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Alan Dunnett

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Deja Vu

It might have been the town of New Orleans
or Mexico City before the war.
He lay with a woman in whalebone and jewels
and silk and remembered how it was before:

had to get out fast because the falling
cards were marked; he seized the stakes as he shot
his man and left with his back to the door
in Mexico City where death was got

or maybe in New Orleans. Do not ask
the gambler if he had a choice. He made
his play and he took his chance. He saw
the whalebone turn to dust, the bright jewels fade,

felt her parchment of silk crack in the dark,
heard a still cry down the long, dry dogline
of decades, reborn at last, he was sure,
to measure himself by another time
                                             *

He wondered whether this could be the start
of the end, whether this would send a sign
to some obermeister who might abhor
the raw flesh crude-cut from malleable rind

and judge a final death, but, no, death passed
him by though the pale light spread through the shade
that was his fixed too his new frame like a claw
at the throat. It was unwise to have stayed

in Wittenberg. He heard the chambers filling.
Addicted, he smelled the air. Thou shalt not
something but no one believes any more.
Thou shalt not, thou shalt not for hell is hot

and man, without ado, is made unclean.
And in all God’s cities, there is a score
from a bible that beggars the rules
but also the chances of choice to endure.

Page(s) 18-19

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