Requiem

Anniversaries defoliate maps.

Remember where you've come fromand the general fixedness of celestial bodies: flawtherein worth a life-changeor realigning

as purpose is to accolades,ministries to choirs

mosquitoes thickernear the riverconservedso join upto make little difference, thwartingmortgage-ocracies, national corporatismrejigged as mountain duckson sandbars    dugouts        saplingsplanted outup on the hill where native growthisn't rekindling

    navigate via callof male white-winged triller,loss-win ratio of northerly gusts

Upstage redbackssnatch at prey, a nuclear test        border testthat opens debate new mines new policiesof nation-making-conservatism    the slower applicationof extremism, clearingto revegetate all scapes    with poplars and Tasmanian bluegums

I smell fuel through the steel jerrycan,degraded land of building.

Watch out: edge of storm,perched, metal casing, locust hoppers lulledbefore the flying; temporal thunderto swallow light and colour,phages in polished places

    black-faced cuckoo shrike predatesthrough mulberry tree, to thinkI might have a revelation in mindwhen I deck out Comusin new rayon garb

I have only ever read Paradise Lost, that's true,not a single word of anything else-or, rather,Paradise Lost is all that's lodged,

all that's taken root,and words sprung upin trans-national vocabsare derivations of what's enclosed

I tell the student my grandmother repeopled the ghost townof her childhood, I tell her windows are the claimsof civilisation, having safe prospect; I tell her townsin the goldfields and Pilbaraaren't just there for extraction,but perpetual colonisation-never believe a white guywith a can of beer    and a pornoplaying on his dvd;        thunder is intenseand I was about to record lightning as a no-show,a freaky aberration,        but lightning is explodingletter by letteron the manual typewriter-the physicalexertion, stress on finger joints,a violent arthritis of the heavens.

November. Shiny green growthof eucalypts, late spring burst to linklittle moisture around-even now the storm is sparingin its downpour-and heat; humiditydrives the sparkle of growing tips, flowerings?

    I need to participate,I need the risk of being struck,burnt to a crispby lightning, this devotion that forgets Godin the rush

and that's a pity, as there'll be no redrafting,no second or third takes.

Expression of requiem painon the unstable imprint.

Driving through loss, deletionsevery week more, though satellites incorrectlyrouted over, or imagesin a mass of data;

    behind every veneer of treesa suburb, a road widening        cessationof privateering transportand down loss ambience,anxiety passed with sleep

but who wants to hear that? Who wants to be reminded,wants to deny rearranging surfaces, ormiles deep, through crust to mantle, as long as enough weight and spinretain a planetary shape?

degrees of technologydespite the windbreak of granite,leeward habitats exult in shelter

    I pray compulsively,always just before sleep and again if I wake during the nightin case I forgot before sleep

I never feel refreshed after sleep;the blue-tongued lizard would stay insidemy head if left to it.

It's not order I look for in Tracy's eyes.

Between the transparent and the opaqueshapes compile and disperse,a breakdown in sense reception: lethargyis the concrete floor of the shed stained with oilheating up-the vapours;

        it's not even an odour,it clogs the intake, inhalation, even through the mouth; after the warnings and the facts, what will be left?Should have taken notice or not been reminded,look ahead-webiological agents.    Spread.            Roland Barthes'margarine scenario-true, Tracy, true. Nuttelex(which he didn't know about . . . surely?)is a vegan table spread. Literally,maybe Barthes literallybelieved in the efficacy of butter. Bretoncame from butter space: poverty and wetnursing,a differing hierarchy . . .

purple flowers of Paterson's cursedry blue, giddiness in crucifixand preface

    patrons scaled writtenwhat is written, copyists and calligraphers...