Parosetrie

The Spark Plug
(not by Seamus Heaney)

From a long time ago I remember
an ostensibly mundane object or event
let's make it a spark plug this time

(I looked up its name in Irish
in a big leathery book -
speouighbhellchoiughsh)

the curve and cylinder of it
filigreed with detail
and hard as a kitten's eye under a gas-lamp.

anyway, now it's a long time in the future
perhaps the very present
and that brassed intrusion

previously described
serves to in some way elucidate
my current situation.

You probably didn't know about this:

Jimmy Carter is filmed attacking a rabbit with an oar, yet somehow he's still thought of as a paragon of benevolence. Conspiracy theorists to work!

Charlton Heston
Was in at least one Western*
As well as playing Moses leading the Jews to the promised lands.
Anyway, the undertaker has taken the liberty of prising that gun out of Mr Heston's cold dead hands.


*the Western I am thinking of is The Big Country. He co-starred with Gregory Peck, and I once saw Peck asked about the film's significant homo-erotic undertones. The wooden-headed McCarthy-baiter smiled and softly replied 'please God nobody tell Charlton'.