.
The Task
What would you do
with these stellar spaces?
Governors must regulate themselves,
cartographers and calibrators
disturbed by identity or
a passing slave.
Closely observed boundaries
iterate. What to overlook:
heaped bodies, trade disputes, ancient
barbarisms, unsleeping legislature,
the art of distraction?
Archipelagos mock
the world news
birdsong in the night
so much death.
Continent
To attempt too much
or too little
both culpable. Schooling……
the hand rail…..
Vertigo.
Into –
the river appears
confident of its destination
perfect fish
doubtless poisonous
Look up -
Devil (huge statues,
immense trees) and the fight
both beckon: the crew look for
women paddling boats
out of the mist.
Everyday
You know:
animal is doing
human is knowing
civilised is wrestling self,
yet agonise:
should the small accommodations
resemble a daily chess-game
would you be winner?
sometimes a-little-of-what-you-fancy
seems the ultimate crime against humanity;
aspiration
acceptance
uncertainty
a rising mantra
the day’s demands
swamp, sooner or later:
your compass,
your charts, your
instructions;
must re-invention be
daily, the poem
of necessity
unfinished?
Risk
Bending the mind elsewhere
while events course
wondering,
suffering anxiety,
facing oneself,
resisting comforts.
And yet
passing through the
teeming city
an early quince bloom
intense, blood-ruby
recalls the permanent
imminence of happiness.
Tragedians
Day slips to evening
and we wait
for the explosions
a thousand miles apart
despite Mozart
and flowering japonica.
The Outlook
Sunny periods
and showers –
the tilt of the world’s axis,
Grendel’s mother
and Ragnanrok
what right have I
to insomnia, while they
watch for the sky to
blossom orange?
Trajectory
Impossible for that pigeon
landing on this rooftop,
these church chimes resonating
through the busy afternoon,
to travel so far:
what dictates
who exacts,
who pays,
the irredeemable
accident?
Anteroom
And when we meet
our eyes
avoid each other:
their hysterical exoticism,
my hideous cold.