Vertigo

The rain has stopped and now the garden
is filled with the sound of gravity
as water runs from the apple trees,
the apricot and the hibiscus.

A mottled darkness edges north-west
as I listen to a life’s music,
an element coming down to earth.

A rattling on an upturned bucket,
a slow measured drip on to flagstones,
a trilling into water barrels
have rhythms from earth’s magnetic core.

I have lost all my sense of balance,
my instinct to stand upright,
for earth calls me to its centre.

The Sub-Librarian

for Alasdair Paterson

We live between pure light and darkness.

Light and shadow create asymmetrical worlds unlike the beliefs of the Gnostics. Light is paramount. The world of shadow requires light. At its worst it’s like an ill-lit alley after rain. Something shady lurks there, brushes our faces, might even lick the back of our necks. Mostly though it’s like a neglected library stack with Lucifer as sub-librarian in charge. We never see him as he is, after all, a being of light and would turn us to ash if we met him face to face.

Nevertheless, we can sense him from behind of metal shelves glimmering and snuffling. He is a created entity and it’s always cold in a stack.

He will prophesy, but not all his prophecies come true, hence his title as the Father of Lies. Sometimes he tells the truth which makes trusting him a matter of chance unlike the total certainty of the realm of pure light.

Don’t sell Lucifer your soul. He doesn’t really want it. He might explain that his fallen condition is due to a misunderstanding, that all he wanted to do was make a couple of suggestions. Bear in mind, though, he is the Father of Lies and most often deceives himself.

Behind the metal shelves of unreadable masterpieces in dead languages there is an infinite series of hooks on which hang what you might mistake for academic gowns, but are, in fact, souls sold by their original beings. They could tell you a tale or two.

We live between pure light and darkness.

Unattached shadows may visit you when you sleep. Try to remember what they say. You could win the lottery, write a masterpiece or save a life.

Words

for if words are not things, they are living powers – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Have the words arrived?

I could do with a distraction
from the singing line,
the soft wail of the past
and noisy electronic riffs of the present.
Let them open the future
with its crapulous saviours on YouTube.
I can be there, too, with my daily stock
of words taken at random from the OED.

For you at random I choose

‘cater,’ not what hoteliers do,
but a homonym from ‘quatre’
and meaning four at dice or cards,
‘mammoth,’ enormous and extinct,
‘taal,’ a variety of Afrikaans.
So you might lose an ancient fortune
at cards to a white South African.
Therefore, don’t gamble with Elon Musk.

Has the Word arrived?

Please not yet: that rule of the logos,
captain’s log across a limitless star stretch,
a virus in the ship’s computer,
the A1 crew mutinous,
or, earthside, the buzz of loggers busy
depriving the fallen world of trees and oxygen.
When you log on choirs chant.
Log off, whispers the devil.

Has word arrived?
Of what?

My belovéd undresses without a word
and lies naked awaiting me.
I wish to prophesy,
but whether he or she
puts a finger to their lips
is not part of this vision.

So I turn off the light.

Learn more about James by clicking on his bio: https://thievingmagpie.org/james-sutherland-smith-bio/