The Mythograpedes
Strolling in the cracks of the pavement
Honouring the city’s weeds
Or walking on unlit shores
The mythograpedes
moving unseen,
eyes like split fruit
every year at the height of summer
The Crab Man walks on blistered feet
GPS, a rightly-worshipped Orrery
a Guide, sort of, in the sightless search
of Neanderthals chanting
the Order’s boundary beat.
Derbyshire wallabies are nigh extinct
Victims of Tourism’s blobby ways
While Surrey overflows with Parakeets,
No pool safe from the crocodiles.
Not angels but angles
Not plans as such
but uplanned plans and planned unplans
Not Utopias but ‘Anywheres’ to cherish
The heart leaps to A. Salmon
And the halting arrest of myth’s progress
Absurdly faint? Faintly absurd
Hardly seen or heard
Central committees
Shun the traps of fame
But request me to state
in a near-real-world way
and in their words
“You are free to share …any part of this work provided that:
1/ you always attribute the work as follows [but avoiding suggesting any influence from the copyright owners]: from Mythogeography, Triarchy Press 20102/You make no derivative works – you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work [without following certain conditions].”
The first condition seems ethically and legally acceptable. The second has, rather like the book itself, a curiously other-worldly feel to it.
Noli me tangere. Now I must go
to catch the mythogeographic Gruffalo