culdesactest

  1989Of cats and tramps.They burned well I recall.Their crackling spatThrough the silence of the Small hours on that night.It seems a profanity, thisDisregard for the past.This building and buildingUp over events. ThisTeeming and ruthlessWay we move about our world.To just forget whileEverything in me cries“Stop it. Don’t touch.”Who knows or caresWhat happened here?My mute gesture futileIn face of the world’s bulk,My hazardous symbolA new home for young couplesWho will never know.Funny being here and Seeing it all again.I feel no regret. It all served To shape me, everythingThat followed. I mean,Who could I possibly beBut the person I have become?The Earth hides these strataBehind its masks. A doorway,Maybe, where somebody diedContinues to function as suchAfter the body is carted away.Yet it served its useFor that person too, a focal pointFor destiny to fulfil itself.Everything they knew, theirLoves and their memoriesGravitated there and died,Ceased on a wet doorstepWith dog-ends strewn about.   1975

“This is me,” it seems to say. “Take notice of me. I exist

In this city, I walk its streets.

I am here. I am here.”

This fire is my noble gold-stuff

Rushing in the black vacuum.

I glow in the dark near

The shrine of her home.

Yet I thought this rasp of flame

Would draw her night-self

To me, into orbit about me.

I feel sometimes that if I want

Something to happen strongly Enough, the world will give,

Spit forth the dream I declare.

Symbolic gestures and cigarettes

Might serve to configure the Storehouse shielded behind the Everyday. But this burning

That blazes through convention

And law doesn’t succeed,

Doesn’t influence a single atom.

She has not changed

And will not, I know.

Up here on the tenth floor, I see

It all at last. My gesture is tiny,

Lost in the sun of the rolling city

And its millions of homes.

All our lives cut and thrust.

Weapons, they hack and Bludgeon. They slice. Our wills

Are sharpened in the attack.

The world spins on. The axis

Of its cycle will not tilt for me.

I am nullified by the bulk of

Earth and its dreadful inertia.

The blue strobe of police vans

Dart about the towerblock.

My work here is finished. The lift begins to climb, carrying its load.

Soon I will be held.

1975

“This is me,” it seems to say. “Take notice of me. I exist

In this city, I walk its streets.

I am here. I am here.”

This fire is my noble gold-stuff

Rushing in the black vacuum.

I glow in the dark near

The shrine of her home.

Yet I thought this rasp of flame

Would draw her night-self

To me, into orbit about me.

I feel sometimes that if I want

Something to happen strongly Enough, the world will give,

Spit forth the dream I declare.

Symbolic gestures and cigarettes

Might serve to configure the Storehouse shielded behind the Everyday. But this burning

That blazes through convention

And law doesn’t succeed,

Doesn’t influence a single atom.

She has not changed

And will not, I know.

Up here on the tenth floor, I see

It all at last. My gesture is tiny,

Lost in the sun of the rolling city

And its millions of homes.

All our lives cut and thrust.

Weapons, they hack and Bludgeon. They slice. Our wills

Are sharpened in the attack.

The world spins on. The axis

Of its cycle will not tilt for me.

I am nullified by the bulk of

Earth and its dreadful inertia.

The blue strobe of police vans

Dart about the towerblock.

My work here is finished. The lift begins to climb, carrying its load.

Soon I will be held.