Escape from Mexico

Ian Walters

A dour gateman
above a grinning bay,
The old bone conch,
Hoary, ridged brows heavy lay.

His great sulking form
A bevy of mirror sockets,
Oil-glossed in blowing whey sands
like skin, under whose sprawled body
A vaulted, pithy-thick rib husk
To the sun bare lay heaving.
And time did rest,
Shell chin upon bony chest,
Head down a deeping and yawning passage.

And within soft echoes a cool entryway,
Dank and close between the salt sheets, still
Wrapt in years, sweet cigars smoke
The spice wood doors.
Their aged yucca oil and a sultry breathing,
What smooth and full-polished sole
Knows them best, or
Were ever as little blessed
As the steps passed over that mossy threshold?

And once beyond, beyond the veil,
Once thy feet on craving heart meat rest,
Thy cares become few, thy choosings two,
While Calypso slouches against the glass—eager
Praying creature! And all the bones heave
And stretch in their fevered yearnings within
His titanic test,
For a green and living guest,
A cruel and gloaming fantasy.

But around the steeped organ wends a stair,
Whose ivory steps have guarded restraint
And glorified the sweet lustre of a tepid sleep.
For as she lay, his waking- as if from two dreams-
Like a denial of a greedy claim drew him up,
Up the stair, lungs of spirit water drained
And furious burst out upon a blazing morning,
Where clean black lattice crossed in holy blue,
And he slept for a hundred years.