hardcore dawn-to-dusk hardcore no-sleep-till-Brooklyn hardcore serious focused intense hardcore birding joy

I think I've just found the most satisfying birding blog ever.

Storm

I am standing in the front garden of a suburban home about five miles from the centre of Boise, Idaho, listening to my landlady’s son and his friends having a merry little late-night methamphetamine party in the garage

I was outside to watch a meteor storm. It was a scintillatingly frosty night, and the sky, black through clouds of frosted breath, was gloriously clear. And the meteors mindblowing. I’d not seen a meteor storm before.

I’d seen meteorite showers before. English meteor showers: a sort of theatre of disappointment. On the rare nights with good seeing conditions, my dad would go out with me into the garden, and we’d stand on the lawn and stamp about and stare at the sky, and I’d get a crick in my neck, and slowly my dreams of the heavens crashing with streaks of equinoctual fire were ruined. ‘Success’ seemed to mean maybe two shooting stars in a minute. If we were lucky.

What was happening above me, that late night in Boise, was a meteor storm. And I realised, as meteor followed meteor in long, scratched, scorched trajectories, sometimes as many as three a second — I stood out there for an hour — that these streaks of fire in the sky weren’t what was sending shivers down the spine. It was sublime for another reason: the sheer number of trails allowed your brain to see, distinctly, the precise area of black sky which was sending us these tiny specks of dust and dirt and ice. Space parallax! The sublime part of it was the way it it pointed outward, away from earth, to somewhere else, unimaginably distant. Made infinity visible.

My landlady’s son’s inexorable methamphetamined slide into psychosis was in full swing at this point. I was already having to hide my telemetry set. He had already asked me if I knew who had implanted homing devices in his teeth, and several times had asked me, urgently and sadly, how it was possible that people could steal your thoughts. Some part of him was rebelling against the craziness, knew that it wasn’t physically possible. But the overwhelming conviction that it was happening, that his thoughts were being stolen, was winning. Ghastly.

He’d heard me, or seen me, out there. And suddenly, he was out of the garage and walking up to me. His white face fixed me with a slightly uncomprehending, if intent, stare. I said, “Hello Mark”. There was a long pause.

“What are you doing out here” he finally said, with jumpy emphasis.
“I’m watching a meteor storm” I said.
“What?” he said.
“Look” I said, and pointed up. At that moment, three more streaked over, searing the sky with trails.

“It’s like the war” he said, amazed. “Guys! Guys!” And he went and got all his wasted friends and we all sat there, everyone but me wired to the gills, watching shooting stars. It was oddly companionable. “Cheers Helen” they said. “Let us know when it’s happening again, and we’ll go out to the desert and watch it. You can come too”.

Greatest Interview Ever

One of the national newspapers is publishing a series of booklets of historic interviews. You know: Nixon; the Sex Pistols, Princess Diana, and so on. Collect 'em all!

None of them approach the glory of this interview with Christopher Walken. It is not a parody. I painstakingly transcribed part of it when it first appeared, about ten years ago, in a colour supplement to a Sunday paper. I wish I'd kept the photos of Walken cooking that illustrated it, and I wish I'd taken down the name of the interviewer so I could give him or her full attribution. Whoever you are, thank you.

I almost did a cooking show. I went to Bravo and MTV and the Comedy Channel. I had meetings with these people and I was going to do this show. It was either 10 or 12 segments. I can't remember. I was going to have some sort of kitchen set-up. I wanted it to be a little like Pee-wee's Playhouse. I love that show. And I'd have maybe a showgirl, you know, with a little thing on, chopping my vegetables. Maybe some musicians. And an audience. Some people to talk to. With the cable, the thing was, when it got down to it, every one of them wanted something much more precise. They wanted it to be much more planned. Much more of a pragmatic, fabricated thing that could be repeated. They wanted to have a comic actor with me. They wanted to have a script. Jokes. I like jokes. But I wouldn't want to have to say the jokes, you know. Because certain times things are funny anyway. I mean, funny people are funny. And I said to them I wouldn't be able to do that. I wanted it to be like the Dean Martin show.

If I wasn't so lazy, I'll tell you what I would do. I saw this thing on television. this whole thing with people putting cameras in their house, for the net. I understand that people outfit their houses with these things, and some guy's girlfriend finds out that she's been naked all over the Internet. You hear about that. If everybody can do it, it can't be that hard. You just need to figure out where to tune in, right? I would need some help with this. I don't quite understand how the internet works. I don't have a computer. You know, 12-year old kids know all about that.

