SYMPHONY
You are in a void. Describe the void.
I have some notes here.
Is this the moon?
hanging
no visible signs of support.
poetry is for extracting one meaning
puts down the notes
straightens the pictures.
to stop flapping is a relief
to be done with the expectation
collective action
will keep us aloft
takes up the notes
reads:
the price of everything
the value of nothing
puts down the notes
notes
sits
reads
Wilde
Down.
Am I Bobo?
hanging in a pale blue July morning sky
perfectly halved
Winter
Your return had not been. No
Your return had been
the green as they say
the light as they say
beggared description
Idea notes: then
before a void description must be rich
powerful
takes up his / she takes up her notes
... the whole South Pacific backdrop
scintillates, cut out hunks of biology, its architecture,
sculpted out of light, dripping & gleaming, behind ...
she reads. She reads,
the houses since their bodies are sheds
shed their bodies and the people are
in their skinless personality
without it
and she says,
I do not understand.
puts down her hand
at once the moisture levels fall
the dry grass seethes
the dry sea heaves
the lie of the land, I do not feel this anymore ,
into the lap of the land , from where he looks up
, the sea wipes its mouth on the sand ,
its dry tongue on the beach
her friend , holds her hair
glistening
wretched from the contant wet , listening
humming in head , from which he looks up
at the Man in the Moon
quietly at night
he sees her crying. puts down his notes
clouds are scorched around the moon
HEY! You up there!
What's all that noise?
she reads that it is a relief not to have
to be precise of all things
about the weather or sympathy.
on the strangely silent paintings
of Bill Hammond
even as it is in the gardens of Owlington House
even as it encroaches and consumes the front lawn
even as it comes between us and the prospect
a postage-stamp view of the sea
the twinkling lights of Beachhaven
unlike Arthur Boyd
who has for the bush in Oz
nobody has bothered
to show us how to see the bush
we hear it
breathing at night full of flightless birds
a huntsman's horn is the half-hoot of an owl
poetry—things that rhyme and time
& style—from jolts of recognition
—ask them what it's like
and they will look up at the moon.
II
To make signs
of our incapabability of actually changing things
is the most we can do
in the materials for which the void is strangely rich
So
which before the description of the void are strangely powerful
we change them virtually
sometimes
the fake escapes
the fake president
the fake prime minister
Deep down, using metaphors No Kings! to describe them,
we know they have no agency,
but are crystals striking the crisp frost at dawn
off the hooves of the true Marquis
whose carriage, his horses galloping
are unbrakeable, hurtles off the cliff;
Some passengers travelling under false IDs, we check
each other to make sure we are not they
that we are authentically there
not silver sliders
not ourselves slivers of crystals
Who counts the beats?
No, really, who counts the beats?
a relief not to recover our footing
to keep on doing what you do
to keep on dancing
a day without
a day wasted
notes Nietzsche
III
just in case I always have ready on hand for the road
my pen
my gift from my parents
my alibi
—a house, your house, which you imagine
its décor or its absence
how many rooms?
—trees, or their absence ...
—the path you leave by
a gate you close behind you
—the road
—a key you come to
do you leave or take it?
(A key will be found among the notes)
—the road, along which you continue
—a bowl
do you leave or take it?
—you come to a body of water
that you will have somehow to cross
and on the other side, the road
—a barrier.
describe the barrier.
what do you do?
and blasé as a butterfly
flutter
above the precipice
You are in a void. Describe it.
(8–13 July 2026)