It is acrid language

‘…The explosion

is for all of us and I dedicate the results

to the fish of the sea and the purity of

language:’     (‘The Western Gate’, J.H.Prynne.)

About to jump off the end of the year

Like an ice berg

There is more of us under the water

Waiting hoping

Feeling each movement

So much discarded

People, papers strewn

In a refracted mirror the truth 

Can be seen with a sidewise glance

Hanging on to the overhang

Knuckles white protruding

The slow merry-go-round

Of unified memory

Attached to the spurs breaking of

Colossal white crashing in

They love you so much they want to devour you

To crush your spirit

In this way we combine the invisible with the

Actual

Ghosts’ are now officially real

And that squadron of green parakeets that

Careened in off the back of a gust

Will tell you so

You don’t go back

To find you’ve lost

‘the thigh bone of the world’

In sleeping torrents of blue familiar night

Right here in the last lost limbic days

Between and sky 

Between stars and home

Behind the faces that march up and down

Oxford street in all weathers

And the pints that pour like so much steady rain

Or lost rivers

Swimmers plant themselves on the edge

Only frosting out for a quick dip

A shoot em up time

Frayed at the edge of an end

Snatching up at the start

Buildings stained in frozen bas relief 

Hands gesture at people moving off

It’s the closure