A quick check-over (Witnessed by. Sign on dotted.) –
Not long enough. Only first observations,
Weight: sixty. Length of taiclass="underline" ninety.
Jagged wounds in the abdominal area
Mostly likely caused by a sharp object.
Not long enough. Only early theories,
There is no time. The reestablishing of radio contact
Keeping the hut warm, catching fish.
Eats the fish with us all, very neat and tidy
Can’t stand coffee, refuses to wear clothes;
Measured the diameter of nipple; change tub water
Morning and evening; the thing sleeps hugging tail.
Can’t tell faces apart. Doesn’t remember names.
Not long enough, just come from the radio engineer
Have suspicions someone sabotaging radio
And emergency generator, work out why
No point in working out why, still I do believe we will meet.
Better to put the notes into code, put all notes into code,
At eighteen hundred last night another helicopter over the pines
Rapid pulse, slight nausea
Splashing and laughter from behind the calico curtain.
Yesterday and today let fish out for a swim.
I stood guard with a pike, Petrov had a carbine.
Didn’t attempt to slip away, only splashed around;
Water temperature; body temperature;
Possible uses for the purpose of fishing.
I ran along the shore, pretending to be a hunter.
It dived in and out gently, to no good purpose,
Wet, white-toothed and gleaming.
Only now: is it happening, I can’t tell
Two hours of pointless conversation
In the cold about the radio and the spares,
A sprint back to the hut. Silence behind the curtain.
And no one there, behind the curtain. The tub upturned.
Smoke in the mess room, I step in a puddle
And there, to the soothing hiss of the radio
The fish and the mechanic are playing snap.
Not long enough, not up to it, the thing is sick
And smells less like vodka, more like moonshine
Distended pupil, sweats, palpitations,
Listless, lethargic, no appetite,
No communications, no photographic equipment
Filth, fishscales amongst the medical instruments
Dreamt of God again, the rotating propeller
The pines bending, and the noise of the rotor.
It’s Petrov again: doctor, he says, doctor —
It’s quiet behind the curtain. The tub is empty.
The mechanic had a flask of spirits, a secret.
I don’t object, let the fish swim. On the floor
A wet scarf, fish likes to keep its throat covered
Although what use a scarf is to it, I don’t know.
From the window astoundingly clear on the bay’s shining
Surface, the head of a swimmer moving forever beyond range.
------------------------------------------------------------
Must concentrate on essentials: we are flying away.
Despite the care I took in sabotaging the transmitter
It was put to rights painstakingly, more than once
And then there was no reason to put it off waiting
For the helicopter, for the helicopter waiting, waiting.
Everything is packed and the crates stowed,
All reckonings completed, all logbooks closed,
Blinds drawn, flags lowered, I am asleep.
My dearest, I went out late in the evening
To look at you in photographs taken at college,
I haven’t seen her for so long, she hasn’t changed
My Dearest I hoped I would never have to tell you,
My Dearest, I hoped to conceal it
My Dearest, I hoped I wouldn’t live long enough
To meet with, the coming together of two halves,
The full combination of classical attributes.
Addressed to the President of the Academy, Professor Nikitin
A copy to the Kremlin, the original for my widow.
Research notes. A diary with his observations.
Height, weight, estimated age.
Those characteristic scars in the abdominal area –
There, submerged in water, last-century surgery
Operations without anaesthetic on the seabed
Changes in pressure, fibroids, scars
Giving birth is hard; bringing up the child is hard
And marriage is a near impossibility.
And such yearning, such yearning, although on dry land.
…But most of alclass="underline" I love you, your very own.
But most of alclass="underline" forgive me, this is not goodbye
But last of all, and first of all,
And Christ! All in alclass="underline" fare you well.
And if this place is the far edge of the earth,
It is not the furthest edge of the earth.
The Body Returns
(2018)
The Body Returns
Z
Need to clean the room / need to clear space
Y
So speaks poetry, the poetry that lives in a women’s body in Canada, in English
So she speaks: once cleared the room writes itself
X
And now what to do
The room is shining
The room is cleaned to its bones, its marrow, must write itself, no one writes to anyone
W
Where are they, where are the men like Ares
Who lift the rafters and will not pass through the lychgate
Where is their bone marrow, their pleasuring digits, where are their teeth and tongues
Into what elements have they dissolved
V
Deep underground in the growing cells
Cell unceasingly makes cell
To put forth like apple gall, when the earth harvests its own
Underground rivers grope for their mouths
Sperm seeds
U
Spring pours like warm piss
Over permafrost
And the ice rises and floats.
Under the ice a turmoil of green, yellow letters
And then, when unseeing branches make lone drawings on light
Poetry, speaking Danish, lying under the earth, female
T
Dead, like the others, alive for some reason,
Resting in the hollow cheek of the clay like a boiled sweet
And has no rights, no more than the ones lying under the other bush
Whose only memory is the reflection of self
In the flat pewter face of a flask
Hearing has run dry
There is nothing more for them to hear.
S
Where there was once ear, now there is earth,
Holds the unhearing place in embrace.
Where there was once mouth, now roots mass
To make a wellspring of growth.
Dead poetry speaks, she says
I write like the wind.
She / they / the others / many who come before and after
Lie there, there is no wind, what is there, why do they need wind
R
Break the frozen earth, touch the dead song.
Under the level winter sky says another
From the same Canada, and lying in someone’s earth –
Since September 1922 her germinating body
Must have brought forth fruit: under the level sky
I saw a thousand Christs go by.
What were they doing, we ask from the kerbside.
They were marching.
They were singing.
Q
Winter. 1918. Petrograd.
Poetry heard nothing, except
Noise, constant noise:
A rhythmic boom
And look out of the window
(the fields multiplying, and in them the dead the dead the dead
heads thrown back
tongues stilled)
We see the snowstorm, flutters like lace at the window
And makes a sign: the room is now cleared.
P
And then
When you’ve grown used to the absence of light
And the flickering pixels of matter
And the gunfire on street corners
Where they sold newspapers before
It happened, and every fifth flower was free, gratis
Lubricating the buyer-seller relationship
With the milk of humankindness,
The milk transparent,
Once the eyes have grown accustomed to the scene, the man and his poetry are clairvoyant