There’s a poem that begins
But that other wreck, where the crew tumbles out of a bad dream
and into a worldwide storm of interpretation.
Life is inhearsed, everything’s on affective hold for an hour
as the heavens pause. A melancholy playlist is blinking its lights.
It was the time when the awful narrative of their journey
was lost at sea, the violence of the weather and the politics
of humans and demi-gods all cast into the deep.
Its terrible choices sunk amongst the rattail fish,
the drowned men sinking backwards into sleep,
their dreams infused with azure. But the hero, the sole survivor,
one of the great navigators, shorn of his history, and of his genres,
made his arduous way back from the ends of the earth –
the far territory he headed for was home.
There’s a detail from his travels in an illumination,
that has him confronting a black Ethiopian panther.
By the time he arrives back at the little country town
he can’t speak or form sentences, his mind has turned into an anagram,
and his memory’s gone. He thinks everyone around him is an imbecile.
But he’s looked after by his mother and an old schoolteacher
who care for him right up until the end.
I can hardly bear to talk about it, but many of its lines are unforgettable.
We inhabit terminals but think we’re halfway there.
This is the new lingo, brazen, disfigured, dazzled with halogen.
The blinds are still up but it will soon be night.