August 2026

  how can such sheer physical beauty
      be guarded , coupled with so crabbed and servile an existence ,
as to hunt in the rubbish dumps of all the world
    for what has been used up and most despoiled
        for cracked and injured minds,
    to its own injury  and the injury of its citizens?
the whole history of sexual and political predation
lies spread out as clearly legible as bloodstains on a tablecloth
 as faeces around the mouth of rulers
  as bruise-marks on the faces of the rendered
declares bluntly that it wears no make-up
and is wearing no clothes  it rains and the rain
  scrapes the land raw private soil;
        it bakes,
    sun raises the blue vault
      after the credits roll
  up the sky's arch shell  so quietly light
  hacks the valleys and the ridgelines
We do not believe here in a God of Death
yet every image here is circumscribed  bossed on the flipside with His face
  Speak not the name of His land (it is Death)
  Raise not the flag of His enemy (it is Death)
  Take no photos of the victims,
      Name not His champions (it is vain, they are Death)
        but receive His grace  for your services nude
if in cautious whispers she talks to the media, why explain
    there is another there already there  another she there
  each shoulder moves  and the knots in your hand
she has untied him  and behind him there is another him who is free
 and free is blindingly white  and strong  and right
  who receives the coin of the Realm of the Dead ,   the Deadland ,
   from the mouth of his former friend.  You Men Who Stand
in sniggering recogniton , in comprehension , know it is the secret
  of predators , of brothers : that they are one in money ,
the bright dark truth shines like the moon in the oleaginous night;
   like the sun in the desert of first religion; the harvest
 good this year, it gushes it geysers in the field,  but inedible;
by morning, the sheep are on the chain,  we will have chops tonight,
 butter on our saveloys for lunch, real veal again;  it blows
  on the faces and folds of the land ,
   on our faces  and folded limbs ,
it carries the scream of birds, the wind, seeds  and fence wires hum
 who would have thought  the cycle  could ever get so quick
   of massage   ; massage after massage ;
 or imagined the kill-chain shorten to execution before news of it.
Although we expected more from the signs , they were never exhausted
  but replaced by new ones before they could be exhausted
   before what they indicated exhausted them utterly,
 the churn of life the green churn the grey churn the white churn
  the black channels that back up like veins behind them
these centres are our final rendering  who could have imagined
  what they have come to stand for?  it boils  memory
    the distant tyrant  be not afraid  step forward
  once you crossed these waters with a candlestick , without
a change of clothes , in a small bag , there were fish here which
  you didn't eat and peaceful days spent burying
    your sister's things ; once you crossed them
  with carpenter's tools  and the european madness for
 inheritance you were golden in their mirrors then you danced
  around the house and retreated to your bedroom with a migraine
how visionary were the earthquakes ! the violent shaking the violence
 of lawnmowers and clippings stucco and sunlight
 dark wooden hallways knocking you back even grown as you are
into infancy porcelain figurines smiling on windowsills
and nodding for all the world as if at the lie of the land
 such shapes they had in their heads these predators , colonists
  until starch blouses and time-pieces counting your pulse
 pride devastated. You retreat again , and again , come forward
  tyrant memory  push your thumb through the clot of cream
    prick your thumbnail into the fruit  always the smell
       of rotting fruit a bruise of fruit
     under the air at dusk and scalded milk and malted milk
 and trolley-buses and mince on toast I can smell you poet
asleep on the bus-stop seat where pocket-knives chip lovers' first initials
  through dripping yellow cream in undercoats of pink and blue
    and gouge the dark wood , the red splinters ,  asleep
      your stained trench, your stained fingers clutch
 in a white-knuckled clench a dirty paperbag around the neck
    and your jaw-muscles clench  as you sail across the deep
      as you get the scent of vomit underneath:
 Come you and I it's morning the yellow cloud
  that shrouded now has lifted and the land
    lies stretched, severed on the sea
      like a specimen
       on a vivisection table
Come, she said, don't ask where it is
you can find it in the silent notes
and the headings that come after

...

(5–18 August 2026)