How things turn out, as from a waste paper basket,
a paperknife, urine-yellow ivory,
ink-stamp gryphon cracked by the surface heat: how
the cable, how a star travelled down the cable, how
things turn out
before the bay window at the apex of a gravel drive
propped a rose quartz pyramid of heroes
dallying with goddesses, diving for a crimped
chrysanthemum, bloom plummets in a root rift
its bibelots,
a dancer kneeling on her rosewood plinth,
a palm tree gripped between their
knees by peeping cherubs, but against chip tongues
gauffering its bark, inadequate to shield from sun as
things turn out
playing from the eyes scattering in oval miniatures
self-immolate at once, when a recognising look
draws them from their trench wet and monstrous,
blow at surface pressure, so
be below
light compositions, stains, fleeting cloud, ballerinas,
tangle of courtiers in a fête champêtre tousling and
tossing to-and-fro a grimace or a smile –
a mock-up bull swags enormous balls, off-screen as
things turn out
tramps squelchy pasture. Stressed idols of the deep
detonate when hauled up: did you have a prayer?
Or will be made stand to reason, brought to light
pickings laid on flagstones, exhibited on sand trays,
bibelots,
these are gravel in a shoe, crunching like milk teeth,
playthings of a dog that nursed me set on plumped
satin. What do they scatter to forestall?
Things turn out.
You loathe their box. You were splintering the sides
of their box. Better downsize. Which
things were you bound to sell off or chuck?
Where is your conveyance? Which do you prefer?
They turn out.
Velvet and with drawstrings. Listen close. At what
inaccessible depth
hard sonar beads. A bay window like a bathysphere,
I made myself scarce,
as if an up-swell might devour the tooth crypt of sky
and below
coins clipped from circulation,
styluses, franked papers, cancelled credit cards,
mortgage agreements, warp the underlay:
Still they pitch up,
straggling on the slant moor, full of yearning
for a skyline, paraffin breath and urine-soaked mats,
left fugitive, stateless on the heath. The whole band
turned out
with their few things, few clothes,
their treasures and their tatters, icons and their vital
proverbs, myths that are their caravan.
Blooms droop, wretched horses slip bridles,
stray to crop at wiry tufts, prickly stalks, they suck
winds that blow,
suck brackish, saturated purses of sphagnum. Stray
from no path, pitching camp where heather sags,
pause in placelessness – what of those things
long-past from our hygienic place turned out?
They soon will explode,
and from the depths the bibelots will strew shards
of rosewood, rose quartz gravel, clumps of oakum
certain to pitch up,
once more will pitch up
coin hordes, burial goods, complex metal brooches,
crocus bulbs.