Codicil

Schizophrenic, wrenched by two styles
one a hack's hired prose,
I earned my exile.
I trudge this sickle, moonlit beach for miles
tan, burn to slough off
this love of ocean that's self-love.
To change your language you must change your life.
I cannot right old wrongs
Waves tire of horizon and return
Gulls screech with rusty tongues
Above the beached, rotting pirogues,
they were a venomous beaked cloud at Charlotteville.
Once I thought love of country was enough,
now, even if I chose, there is no room at the trough.
I watch the best minds rot like dogs
for scraps of favour
I am nearing middle age,
burnt skin peels from my hand like paper, onion-thin,
like Peer Gynt's riddle.
At heart there is nothing, not the dread of death.
I know to many dead.
They're all familiar, all in character,
even how they died.
On fire, the flesh no longer fears that furnace mouth of earth,
that kiln or ashpit of the sun,
nor this clouding, unclouding sickle moon
withening this beach again like a blank page.
All its indifference is a different rage.


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