To think that young mind,
unrecognizably mine
carried the frescoes of
Knossos inside it.
And Zyklon B. One to the
other. Palaces and ovens.
All while the sea rolled its
pinpricks of light
again and again like a gambler
throwing it all
regardless. Then with the flood tide
came thorn-hairs, half-jobs,
years on barbs,
on barbs., the fugue of
distillery chimneys,
gangways rotting and falling
away in the hands,
and longing all the while for
the unobtainable,
its slow calcifications, the
body feeling its way
towards love and unlove,
up to the rank smell of the
returning shore
as it works over seaweed and
jellyfish domes
in this last pewter
light. Above, below,
and all around is the well.
No drop ever echoes. The absence of sound
is like waking out of being
awake.
Published in Poetry Review Summer 2014