I
caught your image forming:
A half-seen shadow in the dust…
then outlines etched across a page,
now substance carved, creating depth;
Growing features, wrinkles, names
with movement, hints of nuance,
breaths of agency, and time;
I began to know a person.
Stacks of ice once blue:
nature pressed by its own weight;
broken free from cold
Again
I learned to walk without the hope of wings;
tracking backwards from intricate devices
to carving graven shelves of slate
while still standing on those shelves,
searching for a way to cut them loose
that could leave their weight behind
Modernity crouched, constrained,
the superheated pressure at its heart
encased against itself to further power;
Created in a symbol of the New, the turbine
hummed,
its power haunched to overcome resistance
until it whispered into life…
A mill-wheel of the giants, spinning under sight –
its screams have spawned across the world,
gorging on our hunger turned to greed
While we trust in calculation, to be
spared the whisker of vibration:
a flaw that could not fail to kill us all.
I hold onto shreds,
almost forgetting I’ve lost
my anchor cable
You shaggy haired buffoon!
You are a worm of inappropriate persuasion,
values lost in folded layers of falsity.
When they inquire into your conduct, how will you explain
that Eden was smarter than you, as was Chamberlain,
but vanity made you surpass their worst mistakes
without an ounce of their integrity?
Who chose you to be our future?
Nothing you can do is in my name.
There is a special place in hell for you…
Every thing that works for you is wrong
and you have brought your curse to dwell in us:
our futures dust, our cakes a hatchery for weevils…
If you were not a fool, you would have fallen
on your sword by now; but seriousness is out
so we must fail instead. And what of us?
We are benighted people, bewitched by fantasies,
choking on confections of a half-invented past.
No longer lions, nor audience; now mute accomplices.
Not one but three kites spiralled,
around – but not of – Easter;
prospering offshoots of an earth
sliced thin for easier consumption…
Three red kites circling overhead,
intent on every ritual of their hunt
to bring hot death to prey beneath,
oblivious, in our suburban gardens;
As they ride a rising wave of carbon 6 –
our alienated friend and profligate –
the sleeping dragon wakens, shifting,
shivering, raging at its wounds…
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
Come with me, you’re one of us! You’ll be all right…
We used to run the country in one another’s interests
but now we’ll help them manage: by privilege, and bluff,
and an educated way of pretending things are fine…
Hold on to that – haha-haha, hahahaha!
Except we’ve carved an arc out of their sky
and cut their children’s futures to serve our unity,
which leaves them in a sticky spot (someone’s made a pig of it) –
But, we are the elite, we know, we cannot fail…
As lucky Dave said ~ sotto voce ~ ‘tum-te-tum’…
when he strolled away
Who knows what’s next? Who cares!
The vicar’s awkward daughter will finish off the dregs,
being stubborn unto death, suborning what she stood for
on her remorseless journey in every wrong direction.
Never mind now! Our life goes on – and after port
we can pretend, the country’s got its empire back!
~ While lucky Dave said, later on, ‘Je ne regrette rien’
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
The year falls due,
closing in a private tragedy –
of island bloodlines and decline –
unfolding in slow motion
It was always on.
But now it tumbles, sliding to its close –
ungainly; insignificant; but ours –
a squall among the juggernauts we’ve known.
