The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Автор

Brian Aldiss

Год написания книги

2019

<< 1 ... 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 ... 31 >>

На страницу:

Перейти

13 из 31

Настройки чтения

Размер шрифта

Высота строк

Поля

The feathered eagle

To the skies

No more uprises

Instead a palm of dust grows

You know that earthly tree now bears no bread

A hand outstretched is trembling

The flagstaff has an ensign

Only madmen see

With famine starting at the head

Some judy delivers a punchline

In the breadbasket today

No fond embraces

Are afoot

Death puts a boot

Where the bounce was once

In among the listening lilies a silent tread

Bite the fruit to taste the stone

Throughout the Gobi seed awaits

The rain to stalk

Famine starting at the head

He only has to say one word

Roses grow from an empty bowl

In our shuttered streets

The cars roam

Don’t need a home

Or volume control

Wandering sizeless with the unaimed dead

We hear his voice cry ‘Paradise!’

On the Golden Coast the cymbals

Start to sound

Salvation starting at the head

Tortures

There’s no answer from the old exchange

I want to push inside you

The sensations you find in yourself

May just be within my range

Grimly sitting round a table

Fifteen men with life at stake

They may torture themselves but those tortures

Will not make them awake

The cards were somehow different

The board I had not seen before

Their iron maiden gleamed dimly cherry-red with sex

Down in the basement I reached Low Point X

Last year they stopped their playing

Phone just ceased to buzz

But if you find them there tomorrow

Better start in there praying

Reincarnation where the cobwebs

Are comes daily from your keep