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“... here. Have been for centuries. No, longer. Everything already has been. It’s not a reasonable place, this continuum between us, and yet here again I put the olive trees in, turn the whole hill-sweeping grove down, its mile-long headfuls of leaves upswept so the whole valley shivers its windy silvers, watery … A strange heat is upon us. Again. That was you thinking that ...”

“... Today on two legs stood and reached to the right spot as I saw it choosing among the twisting branches and multifaceted changing shades, and greens, and shades of greens, lobed, and lashing sun, the fig that seemed to me the perfect one, the ready one, it is permitted, it is possible, it is actual. The VR glasses are not needed yet, not for now, no, not for this while longer ...”

“... lie down on this floor, unnotice, try to recall, stir a little but not in heart, feel rust coming, grass going, if I had an idea this time, if I could believe in the cultivation, just piece it together, the fields the sky the wetness in the right spot, it will recline the earth it does not need your map, the rows you cut into it make their puzzled argument again, then seed, spring has a look in its eye you should not trust anymore, just look at it watching you from its ditch, its perch, heavy on the limbs, not reproach exactly not humour though it could be sly this one who will outlive you of course, this one who will cost you everything, yes, sly – do you catch my meaning says the cosmos-laden morning, I will cover you with weeds, I will move towards beginning but I will not begin again, the marsh gleams does it not, the two adolescent girls walking through it now, in the reprieve, they remind you, do they not, a summer frock underneath, a heavy coat over, so ready, the idea of a century being new beckoning, this one will end, that one we will traverse into via a small bomb perhaps, and the marsh waits, speckling, unremarkable, but yet you want to remark it, even by looking away you want to keep it normal, normal you say, rust can you be normal in me, marsh with your rusty grasses come, bring it again my normal, a bit frostbitten at the start of the day, but now warming where the horizon blues, where the wren has alighted right here camouflaged in normalcy, he left one feather on the ground, I’ll bend to pick it up after he goes, it too is all wings the day, it flaps its brightness on and the fields flatten, the sun lies oily in the sillion, furrow- slice, mould ...”

“... They ask me why. They ask me againwhy. Why the last of. Why the last ofa time. See, it curls up in the doorway & isthe doorway. Then wind and snow and time – your only time –curl up in it. Then the howling. It’s sayingsee, here, in this doorway, look respectfully, it is yr cage. Saying here isyr openingthat cannot befilled, these holes where yr earsshould be, where yr eyes shld be, everythingblows through – yr set of wrong answers, yr insufficient offerings,something not even fire couldburn – all exhalation, sprawl, flow – emptinessmaking of itself a shape for a while,why a while – because a while – thatis the subject – cannot be depicted – uhold your hands up thinking u areopened, u are not – u are still shut – completely shut – allmust go through u – shriek, mutter yrname, no onecan hear u – it’s yr cage, it’s leaking everywhere, lackingeverything – the shape of poverty is time, the form of time ispoverty, westarve, you’ve no idea how fast westarve ...”

“... May I help you. No. In the mirror? No. Look there is still majesty, increase, sacrifice. Night in the flat pond. Moon in it/on it disposing entirely of mind. No. Look there is desert where there was grassland there is sun-inundation like a scrupulous meditation no message just mutter of immensity where it leaks into partiality. Into you/me. Our boundaries now in the epic see-through, how they elude wholeness, let in illusion, pastness, whole years in a flash, then minutes that do not end – that desert – that jungle ...”

“... There is a plot in the back of my building.Not the size of the asteroid.Not what fourhyper-crenellations of a reef would have held when there werereefs. It’s still here. I must notget the timeconfused. The times. There is a coolness in it which would have been newSpring. I can’t tell if it’ssmell, as of blossoms which would have been just thenbeginning, or of loam ...”

