july 2022

                              (i)

…' we, on this earth - ' the graffiti read

leaving the rest - so much - unsaid

did it mean, perhaps, those distant footnotes

to some illiterate universe or other

or these phenocrysts embedded in my heart

telling me of some fastidious evil

that just never seems to go

that always appears to slip

effortlessly into every word

but, perhaps it meant to say

that we are the eyes and ears of the unborn

their thirst, their hunger

yet still somehow gratified with ourselves

blind to what we have done

that hyphen a denunciation

or perhaps, even the vehemence of nothing at all

and yet, if we do hold the hands of the unborn

we must perforce become embedded in the universe

and, as ever, slip anonymously

through this unfinished darkness…