I thought I'd get a couple of those cameras and put them in my kitchen in Connecticut and just, you know, turn them on whenever I felt like it. Maybe I would have a particular time of day I would do it, or something like that. You could charge people to take hits, or something like that. And it would just be me cooking. And I thought to make it amusing, I thought I would have a hotline—you know, a red telephone. And they could call and I could give them advice about their love life. I mean silly stuff, personal questions, about the, you know, "what should I do?" In the old days, there used to be these things—I can't remember what they're called, but it's a Spanish word. Like a bodega, but something else. They'd be on street corners. You could buy a love potion. You could buy, you know, something, if you were mad at somebody, you could buy a hex. They even had aerosol, I remember; you could spray somebody to get them to fall in love with you, or something. I could provide services like that. Or just talk while I'm cooking.

And you remember a programme called This is Your Life? I thought I'd have a curtain over to one side, and once in a while I'd have a mystery guest. You know, actors are always coming over to my house. Maybe Joe Pesci comes over and makes his tomato sauce. Everybody makes something, you know what I mean. Don't you think that might be amusing?

Supply your own moral

A few years ago—so many years ago that I don't really understand, now, the person I was back then—I lived out of town. I'd drive in early to beat the traffic, lock the car, throw my book bag over my shoulder, and take myself and my dear old G3 to a café just off the market square. It was so early there was only ever one other person there. He was a thin chap in round glasses. He looked like a little bit like a young William Gibson: or at least, what William Gibson would look like if he'd gone to Cambridge. His name was Alexander. He was terribly preoccupied with writing something. Piles of paper. Press clippings. Notebooks. Old school stuff. After a decent interval of several weeks of nods and hellos, I asked him what he was writing. "I'm writing a biography of a homeless guy I used to know' he said. "He's dead now. His name was Stuart".

I remember thinking "Sheesh. Good luck with that, mate" and tip-toeing back to my Great and Glorious Work, The Thesis, feeling a tiny bit sorry for him.

My thesis was abandoned.

His book wasn't. And there's a dramatisation of it on tv tonight.

Pictures?

Steve asked for photos of the house: don't actually have any. But here are a couple of photos of the watermill (still working, still grinding) a hundred yards away...

Ride it like you stole it

Bill Griffiths has died. It is terribly sad. Bill was one of the honest originals: a brilliant, curmudgeonly figure: poet, biker, founder of Pirate Press, gifted translator of Old and Middle English texts. There's a cracking obituary in The Independent. Nicholas Johnson, poet and publisher, has done him proud. "He read Medieval and Modern History at University College, London, graduating in 1969" writes Johnson. "By this time he was a fringe member of the Harrow Roadrat bikers, knew many Hells Angels chapters, and was resourceful and precocious on a red Ducati".

I read with Bill a couple of times. Both times, he fell asleep during my reading, beard on his chest, and snored. Snored loudly and joyously. People in the audience grew rigid with apprehension. Those sitting next to him wondered whether they should dig him in the ribs to wake him up. They generally thought better of it.

Poetry readings are ghastly things. I have never understood why people go to them. Perhaps it is some strange desire to see the poet in action to understand the work: the thought that when a poem is read by its author, somehow its real meaning is expressed. Privileged knowledge. Celebrity lights. This is nonsense. "Who anyone is or I am is nothing to the work. The writer properly should be the last person that the reader or the listener need think about": Denise Riley.

And I love Bill Griffiths not just for his work, for his variousness, but also for a valuable lesson. Thank you, Bill, for snoring through my poems, so adding a perfect commentary to the whole business of hawking yourself on stage. Go well.

I should be

Packing. Sorting out final utility bills. Cancelling broadband. Clearing garden. Taking rubbish to the tip. Sorting clothes. Catching up on work.

What I am in fact doing is listening to back-to-back episodes of Paul McGann's Doctor Who. I've been doing this all morning, and I can't possibly do anything else.

Radio 7's Listen Again facility is my new downfall.

The BBC offered me 1.7 million pounds to play the eleventh Doctor last week. I was so disappointed when I woke up and realised that they hadn't.

