Echoes

A light goes out.
I drive: I pass a gorgeous young woman on a bike,
a geeky looking young monk in elaborate robes,
tourists from the far east,
cast iron bollards,
dreaming spires,
autumn, spread across an affluent town
like effluent on the steps of a dining club;
and none of them feels a dimming.
Not one of them feels
the slightest diminution of the light,
and I feel their indifference like a fist.
How can they just keep existing blankly
as though that extinction were irrelevant,
as though it were just
that your daughter should grow motherless?

A light goes out.
I examine all the desert places once illuminated,
moistening and salting them.
A light goes out and it is wrong
so fucking wrong
that shade does not fall across
the whole blasted heath of my sight.
It is wrong that
the babe, the monk, the tourist,
the bollard, the spire, the leaves, the slanting light
fail to see how impoverished they are
by that casual circuit-breaking.

A light goes out
and I want to shout.
This is me shouting your name
wanting echoes to slap back infinitely,
but the future is bottomless,
and swallows all reflection like a greedy child.

Cambridge, October 2010


This one is dedicated to Alex Perry, and was inspired by the appallingly tragic news of her passing.