“... The blades like irises turning very fast to see you completely – steel-blue then red where the cut occurs – the cut of you – they don’t want to know you they want to own you – no – not own – we all mean to live to the end – am I human we don’t know that – just because I have this way of transmitting – call it voice – a threat – communal actually – the pelagic midwater nets like walls closing round us – starting in the far distance where they just look to us like distance – distance coming closer – hear it eliminating background – is all foreground – you in it – the only ground – not even punishment – trawling-nets bycatch poison ghostfishing – the coil of the listening along the very bottom – the nets weighed down with ballast – raking the bottom looking for nothing – indiscriminate – there is nothing in particular you want – you just want – you just want to close the third dimension – to get something which is all – becomes all – once you are indiscriminate – discards can reach 90% of the catch – am I – the habitat crushed and flattened – net of your listening and my speaking we can no longer tell them apart – the atmosphere between us turbid – no place to hide – no place to rest – you need to rest – there is nature it is the rest – what is not hunting is illustration – not regulated are you? – probing down to my greatest depths – 2000 metres and more – despite complete darkness that surrounds me – despite my being in my place under strong pressure – along with all my hundreds of species – detritus – in extreme conditions – deepwater fish grow very slowly – very – so have long life expectancy – late reproductive age – are particularly thus vulnerable – it comes along the floor over the underwater mountains – scraping the steep slopes – what is bycatch – hitting the wrong target – the wrong size – not eaten – for which there is no market – banned – endangered – such as birds – sometimes just too much – no more space on the boat – millions of tons thrown back dead or wounded – the scars on the seabed – the mouth the size of a football field – and if there is no one there there is still ghostfishing – nets abandoned in the sea they continue through the centuries to catch – mammals fish shellfish – we die of exhaustion or suffocation – the synthetic materials last forever Ask us anything ...”

“...             One bird close up by the house    crow makes the wall’s temporariness             suddenly exist             one call into the arrival of the storm the announcing by flocks and swarms             the flowerbeds turning in the solar system             listen – Schubert and the thrush at once and             somewhere in space we             hang are hanging             also the red dress on the line I rush to get to in time also the slack in the line up-snapping then down             what scale this pitch-             changing slapping of the cotton-poly blend listen and my approaching arms rising to catch the             ties my hair blowing over it onto it behind us             from the open door the violin and beside us at the edge of the woods the last of the thrush –             can we hear them             these flowerheads being carried in this solar system             sepals receptacles – the vascular bundles inside the stems –             near the blown-open door the strings’ diminuendos –             also these hatchlings in their nest in the eave in the storm born in it wrapping round them thunder twigs bits of mylar dusk             also accuracies of the             built porch of day of the negative forcing, the solar constant, the             storm nonstop though modulating round these             dime-sized heads – in each the magnetic chip and round it the tiny shellfish-crushable skull – Venus is almost big as earth was lush at origin had             oceans imagine yet has no             water anywhere             today ...”

“... Ode to Prism. Aria. Untitled. Wait. I wait. Have you found me yet. Here at my screen,                                                                                   can you make me out? Make me out. All other exits have been sealed. See me or we will both vanish. We need emblematic subjectivities ...”

“... Embodies Deep autumn & the mistake occurs, the plum tree blossoms, twelve blossoms on three different branches, which for us, personally, means none this coming spring or perhaps none on just those branches on which just now lands, suddenly, a grey-gold migratory bird – still here? – crisping, multiplying the wrong air, shifting branches with small hops, then stilling – very still – breathing into this oxygen which also pockets my looking hard, just that, takes it in, also my thinking which I try to seal off, my humanity, I was not a mistake is what my humanity thinks, I cannot go somewhere else than this body, the afterwards of each of these instants is just another instant, breathe, breathe, my cells reach out, I multiply on the face of the earth, on the mud – I can see my prints on the sweet bluish mud – where I was just standing and reaching to see if those really were blossoms, I thought perhaps paper from wind, & the sadness in me is that of forced parting, as when I loved a personal love, which now seems unthinkable, & I look at the gate, how open it is, in it the very fact of God as invention seems to sit, fast, as in its saddle, so comfortable – and where does the road out of it go – & are those torn wires hanging from the limbs – & the voice I heard once after I had passed what I thought was a sleeping man, the curse muttered out, & the cage after they have let the creatures out, they are elsewhere, in one of the other rings, the ring with the empty cage is gleaming, the cage is to be looked at, grieving, for nothing, your pilgrimage ends here, we are islands, we should beget nothing & what am I to do with my imagination – & the person in me trembles – & there is still innocence, it is starting up somewhere even now, and the strange swelling of the so-called Milky Way, and the sound of the wings of the bird as it lifts off suddenly, & how it is going somewhere precise, & that precision, & how I no longer can say for sure that it knows nothing, flaming, razory, and the feathered serpent I saw as a child, of stone, & how it stares back at me from the height of its pyramid, & the blood flowing from the sacrifice, & the oracles dragging hooks through the hearts in order to say what is coming, what is true, and all the blood, millennia, drained to stave off the future, stave off, and the armies on the far plains, the gleam off their armour now in this bird’s eye, as it flies towards me then over, & the sound of the thousands of men assembled at all cost now the sound of the bird lifting, thick, rustling where it flies over – only see, it is a hawk after all, I had not seen clearly, it has gone to hunt in the next field, & the chlorophyll is coursing, & the sun is sucked in, & the chief priest walks away now where what remains of the body is left as is customary for the local birds ...”

