Like Trapped Birds

‘Now I am ready to tell how bodies are changed into different bodies’

The Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal as much as Benugo 
is where listening to the overture of Tannhäuser 
and brimming with good intentions    is the done thing
as much as sat outside the Jeremy Bentham 
as much as where people lose nearly their whole selves
near Pizza East Kentish Town (for God’s sake)
as much as in a Welsh home with low ceilings and
lintels that are after smacking you in the furrowed brow

Trembling with the whole weight of this sound      then
as now 
strings fold over themselves                    to lean 
and take the towpath and force the listener right up and over
the edge into a canal of near stagnant-

Struggling for a distinction between the listener’s trembling
alongside the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal and the trembling of 
the self           almost lost whole near Pizza East Kentish Town

With Ovid me oh my so with apple cheese and knife
So with the trembling expected at every moment when nearing
Losing one’s whole self near --------------------- me oh my
these things coincide and are damned near enough identical 

[a vale of soul/coffee making    
grasping for ecclesiastical history        Irenaeus who? 
A lecturer stands up and asks his students to hold hands 
to learn about embodiment or-] 

As much here as now           with a half pint of ale as much here
as then looking at the Usk Valley eating the dust 
of dry roasted peanuts and returning to the B&B and the kind of woman 
who asks her guests about their relationship with God 
her silent husband is just going out to buy canes for his peas

———

Trembling & twitching strings sound as much now as 
the maids on no-one’s return          to lay waste 
Odysseus (I mean)                   strung them up 
and when I write ‘I don’t say I’m a good man’ I mean 
Peter Green’s   Fleetwood Mac’s   Man of the World

“What are you thinking about?” 
look at me
as arch as your eyebrows
can you believe? 
(for God’s Sake) as much now as then
suddenly
here comes the chorus trembling with judgement and religious experience 
following the listener over Pen y Van and Corn Du to start their fourth day 
climbing frightened into the low clouds
Craig Cerrig Gleisiad