The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Mick Wood

Last Carp in the Abbey Pond

Shoulders its way through a William Morris nightmare,
tangled root and twisted stem, its mercury heaven
illuminated by a madman.

Winters on a rotting mattress of black leaves,
beneath the roofless, gothic eaves
of a drowned monk’s rib cage.
Its fitful dreams are of liberating floods,
crystal melt-water to flush its aching cheeks,
fresh spring duckweed tumbling
through waters that taste green again.

Nightmares are the red smoke of a sunset at noon,
a dreadful hammering in heaven’s forge,
the tall shadows that gathered at the sky’s edge
the day the gods died.

It sifts the bitter dregs of silt through scarred gills.
shards of pottery bear the faint taint of carp flesh.
But it would have those old days back,
when the scythe trailed silver,
when the rubbery lips of the gods’ friendly horses
came jabbering holy nonsense into the depths.

When death was a lottery worth the bright water,
and muscular, clear-eyed carp could live
with a terrible knowledge, could almost rejoice
when a milk-white hand reached through the sky.