, Piggles,

Served, with poppodoms, you,

Sweet-flavoured enough to make a saint spit,

On a spit.

You had been plumping up nicely for a pet

But the Devil, who envies all that’s good,

Disposed me to see:
Four Cumberland sausages for your four fat legs,

A pink pork belly that besought beans,

A ham-acting rubber bum.

It was enough to try the patience.

What saved you this time?

Saint George, bless her!, came by with fish and chips.

Nice piece of cod, Tony!

Passeth understanding, Captain George!

We laughed.

You escaped incommunicado

beneath the table.

You were remitted.

ALI'S BAR

That sand-blasted Sunday morning at Ali’s glummy bar,
In from the desert to find the place deserted.

Just you and me, Piggles!

Home from our holy days

And not a blessed Teague

In sight.

Mass evacuation, Ali!, What?

He did not smile.

No saints came marching in.

Not even a Desert Father to call

Daddy-o.

I was mooding into my Guinness,

Searching for the secret ingredient,

Missing the bimbi

And fantasising about black Fatima’s thighs.

You were pretty glummy too,

Pathetic even.

But what a pickup when church let out

And the dominoes team,

Saint Columba and the holy Teagues, stout fellows,

All saints, bless them,

Fell in like little bits of heaven

From out the sky

One day.

A thumping of dominoes

Followed a gulping of  diurnal Guinnesses

And an elutriation of sand-blown, parrot’s-cage,

Scrawny throats,

And when old Colly told the one about the one-legged nun

And the Taoiseach.

How we all laughed despite the agony.

Tears streamed over our pious cheeks,

Trickled along the ridges of our holy noses,

Dripped down our blessed beards

And splashed into our good-for-gulping Guinnesses

And onto our sand-strewn dominoes.

For one moment

I fondly thought, dear Piggles,

You too were able to shut your little piggy

Eyes to the bloody-awful, wretched, woebegone, comfortless,

Forlorn, godforsaken, miserable

Nature of this weary world.

But no,  you were just shutting your piggy eyes.

   

PORTRAITS

 

 Who was the joker who painted that portrait of you?

Augustine/John?

One or the other, saints both, bless them!

Whoever, he got carried away,
Fell over his easel

Easily done I said
He did not smile.

Then he fed his colours,
Pinks exclusively,
Into your
Piggy image.

You to the life, Piggles,

Pink and pathetic,

Delicately blushing

But no-one would notice.

Suddenly -  ‘What was that falling?’

A shadow of Yaddo?

No, it was the sun.

It was the onset of the sunset.

Augustine/John smiled as

The pink light rubbed you out..

'If it’s there I paint it,

If it’s not I don’t.’

He said.

In the end

You were the pigling nobody needed to paint.

You were the ‘Pig at Sunset’s Onset.’

Subsumed by a pink window,

I was disappointed.

I really wanted that painting.

You, however, were short on opinion.

You did not comment

Which was expected.

STARCHED SHIRT

Suddenly I needed a holy day from you.

I just wanted to be clever alone,

Wanted to cut a figure

Sharp-edged and pigless, white in the moonlight.

Which of the holy bimbi, bless them,

Had starched my best shirt?

Sister Suzy Wong surely?

You trotted behind.

Go away Piggles!

You hung about.

Push off!  Go play with the girls!

You would not hear.

Shove off!  Go snuffle a truffle!

Suddenly you were enough to try the patience.

Piss off, Piggles!

You did not piss off.

You crept beneath my feet.

Pop-eyed and pathetic,

Peeping up at my essential pinkness

Hoping to find your dead and eaten Mum here,

Behind and beneath the sharp edges of my starched shirt.

LOCAL LOCUSTS

I remember lots of happy local locusts. 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks

And two short planks.

But happy certainly.  Eating their greens,

Enjoying each others’ company. 

So happy they didn’t know they were happy.

One holy day we watched them swarm,

Shove off, scarper, push off, hop it, skedaddle,

Buzz off southwards.

The locusts were leaving the locality.

When they swarmed they ate the sun,

Made a someone-scored-for-England noise.

One moved they all moved

Southwards.

No locust any otherwards.

Which had me thinking deep and clever thoughts,

You, let’s face it, Piggles, could not share them,

About the unfailing logic of the earth.

You sat on your question-mark tail, waiting for supper,

Thick as a dozy locust but less happy,

What were you good for?  I asked myself.

.

GRAND KARNAK

When was the next time you were pathetic?

That picnic at Karnak with the girls?

You and me (or I, -  a saint may choose,)

With the hamper

On our defective tilting humper?

Four legs being better than three, Piggles,

Especially with camels.

You were pretty dizzy.

It was just too big to put in a poke,  that temple,

Just too grand for a nauseated pigling.

It was just too much.

We squinted up at the inadequate ceiling,

Miles above my tonsura

Miles above little Laura with the aura,

Miles above the glowing nimbi of the holy bimbi,

Miles above your quivering pink snout,

(Well, maybe not miles!)

And you were literally

sickened again.

I know the guide we settled for didn’t help

Much.

Startling teeth,  princess shoulders,

Bottom of an Irish cook and the smell of Nubia.

She reminded you of your mum,

Gave us some Theban tedium,

Not one joke!

You, nip-conscious,

Kept out of her way.

For me the highlight was the belly-dance.

BOUM BOUM!

Saint Fatima,  bless her, big and beautiful,

Thighs like a glass of Guinness,

Livening up the picnic

With two tassels, a fig-leaf

And that fat scarab in her bouncing navel.

BOUM BOUM1

You weren’t too impressed. (Surprise, surprise!)

Dare say you don’t remember much,

Being these days very

Dead.

But I have only to close my eyes:

BOUM BOUM!