Sex is always monstrous. Blood appears in the air next to the body but nobody asks a question about the body. “Please touch me there. More. Oh god.” For a hitchhiker, the problem of the boudoir is transferred to a makeshift, itchy, unsafe space on the verge of a New Mexico highway. It is often the sex of another era, in which the socks and dress shirt/blouse are not necessarily removed.
1. The Winter: 1748
— Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802
A little satin like wind at the door.
My mother slips past in great side hoops,
arced like the ears of elephants
on her head a goat-white wig,
on her cheek a dollop of mole.
From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,
where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;
1
Gently disintegrate me
Said nothing at all.
Is there still time to say
Said I myself lying
In a bower of bramble
Into which I have fallen.
Look through my eyes up
At blue with not anything
We could have ever arranged
Slowly taking place.
Above the spires of the fox
Gloves and above the bracken
Tops with their young heads
Recognising the wind,
The armies of the empty
Blue press me further
Into Zennor Hill.
Unmet at Euston in a dream
Of London under Turner’ s steam
Misting the iron gantries, I
Found myself running away
From Scotland into the golden city.
I ran down Gray’ s Inn Road and ran
Till I was under a black bridge.
This was me at nineteen
Late at night arriving between
The buildings of the City of London.
And the I (O I have fallen down)
Fell in my dream beside the Bank
Of England’ s wall to be, me
With my money belt of Northern ice.
I found Eliot and he said yes
We shall meet again, in Srinagar,
by the gates of the Villa of Peace,
our hands blossoming into fists
till the soldiers return the keys
and disappear. Again we’ ll enter
our last world, the first that vanished
c.1951-2
The child I left your class to have
Later had a habit of sleeping
With her arms around a globe
She’ d unscrewed, dropped, and dented.
I always felt she could possess it,
The pink countries and the mauve
And the ocean which got to keep its blue.
Coming from the Southern Hemisphere to teach,
Which you had never had to do, you took
A bare-walled room, alone, its northern
I
Sound of the rain so I know
there’ s constraint
sound of the train
so I know commerce
has not come to a standstill
now they raise the barrier
now they set it back in place
What coats the bottom
of the surface of the sound
when the swifts come in
when the clerks come home
who will bathe the children
who will bake the bread
when the luff is tight
when the mainsheet
starts the boat underway
whatever you do don’ t
let the tongue slip
from its moorings
