like beer in a cracked plastic cup, one scrunched cloud

like a boarding-house towel, grey. You’re a contestant.

Take my advice, leave now. Head for the Gaiety Bar

or the rifle-range. Better still, slink to a seat, knot your handkerchief

over your head and watch. The spoon-player has no chance.

Farmyard Noises takes out his teeth. Ambitious. In for the lot.

Why do you sneer? A cheap song sung badly

pleases the crowd. The tap-dancer spreads out his arms

and grins, a man tortured. Beware the ventriloquist,

the dark horse, whose thrown voice juggles the truth.

You don’t want to hear this. Poweran moneyan fame you say to yourself

like a blessing, then you’re into the act. Make ’em laugh. A seagull

shrieks at you out of the blue. Make ’em cry. A baby

sobs and sobs in a pram at the end of a row.

Applause. A show of hands from plonkers with day-jobs. Cheers.

You’re kind to the yodeller later, sneaky and modest, not letting on

you thought it a piece of piss. Talent. A doubt like faraway thunder

threatens to ruin the day, that it’s squandered on this.

Ape

There is a male silverback on the calendar.

Behind him the jungle is defocused,

except in one corner, where trees gargle the sun.

After you have numbered the days, you tear off

the page. His eyes hold your eyes

as you crumple a forest in your fist.

The Legend

Some say it was seven tons of meat in a thick black hide

you could build a boat from, stayed close to the river

on the flipside of the sun where the giant forests were.

Had shy, old eyes. You’d need both those hands for one.

Maybe. Walked in placid herds under a jungly, sweating roof

just breathing; a dry electric wind you could hear a mile off.

Huge feet. Some say if it rained you could fish in a footprint,

fruit fell when it passed. It moved, food happened, simple.

You think of a warm, inky cave and you got its mouth all right.

You dream up a yard of sandpaper, damp, you’re talking tongue.

Eat? Its own weight in a week. And water. Some say

the sweat steamed from its back in small grey clouds.

But big. Enormous. Spine like the mast on a galleon.

Ears like sails gasping for a wind. You picture

a rope you could hang a man from, you’re seeing its tail.

Tusks like bannisters. I almost believe myself. Can you

drum up a roar as wide as a continent, a deep hot note

that bellowed out and belonged to the melting air? You got it.

But people have always lied! You know some say it had a trunk

like a soft telescope, that it looked up along it at the sky

and balanced a bright, gone star on the end, and it died.

Descendants