Tinnitus
To Alan Palacci
All night on the beach. A crush
of pebbles. The clop and splash
of waves on a groyne. Mish-mash
of jetsam. Just the place
for my father’s barnacled face
to wash up. The clash and hiss
of water makes me miss
most of what he says:
something like ‘tosh’ or ‘fash’ or ‘fish.’
***
In another country a man
falls from a tall building
or a rock, perhaps, with a rep
for just that sort of thing.
His cry is carried to you,
unravelled, by a wind
that travelled step by step
or else hand over hand
mile after mile after mile
for days on end.
***
What if the music of the spheres
were the cryptic ne plus ultra of human fears…
***
I am walking down a lane that is white with dust.
It could be a dream; it could be the dream will last,
unlike any shape or shade of love you care
to name (or find and follow if you must).
Empty, white with dust, and something stopless in the air:
the chain-stitch of cicadas; a dynamo somewhere.
***
Largo, allegro, con brio, glissando, crescendo,
vivace, veloce, da capo, da capo, da capo.
***
A single note drawn out
beyond imagining,
pitched for a dog or a rat
by a man with a single string
on a busted violin.
for gall is never to let
the music settle to silence.
***
Something indelible behind your eyes:
the swift’s wide wall-of-death between
the campanile of San Giovanni Battista
and balconies filled with flowers, a seamless scream
flowing behind the bird, a tiny twister
too sharp and shrill to be anything but lies.
***
Rough music in the lane,
the love-child lapped in blood
and safe at her breast, the pain
echoed in wood on wood,
steel on steel, as they come,
the women in their blacks,
to hound her from house and home,
bands of bitches and claques
of crones with their pots and pans,
their hooks and ladles and bowls,
to beat outside in the street,
to stand at her window and howl,
while the child takes a taste of green
milk and ‘the dead of night’
is all she has of her own
and the music goes on and on.
Page(s) 91-93
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