“XII.
Their spades grafted through the variably-resistant soil. They clove to the hoard. They ransacked epiphanies, vertebrae of the chimera, armour of wild bees’ larvae. They struck the fire-dragon’s faceted skin.
The men were paid to caulk water-pipes. They brewed and pissed amid splendour; their latrine seethed its estuary through nettles. They are scattered to your collations, mouldywarp.
It is autumn. Chestnut-boughs clash their inflamed leaves. The garden festers for attention: telluric cultures enriched with shards, corms, nodules, the sunk solids of gravity. I have accrued a golden and stinking blaze.”
–Geoffrey Hill, Mercian Hymns (1971)
“…mosques…were built with mortar that had been mixed with musk. …It is even said…that the Mosque of Zobiade still smells of musk today.” –John Trueman, The Romantic Story of Scent (1975)
[A great poem is such a mosque.]
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