The first came
with the conviction of a divided dusk, one path
deflected sideways and up to an evening
charged with lost lights,
everything in it that might float out or be fished for
of even clout. Equal, unranked, free for the taking.
Then arranging to forget
the known lie of the land beyond the next bend
and watching the void fill rapidly with enough inventions
to bring reality to its knees.
I created everything I see.
It wasn’t hard. And with
crusts of detail I could never have guessed at.
Soon gone: even
the name of the relevant philosophe
got rinsed away with the rest of it.
It seems
nobody thought of trying to steal Roger Langley
or borrow him for a spell.
Already and always at home elsewhere.
Todor Zhivkov
a man in a jar
trapped for four seconds in a TV screen
decades ago and never escaping,
mouthing silent lies, his face
the precipitate and stain of the violent collision
of opposed understandings. His bad luck to be caught so:
could have been anybody.