like a god I watched

the exact prism of her being

from such a height;

she was luminescent

and throwing sparks

though inside I could see

her talent for shadows

and pitch black.

light begins again

coming in ocean dark blue

in buckling mouths

in the city’s underwater sobs

in fires brute weather

can’t extinguish

in the steel and wire bridge

of our leitmotif.

whatever I imagine is true

so she bends towards me

her hands knowing

all the ways home

finding out the colours

of my unknowable code.

pulling winter weeds

the soil shakes loose

while on our knees

and the edifice comes free

of a winter we can’t keep

it falls yellow around us

it’s even in our hair

and eyes after the rain

which was warm enough

infused with green light

and I’m in pieces

small enough to hold

and this moment

has no parenthesis

[xv.   untitled fire painting]

names are lost

between the thumb and forefinger

of early morning

all i hear is heavy weather,

syncopation, Scriabin’s fifth sonata

which she hammers

inside my ribs

that brute, that mystic

with his endless backwards phrases

it starts from nothing

when i am face down and refracted

in a basin of cold water

life suspended in that moment

between Slessor’s ‘Five Bells’

and the harbour lights

tossing their fireballs wearily

to the point where flames intersect

and what now do i know of her

as she looks from the window

seeing the orange halflight of geometry

and two empty chairs

where sleep is a handle i grip

and swing like an axe

then lose in the fire

the house is dark

i am four thousand

miles east of here

searching for words

i find them still in her mouth

then in Rimbaud’s letter

of 1871 to Paul Demeny

that you should not read at 3AM :

‘Donc le poète est vraiment voleur de feu’