A Great Crowd Assembled

A great crowd assembled, at the end of a road.

They gathered around the small, black, glossy, hard pellet of damage

that had extracted sticky filaments from each of them

and tangled them in a web of which it was the centre,

but to which it was not connected.

All of them stared at it,

that black hole spider,

accepting all their gazes, absorbing their attention

and reflecting nothing.

Some of them perhaps had never seen such a thing:

to most, it was unknowably familiar.

To many it was on the periphery of their vision,

just behind one shoulder, stalking them;

to many others it was invisible,

so that when they stared at it directly

they saw what they imagined was behind it:

but not on this day.

On this day it seated itself in dark splendour

unfurling its robes over the steps of its dais like a dowager empress.

On this day it held court

and all the people in that shuffling haggard crowd offered tribute.

I knew a man who went to Africa,

a man who had soul,

a man with two names, one in each of his native tongues.

He was a full man, rotund with humour,

corpulent with intelligence.

He was a music lover.

He is a minister in the court of that shadowed presence.

I knew a man who went to America

disguised as Fidel Castro,

who also had two names:

one for his family, and another for his thoughts,

which were songs about buildings, the coin of our speech.

He has been my shoe size.

He is a henchman of that glossy, matt horizon.

I knew a man who went to India

armed only with a flute.

He had a dog as tall as him,

and I ate powdered milk from beneath his sink,

consumed his bandes dessinées.

He set me in motion.

He sleeps at the feet of that oblivious master.

I knew a man who went to Spain

and dwelt in his father's house.

He stole images

from the quick and the lovely,

and dashed himself on the rocks

of his saline imaginings.

He is a tumbler before the chancellor of that absence.

I knew a woman who went to Norwich,

whence came the man who went to America,

who once lived in part of London

where the man who went to Spain

and the man who went to India came from;

and the man who went to India had a child,

who lived near the woman who went to Norwich.

This is how that jet puppeteer weaves its net.

And that great crowd began to drift away,

returning each to their business, or so they thought.

They are still gathered there,

at the end of that pleasant, wooded lane,

bound.

Bound not by oath or loyalty to that hated compulsion

which drew them together,

but by that tight net of tacky threads which it elicited

but which they alone created.

Bound, an arch of only keystones

at a certain unchanging distance

in orbit of that unreciprocating singularity.

We cannot see it or imagine it

and so we do not fully believe it

but it is all there is.

We are its cadets, and we will be its slaves.

Some of us will serve it as midwives, or couriers:

but every single one of us will be its mute parishioner.

We will be complicit in the sentences and decrees of its court.

We will polish its smooth surface,

and admire our reflections in its light sponging outer boundary.

We will eat its meal of ashes,

and drink its wine of dust,

and hating it, will submit to its excruciation,

until we love it.

Until we welcome our dessert, and sleep.

Suffolk, November 2010