24. From 'Nocturnes'

From a currently dormant project, a sequence of prose-poems. I was considering including these in my end-of-year portfolio, then decided against it for reasons of space.

After John Burnside

I

These avenues are an absolutism. Statements in tarmac, red-brick, pebbledash, we do not want to hear. Webbed with traceries, absorbing the resonance of streetlight, the footsteps’ years. The mapping, above all, remains.

II

The marshes, a ghost-map on tarmac and concrete: fronds, tower-blocks. Congress of the semi-detacheds, sand-brick Barrett estates, mulched in brackish water. Curlews and bitternes ululating in public toilets, nesting in ground-floor offices, stalking between the flooded cubicles. The shopping precincts patrolled by fish, the charity shops flourishing with bulrushes and ferns, weevils devouring old hardcover Hazlitts. And, as evening draws on, the sputtering: sodium communing with marsh-light.

III

The beach sloping, stretching along the curve of God’s dragged finger, the churned-up mica in endless drift. Settling as a conglomeration of loose powder, congealing as the sea feels fit, repository of misbegotten stones, slashing razor-shells, the sea-life expelled. Charcoal petrified, a black, hard memento. And, in the evening, the half-lit swarming of Victorian needle-nuzzlers, parasols to the harsh moon.