42

Austin

The recollection unexercised falls away by slow degrees like a parakeet’s flight aborted through moult, the aperture of air crossed only by lapsing feathers.

4Geoffrey Hill: ‘Reviewing language,/ I am wrought up by how patient it is.’

By when were you hard done?

It was Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . (I’m sweeping past the day again)

No, no. Why did the year?

(Motivation’s a hard question) Because, from here where we are at home they went up to the moon. But don’t believe it.

Where came the mountain from?

I was in the chemist’s buying guns . . . oh and a duplicator.

But how to the people who weren’t there?

You try to copy the day on the ground. (I can’t speak at all in the dark between streetlamps)