A geography
of tumbleweeds
everywhere you look the same old man
a rusty bike
a mote of dust in God's eye /
a city
white & entelechious
its down-pipes announcing the beginnings of spring
+
No moment's eternal
eternity's the absence of time (as large as a peanut
as golden as autumn lovers
black as a swan or bread loaves)
+
A crooked path through the bush
becomes a clearing
a plain
a rough map surrounded by mountains as high as
the swamp birds
+
Each spring creates the LANGUAGE of its own
beginnings
At the roadside - the old man fixing a puncture
his dog asleep beside him
Albrecht considers the Great Fire Of London
he knows you can't go there
but buys the ticket anyhow
Twilight is the colour of closed hands
the page (of a book) that flips over
in back light
In the Synagogue Of Larks
the heart rises...
that's what A reckons
(he said the ceramic air-vents are particularly lovely)
+
"If silence is the absence of sound
how come we hear it?"
"That's a good question," replied A
who didn't believe in it anyhow
+
(All stratifications reduced to a riccocino
a sidewalk caff
they did their post-doctoral work in fifteen minutes
all you need to know
to repeat the data of post-colonial histories)
+
an alphabet of sighs / alphabets of conflict
the simplest 'actions' /
like diplomacy
the Prince Of Time
multiplications of illusions
(a mirror in a mirror
in a mirror)
IN YOUR WORDS
+
A said it was all skylarks
& mountain passes
Poems ©John O'Connor 2013