Teaching her ABCs

Click for big: see what she's looking at?

Bad Day

On the wall of St Brides, Fleet Street. James took this photo; both of us were aghast. Poor, poor stonemason.

Happy Birthday Aimee!

Demonstrating here her extraordinary cat-wrangling skills. Go Aimee!

Photo by James Macdonald

Plan Nein

Fatrobot has given us all permission to do no work today. He says: watch Plan 9 from Outer Space instead.

Gos

Off the creance tomorrow. We're gonna try and catch a rabbit. Wish us luck!

Another gem of a communication from my historian friend Dr Ralley....

I'm going through the records of the poll taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381 (don't ask). Now, I guess I was half expecting names like Richard Bastard, and even John Shitte (and his wife, and son—John Shitte jr—I mean, like it wasn't enough to have that as a surname, without forcing him to have the 'junior' bit afterwards). But I've just come across my absolute favourite so far: William Bolloc (he has a relation called Geoffrey Bollok in the same village). They just don't do names like that any more. Wonder why?

Miss Anthropy's Commonplace Book

A Digression Concerning Criticks: excerpted from A Tale of a Tub; and I'm posting it partly to find it again.

By the Word, Critick, at this Day so frequent in all Conversations, there have sometimes been distinguished three very different species of Mortal Men, according as I have read in Antient Books and Pamphlets. [...] The Third, and Noblest Sort, is that of the TRUE CRITICK, whose Original is the most Antient of All. Every True Critick is a Hero born, descending in a direct line from a Celestial Stem, by Momus and Hybris, who begat Zoilus, who begat Tigellius, who begat Etcaetera the Elder, who begat Bently, and Rymer, and Wotton, and Perrault, and Dennis, who begat Etcaetera the Younger.

And these are the Criticks from whom the Commonwealth of Learning has in all Ages received such immense benefits, that the Gratitude of their Admirers placed their Origine in Heaven, among those of Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, and other great Deservers of Mankind. But Heroick Virtue it self hath not been except from the Obloquy of Evil Tongues. For it hath been objected, that those Antient Heroes, famous for their Combating so many Giants, and Dragons, and Robbers, were in their own Persons a greater Nuisance to Mankind, than any of those Monsters they subdued; and therefore, to render their Obligations more Compleat, when all other Vermin were destroy'd, should in Conscience have concluded with the same Justice upon themselves: as Hercules most generously did, and hath upon that Score, procured to himself more Temples and Votaries than the best of his fellows. For these Reasons, I suppose it is, why some have conceived, it would be very expedient for the Publick Good of Learning, that every True Critick, as soon as he had finished his task assigned, should immediately deliver himself up to Ratsbane, or Hemp, or from some convenient Altitude, and that no Man's Pretensions to so illustrious a Character, should by any means be received, before That Operation were performed.

Now, from this Heavenly Descent of Criticism, and the close analogy it bears to Heroick Virtue, 'tis easie to Assign the proper Employment of a True Antient Genuine Critick; which is, to travel thro' this vast World of Writings: to pursue and hunt those Monstrous Faults bred within them: to drag out the lurking Errors like Cacus from his Den; to multiply them like Hydra's Heads, and rake them together like Augeas's Dung. Or else to drive away a sort of Dangerous Fowl, who have a perverse Inclination to plunder the best Branches of the Tree of Knowledge, like those Stymphalian Birds that eat up the Fruit.

These Reasonings will furnish us with an adequate Definition of a True Critick; that, He is a Discoverer and Collector of Writers Faults. Which may be farther put beyond Dispute by the following Demonstration: That whoever will examine the Writings in all kinds, wherewith this antient Sect has honor'd the World, shall immediately find, from the whole Thread and Tenour of them, that the Idea's of the Authors have been altogether conversant, and taken up with the Faults and Blemishes, and Oversights, and Mistakes of other Writers; and let the Subject treated on be whatever it will, their Imaginations are so entirely possess'd and replete with the Defects of other Pens, that the very Quintessence of what is bad, does of necessity distill into their own: by which means the Whole appears to be nothing else but an Abstract of the Criticisms themselves have made.

Dunning-Kruger Syndrome

Xtin and I were talking yesterday about a certain kind of person: the one who comes up to you, upon little or no acquaintance, and starts telling you what they know about x, or their theories about x, and not only presume that you're horribly interested in what they have to say, but generally fail to listen/show any interest in what you have to say. That is a recipe for excrutiation.

