A man next to me
Turns around
In a manner reminiscent of
Many,
If not all,
The adjectives in the English language

...

He walks past me
(no description available)
And I realise,
Some minutes later,
There is a piece of paper
In my pocket
With his name on.

How curious.

I watch the loping invalids in the courtyard
nil by nil by nil feet
How to describe a sensation such as heat
to them? The interminable sun and so on
I wonder if they understand that
Light itself is not heat

whereupon the bell sounds
their minds divide and fog in the somnolent air

I look at a Dupuytren in the room
Cord around the chair
His clothes hanging off him
Trying to move his remarkable shock of hair
From his eyes

My room looks out beyond the yard
It is high up - precarious
Through that picturewindow, the world without
is framed, beyond the walls the oldtown
spires and roofing
I see my own sadness, my impotence
In every inch of the heights

the girls come back, propping black bikes against
the gate;
my legs are wrapped in a blanket
and I feel nothing below my waist

Through a system of cables and consent
my companion molls in Bergonic poise
each day the room behind his eyes receded, the heart
lessening
the birds gathered around the bathroom doors to be fed

He read about Escher in bed
waiting to be plugged
unbeknownst rigours of treatment, and
unbeknownst methods
until he forgot those days in Margate
the sound of his nieces
and everything he read about Escher –


the light makes dull
the precision of the thorn

When I have the dream
that I am pulling him
from the castle, by such
crude force, and I dream that
Otto, my dawn compatriot,
has him by the collar
face down
I feel myself out of that
assumed body, still present in
the scene – and each time
I recourse to the knowledge
that the lake has a great depth,
an unknown depth at its deepest point
So when the ripples are subsiding
When Otto stands in that detumescent
pose, I look very simply and solemnly
at the water, and my outside self
just above
is revelling in recourse to
the lake's unknown depth.
The beast I am
cannot know the serenity in that great depth

With that in mind
I long to plunge him, to
plunge my surrogate frame into
that beautiful water
among the weeds, the trout and
the body
And dive
in nervous equanimity
to that depth
to know that fact
and to hold my arm out
through the deep
as a line to the surface

but I am conscious of
the approaching light
so we leave, Otto and I,
the morning sun warming
us, releasing the dew;
I know I will return
to the cold room
to erase all the lines;
spent
after the relentless
****** of a man many citizens
of my nation
suppose to be perfectly innocent

In another vision
I emerge onto the lakescene
in a slender junk
my white drapery
and my precious oaring
does much to disturb
the Guineverean twilight;
close to the bank
where the fog has receded
there are orbs
I am younger
than I have been
for some time now
and just as each movement
that I am making
in my elegant junk
strikes me as being unique
I am faced with his image
over again
in the same humour
the likeness
over again
they could not find the body
in the deep lake

I can make a confession
that I am alone on this trip
confident, though
quite old
with my husband long departed
this is a confessional piece
about when we went to the lake
and I swam
and he was watching
and we were quite young
and I thought I might marry him
and I did
and after the drying off
and the drink of water
he was telling me about Ludwig, looking out over the Starnbergersee
with his mournful eyes
I cannot say if I loved him now
I cannot say if 'summer surprised us' as the poem said
he liked the poem
his mother was named Marie
and our house had a wonderful garden
so that poem was evocative, I suppose
you could read it that way
I didnt open my body again

I often wonder if the silence
owes something to my
nightly ritual
my method of calm:
I lie very still in the dark
burrowed into the sheets
and I imagine each being
reposing in the uniform rooms
the light outside almost without colour
within, it is only I,
repeated throughout each room
and each room's little boxed being, I am
luming over the bodies
to extinguish any little vestiges
in those cognisant minds –
the memories falling;
dim petals around me
every time my hand
on a bright body
the sssssss sound
that leads to the inevitable blossom
that is falling around me