I held three insurance
policies in my fingers.
Up close, I saw
some hairs in the sink.

Up close, a comb,
a cloth, a sponge.
And Tesco's lamb
was there in the fridge.

The head of the hoopoe
looked out from the letter.
Five marks and a cufflink
lay on the table together.

At sea, in the days before rock 'n' roll:
all flesh falls awry
from the timeline, falls forwards,
past the timeline,
falls back into the Broca. Water holds
no time. Water
sticks to trousers,
to a skirt, to the entrance to the vagina,
to the organs' dock, to the bowels,
to money, to telegrams,
to miles of fields of rye.
Planets crash, braked by dust and gas,
into the centre the tree leaves
become fallen leaves, the bundle of bones
becomes shale and oil,
becomes light, dark, grows
into claws and the High Noon of secretion,
in the colours of sandstone, Aids and raspberries.
Waves noisily putting in,
putting out, become flesh, under the skin
grow plants, bacteria, acids, sand,
workshops proliferate on the waste land,
epiphanies, at their edges are seams of cranes,
no man's land, containers,
silently falling from the sky, the woods
are black, the mud
on the Volga's shores is black.
Shit is black, as is the reflex to slavery.
Your plant is black, the ham
is coloured black. The furies slide
down the timeline,
sucking and licking at the damp
in the grave.
Secular flesh still rots
as we sink, soak and bore
in the mother's hole
in the cesspits' goal:
in the juggernaut.

I held three insurance
policies in my fingers.
Up close, I saw
some hairs in the sink.

Love sits
upon the dumpsites of dealers.
Love will lure
from a firm arse, hairy
or hairless, it glitters
in the froth on the beer, in spit,
in heat and steepness,
in the wind,
in gangster hideouts,
in car windows
let down by the driver.

A child licks
his ice cream standing up,
stares ahead, tears roll down his cheeks,
a woman bucks
her hips. The earth lurches a little on its orbits
each millennium, a dog
lurches a little, as if it had left its own body,
discarded its own body like skin,
before dying. They are executing
fare-dodgers on the corner.

Up close, a comb,
a cloth, a sponge.
And Tesco's lamb
was there in the fridge.

At night the caimans' eyes
light up. Their jaws move
as mechanically as the sex act.
The earth contracts
like a balloon.
Callas lost Onassis to Jackie,
Jackie lost Onassis to Death.
A purring sounds from the earth.
The caimans' eyes are alight.

The sky lies heavy above
the fault. Buzzards.
Yellow rapeseed.
Nyssia stands frozen.
Gyges kneels
beside her. The humming meadows.
The dying stay in bed, their mouths streaming.
They want to walk into the sea,
immortal molecular poems. Ice.
Coldness. Coldness.
Ice. Molecular poems.

The head of the hoopoe
looked out from the letter.
Five marks and a cufflink
lay on the table together.

Whoever knocks,
it's always Death. The knickers
are stained, the toe
is mucky. When you come,
then come. When you go,
then go. The tongue
is thick as the arm
of a woman you're not in love with,
and out in the yard
some poor sod is dying,
shut your eyes so you won't see his cufflink.
Love, shut your eyes,
don't trust me when I call you a molecular poem,
a tiny drop in the ocean.
The ocean won't run dry.
Come here. Don't go.

I held three insurance
policies in my fingers.
Up close, I saw
some hairs in the sink.

Up close, a comb,
a cloth, a sponge.
And Tesco's lamb
was there in the fridge.
Translated by Alistair Noon