Antarctic Depths An ice-roofed stratosphere, clear liquid space And nerve-legged spiders Crack fans of anchor ice To mend all seals Here it is coddled by the final killer, Will it be toppled by comfort’s rays?
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Love Letters of Old My love was stifled Between the gum and the paper – The sealed envelope was lumpy
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Dark Dream Out came the swarms of shadow things To make their dead messages, To find their story-forms, Glinting chitin delighting, Reeding the pitches. Down went the depths, encased and ethered, Numbing us to touch the greater. Down went the coils of lit signs, And made the questions dark and known, And made the answers dark and known […]
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Disintegration The bottom fell out And all things gathered, Reverted to their origins In skips, on pavements, Fell to casual hands. But at the pit Of all exhaustion, The bottom of grip’s loss Are seeds and roots Of restoration Which in throbbing cycles Breathe out on pine and belt. The bottom stood solid.
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Growth Before Buildings Wood piles beneath the shallow permanent stone Firm feet upon the yielding bog Let water in – the wood’s grain will prevail through its lines Let water out – white softness will grow to draw things down The foundations could be called organic, So people longed to analyse to scrutinize Trade silver mercury Sweep […]
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Part II Let calcium lines be shaved of moss and other growth be centered, Re-score the patterns. All who change and slither shall live; those who clinch all roots shall perish. Wilful ignoring and retraction is a key to survival. In the circle, all is death; through the lines, life is pursued. But all life is angular, clinches segmentation. Knowledge […]
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After the Horoscope So Mercury backtracks Till Equinox wakes him; So Mars huddles his cluster In Cancer’s shadow. The Moon’s in Virgo, Northern node prevails No more a saviour, I care As vile invective touches inner shells No more shall hollow ring Out there A rubbish-tip of meteors Fast monuments and postures Float clearing – What craters […]
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Carnival That peacock opulence, Swarming on strutting grime; That massed ecstasy, squeezing itself, Short-breathed, near suffocation; That sound-abandonment, seeming to plunge To deafness’s peace; Yet keeping those maimed faculties alive, Ever denying their last fulfilment. Maybe it’s only I and it, I, starting in the middle And it, commensurate with my idea Of my own size? Maybe I […]
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Nocturne Small specks at night Made light of all our thoughts Which grew, in wonder, And burned the flesh that knew them And found the first thoughts, the controlled desires, the boxed fires the thrusting shields. And spoke behind the pauses, And thought between the brain-tissues, And swarmed through infinite cells, And crowded out the millions And burned […]
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As a new generation of writers confronts global warming, a new book genre has emerged: “climate fiction”, or “cli-fi”. Russell: “In my secret heart, I hope that all these books that are now talking about climate change will help to move public opinion.” That’s Canadian novelist Craig Russell. In his recent book, Fragment, a shockwave sends a massive Antarctic ice […]
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