This kind of sounding-board personality includes pretty much all the crazies I met while working in a second-hand bookshop, years ago (trapped! trapped! I hate retail for this very reason!), who'd demonstrate an astonishing inability to recognise or react to any signs of my frustration and growing anger.

I remember one memorable exchange between one such chap and the bookshop owner.
"Ah. Ah. I see you're wearing a CND badge. Well, I think there should be nuclear war. Limited nuclear war. Clear the earth so we can start again."
"You're stupid. Fuck off out of my shop, and don't come back"

Xtin met one of these people yesterday. I know I am coming across as vastly misanthropic, but oh, to hell with it. I mean, unreliable narrator and all that. Anyway. I was talking to a chap dumping manure (horse, I hasten to add) at the farm where I fly the gos. Xtin was hanging back near the gate. And I turn around, and she is standing with a woman dressed in bright purple, celery leaves flopping out of her bike basket. The woman has been telling Xtin that she knows all about falconry, which she clearly doesn't, and Xtin has already given up talking, and is approaching critical mass, in a rigid, shoulders-tensed, teeth-gritting stance. And the goshawk takes one look at Mrs Purple and is utterly terrified. Bate, bate, bate, bate, bate. Mrs Purple then tries to talk to me. It's like treading on the edge of a bit of quicksand. Back up! Back up! I mutter and disappear rapidly up the farm track, followed by Xtin, who takes about half an hour to decompress.

Note: it seems that no matter how tame your goshawk, it will take enormous fright at certain individuals. There is nothing you can do about this except remove yourself from the scene.

There might be a lesson in that.

Also, this.

Yep

Noooooo!

Went to look at a house today. Frankly, the most beautiful house I have ever seen. A converted section of a thirteenth century hall. Older than anything else in the town, except the Cathedral. Ancient stone floor downstairs. Four hundred year old oak floorboards upstairs. A marble-tiled showerroom. An exquisite galley kitchen the other side of the elephantine chimneybreast. And the roof! The roof! The whole place has been bevelled and fitted and kitted out with incredible care, massive expense, and oh dear, it is absolutely the most heartbreakingly lovely space I have ever walked about in.




Heartbreaking because: it has no garden. Bar a five and a half-foot wide stretch along a wall out of the doorway. Which is used for access to all the other apartments in this building. And that's just not safe enough, or large enough, for a hawk.

Heartbreaking! I guess I could keep a hawk indoors....

no, I really need a garden.

Gah!

A Warning

This is M.R. James. Montague Rhodes James. Provost of Kings. Medievalist, and writer of the most appallingly creepy ghost stories in the English language. If there was ever a book demanding to be picked up gingerly, by one corner, and with a hurried glance over the shoulder, it is his Collected Ghost Stories.

I would advise anyone new to MR James not to read this book in the following manner: one story after the other, straight through to the end. Do not do this. Do not read a story or so at night, sitting up in bed. A story or two, lounging in the bath; a few pages, waiting for the kettle to boil.

That's what I did, and I wish I hadn't. As the pages turned, so the atmosphere in the house thickened. Things started to feel oddly as if they were in the wrong places. Disquieted, I started keeping the radio on all day. The cool draught blowing from the back of the boarded-up fireplace made me uneasy. I'd watch something rubbish on television, and be wondering why I'd not changed the channel. Perhaps it was because I had become disinclined to reach for the remote control. In case I put my hand down on something else...something scaly. Or taloned. Or worse.

It's not that I'm a particularly suggestible soul. But Monty James is such an exquisite writer, and his mental landscape so thoroughly frightening, and so clearly set forth: a world of antiquaries, of rare books, old houses, ancient curses, mazes and mezzotints, you find yourself drawn into his sphere, and start, like his poor characters, to feel a strange sense of oppression. These are harrowing, grim, violent, horrifying and the most beautifully crafted stories of demonic vengeance and spiritual trauma. They make Le Fanu look pedestrian.

James believed in ghosts. Of course he did. He couldn't have written these stories if he hadn't. I've been told that for the many, many years he lived in his rooms at Kings, he'd take to his bed each night in mortal terror, for every night a strange tapping noise would rise up through the chimney-breast. Tap, tap, tap. Of course, the noise was simply the Fellow downstairs knocking his pipe out onto the hearth. But Monty never realised. For years, he was convinced that something, or A Something from the netherworld was trying to communicate with him.

