193

Waking is a directive issued
From the intestine. For at
The heart of waking is an
Idea, and it is like an
Engine idling on remnants
Of fuel. Like a short fire
That flares in a candlelit
Space and is oxygen-starved
From its commencement and
Cannot hold itself for long.
Waking is a directive so
Fragile it is consumed in
A further sleep or forgotten
In consciousness. For one
May not be conscious of the
Memory of sleep. At first
The self is like an elegant
Apparatus that tends upon
The fuel of the will. But
It can fold into the arms
Of sleep once more, where
Its congruence will become
A rhetoric, and yet sound
Softly like the voice of an
Unseen speaker present in a
Darkened room. The promise
Of late sleep is consciousness.
On waking into a full power
The structure of one's self
Is ratified and the hollow
Contortions of will and form
Begin, darkness left aside.

192

The white-tails move through
The wood like aspects of one
Entity : their tails flash white
To the order of an irregular
Series. The sunlight breaks
Through the treeline in dim
Crepuscular shafts, and as
The white-tails pass through it
They appear only part formed,
As if the light constructed
Them from moment to moment.
They come to a tree fallen
Across their path, overgrown
With moss, seeming to dance
In the light of its own dust.
Each in turn bucks up into
The air, first with the front
And then the rear legs, as if
Stung. They vault the trunk
And at the apex of each leap
The white-tails seem to hang
In the air as they carry back
To the earth. They pass from
Sight as silently as they came,
A train of vacant spirits.

191

Set forth, pilgrim star,
Into the vast chamber
Of the heavens. Your
Path is lit before you,

As if by a thousand
Incendiary motes.
Sound that cavity for
Us : light a slow way,

That we may follow
In the years to come
The history of your
Project and your fall.

You do not remember
Us, bright pilgrim, for
We were never yours.
Our little sleep is light.

190

Father
It is all one to me now. The mass
            Of nebulae teeming with new births of stars.
                        The bright gasses that burn, violet and burgundy
And gold, like bruises on the flesh
            Of the deep. The ephemera of comets that die
                        In their long flights like angels of sleepless earth.
The fugitive lights that pass beyond the reach of
            Our human sight. The fragments of their fire that
                        Fall to earth, communicants of their own burning.

We may think of a state of no energy
            As admitting no potential for force, that God must
                        Reach from some station of the outer dark to will
This work in motion. What if a vacuum
            Were the ultimate state of becoming? A state so
                        Pregnant with the lack of and necessity for energy
And mass and the phosphored, fluid pathways
            Of being, that it could birth the totality of all energy?
                        Astral wind, that carried the seed out of the night.
This mechanism : the motion of a dream.

            Your image falls across my thought, as from
                        A projector. The coincidence of our forms in space
Is what we call love. The pale flower
            That burns in the movement of the wind.
                        The soul of the giraffe distended in the atmosphere.
Our child destroyed by fire.
            The earth has receded : I have inherited the void.
                        In the dust of the stars the darkness is a pale flower.
Come down from heaven, honey,
            For earth has gone away and life is over. We are lost :
                        Our loves flee before us like visions of a dead world.

189

Father
I have spoken to you the only words
            I knew to speak. Is it such a cold world? Tonight,
                        In the heart of all our meagre life, in this question,
Time holds. I have not lied to you.
            No, I do not lie to children. The manifold lights
                        Are the children of our very souls. Broken starlight.
The dress you wore, I felt like death.
            I found you in the bathroom, under a corona of
                        Light, vomiting into the basin of the toilet. Aureole.

You fear the death of my soul, but not that
            Of my body. But I am composed of nothing if not
                        Of structure. I am animate : this motion is inherent
In the energy from which the structure was
            Derived. I do not know where I derived my love.
                        There is no soul of me than my mind : a proliferate
Clockwork, and nothing more. All you have known
            Of me abides in that mechanism. I am, as I am,
                        No more than an empty vessel. I search through my
Sleep for the silent words of your prayer.

            Let us not be cold. I cannot be cold with you.
                        I have spoken to you the only words I knew to speak.
You are silent like a ghost. The fire has
            Grown and the hills are dancing with it, like flowers.
                        I have realised that everything is ending. Stars fall.
You have lost me in the years : I find now
            My arms have grown weak, I cannot stand.
                        Take courage! A light is passing through the forest.
Ride home, pale roe : my soul will light
            Your way to sleep tonight. God be your keeper,
                        Tonight and until our common end! The dark sings.

188

God did not speak of you
When he spoke the first word.

You are the flower that the
Night encloses : a singular light.

No purpose is commensurate
With you, and yet you are.

A child cannot sleep and is told
A story, a story of angels and

The ghosts of angels and the
Fallen angels that God cast out.

