Rapunzel

Rapunzel

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down your long and golden hair.
Let down your long and golden hair.
Will you not take me up into your walrus tower?

And where are you now?
Striding out along the dykes,
slender amongst the bulrushes and yellow buttercup.
Down by the rusty river
where brooks run in and rot in the shifty backwaters,
and the frog legions croak their gluttonous victory of flies.
High in the lupin minarets
“Allahu Akbar” echoes from the buzzing bee muezzin,
Honey-tongued, praising his God.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
Let down, let down your long and golden hair.
There is no staying longer.
You are too close to the trumpets of the sky.
Come down to where the green dog-grass snaps at your ankles
and leaps laughing in the air,
beating time with its roots in the earth.

You are too close to the sky.
Out of the blue, bolts of lightening fall
with the inconsistency of summer hail, striking your head.
It is that season.
The tide is high on the sun and the full moon flaring.

Headstrong with impractical sorcery, you shall bend spoons
and send eggs, unfertilised, clucking across the road like old women.

And what and what and what
are little girls made of?
The scent of lemon and the smell of honey
and a whisper deep in the poppy’s throat:
“Sleep, sleep,
sleep beneath my spider-headed crown
in these arms,
silken, crimson, deadly,
till you awake to the harsh screech of an eagle
teaching its young to fly!”

Rapunzel, Rapunzel!
And whose is this encircling embrace,
scarred like an old man’s smile?
In rose-petal beds among the green thorns of love
you have bled without sighing.

In your windswept walrus tower
your heart is all bleached away
to hollow ivory.

Down by the restless river
crocodile logs rise and fall in the shifting backwaters,
indifferent as mud,
oblivious even of sleep.
Only the dragon-fly,
dressed for dinner and glittering like an opal,
hovers on the wings of appetite,
all jaws, teeth and expectancy,
lusting after sustenance.
And the frog legions croak their monotonous history of flies,
beating their own drum.
Rapunzel, Rapunzel,
have you ever kissed a frog?

I am of that Amphibian Race.
Once I was noble.
Long ago, long, long ago
I put away my armour.
Only my body has rusted,
squeaking like an old gate.
Down by the rootless river the frog legions creak
like the gates of Heaven,
which open only rarely, and never for strangers.

Rapunzel,
I am but a frog.
I wear the badges all knights covet,
but like my armour, I am out of time, and long unused,
an accountant’s harp,
rusty and buckled on for the occasion.

Rapunzel!
Let down your long and golden hair.
Come down. Rake your long talons
across my thick amphibian hide.
Wake me, wake me!
For I have dawdled away winters
in the grey hibernal clay,
down in the deep,
dreaming I am a dragon.

And what and what and what
are little girls made of?
The scent of lemon and the smell of honeysuckle,
and a whisper, deep in the prophet’s throat:
“Sleep, sleep,
sleep beneath my spider-headed crown,
in these arms,
silken, crimson, deadly,
till you awake
to the harsh screech of an eagle
teaching its young to fly”.
© Mike Absalom