David Menzies

Bank Holiday

1.

Old Brompton Cemetery


o broken column



                                  you was

                                                      thou wast


in the cemetery with me.

                                                      The dead began to sing



without reason.

                                  I wander the splashed slate black streets



no more
no more
no more


It is interesting to compare poetry and contemporary physics, and to note how


                                                                            inventor
                                                                                         creator
                                                                                                      discoverer
                                                                                                                   mystic
                                                                                                                                physic


relate new found trails through blank darkness:

language, mind, matter   matter, language,mind    mind,language,matter
language,matter,mind   matter,mind,language    mind,matter,language


o
   whit
           a
              XXXXXfXXXXX
              XuckXXXXXXX
              XXXXXXiXXXX
              XXXXngXXXXX



                           ride
                                fae
                                    oot
                                          o
                                             here !



2

The 11th of September


When the sky is low over History
revelations occur.

Heightened glances
of a supermundane sensibility.



A late autumn sky comes to mind
over Loch Creran:

cyanic blue cuts
through geese skeined cloud.


A wintry squall
cautions from the north,
from the land of Appin
whence the assassin came.


Cattle snort in the dark field
above the raised beach.



Returning,
a young nordic face is singing at me
from the video screen.

I divert my gaze from ideas of sex and beauty
to a phenomenon that can only be described by photography:

translucent box

under

electric chandelier

                                                           — then if another recession does happen
                                                           the spectres of the last century will rise up
                                                           to the east of us
                                                           shouting and condemning
                                                           commanding and destroying

                                                           producing an historical moment so full of terror
                                                           that the past will seem like —


                                                                                                            chickenfeed,
                                                                                                                         sd the diabolical.


                                                           Kampf. Kampf. Kampf.



                                                           (the revenge of existence on its self)



The speculative imagination has materialised:

falling towers and crashing planes and endless deserts.

Unreal city

Unreal city.