Sunday, June 03, 2012

The view from here


The view from here
















I Fog
Newcastle has gone,
and Gateshead. A fragment of Tyne
locked like an anchor in mud
a few blue-grey roofs some
street lights and steep houses
chain it to me and separate us,
buses form themselves from air,
vanish to nowhere; memory
is myth.


II Lucid
It rained overnight. Black ashphalt
sparkles with pleasure at being
walked upon, wild buses play tag
to their destinations always
leaving because they've arrived.
I can see distant green-brown
bounding hills streaked with houses
and imagine tiny people
imagining us.


III Nocturne
Brighter at night against the dark
the wealth and lunacy of the city
reflected on the surface
of the empty river, still
great crack, laughter, an argument
with my face in Fenwick's window
till, by uneven steps, I miss
the final metro home; home
is fiction.


IV Sight
We are as ants and less than ants
scrawling our sentences like
scent trails over dust
each I a monarch
in its own domain;
quod scripsi, fecit.

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