Classic Poem

If yours can be substituted for several
you’re in business, says my guardian (at my side
like a shadow). But which business? Odds are
that it’s dubious. A straw concession, say – selling
straws to those old men kneeling on the riverbank
who love to spend their day sipping muddy water, a
kind of wisdom getting one supposes; or as a vendor
of inflammable pulpits – up in flames as the sermon
comes to a close; or as a shipping magnate – cargoes
of haloes to Sierra Leone, dreadlocks to Outer
Mongolia, ostrich feathers to the Arctic, the ship
crashing through ice, a child’s frozen hand
pointing the way to a village where bicycles
are adjusted for human use. Ride
at your own risk. Pitfalls more numerous than mouths
in Ethiopia waiting for food that never arrives. Held up,
as always, by the Authorities, in this case a clutch
of bellicose elders exposing themselves to confidence
men in the hope that they’ll be selected for cross-
chilling, a process similar to cross-dressing, the only
significant difference being that the former takes place
on a cross, the gender switch accomplished before
a crowd of thousands. In the words of the Virgin: Let
them rise to this solemn occasion even if it's only for
yet another publicity shot, paparazzi circling, cameras
snapping like the teeth of hungry wolves. Which
gives rise to the question – are these elders
on a hunger strike? – the answer
a loud No, nor is their constituency back
in that Ethiopia that Mussolini’s air force
bombed in ’35, Bruno, his pilot son, marvelling
at the spectacle, one worthy, surely,
of a Sistine Chapel. Love the way
those bodies fly. God’s children
on the move. Safe journey
about as applicable as a fly in aspic
in a confessional, the priest & the client
having somehow switched places, the former
gloating over that boy he’d been a fisher of in ’42, a
practice known in the trade as fingering the beads;
nice work if you can get it, if you don’t
blow the cover, the acoustic plug which, subject
to explosions of a gaseous nature, has been known
to fly through the air with the greatest of ease, a
truly abominable practice which in no way
reflects upon the morals of those creatures who
supposedly inhabit the mountains of Tibet, belief
in their existence not being a prerequisite for
liberation, obviously, as all phenomena, belief
included, dissolve like mist when the practice
is truly ripe, your face as a substitute for several.