Reeds like violin bows quiver in the pit, glinting
in low, angled light. They point to grey
weather, an incoming chill curdling beyond
the porticoes of stripped willow.
A thousand exclamation marks in dun-coloured
felt are skewered on wands, on flagpoles driven
into the murk, where nasa turtles
mime zero-gravity walk, knocking
up silt clouds that roll like mushrooms
of cream in black tea. Walnut skulls adrift
in a dark they’ve yawned into being —
a backstage of jostle and bump and so what,
a barbiturate calm in the brain stem —
blinking leather change-purse lids, wondering
at nothing but what it might be to wonder.
A frigid gel cataracts the one floodlight.
Their sky freezes solid; a stage, a mirror in front
of which they suck in arrogant underbites, hook
horned thumbs into waistcoat folds and
audition for the only role going: stone —
stone for a run of months,
to mild applause from mallards who missed
a cue, who stand and sit down and stand and
sit down. Delicate ankles shackled in the cold snap.