grey sky heat pours dark rain
drenching the green
& then sudden explosion.

as if the centre of the universe
& not some small place in the world,
a whip´s crack
lashed in the middle of the year,
bang & blind
into the man in the room.

out in the rain,
in the garden in the garden,
in the dream in the dream,
whom lightning
does not cut down,
as heaven splits open
& the newsman comes on
with his voice from prison
& his promise utopian.

measure of all things,
who rose from the glaciers,
to whose village the tiger came
& the polar bear to his igloo,
as the last call blows for home
soon beyond living memory,
a veteran of once four million
but today but four. *

man in the room
you are a celebration,
only the world moves on.
who knows but its fame
& the newsman in prison,
who knows no completion.

final man in literary name,
first dialectician of interlocution
to a third person
in hypothetical argumentation
of an imaginary plot.
final fallen man in
a gallery of allegory, a museum
of sacred & profane names
with their banner crusades.

& the last woman you knew,
when you were alone
in the room.

& remembered
she went to a barn
by moonlight in a white gown

across fields of blue corn,
where silver wolves ran
& ravens flew on the borders.

where nightmare & the world
meet for the sake of freedom.
winding zig zag

the cliff face in a night
obliterated of stars
in the wind´s black maw

& the sea´s exploding roar,
as you stare through a screen´s
shattered transparency,

translucent in those cold
waters, suspended
in an almost absolute

vanishing moment,
which the edge of the world
grinds beaten black thin

between water & time,
as ephemeral as dream
& the shore of the world.

* The reference is to the Veterans Day Aniversary for the First World War 1914-18
Gift of Tongues