Wash it.
Separate the meat from the entrails,
clean its body: fins, gills,
the mush of the head,
the bent spine, a rub.
It has drunk old
water.
Shadows fell on grass;
kelp hands snatched out the light.
Now reef, now sediment.
Oil its flesh.
Salt-turmeric the slice.
Lemon. When the smell wakes up from the pan,
march the fly, hook,
half-eaten bait past the gas stove,
with a stiff salute
through the kitchen door.
What remembers loss
remembers
all its fishing time.
Nightly recollections, or unperturbed hours
of shame. Twenty Hail Lucifers,
sour fragments still lodged in me —
Head in the clouds, feet pressed to the treebed,
throat dry, dry for milk.
The hour of sonar, the hour of bats:
cubs squeaking, circling the moon
before the fall and banishment from my heaven.
The sun will invert me soon —
dousing in the adult pee
of guilt.
So stubborn of you
not to appear, be so aloof.
Prince of long holidays —
body a jet of blood,
a ship of rage
and restlessness.
Loving absence, is that you?
Step on water, the path runs dark.
Ghost of phosphorent fate,
the self, powdered ash,
floating, sinking —
never forgetting you.
Just get out and run you a mile —
That possibility hangs heavy
over a quiet street and a flyover, blue tarpaulin
above shanties on the tar banks.
The morning is mist, the era of road repair,
orthogonal routes to far-flung stops;
the city’s breed of transport
softly collapsing on pilfered ground.
Not to startle: tiptoeing —
with vim, without vim —
a motion made to seem like stillness.
Rest. Arrest. Breathe.
How will they know you are a good man?
They won’t. That’s the point.
How will they know you were here?
Who cares? Nobody profits from that useless fact.
Why are you here then?
Fate. This burden had to be carried somewhere.
Then they raised a diaphanous screen
in front of the dying man,
separating him from the others.
He could still see through the film,
but they were only moving shadows:
wan figures trudging along
in broken, abrupt gaits —
like one who walks
bouncing a colic-screaming baby.
When they touched his skin,
their hands were tight
in transparent gloves,
warding off the faint germs
of his impending death.
Yet he was glad to be there.
A condemned man is still a living man.
But the exhaustion — God!
Pain arrived as long pikes.
Like some stubborn child
refusing sleep,
he hung on by a thinning thread.
And the relatives,
they were on the edge:
fed, cleaned, and watched over the man,
but they also wanted him to go —
as only the living can:
fussing over and failing
him at the same time.
I know you as the shadow
knows its flesh.
In evidence, the object —
a lingering state.
If light is a permanent thing,
if love is?
Lie on the ground, squander
yourself,
as darkness wears darkness —
such is its autonomy.
If longing is a permanent thing,
if silence —
Should we grieve each other?
We’re both still alive.
Our sadness feeds on bitter fumes,
and memories ride a red bus.
Are you leaving?
My peace of mind takes the window seat.
What little’s left
belongs to neither you nor me.
I’ll give this misery another name.
Please — give me back mine.
Keep your grievance, and my forgetting —
but travel on a red bus.
This forgetting, too, is a long halt.
Let’s stretch our legs awhile.
Let’s imagine we never loved each other:
just rode together on the red bus.
