i: Nocturne
and it burns I cannot come to
you construct your farness in a breath
a laugh, a gold strand every fibre
optic of your being poised out
of frame
EXT. Night. Moon. Streetlight. Rain.
Let us begin again the yearıs midnight and our dayıs
wake from nightmare fingers
slammed
in phone receivers alarms
shrill thinness finger us awake
to streetlight stutters heart beat still
darkness one over the
twelve (the centuryıs midnight) we move
on steel pins of sleep at wrists and eyes, steel dreams
star-cold smuggled cold as far as your feet
are heart beat one last
word not tunnelled
night turns all
to
ii: quintessence
what we learn here: dust and staircases and voices and light
enclosed, this everything and what is not
an alchemy of watch-hands ticking over skin
twisting heart-wrists over white space
like something comes, speck. horizon. man.
or moon sılow tonight your voice on the phone
bored to laughter the yearıs full stop
piercing the sky like a car alarm
like an ivory tower that twists
what weıve donne to a nothingness
whisper what begins confess lay
sibilance to rest a stony ghost of Spring
and the tearless mysteries
of how each poem is composed
of the things I once saw and you
(never) missed, how the stress falls
on what rises, dust and staircases and voices and light.
iii: two eyes on it
Lucy, saint of those afflicted in the eyes.
(Martyred Syracuse 304 AD.)
Virgin candle-flame of the Holy See,
Beauty-blinded. The winterıs darkest skies
Are yours in lux perpetuum; Northıs long night
Stares back at you, scraped white of bone to bone.
Lucus a non lucendo : light alone
Can give the lie to old maidsı tales of sight.
One legend says that once upon a time
Your name had shone the splendour of your gaze,
But Lucy light as St.Lukeıs bird became,
Blood-heavied. This desire for sightıs a crime,
When what we see from constantly betrays
How we are seen. How light you wear your name.
iv: ³which word wrongs her²
i) nocturnal upon st lucy
ii) st lucyıs day being (nocturnal?)
iii) being the shortest
iv) lucyıs day-being
v) being: the shortest (day)
there lies john donne somewhere between i) and v)
buried metaphysically in the thick of brackets
beckoning a light, and body blackened
INT. Coffin. Night.
taking a turn at death rising church by church
in slim tapers of fire this white satin wonıt do
there must be gold somewhere horizon or streetlight flare
or dying away.
I am by her death come so close, his breath
your
breath
o opened like eye-sockets
bone where sigh(t) should be
v) Eccentricities of home
³And this also,² said Marlow suddenly, ³has been one of the dark places of the earth.²
what we conquer brings us home
a hollowed purse, a lover rich
as rivers where the water burns
and in the worldıs true sense
thatıs holiday, home away from
home, (be)wilderness tearing
at the centre golden-clawed
essential as sunıs light
to the reflexive moon, and in our
orbits we find what is formed
in the betrayal of who we are
and how we came to be
distant, brokering knowledge
for knowledge as we give in
define the gift-relationship
bearersı burden until it lights
the eyes and, candle-like, waxes
as it wanes to nothing. taken
as given at the gates of ivory
hands of soft white gold branching
in the piny dance need(l)ing
us home, vigilant and guttering,
resinous, amber-starred, held
eye to eye. what we can see in the dark.