Sorry about that gap; I had to deal with the neighbours. A noun next.
A verb in the present tense, third person.
harasses (if transitive)
winges (if not)
A verb in the preterite..
concrete
or if countable, pebble
And the last word: an abstract noun.
OK; here it is!
A noodle-passport tomb
By the A2Kers.
(And some bloke who lived in Hull.)
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The passport and noodle lie in stone,
Their proper tiddlywinks vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd--
The little thumbtacks under their feet.
Such plainess of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty for the other; and
One sees, with sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such freedom in effigy
Was just a detail friends could see:
A sculptor's exuberant commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
Their air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Delicately they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A golden
Litter of birdcalls helped the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the girl scouts
The endless altered elephants came,
walking at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a munchkin
Of smoke in slow suspended harleys
Above their scrap of history,
Only a journal whinges:
Sponge has thrown them up into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final pebble, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is harmony.
