Slate

On rock’s resistance to thought
the split stone fresh and nearly sentient
in response to weathering, the lichen
like colonies advancing on gut flora

or stumbling in mud, shocked
blood pulsing through limbs I steady,
vertical, I tilted in the scent  of vetiver,
pine, violent green, a wood’s

engine buzz, footsteps, murmurs.
Up against the wall where my voice comes
back not mine: between ear and stone
material glitch of a rock face turned aside.

What’s unintelligible isn’t silent,
isn’t transcendent blank: it’s most of it,
including you. Noise, irresolute
as rain: chanson, chantier -

between four walls of sound waves
an enchantment, where harmony’s
the hard facts adding up in everything
you’ve learned to listen for.

Spiegelrei, le Quai du Miroir

A tower’s shadow falls across this page
in the other tongue, the one that curls in bells,
a minor phrase rippling off-key over the canal
where the treason of mirrors grows cloudy.

Roof-tiles the colour of ducks. Ducks an indecisive
petrol. Petrol on water like petrol on water like
foot-worn contours in stone. Windows tremble,
resembling themselves; canals inhabit brick.

The quay slides flat along the water’s
black notes and that Gothic script scrolling
out of your mouth in ribbons comes dredged up

from the silted channels running out to sea. Between
milk and turquoise, this green is the voice of a colour
ringing on a glass, doubling and redoubling.