There is a ghost in the light
That plays across the ceiling,

Which the child watches, and
There is a ghost in the child's

Heart that causes it to sleep.
The light is as silent as rest.

Your hand and the fire are
Two forces of the same origin.

You may be a thought of God,
But you were not the first.

187

My voice falters, my children.
I have seen the last in this
Series of images. I have
Seen the logic of what must
Come. I recognise the true
Quality of things, their real
Origin, their actual progress.
Nothing can escape me now,
Except that your bodies are
Powers beyond my strength.
Except that the light of all
Is collapsing like a fire
Starved for fuel. Your love
Is visible to me at last,
In the wreckage of that fire.
I am so sorry for the father
That I have been. It comes :
Hold to the light, my children.
Its gate is my last word.

186

Father
Nullity is the church of my heart,
            Little one. Nullity is the roe that rides in flame to
                        The wood's edge. These are fine, elaborate sounds.
I have taken your testament, love :
            Its essence is the fruit of me. I am its dull mnemonic,
                        It is the burning faggot that illumines all darkness.
For it must be proclaimed, that fire
            Is only a potential. Meaning kills that blaze. Let us not
                        Sing life to sleep with meanings. Nullity is my torch.

We must proportion the world we find to it.
            It is not balance, but rather instability, that
                        Inheres in nothingness. Let us sing the old chanson :
Natura abhorret a vacuo! This may refer
            Not only to the veering motion with which matter
                        Seeks matter : sphere, sphere : body, body : but to
The impossibility of the vacuum-state
            Altogether. I cannot be empty. The burning of a roe
                        As it flies to the border of the wood is vivid, empty.
God sings in his chains like a giant.

            Comets dance in the wake of the ship,
                        The ship where I wait for you. I watch their paths.
Prodigal, fugitive, acrobatic : they are like
            A circus of lost boys. I am at the bar drinking
                        Whisky. Please consider meeting with me, tonight.
I have lost my soul in gallons of booze.
            Your arms hung on me like a cable : O fathom
                        That has swallowed my last God! My human dignity.
No, my tuxedo jacket. Was it a dream I loved?
            You remember the words I spoke to you. Come back to me.
                        Pale roe, break from the sea.

185

Mother
Elohim, my cry goes up to you.
            He is not of his nature : His sickness is
                        To hold the world before him as an automatism.
Come down, we are asleep and
            It is not too late, and it is cool on the balcony.
                        Time holds. Earth is particolour tonight, Elohim.
It is a gift of love I bring to you.
            The ghost of a giraffe is distended in the long
                        Vault of heaven, where the stars leap like children.

The living body of it lies in the
            Dust of the savannah, fallen half beneath a yew.
                        Dust. The constituent of man, and man's terminus.
The yew is older than the dust.
            The giraffe is white in the moonlight, like a particle
                        Of God's burning ejactile quivering in the vacuum.
It is inchoate, white, long, dim,
            Skeletal, abstract : it forms and reforms like
                        A thought. It is the first word. Stars fall. The ghost
Of it is distended in the heavens.

            I turn into the dark of the wall.
                        My breasts hang like shapes hanging over a cradle.
I am the lost and broken girl,
            O captain come through the wood, I am waiting!
                        The time is a memory of my sleep, and of my song.
I have seen your colour on the
            Stockade in the haze over the river. God's rifle
                        Is hanging above the mantle in heaven. Come home.
I have drunk myself to death in
            Our bed! but no, I am only asleep, and the light
                        Passes over my body like the movement of his grace.

184

Father
Rockets fall across the face of the deep.
            In the night of all our worlds the archangel
                        Stands at the aperture, his prosthetic arm framed
In its light. My father a silhouette in the
            Door as we slept. Through the fabric of the
                        Walls, the outer structure of the house, the stars
Burning like the spent munitions of a far
            And distant, and meaningless war. Aureole.
                        Cancer, a pair of bright mandibles of petroleum.

There is no differentiation of power
            Across the fabric of reality. Counted, it would
                        Amount to zero, all quadrants interior or exterior
Or anterior, or without coordinate, report
            A nullity. An equivalence. Even this interior,
                        This exterior : my volition, my body : a threshold,
Lights arranged across a field of darkness.
            I fall again into fallacy : I wake. The inner walls
                        Of my skull elaborate a surface multifoliate across
The surfaces of these phenomena. I sleep.

            Fire is the amnion of my rest. Come down with me,
                        Darling, into the bed of the dwindling fire, and we
Will make an exegesis of our common hopes.
            What's yours is mine, Columbine! My projections.
                        My invert self, only you have communicated with.
My body decked in inarticulate colour.
            My hopeless force : my final, violent motions.
                        I have perjured my very form to be a palp. To pass,
Through the configurations of your gilded hands,
            For a mere meaning. I love you, my bright horse.
                        Be the cross that rises in the morning of my vanity.