So, in an era of formal silver
this is the return of no returning
the combustion of a sigh in Août our time
the country of these days–clouds seen from Vincentsville, North Dakota
turning once more to the bottle
to stop up the genie of silence the genie of ‘of'
with his gemlike connectors
with his promising neat gemlike connectors

This is the magic kingdom of form the sonic jinn
crackling knuckles and brooding in glass
making death shapes and smiling at us
from just beyond his own existence
laughing and playing with limits and grief

My world is a mysterious place I don't understand it
in 1997 I am arriving and leaving
as we dip in and out of sense enter and exit
the ghost of a voice this one the one that is always yours
laughing and playing with the machine of my words
and the machine in the Jerusalem–ghost of my kiss
is let slip collecting sand sea-murmurs and miles

My world is a blue planet sharply biographical with fear
waiting to exit the vehicle from a state where
the slightest kindness to me is a knife tear
balanced on loss while the sky
a shelled wing of your eyes
concedes us forever
giving us to freedom, to no one's azure and incoming rain

So, in an era of formal silver, we say
'hush now, little one, hush now, don't cry'
as this aborted dumbness slips between us
and the child of not being born is restless
seeking an iota of flesh to be
snapped fingers a spark a wave or pointing
and especially a caress an erased ‘yes'
scooped out of flame in a determined position

So, in an era of formal silver
in an epoch of wow, on an agenda of fillets
if this is so, then this is how it may be
when the shyest colour on the palette
aches to be sky or silver birch in other words
to be composed with friends a part of the landscape
while the ferocious incendiary pink in the foreground
is flirting with fire engines and flamenco dancers
with vertigo cockerels and lust
and equivocates for all time over bleed or bled
while before them all you
with your eye–horizon read
past the tense harmonic edge
and are like breath, unseen, the background itself

To have fallen from the towers of hands such as these
is still a gift
the sea-tomb of Crusoe's first canoe is also like this
a dumb djinn of weights playing with telos
but across the Jordan–glance (there is a blindness
of brothers and a walking on palms)
(is it?) you no longer wait for me
(is it?) I must bow down to nothing

The classic castaway of believing is over
the Sybil at Cumæ suspended in her gaol of a bottle
distills the endless gin of her death
while the colour of absence, the colour of your next sky
packets its acts in shattered retinas
and all these words scoured to shell vanishing
only prepare the silence for our coming

Copyright © Michael Ayres, 2003.