A few millennia hence
(fresh from inventing
the shovel and the spade)
those who came after us
will be chancing upon
an ancient sign bearing
an opaque message from
a more illuminated time:
a smiling Death’s-head
on fluorescent yellow,
radiating magic rays.
Desperate, curious,
ever hopeful
they will start digging.
An endless sea of ancient oak trees –
swell upon swell it runs to the horizon,
the rasp of a million cicadas a second tide
in the almost night air. Three stars are out.
In the middle distance a village, its lights
hovering between waking and sleep.
Beyond, a faint glow parts earth and sky.
Inklings of civilisation; Siena, or Florence.
the rimless pool
last vessel of spirituality
mildly chlorinated transcendence
as if you could simply
swim out there
Tide of birdsong washing over the pillow,
morning light zebrastriping the wall.
I surface to bubbles of drowsy excitement
drifting up from under the bed.
The old dog is dreamhunting again.
Fug of ancient canine wafts up,
a friendly embrace.
The world is at peace.
A company of rooks have commandeered
the tree tops, cawing their raucous orders
to the foul-mouthed platoon of carrion crows
billeted lower down.
Their croaking sorties darken my window –
but shush: from his high lookout a blackbird
raises his voice, rehearsing spring rebellion.
I clear my throat.
Assemble all the implements.
Then lock the door and set to work
when night falls.
It takes the darkness
for the thing inside to stir, and hours
of tender teasing out before it shows its shape.
Then deftly, cautiously, you set it in a vice:
compress, condense, and purify;
decide what must be smooth and what left rough.
At last you chase its silver surface; polish round
and round until it gleams with hope
and sparkles with despair.
Now get up from the table
with its paperful of fragile words.
Unlock the door. Admit the day.
I sit quite still
on the weathered wooden bench
as the caramel coloured chicks
stalk closer.
The sharp tugging of beaks
at tender shoots of grass,
the homely hencoop smell –
and I’m five years old and adrift
in summer, giddy, cut loose
from my moorings,
lost but wrapped safe
in solicitous clucking –
The chicks nestle near
in the last rays of the low sun;
the hen, wary, patrols –
and I hold Grandpa’s hand
as we go and lift warm eggs
from their beds of straw.
Not today, though,
in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
not today he isn’t.
The entrance to the room
is barricaded with plywood permitting
only a partial glimpse
of the General: upstanding, unfazed
by the turbulent ice floes,
unwavering gaze fixed on, well,
plywood. The impeccable turnout,
in democratically dun-coloured mantle
(lined with scarlet),
thrown in dramatic folds
over shoulders bearing the weight
of a nascent nation –
all for nothing today. He shall not
reach the far shore, shall not
trounce the Hessian mercenaries;
and this great nation shall never,
now, be birthed – and not
just this room, no, the entire museum,
Fifth Avenue, all of Manhattan
declared closed
for the duration; New York roped off,
the Empire State Building un-built,
stone by stone, steel girders
dismantled, the Brooklyn Bridge
melted down and Brooklyn cut loose
to drift out to sea.
By and by the prairie schooners
will return from the West (California
now only a word
whispered in feverish dreams
and no more), and from a non-place
not called Washington,
in a porticoed, pillared white house
that never was, a last tweet proclaims
the fading usurper’s futile fury –
then silence. Peace.
Sofia, age 23, from Siberia:
processed in Ellis Island, 1921;
destination Gackle, North Dakota.
You have to wonder.
Gackle, North Dakota:
founded in 1904;
located at 46°37′38″N, 99°8′36″W:
not even the middle of nowhere.
Population (1920): 424.
Population (1950): 606.
Population (2016): 291:
not exactly Boomtown ND.
Things to do in Gackle ND:
ˮGackle is home
to the Gackle Public Libraryˮ –
that is about the extent of it.
They must be doing
an awful lot of reading
up there in Gackle, ND.
And you have to wonder:
Did she find her home there?
Was it worth the loss of loved ones,
the heartbreak of exile, the long journey
all the way from Siberia – to Gackle, ND.
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