On Some Late Inhabitants of the Black Hills

[TranquillityBase]

The clock of sex
Tocks like the rain
On a skull buried three feet down
Next to a pair of silver-bowed specatcles.

An old axe of peculiar make
Amid a collection of human bones
Under nine feet of earth
Stirs in its sleep and shifts itself against the rib
Of an always hungry miner.

A cap and ball pistol, buried two feet under,
Dropped in death or haste or simple frustration,
Dreams of the flash of powder
And mourns its empty barrel.

An old shovel and a pick
At the bottom of a twenty foot shaft,
Wooden handles wormeaten, iron rusted,
Wait in increasing despair
For familiar hands to swing and thrust them
Back to life like Lazarus

A collapsed cabin whispers to a piece of board,
Hidden in a crevice,
An abandoned diary on a wooden page,
Writing effaced except
"April…..baby born today.”

The clock of sex is a resurrection machine.
It reconnects these fragments of hands and eyes
Into a song that finally fits the sky.


Italicised phrases are lifted from The Thoen Stone: A Saga of the Black Hills by Frank Thomson (1966)

[dukealien]

This is quite nice, in the manner of a list poem.  The connection of history with sex, the aspirations of inanimate objects, both very pleasing.

I see (since it's not italicized) that the revolver was not actually on the list of finds.  Not surprising - they tend to be snatched up warm by their most recent connections, or cold by the first souvenir-hunter amateur anthropologist who finds them.  Making a new connection...

[TranquillityBase]

Thanks Duke,

The cap and ball pistol was one of the finds listed but I didn't lift anything directly from the book there.  But maybe i should italicize at least that phrase just to keep things consistent.

[Knot]

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Hi TqB,
enjoyed the read, the voices of the 'dead' artefacts, but not the constant reminder of how much of it is 'lifted'. Can't you write this entirely in your own words?

Wouldn't 'The Clock of Sex' be a better title?
Should 'On' (L3) be 'To'?
Don't think the speculation as to why the pistol was dropped (S3) adds anything. Surely the reader can fill in these blanks themselves?
(S4) how could the 'hands' be 'familiar'?


Best, Knot


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