1

in hot darkness a pool
spreading drawn across by
politics to be polite

here's a way forward
things drifted between
the banks through the

dropped arches fascist
memorabilia a spreading pool
of fact the tall monuments

casting shadows brain
damage from a bulky pinnacle
I can see my house from here a

sphere of influence from holes in the
ground many spikes rise commemorative
and that which has past the industrial

daring the future a series of
rectangles each one over and
under or to one side the fit not

perfect not meant to be people
written over and through the
arch to arch from lighthouse

to lighthouse no more than a heap of
rock where the birds come to roost beyond
the fold around the tides meet

2

The longitude and the latitude

Within the grid reference the contour lines
leak
between a mountain life is different
higher still no vegetation grows

It sits as if to squat below a certain level
small squares of fields between
dry stone walls we’re no goats nor mountain
agiles to climb or needing peace at last

Most sudden movements can cause bruising the
Marxist party or clearing land of its
people for other purposes and that’s why the
big house is big and the monument something

to begin at the beginning there is a stretch of
water wider than even my outstretched arms
and spreading further across the wooden floor
a voice can go further than that it can take up time

 

3

Water has less friction I glide on pictures of
water oh choppy sea the superstructure
of pier mighty columns across a
stretch and its failed significance station

Hotel pink flowers against dark stone some potential
difference draws the road through from point to
point whatever pollution they come up with in
layers and slices I heal and clone new bands

And when she smiles, smile, towards sunset June 18
1815 I am badly drawn between difference
and unsure of coordination what England expects
whether a memory of itself or the real thing

Shadow induced panic the switch thrown across
the face of the earth across the lung the dig
x rayed long held skeletons back by the tide a sea
wall or a tidal wave between the two undertow

4

the tale of the battered monk
turned out a light well less
an inner courtyard my
architecture is faulty the flexible
spine of the fish and its feathers
washed out to sea on a wave of
optimism back to the wall and
what is it this sand is it blasted
bone or the wall of the cistern
for the wet sacred bones the

sea exhuming out of disinterest for
what angle are they laid at
how does the sun bounce
off the sea the first day all the
grass was bent by a westerly and
when the background is not
granite which splits
evenly down the grain what
material do they use for a cist?

sometimes a one word answer
yes or no an augmented maybe
or the stutter of sources juddering
down the time lines before
lighting up the dark wires
of a brain that’s lost its history

a child plays between the cracks
poking a drain with a stick a
hole into somewhere without light
where liquid runs and what is the
shoreline but a barrier why does
digging stop at the high
tide mark the fear of sea
slugs thick kelp a medium

 

5

thick with absorbed oxygen the
expertise swims in the brain the
clipboard floats away we classify
the objects in a piece of mind
standing in the air and moving

once dug the ground is never the
same again it’s a performance
archaeology of discovering what
really went on or at least as far
as they can tell the real thing

he saw himself pretending to
doubt and that was enough
the queue outside the town hall
spread down the street the projector
was useless with that size of crowd

poetry can be put into words the
purple amongst the marran grass
rain whipped across
a windscreen how a sea shanty feels
from the inside where the mouth of the bay spits in
waves and the jetskis in the jaw
or the curve against the horizon where
the island becomes a wasp waist

on the second day the wind still blew
and the air was full of water, the site
protected from invasion from
young and inexperienced fingers
picking it over disturbing the bones
with the seal of approval others just
worry away at it like the sea washing
through the stone wall or the chapel that
Pennant mapped all the facilities

Copyright © Ian Davidson, 2002.