There’s Something At The Bottom Of The Black Pool - Augie March

There's Something At The Bottom Of The Black Pool - Augie March
There's something at the bottom of the black pool
I daren't dredge it up not while the weather's still cool
It's a feathered thing its origins are mixed and untrue
Once a straw-body now a lamb-picker now a clove in a black brew
I think of the peacocks of the gorge
And I think of the gryphons they kept in the Tower Zoo
The unexpected water swept all before it
As it rushed on terrible through -
And left them all dead and spread through the park
Amid the myriad mangles of the coming dark -
Of the shadow of a loon the howl from a bloody craw
Those strange interruptions don't scare me anymore
Since all the while the weather was cool
I stood at the crumbling edge of the black pool
Perhaps a pigeon fell off its stool
I have drowned a conscience or two
There are palm trees and clouds and the under-sides of drowned blues
And sometimes the faces of people I think I knew
I know at one time this thing flew
I have sunk an ambition or two
Now when I think to drink then I wonder with who
I pretend that I'm sitting in the booth with you -
O what a f**kin' sentence what a f**kin' noise
I don't know these girls I don't trust these boys
And over there in the corner there hangs a strange bird
Sings a strange song but it won't be heard
A song to enquire whither went the milk money
While the darling babes of Toorak were a'yowling for their honey
Let's walk up this hill let's go walking up this hill
The sun is in the middle of the sky the grass is yellow from being dry
There's music there's you many others here and I
Up the hill then up where those holy lodestones lie -
How suddenly still and though the wind blow
From here we will never leave or go
And but for a will and but for companions
We might go tumbling home below
To a place at the table to gamble and settle
Make the words amiable and able
Of resting assured in the breast of that bird
That I sure did not suffer a fool
Since all the while the weather was cool
I stood at the crumbling edge of the black pool