The human cylinders
Revolving in the enervating dust
That wraps each closer in the mystery
Of singularity
Among the litter of a sunless afternoon
Having eaten without tasting
Talked without communion
And at least two of us
Loved a very little
Without seeking
To know if our two miseries
In the lucid rush-together of automatons
Could form one opulent well-being

Simplifications of men
In the enervating dusk
Your indistinctness
Serves me the core of the kernel of you
When in the frenzied reaching-out of intellect to intellect
Leaning brow to brow            communicative
Over the abyss of the potential
Concordance of respiration
Shames
Absence of corresponding between the verbal sensory
And reciprocity
Of conception
And expression
Where each extrudes beyond the tangible
One thin pale trail of speculation
From among us we have sent out
Into the enervating dusk
One little whining beast
Whose longing
Is to slink back to antediluvian burrow
And one elastic tentacle of intuition
To quiver among the stars

The impartiality of the absolute
Routs           the polemic
Or which of us
Would not
Receiving the holy-ghost
Catch it         and caging
   Lose it
Or in the problematic
Destroy the Universe
With a solution.

One evening at dusk as Noah stood on his Ark,
Putting green oil in starboard side lamp,
His wife came along and said, 'Noah, summat's wrong,
Our cabin is getting quite damp.

Noah said, 'Is that so?' Then he went down below,
And found it were right what she'd said,
For there on the floor quite a puddle he saw,
It was slopping around under t' bed.

Said he, 'There's an 'ole in the bottom somewhere,
We must find it before we retire.'
Then he thowt for a bit, and he said 'Aye, that's it,
A bloodhound is what we require.'

Se he went and fetched bloodhound from place where it lay,
'Tween the skunk and the polecat it were,
And as things there below, were a trifle so-so,
It were glad of a breath of fresh air.

They followed the hound as it went sniffing round,
'Til at last they located the leak,
'Twere a small hole in the side, about two inches wide,
Where a swordfish had poked in its beak.

And by gum! how the wet squirted in through that hole,
Well, young Shem who at sums was expert,
Worked it out on his slate that it came at the rate,
Of per gallon, per second, per squirt.

The bloodhound tried hard to keep water in check,
By lapping it up with his tongue,
But it came in so fast through that hole, that at last,
He shoved in his nose for a bung.

The poor faithful hound, he were very near drowned,
They dragged him away none too soon,
For the stream as it rose, pushed its way up his nose,
And blew him up like a balloon.

And then Mrs Noah shoved her elbow in t'hole,
And said,' Eh! it's stopped I believe,'
But they found very soon as she'd altered her tune,
For the water had got up her sleeve.

When she saw as her elbow weren't doing much good,
She said to Noah, 'I've an idea,
You sit on the leak and by t'end of the week,
There's no knowing, the weather may clear.'

Noah didn't think much to this notion, at all,
But reckoned he'd give it a try,
On the 'ole down he flopped, and the leaking all stopped,
And all... except him, was quite dry.

They took him his breakfast and dinner and tea,
As day after day there he sat,
'Til the rain was all passed and they landed at last,
On top side of Mount Ararat.

And that is how Noah got them all safe ashore,
But ever since then, strange to tell,
Them as helped save the Ark has all carried a mark,
Aye, and all their descendants as well.

That's why dog has a cold nose, and ladies cold elbows,
You'll also find if you enquire,
That's why a man takes his coat tails in hand,
And stands with his back to the fire.