Booz's Dorm, by Alex McKeown

 

 

Booz, couched, fatigued
and travailed, airs
his place. Ordinary
Booz's dormitory 

possesses
riches, justice 

and forges.

Argentine April,
avaricious and heinous,
voyeuristically passes and poorly gleans,
expressly

marching, puritanical and oblique,
in probation's candid lingerie: a blanket;
the coat of poverty;
a sack of grain; a semblance. In fountains in public, 

Booz, master of fidelity, parent
to generosity, economises
feminine regards. Booz plus
a beau is grand. 

O revenants, sources, O premieres
eternally changed,
O flaming gents
of luminosity! 

*

So Booz dormantly
prises
his couch as, grouped sombrely,
we pass, temporarily ancient, 

we tribes of Israel's chiefs and judges,
who terrestrially err in tents of inquietude
as imprints of pedalling giant
voyeurs encore the deluge. 

*

Dormant Jacob and dormant Judith,
and Booz, firm.
A portal of celestial ballerinas
tête-à-tête descends 

on Booz;
the celestial blue
race's long chain
chants haughtily of mortified god. 

Booz murmurs, voicelessly.

The annals pass by.
A female, 

longtime dormant,
now senior, has quit the couch.
An encore,
vivacious yet moribund. 

A race nascent
with infants
triumphantly
journaling their victories 

trembles

and curbs to entomb
its beefy front. 

In a parlour Booz is ecstatic,
turning somnolently a
cedar scented, roseate, based,
sensual female's pedals. 

*

Somniferous Ruth, a Moabite,
is couched on pedicured Booz, nude.
Rays
of luminous

Booz's femininity,
at Ruth's volition,
in fresh perfumes of asphodel,
float to Galgala, 

nuptial, august and solemn.
The angels, doubtfully obscured,
voyeuristically pass a moment
of blueness, 

respiring Booz's dormitory's
melange of mossy
nature, dulcet
lilies, summited 

Ruth, Booz dormant, herbaceous
troops palpitating vaguely,
an immense firmament,
hourglasses of tranquillity, and lions 

reposing. In Ur,
astrologers see celestial profundity in a sombre
crescent of fine clear flowers:
the brilliant occident Ruth had demanded: 

immobile veils
and eternal
négligées
in a camp of étoiles. 

 

 

 

Alex McKeown is an Australian poet and translator who in recent times has devoted himself to exploring constrained adaptation. His work appeared this year in E-Ratio, Cordite, Otoliths and the Penteract Press anthology Myth & Metamorphosis. A selection of his published poems can be read on his website alexmckeownpoetry.com. He works as a software engineer in Hobart, Tasmania.