Jolt
The sound of feet started it, the sound of feet
in the night that was becoming morning for the New Year.
Full bodyweight sounded falling on those soles
that bolted like a thief between the bricks that locked in sleep.
Woman alive, who was it?
It was no one that I knew.
The street's head was frantic and so was my heart.
Then the sound of feet swallowed itself where the suburb widens
to common ground, and greens, carrying past swans,
fetching fog over railtracks, freezing out the Thames.
The street was Victorian and single once again.
Our objects are in fugue from ourselves.
Try to draw up the starred glass that chunters glumly down the tides,
or to arrest that phoenix of duplication, the plastic orchid that wilts!
Objects have taken other motives.
First they overcame us, arguing inheritance,
shouldering apartments to a sense of smallness,
in pride of place, drinking deep of Danish oil,
toppling forwards with scarred foreheads. Now they are swelling to
escape
to some final warehouse by the Isis … that would be a reed bed
where we'd find them by their upstretching, their own legs
drawn up like churches, restful and rotten,
their limbs dog-wise at last.
Put me back to bed. Our objects are in flight.
T-shirts scatter stitches as distinct as stars from stripes;
machine finish makes the MADE IN, no matter where the fabric took
its form.
Far away I say,
further than my air miles reach.
Put out the calendar and make a fire.
Your feet are cold and I am flying apart.
Page(s) 135
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