Londonistan
                  america fundamental
'get me out of here'

Arms up, it comes
                            out onto a balcony
Naked almost
                      what it aspires to
Self-abolition
             a dissolved sign

'Come out of there, and we . . .
We will not shoot you this time'

A man wrapped in paper a paper man
Wearing remains of an immortal book

'Yes. We can read you like a book!'

Hands over its flesh,
Was once a warm embrace

And did not want to touch
Something so shrivelled, it
                                  speaks

To fade
With its dignity into the ground


English, like a curse
As if I'd invented a person
Alterior voice
And I had begun him


Is it    naked on a balcony
Is it a word or a man?
Whose wounded appetites remote as music

These are the sounds of the air
A compound man already
Haunting the future —

Being all potential's
A gathering-point of forces

And half-way to being in another tongue
Where exile prints its name


Shallow
             magnificence
Twinkling of an eye
It is like an illness you'll discover
Just go out there and scream!

The night speaker
Uneasy exuberance    of its streets
Were what I had to cross, to a room full of presence
The curtain swayed evening sunlight pouring in
Pulse of the city    beyond

Out here is your ground
As if waiting
For there to be less
                            wretched afflatus!
And yes, the


Relief of less
Look in there you can see him
He begins to write as if something depended on it
And if I could come to rest
In you this final hour


After the rain
An awkward gleam
A minor alteration in the air
Dismembered with a prayer
Harks back, to the original sacrifice

And a sort of redundant vigour
Here he is the thief of voices
Furtive           imprecations
Gutters swimming with sewage
                                                  stories

I mean
The man's impossible dignity
Cornered in exile
Is what fails to disappear
The weaver of uncorrupted cloth

Feeding the plants' thirst
Feeling their solitary thirst
He grew up and sang
This I wrote and wondered if I sang
Dumb partner to the animal

And said to the reader, vanish
Turning the page
                          pulled down the lid
                          climbing inside



The water in the canal is fairly clear
swan family their
bliss of extended necks

and the way a column ends abrupt as that
a failing arrow gathers speed
and the future's almost here

as if straining for effect the fruit hangs down
blunted municipal mosaics
tagging miraculous inscriptions

the water comes alive with light
on the underside of the bridge
is where the water prints itself as light

aspiring    respiring    trees

imagined fruit
almost touching the water
such ripeness descending

It sinks beyond reach
buried in its reflection
in passing shop windows

empty clatter of leaves blown over the square