VIII. That’s epic There is a city beneath the city beneath the city beneath the floodplain. Forget about it. A city is at the back of the city at the back of the city. Ignore it. Ignore the scripts in which mathematics and astronomy were first written. Ignore the scripts incised in rock, the scripts inscribed in landscape. O Muse, make the poet move on. Memory is no good to triumphant civilizations. O Muse, your poet is blind, saying life has a sheen. O Muse, your poet’s a hostage, saying land has a meaning. Nobody likes a try-hard, a lacemaker working with a vascular surgeon to join delicate gaps. Put memory in the service of intention to keep the story shining, like tears shed over onionskin, or the cheering faces of the well-fed family watching screensful of migrants plummeting or washed up at a border, from a wall. The camera admires guards, themselves descended from migrants. The shining chorus of weaponry, made manifest by taxes, drops death on more children shining and their many lovely languages as if they were done for from the get-go, like paper brochures in a digital age. Forget about it. Keep going. A story has the tricks of appetite.

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