Northbound

We know this is the way north:
the unending barns are smeared
in certain light, the sky
is lucid and we its dream-figments.
This must be the way north
because our feet drag
flurries of dust, even
as another luminous brace of trees
outflanks us beyond the car window,
the train window, the drawn curtain.
Could there ever be another way
to travel? Eyes clenched and hands
summing up their fingers from our laps,
voices drawn closer and tighter
into the leather pouch of the throat.
The air advances here. We ascend
because our compasses point upwards.
North. Above. The neck is a stern
climber in arctic winds, the skull
a blown-out lantern to be carried
down into darkness. No use for it now,
so we check it's still there
for the time being. Small women watch
from street corners, clutching dogs
which are their safe-house hearts.
And, heading north, our accents
clinched shut in the corners of books
and streets and odd geometries,
we can pay them less and less heed.

The sun is a gobstopper

No, I could not speak of it again –
the field of ragwort we crossed
to that bright summer garden, our skin
draped from branches,
waiting to be tugged on, the vertebrae
snapped into place.
Even then we chose
to go on singularly, digits
scoring bark, the white wounds
on our palms
proof that we were self-contained.
Still this memory is nearly
closed to me, cramped as a rat's tunnel:
what would be our tongues
drooped like fat black petals
at the centres of enormous flowers.
We choked them down, and knew
it was better
to call them fish – wet fish
slapping the palate,
that final sound
hushing the world
I can only now approximate.

Actaeon: the body politic

I try song.
                     Already my head

is flushed with birds
                                     already my lungs

resound with timber.
I understand each bone as brittle
stick     each hair
                             as moss or whisker

     sweeping into darkness
like an owl seeking out
the ripe sweetmeats of rats.

And ravenous     the wind at my back
howling   as if to say
                                    in bocca al lupo, chum.

I try song.
                     Already my head
                     is beaten hide.

Bend to the conch-horn I dropped
and hear my skull’s river
                                              the pulse
at my temple a beautiful tick
                                                my heart
a bell hurled to a whirlpool.

Already my fingers losing themselves
     and feet turned sandals of mud.

I try song
                      and bark.

The Suicides Return

Let me say this: at least I loved
the redbirds circling the courtyard, trees
sheathed in their scabbards of permafrost
the second time around. Eventually
we all came home, after
the cemetery-looting, the mausoleums,
crypts, ditches, pyramids, volcanoes.
In the end it didn't matter
whose body you found. We bartered them,
tricked each other with dice and cards
and scripture, gathering in milky forests,
and all the while dragging these frames
we couldn't identify, couldn't look upon
as property any longer, the filmed eyes,
cheekbones like curious slugs or just
the clack and rattle of muddy bones.
For what were we punished? I barely remember.
At least I can love the berries falling
through my fingers; it is enough.
I've lost that way of slipping on
another self, my costume split and mouldered.
Perhaps this is more punishment.
Perhaps this is a second chance.