Ludslumber
catastrophes,
entertainments
a
shower of sparks
she picks her
way across the littoral junk
dead shoe soles
seeming more charred than drowned
the inch lengths of clay stem and
oyster
shells
the pearls that have been, who now are bones
and
echoes
ashes of the festival faded over the marsh
as though I
saw through time
the
face she had as a child
when ways were equal, without degree
my eyes went hungry to meet her eyes
diesel sucking
the morning’s grey
drags us to our stop
the foam of every ocean laps the kerb
once
The Cut
had an accent quite distinct
to the late Fred Stringfellow, piano tuner
almost
blind from birth
at
3am the long blue streets
are
empty like the sea
one
by one
the cars are carried away on their own sound
and
one mindful satellite
and
the fox
that leaves no wake in the sleep of the city
pass
over stars
and
under
a
needle
to quilt the time in which we dream
and in solution,
voices
precipitate, then drift to silence
a
battleground founds the settlement
I
was looking,
said the policeman in the voice of a plaintive child
in the frigid noon of the midnight shop,
for
a Pot Noodle
body armour
on his belly.
the
eons
have the nature of water which nothing withstands
I alone am
aimless and depressed
said
Lao Tzu
as
some old Asian makes his bed
of
litter among the litter
on the New Kent Road near Speedo Pizza
it does not seem the way to a land of apples
When nothing is done, he said
nothing
is left undone
John Gibbens
