Will it rise and fall, be shifted like a shore?
It is not a place I’ll be, it is not a plight.
It is neither meant nor merited nor made.
This can’t be seen from there. This makes no sound
there. There things can neither end nor fade.
This does. You can see it does if you look down.
Look up, I’d say to my child and I say to you.
See where I haven’t written but hope to.
Blank Page Speaks
May I say that when I meet you in the morning
and you infer from silence that there’s nothing
you can’t say,
one thing I’m also saying is there’s nothing
you can do.
May I say that when I meet you in my brightness,
you in a ragged gown to do your business,
it’s not I
who presses it from you – do I look restless –
only you.
Only you you drag from what you dream of
to pen your variation on the theme of
how you are
this morning. May I say I had a dream of
something too?
Obviously not and off you go now.
Left your little footprint let it snow now
let it snow
and you can dream I wonder where you go now,
can’t you.
Blank Page Gets To Work
May I say that when you’re gone
I get to work.
I got to work
just then. Back then,
the second you were done,
were done with me,
done using me,
your page. Your page
pressed on alone and when
your back was turned
on it it turned
and look: you’re back,
having some second crack
at anything
while nothing
watches. Which is
all it’s all about.
And which is me.
Watch me
when you’re done. You’re done.
The White
When you first made a sound you made a sound
on nothing. Not on peace,
on nothing. Not on silence nor the grand
absence of what was,
on nothing. And it hadn’t got that name
nor any name, it looked like what’s to come
and has gone now, that swathe of white. And white
was just a term for it.
Not a thing to notice, that polite
attendant at the gate,
with nothing to examine but a list,
clocking and ticking all who’ve simply passed
by now without a word. What kind of fool
can’t make his mark on white?
When you first made a sound you could make all
the sounds there are, could write
the moment in the moment, at the pace
it passes you when you don’t hear it pass,
until you do – you saw that stanza break . . .
And now it dawns on you
you’re in a fight with something: what you make
is making something too,
and it’s something you don’t mean, the gaps, the blanks
are everywhere, and vague oblivion blinks
whatever room you enter. Shrug it off,
there’s nothing there, it’s white,
it doesn’t speak, is nothing to speak of,
nothing compared to what
you have to say, have come to say, have left
to say. It seems you thought your gift a gift,
but look what’s walking with it, each line-ending
turns your head – it’s nothing,
the wind perhaps, crack on with what you’re saying –
but all you hear is breathing.
You hide in other voices so the space
will come for them and leave you be, but these
it doesn’t want, your plays, your make-believe.
They edge away, immune,
to faraway and once-upon, said, safe –
they are leaving you alone
like beloved actors will. Now white is dark
and audible from here. To do your work
is to defer it, though you hurtle there
on its cold fuel. To cry
against it is to sound its orchestra
and the opposite – to cry –
will bring it in white gloves and epaulettes
to say there-there and dab your eyes to bits.
Nor can you shake it off. It’s now the cold,
the soon, the gone, the neither,
it strolls with you, your wrist is lightly held,
your breath depends, forever
streams beside you like the only river
and what they make you gingerly step over
you don’t recall. When you next make a sound
you strike a match in darkness.
See all that grows is growing all around
and all you wrote was helpless
as a witness. If the white did this to you,
all this it made of you, or made you do –
What is its name? Who was it? Who lives here? –
To which that same benign
attendant sweetly smiles at the screen door.
And if you wish to sign
her leather-bound great crimson book just do,
for no one’s asking you, or stopping you.
Blank Page’s Dream
I was waiting where I’m waiting.
You didn’t come, I peered out into
where I feel you stem from.
Then I rose in my white habit
with every word you’ve levelled at me
sliding off like filings,
each little pin-sharp point
you were moved to make and made on me
you hadn’t made at all,
I had gone from where you find me.
The turned room was staring like
this cannot be the case,
you really don’t belong here,
the books indignant all the chairs
confirming this one’s taken,
the table droned reserved,
the pictures we’re not here for you
the door no love we’re closed
as I nonetheless step through,
I nonetheless step through the door
that said so. I say Love
you are wide open, I
go into light I recognize,
serenity I know now
as time I lost restored.
In a cluttered corner there you seem
absorbed in your own hands,
sunbeams at your fingers
are all the words you wish on me,
the patterns of your dust
with nowhere now to land,
no page or port or platform, no
whiteness to be seen by
nor silence to be heard by,
no form on earth to catch them
as they fall, still they fall
till my long dream is over,
and you find me where you find me,
staring at you blankly
while you’re staring at me blankly,
your hand still reaching out as if
nothing’s changed between us.
Pasolini’s Satan
After The Gospel According To St Matthew
Silence brought me here.
That and meeting somebody for whom
silence isn’t there.
But it brought me here – white silence, the black view.
I am the antibody
striding to the wound christ not again
I murmur to myself
as I slip my dead-banana black shoes on
at this hideous fahrenheit
and make my dusty beeline down the slopes
to see who thinks there’s no such
thing as silence. Earth smokes at my steps
because Earth thinks it’s cool
to smoke. It’ll smoke a pack on its last day.
Look how small I look.
I’m the mote in my own eye, I am blameless, me,
cast in this gospel, cast
in the Only Truth – one of four Only Truths –
by a
