Works in Progress 3

Wurra Wurra: The Night of the Long Brooms (Part One)
© Mike Absalom 1 November 2009
(translated from the Irish of Micheál MacSolamh “Oíche na Scuaibeanna Fada”)

Broomsticks I saw first.
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.

I am not yet three score and ten years of age. In spite of my piercing gaze which has the diamantine glitter of a snake’s eye, and despite the silver halo wreathing my skull in eleventh hour blossom like a thorn bush that doesn’t give a tinker’s curse it has missed spring, but extrudes flowers like sausages willy-nilly all over the place whatever the damn season, I am not yet three score and ten years of age.

The skin of my skull is wrinkled with savage furrows that make me look as wise in ejaculation as a puffball on a lawn trampled by children.
I am not wise at all, but that is neither here nor there.
I am not yet three score and ten years of age either.
Broomsticks I saw first.
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.

The Old Testament says three score and ten is my sell-by date.
But I am not there yet and so we have no earthly reason to speak of Testaments. Or panic.
Broomsticks I saw first
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.
I will not deny though that a birthday is upon me soon,
but it is merely the three score and ninth.
As numbers go I have no problem with this one. It is depressing, but only vaguely so, like the idea of caterpillars visiting my library or an invitation to play a round of golf in

winter.
I would not call the number 69 an apocalyptic statement.
Broomsticks I saw first.
Glowing like iron rods under a blacksmith’s bellows,
red as the geraniums in my window alcove
they moved towards me out of the darkness.