Last night I used up in a dream all
that I had to give
reading out my collected works in
some grimly renovated tube-lit hall.
It took a while, and when it was done
—without a word, without applause— each member
of the audience stood up
one by one
and marched away into a suddenly appearing tunnel.
From where I stood, I could see heel
following heel
in the echoing ardour
of their single file
my wordless goodbye
until
into a concealed turn
the procession disappeared.
I hadn’t moved.
Now only one seat was still
occupied, in that guttered
hall: a stocky mustachioed man. With a bit of caution,
he got up and gave me a pained grin. I knew his face
only from photographs: (I’d made fun
of him in a slightly evil rhyme and
he, angrily, had tried
to take revenge by panning my first book.)
Sir,
I said, casting about for some inoffensive appellation.
I hope you see I never intended malice—I mean, so soon—
It’s okay, he said, cutting me off.
Time evacuates intention.
(Pause.)
But what’s left, I said. Nothing! Just some cartoon
that makes the eyes fall out!
Well, well, never mind,
he replied, warming conspiratorially, fixing me in the moon
of his brow,
I guess it helped us out in the end,
both of us, didn’t it?
Hehe.
Thanks.
I don’t know what got
into me then, but we embraced.
I felt his forearms on
my back and I slipped my fingers through the knots
of his hair.
Okay, I continued,
that rhyme
might have been a little misjudged, but
isn’t it like some
enzyme
leavening us
from within?
All grown up
a tongue between us?
Or, indeed, a mind
far enough to know
—and mourn—
all that was to
and could have been
said...?
It’s teeth
that make a single poetry, echoed he,
looking still forlorn,
still tough.
Anyway, they’ll consign us to the lousy
depths of the database for sure,
said I,
they’ll plant the blandest gardens
on our remains.
And those
that tramp
us down
will follow in turn
into the long
ravine where all
our little victories
vanish:
each dropped planet
in the cry
of its jolted orbit,
the sand of our
languages by
degrees
pulverised
and
bleached
into air. Well:
we may be aught but minor poets
of the early 21st century, but
dammit,
we have our pride!
Now now, don’t get scared, our dues are paid,
responded he,
Who moves the pen
is moved by the pen.
Huh, I said.
That’s kind of a
“labyrinthine”
line—
I like that!
I knew you bloody would, he said then,
This is your sort of poem, is it not?
And it’s true
that I would have preferred
to be stuck
in some
febrile, living stench than over here. But listen, if this
tube-lit
two-bit
indoor limbo
is going
to be our home—
and we’re trapped
in this embrace
for all of eternity,
I suppose it’s best
to get comfortable. And then almost as if
our inadvertent words
had released a spell,
the inside became
the outside, a warm
breeze blew against us, fire
mated with air and the earth too
flung about
in damp clods parted
to take us in.