There’s Something At The Bottom Of The Black Pool

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 fuckin' sentence, what a fuckin' 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