Even Still Lives . . .

Across glass across the rich pre-morning dusk,
quizzical and direct,
the mother stared, as did the hidden joey
through the peephole in her bulging fur-lined pouch ⸺
four wide bright kangaroo eyes
dead set against me staying even one minute longer
on my mattress on the floor
in stupid sleep. Frost
was in the air,
was all over in me,
any personal warmth quite dexterously extinguished
along goose-bumped human skin. But for all that,
mist lifted in shape-shifting sheets off the small pond
as if to say: See,
Sun is on its way! And don’t go thinking
the feebleness of this sign
makes the outcome any less certain!
Saturn could shine for all he was worth
up towards the North, canary- or sulphur-yellow,
but these kangaroos had no time for him:
today, I was their object and nothing else on this Earth would do . . .
Dressed gingerly by now inside crumpled coldish clothes
I knelt and watched back,
humming absent-mindedly an old Swedish song
about a stable-boy called Staffan,
who was, no doubt, at another moment just like this,
watering sina fålar fem ⸺
his beautiful five young horses ⸺
probably wide-eyed to his every move,
maybe naturally starry-eyed, too,
as he made up his own tune out of hay scents
and the rank stink of piss
through the careful-tactile stages of his work ⸺
more to do with blind touch than sight ⸺
for the spark of life kindling again out of nowhere within him
in that frigid lidless twilight before dawn.


You can listen to one version of the Swedish song here.

Six Letters, Starting with “A”

A short word against the run of play
thirteen billion years long;

ETERNITY’s unassuming twin, first voice
of that tall-tale Big Bang;

its effortless forever bears just the right weight
of each thing;

inconspicuous amen, fresh whenever
whoever we are wakes

snug in the palm of its deft left hand
to plant the teaspoon-span of our only lives

down with the dust, dust —
slow-down diamonds of dirt and dust —

daily with the brief human galaxies.
(Solution: always . . . )

 

Photograph: 香港西貢赤徑 Chek Keng, Sai Kung, Hong Kong (Evette Kwok 2019)

Gunslinger

At this point in time
a finger on the trigger is the only fact you can possibly make headroom for
while your opponent ⸺
if there is such an assailant ⸺
manages to snaffle every hiding-place on offer
in this weather-boarded weather-beaten ghost-town.
TIME AT THIS POINT PASSES YOU BY:
needles on the cacti spike out an extra inch of their substance;
TIME AT THIS POINT PASSES YOU BY:
a whole small mountain
removes itself in equal measures of fine dust and sand
to relocate
in horse winds galloping the prairie or in long lung-linings
elastic with howl in a grey wolf;
TIME AT THIS POINT PASSES YOU BY:
you feel the rougher molecules
in particles, then atoms densely packed
in discrete motes of steel, as texture ⸺
out of thin air ⸺ overtakes by stealth
all those sources of distraction in your porous cowboy head.
You don’t exactly lose yourself
in this quest for concentration,
but, in blinding sunset’s molten yellow glare,
as your man-shadow lengthens past the point of no return
it is you who go off ⸺
not that figment of a firearm you once held in your hand
and when you turn for home
puzzling in this dark adaptation
and navigating by new stars in your personal undergalaxy,
there is no time to spare even one last thought
for any Wild Western smoking gun’s linger . . .

 

Photograph: 香港龍躍頭天后宮 Tin Hau Temple, Lung Yeuk Tau, Hong Kong