TO WHEN WE NO LONGER DIE

12 maart 2013 We have all we don’t want now and can’t
know need, though the Victorian terminal’s still
visible from here. Its shell freshly sand-blasted,

and what iron still veins those windows
gives them a lumpen aspect, like trowelled-on
mud in the winter of an era deeply previous to —

unnamed calendrical marker fading fast
into movie wars, pundits in seizure, and fragments
from Lincoln’s speeches. Latin U’s appear as V’s,

we can’t help wondering were they missing
a particular chisel blade. Rock doves
decorate the gothic cake in cack. Shot

in black and white, we’re to choose colour
tone and contrast later, in post-production,
once we’re past the very teenage tristesse

of imagining ourselves gone, all art-house taciturn,
crises of finitude, and very little make-up. Ranks
of the as it was ever it shall be, still smoking. Treble clefs

of black squirrels, meanwhile, change to bass as a wind
gets up in the far-off branch work. We’d like
to be remembered for not mucking

up the place. Are songs litter? Is there an alley
we have yet to piss in? Accelerating heads whip past
in illuminated diorama, flip-book depicting

the one head. Our own train slows. We re-take
our seats in separate compartments, tot up
turkey vultures, imports from Arkansas, glaring

at congested cloverleafs. Mid-range drone of turbines
above sugar beets and alpaca. Appearance proclaims
itself the original mystery. Northern life migrates north.