Did you know the boy raised in a lobster pot,
face mated to beams of light, the empty space, the lobster pot,

when the penguins followed you home that night
with the news of Cheetah and a hornet bike?

Did you spark at the thought of the tuba train,
where Cheetah was at all alive that night, the way an elephant climbs into a car,

at all the Fat Boy wailing the melon, the watermelon and beams of light?
That Cheetah soothed to hymns of grace, do you believe the holy songs,
the hymns of grace, the beatification, the empty space?

When the penguins followed you home that night
and the boy, the lobster, beamed in grace,

did you believe that the hornet came by bike, that the tuba train and the news in time
were of Cheetah joining Tarzan in flight, eighty years old,

holding the door when the rooster attacked,
wailing Fat Boy at the watermelon, crying fat seeds

for beatification at the point of a gun,
bird in a cage? The news of Cheetah, eighty years old,

comes dressed in a deep-sea diving suit
when the penguins followed you home that night?

When the news arrived with the tuba train,
when little boys smoked and Tarzan took flight
with beams of light at the point of a gun
and the boy was raised in a lobster pot, hornets and bones
and a saw of grace, when Cheetah died and the deep-sea news?

Hold that door to the rooster attack, the elephant climbs into the lobster pot
and the penguins followed you home that night
to carry the news of Cheetah’s demise,
when the upright chimp threw a bottle of grace.

Freeze at the door, the bones on a bike,
the hornet brings news and the beams of light.

by Malvern Westcott