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Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

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Andrew Marstrand-Daucé

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Space travel

In the darkness of the bathroom, I become light
As I sink into the water and breathe the chatter
Out of me, then kneel, lean forward
Touch my lips to the water’s surface

And blow bubbles, listening
As the rate of bubbles rising
Slows down with my exhalation
Until I forget where I am

And can fly over ancient Peruvian tracks
Which point to sandy distant mountains
The source of remembered water
And giant animals, offerings to the rain gods

Visible only from the air, are flown over
By a Shaman on psychoactive plant extracts
Hoping to see the face of heaven
As rain-makers walk the path of a spider’s legs

While others tread the tail of a Nazca monkey
Or a whale’s back, as he carries a sacrificed
Human head on his great mouth.
Some walk the line of a humming bird’s beak

As it sucks the essence of a flower
And a second Shaman flies inside the bird
Sucking in nature’s truth to tempt the gods
While fragments of pottery, geometrically marked

Are scattered along mysterious triangulations
Dry as the surface of Mars from a forty-year drought
Until hunger and a dripping tap
Bring the room back into definition.

These things can happen,
With relaxation techniques
In the bath,
after a really good documentary.

 

Page(s) 31-32

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