George Szirtes

I found this in one of my poetry anthologies--Earth Songs: a Resurgence anthology of contemporary eco-poetry.

                                             Daddy-Long-Legs

It was an act of daring then to fling one at the girls,
a kind of modest proposal like requesting the pleasure
of a dance, and their cries, we understood, were pleasure.

Purring and rattling in the palms then out upon the world---
flop-flop across benches and the gras, these maddened ghosts
had their legs broken or pulled off, silent in their pain.

Little brown handkerchiefs animated by bluff currents,
blowing against windows where a veil of condensation
held back the damp larders of grass, bark, potato-leaf.

Those days were shorter. Our legs froze although properly speaking
it was hardly autumn. The television lay muzzled in
the front room. Tap and splay. They hung there, vegetal.

God save these daddies and all their young babies--
repulsive fry greasing the cellars, leathery nuisance.
Put salt on them like slugs, their curling slime.

They lilt against the lightbulb, out of control: in hell
they will be gorged with our blood, now they are brittle
girls proffering leaves and hands, ragged, memorial.

--George Szirtes