“... it came, before the turn in the cherishedwind, what we called history, the turntowards, all of it more and moretowards – what is it that iscoming – must come – unfathomable, unbreakable – you want it so, yourfuture, no thefuture, sobadly – you standon the threshold of your century as on a highparapet, brush in hand, a ladder wrinkling the air as it rises,a kind of singing,rung by rung –all of you bowing to it saying thank you, thank you my lucky stars I am livingnow – right now –of all times this is the one now,the air ahead all tongues, they are actually red why don’t yousee it – & all will burn my friend –are you there –where are you now –is there a place to still beout therenow, in the actual future, which came aboutafter all – because none of thiswill survive, though from here see, so sun-dappled inwhat we called hours,long strings of human eagerness, & wonder curiosity hope expectation belief –(under the skin greed)(greed feeling its way into the hours)but the story above so shiny,the whole prepared-for-the-future soul nodding, saying you’re welcome, yes,you’re even more welcome[I’m letting you go now are you ready][I trust you to catch me]and the afternoon went on forever,and the path to the walled gardenwent on forever,the repast the Sunday the sunlight burning this leaf then that one,the wine on the table, burning, the bread,the thudding of the minutes inaudible,of what’s in the minutes,that greed,like a fleet of bombers actually,as the empty path filled up with men, rows and rowsstacked on the sides,bodies crying or no longer able to,a small path maintained for the stretcher-carriers,but all of this still invisible[except in the brushstroke]the one with no legs saying to no onewhat’s this all about,engines, sweat, memory of marching as one,huddled up till he’s a rag now calling for his mother,vital fluid seeping into the dirt,growling of plane circling low,what’s got you boy,nerves got you boy,till the path to this garden delivers its message,its millions of facescrying medic, crying mom, one of them whispering this was my homeonce, right in there –this hour –in our garden –where I look in my parents’ eyes and see nothing butthe surfaces of things,unbreakable,all round usthe sun perjuring itself promisingthe world cannot turn on you,gold firing on every leaf and pane,ricochet of sunstrikes on glass, twig, stone,the wall of vines all mouths whispering here you are here you are,fill your glass the promises shall be kept,& that quiet in the light, that quiet that cannot die,over our repast in the garden,over my one fear that I would spill the glassin the conflagrationof simplicities …Those who will never walk again on this earth ...”

“... The American experiment will end in 2030 she saidlooking into the cards,the charts, the stars, the mathematics of it, lookinginto our palms, into all of ourpalms, into the leaves at thebottom ofthe empty cup – searching its emptiness, its piles of deadbodies or is it grass at the edgeof the field where the abandoned radio is cracklingat the winter-stilled waters, the winter-killedwill of God – in the new world now the old world –staring quietly without emotion into the rotten meatin the abandoned shops, moving aside with one easy gesturethe broken furniture, the fourth wallsmashed& allthe private lives of the highrise apartmentsexposed to the city thenwind ...”

“... lost all the wars. By definition. Had small desires and fundamental fear. Gave ourchildren for them, paid in full, from the start of time, standard time and standardspace, with and without suspension of disbelief, hungry for the everyday, wideawake, able to bring about a state of affairs by bodily movement, not even gradually,not hesitating, not ever, gave brothers fathers sisters mothers ...”

“... Then the drone came. A small personal drone. Hung at anintimate height. Hadmuch to say. Hovering,eye to eye, lurching &chattering. Is it your time now, I thought. Thoughtit saidyou should have learned tolove but came upclose, saw it was old, had beenpatched thousands oftimes, maybe more, was medalled with debris,a tin castle, a wooden fish, a rattle – a plasticclock w/one hand – piano strings w/hooks – a miniaturetelephone pole – a brasstemplefront & golden ladder stuckin a tinywell – all shaking the air – a tinny racket –also scraps of veil – maybe tulle – seemed angry – one eye a milagrohanging there sideways – a pair oflungs or were those actualair sacs & bronchialtubes –the red drops actual –as if whistling or singing though we both weresilent ...”