He used to read these stories out loud to his friends. I can only imagine the atmosphere: some fine port; a flickering fire; weathered leather chairs and perhaps the rain beating on the casement windows, while the gaslights along Kings' backs glowed into the night. Wooooo!

I only mention this because I have been reading him again. Found my copy stuffed in a pile of books while packing. Read the fantastic story, this morning, of the chap who spent some days surveying an ancient maze on his property, and sitting down by candlelight to make a fair copy of a map of the labyrinth. Here's a taster:

The tracing of the plan was done: it remained to compare it with the
original, and to see whether any paths had been wrongly closed or left
open. With one finger on each paper, he traced out the course that must
be followed from the entrance. There were one or two slight mistakes, but
here, near the centre, was a bad confusion, probably due to the entry of
the Second or Third Bat. Before correcting the copy he followed out
carefully the last turnings of the path on the original. These, at least,
were right; they led without a hitch to the middle space. Here was a
feature which need not be repeated on the copy--an ugly black spot about
the size of a shilling. Ink? No. It resembled a hole, but how should a
hole be there? He stared at it with tired eyes: the work of tracing had
been very laborious, and he was drowsy and oppressed ... But surely this
was a very odd hole. It seemed to go not only through the paper, but
through the table on which it lay. Yes, and through the floor below that,
down, and still down, even into infinite depths. He craned over it,
utterly bewildered. Just as, when you were a child, you may have pored
over a square inch of counterpane until it became a landscape with wooded
hills, and perhaps even churches and houses, and you lost all thought of
the true size of yourself and it, so this hole seemed to Humphreys for
the moment the only thing in the world. For some reason it was hateful to
him from the first, but he had gazed at it for some moments before any
feeling of anxiety came upon him; and then it did come, stronger and
stronger—a horror lest something might emerge from it, and a really
agonizing conviction that a terror was on its way, from the sight of
which he would not be able to escape. Oh yes, far, far down there was a
movement, and the movement was upwards—towards the surface. Nearer and
nearer it came, and it was of a blackish-grey colour with more than one
dark hole. It took shape as a face--a human face—a burnt human face:
and with the odious writhings of a wasp creeping out of a rotten apple
there clambered forth an appearance of a form, waving black arms prepared
to clasp the head that was bending over them. With a convulsion of
despair Humphreys threw himself back, struck his head against a hanging
lamp, and fell.

I put the book down after reading that; went off up the road to buy a newspaper. It's a flat, heavy grey day out there, humid and unappealing. As I turned the corner, I yawned. Too much coffee early on. And at that moment, a wasp flew into my mouth. Banged against the roof of my mouth and fell onto my tongue. I froze with horror. I knew it was a wasp, and I knew that it was sitting on my tongue. Do not move, I thought. Don't try and blow it out, or spit. If it stings, you're in trouble. And slowly, this wasp clambered out of my mouth into the air; I could feel all six legs as it crawled over my bottom lip and my heart was beating high with horror. And then there was the buzz as it flew off; a little black and yellow piece of nightmare.

I am going to burn this bloody book!

LOLYeats

Via Dr Hypercube. Brilliant.

What has she got in her pocketses?

Tendresse etc

Just came across this marble rendition of Ganymede and the eagle by Berthel Thorvaldson. Bloody lovely, and winningly dodgy with it.


Click for big

TENORI-ON

Courtesy of a link from my brother: Toshio Iwai demonstrating this unbelievably cool new instrument/musical interface, the TENORI-ON.

He says, also: you need to watch this video for a while before it really kicks off. Is amazing.

Another O'Hara

A True Account of Talking to the Sun on Fire Island

The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally

so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."

"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."

"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."

I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.

"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.

Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.

If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.

And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"

"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.

And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.

Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."

