The absence of music,
Drawing on itself
Lasting a second
Then a full hour
Alert-
But only just.
And slowly it crawls out of bed,
Sits up and wakes,
Walks out into traffic
Or what it calls its silence.
We see in every line lost,
The last syllable isolated
By further loss –
Clear, blue, immobile
Suddenly
In the word “sorrow”
The word thundering in whiten mass.
In one direction and then the other
A strength of body, of weight
Straining at both illusion and shadow,
Making the waves reflect this thought
Of straightened point.
Formed and lost in further thought
Capturing the mighty spear of a silent roar
At the point of loss.
The hook in my back,
My hanging there –
The metal tissue
Between energy and earth
Sprung forth, spewing this last noise electric.
Wired and revolving –
The cell voices now startled and started,
Concealed and conducted
From another mouth
The taste of sweat in a single bullet,
Travelling,
Entered my body as fire and iron
Communicating it was personal.
I visited it once.
Thought I saw a fox leap the barrier –
Crafty fellow,
Still carrying something – hounds following.
On the platform celebrating
A dance or something.
Bank can be like that –
Packed and bloody.
The burning of earlier life,
Its smell hung in the air like life.
Still I kept moving not looking back –
Was I fleeing?
Waiting for the dark to guide me
To another clearing
Neither disappeared nor disappointing
Where strange creatures gathered wailing
Like demons for night to pass.
All mutant and bird eating
Such as a schoolboy’s mamouth,
A pig with the head of many,
Even a twelve foot snail mating.
So it was as I walked
My hand was taken by you, father,
Into light without form or smell or touch.