Having crawled from the desert
of the 1970s already greying a little, impatient,
with physical inconsistencies, crying
bosons and fermions, crying out
the four forces, calling the unified
from the unnamed wastes, it saw in our homes
a vacancy, began repurposing the furniture.
Already it seems never to have been otherwise.
When I think of it my atoms are as the weakening
euro, the housing bubble, too many parts
in search of the one part, it’s a joke.
It’s a giant scientific instrument outside Geneva.
An argument that knows not me
or my siblings, that has no dominion
over me yet enters my thinking
and undermines it. Then all of my theories
seem raised by the state, fearful,
acting out inappropriately.
I went to see you
on an airplane and on an airplane
was I medicated amid the transatlantic
generation and its complimentary
beverages. People of the light
flying over the living waters. My body,
belted in, a joke, and the heap we call
a mind also, each atom an engine schematic,
a backup system sequence or a prayer
from childhood though I’d lost my faith,
that’s how weak I am.
But in the cockpit, threefold,
the Great Invisible Virgin Spirit was incorruptible
in my sedation and in the cabin
the new cashless society
and off the wings degrees
of freedom.
No patterns emerged
between us, it was new
each time, each event its own, with fresh
odds. We honoured the principle.
Though our creditors didn’t see it that way.
They filled our past
with their notices. Their notices
were our bridesmaids. When I think of it
all my atoms are past-due notices
but with the option to consolidate as one large
debt. The market writes its autobiography
on minds and bodies, my own and those
of my siblings. Are we not innocent
with respect to it? Our credit rating is
a joke, our homes venture with us
through the rental agencies.
We went west
before the west dried up. Between Calaway Park
and Dead Man’s Flats the cumulonimbus
extended their funnels, melancholy
and inquisitive, they love
the earth so much. Long-haul truckers,
shepherds of product, blew past
on deadline into the storm, tweaking
in their cabs, each cloaked in his machine
with a handgun for an angel
in the lots and roadside pullouts.
If you can’t see it, it has
the advantage.
If you can’t see it,
it’s philosophy. A game between us
and the nature of things. People of intent in the valley
of the shadow of. One hundred metres underground,
a divine heart races in the apparatus
and soon we will hear its voice. It will speak out
from the invisible orders not as an attribute,
a quality or quantity, but a truth perfected
in all the ineffable places. A live
hypothesis. A supersymmetry.
Is it possible to love something like this?
I prayed it might happen to me.