"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"

Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept

Fragments

Between her wings the novitiate
conjures blocks from the palms of her hands.
Some fall, some rise to create their own mistakes
blossoming in little liege-struck parentheses of air
and cement, blood and spittle. They survive like
opened chitin, small frequencies, with pearls and tines
in circuits, dust to small versions of nothing
ventured, nothing gained, and that sets a smile
to prey upon her face, where the dirt is.
The wings are black, of course: she'd assumed
they'd be off-white, a kind of shabby perfection,
but the thumbs and the long, emarginated curves,
the complex slings of cord and muscle that flare
at her shoulders are not. They're black. Not
that this is a bad thing, she decides, at once. It means
I can't be seen at night. And during the day, I'll hide.
I'm good at that. There are parts of the air so thin
you can slip inside them, and then, with the wings
hitched and the coverts raised, each little feather
with its four tiny muscles erect and the air between
burred with the warmth from her back, she'd sleep.
Never wanted to be nocturnal. But dusk
and dawn are enough: larks sing in the dark, and
I know the blackbirds do, too. I shan't see reptiles
she thought, with sadness, but then if I lived in Ireland,
Nor would I then. St Patrick kicked them out. Or at least
St Patrick in the form of an icesheet. She shivers. How
various are those theories of the world. Paper
at her feet, wet cobbles, white fletchings & vowels
swans, verbs, the headlines all the swans' invention,
showers of thrips and crowds, the last
in their progress less certain of meeting
each other than of the water running under
their feet. Concerned, she drops a block; it breaks
to fifteen dice, one watchface, a cabbage white, two
Yale keys & a small vial of perfume. Tester. Unlabelled
of course, she sniffs. And cabbage whites? As if.
Dropped blocks for disorder, for curt treatment
the demiurge despoiled. Across the water, Debussy,
high definition porn & the diplomat's own smooth language
stroking all matters of pasture and selvage up to his own
sweet ends, no matter what the ends themselves
Delft animals, styles, fat corn to be pushed to the heel.
He might turn for the time to respect what is gathered: prime
miracles just numbers to be signed. Wrapped in gauze. Sealed
with a print. Stored for faith. Those tiny blue hooves
and tiny flowers. A prospect, a roof, and above, in clouds,
a miniature graze of indigo, ghost against the craze. Some
human error, some mimic tacked the receded features.
And polity, and the white parsimony it calls to mind. Later,
in clocks and patches, with roundels glued to the eye,
her blocks are minded to sing. Blisters. Forks. The corkscrew
faltering fall of pipits through air. And seeds are never
never, and the lures all remain: tiny, panicky gods,
covering their eyes while the fire escape burns.
I love you, parsimony, he cries,
throwing his arms wide

***

Water supports miracles, you know. She'd got
chatty. Not that anyone heard. Ankle-deep she
swallowed hard, extended both wings & beat
them twice, brought their shoulders to meet
over her back, shook them free of rain, then
settled again. Look what it brings. Sure enough
the dictionary was here again, resting
at her feet, its pages bloomed, submerged.
If I pull it out, she said, you'll read nothing.
The words will clump, the book become a brick.
You could make paper from it again, of course,
if you felt so inclined. I don't. But see,
even though the pages are open, there's no-one
there to read. She kicked the water's bevelled edge
raised the surface into a spray of soft blades, a rose.
Soapy. She sniffed. Ya de ya, she said. The dictionary
thing is trite. I'd like to tell a greater truth,
but if truth be told, I don't know it. I don't even know
what these wings might do. I can't find out in this wind
I'd be drowned as a dictionary. Kicked again. Irony.

***

Later she hugged her shins, bowed
her head over her knees and cried. The flood
had reached an inch from the top of the wall
and her feet were cold. The tips of her primaries
were narrow with wet, and it was still raining.
Eyes squeezed tight she saw a smaller light
impressed to mud. One bowl for the hare's
warm chest, another too slight to sky
& above the wind is salt. It carries to the tip
of an easterly cloud, whose building of throats
clips eaves and ledges of water for dust
takes speech in hand to avoid them. Partial
migrants, all of them, writing with damp hands
in leucistic tones: the lines get vaguer, weaker
as the day goes on. Foreheads are wiped. Cups
set down. Somewhere at the end of this, even
the paper thins to extravagant end. Quills,
she mused, are funny things. They have blood
to begin, and then become hollow. If I reach
to my back, I can follow each one to my skin
and the long threads that lie amongst them
tell me of the wind. She had no idea
that wings could feel. Disconcerting. As much
as a quill stuffed with dust, or a heel stepping
forward through water. Odds on, or ends.

Bamboo Sun Tzu

The Art of War, of course. More here