VI


I had not meant to go so far in losing that hated fluency which drew those I did not care for, no longer even talking to myself as I moved through the streets, my top pocket full of scrap paper: from such disconnected speech texts were made.

I regretted that any text more extended than a slogan required the passerby to halt too long for much in the way of poetry to bloom and fade anonymously upon the walls of our cities.

I wished to live on my own and pursue an intricate game, mix only with such as live by analogy, the culture of romance and the quest: at the end to inhabit the matter of Britain, for all the landform's hollow promise of a sleeper.

Still I recorded oracular days: a dog saddled with two bags in a narrow lane, a horrible pink tip to the stump of its tail; a girl with black plaits who coaxed a crow onto her hand while her friend looked on; the muscled drunk who attempted to cast his shirt over a kestrel.

I tried to evoke a girl upside down with drink, roots sprouting from her brow, searching for the earth, her feet with starry soles, but it was I who had been possessed by a spirit that knew no middle path between exhaustion and boredom.

I found out at last that it was better to get lost, cast among creatures I did not perceive to live or change.