The Imageless World MICHAEL BRENNAN aolPO Bax 937, Great Witbeahatn Cambridge PDO ca s)x United Kingdom PO Bow ao, Applecross, Western Austalla Gt All ight reserved ‘© Michael Brennan, 2003 ‘The sight of Michael Brennan tobe Wentied asthe ‘suthor ofthis work has been asserted by hi th acoedance swith Section 77 the Copyright Design and Pleas Act 1988 ‘This book in copyright. subject to statutory exception ano provisions of relevant collective icensing green. ‘na eprotuclon of any prt may tke place without the wetten permission ofS Publishing. Fst publi 2060 rote and bound in the United Kingdom by Lightning Source ‘Typeset In Swift 95/19 Thc ok sd a the condtons ha al at a my of tae roti, bet res, ied ot or eter irate whoa the pushers por consent may orm fins coe te han ht which ‘lepine ar colton nd TS “tong mre on the sequent prs san 1 8447 005 x paperback tas798642 To Nick O'MalleyLetter home “Ah, good. Iwas not very sure, finally, of having initiated the conversation myself."—"But could | hhave come otherwise?”—"Friendship would have sent you.” He reflects again: “I wrote to you. didn’t 1° Maurice BLaNcwor ‘These are strange lands I barely understand, ‘We are walking in a park of manicured lawns. ‘The sky is a mosaic of syllables Parts of a puzzle. ‘The people here douse themselves in petrol ‘As though poetry mattered. Some of the pieces are missing And the old man tells me we have to make new some new ones. He looks through me. It matters little if lam here, Ina corner of the park monks are burying elephants. found a word under my tongue but swallowed it whole, ‘The lawn is a lesson in geometry, it imitates ‘The cast of the concrete walls, | don’t know if the grass is grey or the concrete grass. None of it looks like the sky, least ofall the sky. Fashioned out of water, paths no one walks on Lead into proximity. Isl‘The old man spits out tones that sit in pools on the water, Halfoil, halfmercury, he tests them with one foot, In the distance someone or something catches fire. Perhaps itis the elephants coming into bloom. (6) Letter home On a street in Tenerife she finds a photo A pigtailed girl she places on her index finger's Soft pad and balances there each day of her life. ‘At night she listens to jazz in Stockwell Where she gets in for free While outside estate kids hustle for crack Or she dreams carefully of lavas turned to basalt, And a boy half covered by dune sands, ‘As some morning she could discover certainty Between the sketches of her notebook: ‘The woman with the oversized eye, the thin bodies ‘And small breasts hidden between phone numbers. ‘She doesn’t walk the quickest way home After the jazz, through the unkempt cemetery, ‘Where male lovers meet at night to touch ‘That place between desire and fear, where She's seen a fig’s roots melt over a grave ‘And clutch a headstone in its liquid grip, 1856 in one hand, today in the other, She doesn’t know the girl with the pigtail Is already nineteen and works as a temp in the City, How she laughs with friends and falls in love easily, I‘The Imageless World ‘When we walk into the world will 100k through your eyes and see clouds“ of lightest unknowing, patterns they roll as in, out and through— @ handful of stories ‘we cast, skimming across motionless water, rains gentle with heat, the years with a need to love something stronger than ourselves. Are we breaking threads joining us to myths of day, such as love, strength, world, enclosing freedom in tokens, the rising saturation between, leaf and bark, as world suspires without us, without our knowing. Iss] We are travelling again, as distance and its hungers, ‘you & I, a day, a night, unbinding each other so that ‘we uncover silence beyond words, selves beyond silence separate us now We are differences & nothing more Radiance slips from us, there is nothing. inside our words contained in this groundless world and its struggle of limits and beginnings. repeat you. You me & there, now, we exist, a script of crows’ feet tiring our eyes, charting Joy across skin.Our modern toves are survivors, late night television, seventies heroes ~ & hiphop clips, sound bursting through hammers of our ears. What to praise but endurance, the interminable gulf between, ‘There is no pain. Night dissolves into white noise, the blind remote, trudging: through snow, day broken turning again in finite lives, that meaningful word that no longer exists. Iss] ‘The image shaped by absence, perhaps it will sing, a glorious bird described, fattened on. honeyed words. Dead on the roadside, wings suggest flight, nothing of sorrow. ‘We are caught ‘on mild currents of recollection that lift us higher, as though world was residue, not imperceptible loss, moment that draws away Iss]‘There is nothing, here, a century. habit forming forgetfulness. Time between moment & ‘word, space ‘where an image might form. Arain of ash, curve of a rib, the Vistula, sea of hair, perspex, a warehouse of eases, chalked name, age, date. single blond braid cut close to the scalp. Walls of faces, dead bracketed by dates. What do I know, not knowing how to forget, how to begin to remember. {60} Letterhome She allows only one picture of herself With the rest of the family photos Collecting on the outoftune upright No one's played in years. She knows our shadow and its body ‘Are gifts, one day exchanged. Itis 1956. She is in her nurse's uniform, On a beach south of Sydney. She is twenty years old, watching ‘The tide turn black water white. Ie)