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Dominic Leonard The End It happened like this: the clouds froze And stayed there, silent. Now there is No sky, just one vast floorboard, creaking. The sun, killed by its father offstage, Will not roll back to be gawped at. But clouds also produce a sound, Says Lucretius. Entirely untrue, so why Did he say that? He is not speaking Of thunder as far as I can tell, perhaps He is stuck in that difficult moment of mind Which must approach a raw new season And its new orders. But vision has no order, Draw as many perspective lines as you like. Some of the simplest things are unimaginable, Like snow falling on a black ocean, you can’t See it, unless of course you’ve swum that far, Further than I have. The sea still frightens me. As George Michael put it, there are things That I don’t want to learn. I make record Of what I can but dignity is alien to me, I cannot see it. When I look at myself It snaps. What do we know of what is left Of the glaciers, their terrible, complex haste Which touches us still? Ah: they produce A sound. We too produced a sound. Winner of The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2024 8
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Claire Carroll There or Not There Ok, fine. Fine. I’ll tell you a true story. But this is the only one I’ve got. It’s a horrible story though. I was twenty-two, and I worked for a hybrid ethical advertising practice in Central London. I didn’t know what I was doing there. I had no idea. The practice was commissioned, usually by the local authority or private companies, to deliver striking messages in public spaces. The practice was in a studio, located in a former warehouse, which had been damaged by a flood that summer (no, don’t worry, that was before I started. That wasn’t the thing I did). I was employed as a studio assistant to sort out all of the archived drawings and paperwork that had been damaged by the floodwater. I was quite happy to re-file the crispy, dried-out papers. The work was better paid than the pub, plus I didn’t have to work at night, or walk home with my phone and keys clenched in my hand, damp down my front from the drip trays, ears ringing. Working in the day was something normal adults did. So, if I did this type of proper work then I’d be a proper adult. London was full of this type of stratification. Or maybe I was. I can see that now, OK? I can see that I was the one with the problem. Perhaps because I seemed excessively happy to have been given this role, or perhaps because the directors had told them they should make use of me, the architects and architectural assistants started to ask me to help them on their projects. Some people say that the structure of our practice veers towards anarchocommunism, one of the senior creatives said to me during my first week. I didn’t understand what anarcho-communism was, but then I realised that he probably didn’t expect me to. He went on to describe how the work they did was concept-driven, creatively led, no hierarchies within the staff, a horizontal network of collaborators, no company shareholders, no dividends. It’s about producing the best, most functional, most aesthetic and most meaning ful design for the client, and for the public, he said. Nothing else matters. I said something like, oh, wow. Cool. 9

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Dominic Leonard

The End

It happened like this: the clouds froze And stayed there, silent. Now there is No sky, just one vast floorboard, creaking. The sun, killed by its father offstage, Will not roll back to be gawped at.

But clouds also produce a sound, Says Lucretius. Entirely untrue, so why Did he say that? He is not speaking Of thunder as far as I can tell, perhaps He is stuck in that difficult moment of mind

Which must approach a raw new season And its new orders. But vision has no order, Draw as many perspective lines as you like. Some of the simplest things are unimaginable, Like snow falling on a black ocean, you can’t

See it, unless of course you’ve swum that far, Further than I have. The sea still frightens me. As George Michael put it, there are things That I don’t want to learn. I make record Of what I can but dignity is alien to me,

I cannot see it. When I look at myself It snaps. What do we know of what is left Of the glaciers, their terrible, complex haste Which touches us still? Ah: they produce A sound. We too produced a sound.

Winner of The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2024

8

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