ONE MORE WINDMILL

One More Windmill*

Don Quixote and Pancho
men of iron
in winter's iron grip

stationary
and stopped

before the Windmill
of Retz
the tale to tell

pickaxe footed
with an old gate shield
on a mountain of pipework
and milk churns
angled iron
screws
nuts and bolts
boiler wheels
chains
a shovel
and a spade

a smooth brass doorknob
and a worn out shoe
the latter
from a worn out carthorse
out of Moravia
where the travellers now gaze on the plain
in the whistling wind from the Steppes

two horsemen
blankly looking
into the lore and lie of language

close by the river
that is merely a convenience
and a border
for the insecure
secure in the knowledge that knowing where they are in time
and space
like moths on their flights to the stars
is the be
and
end of all

witness the Plough
that signpost
circling the faint North Star
or the Big Dipper's directors
aside the dim Polaris
(in another way of saying it)

ten miles above the frozen landmark
of Retz
the sky was more than once too wide
and the space beneath
was always going to be too small
for man


_______
gw 2009

*the Retz Windmill, these days a prominent landmark, stopped work in 1924