arrivée d’un départ

Today it is yesterday in America. The wine we drank is all run away into the channels of the flesh. An ashtray of butts with gold writing on them, under the Christmas tree, for just a moment longer. Then they'll be gone too. Which indefatigable graffitist inscribed the black line down the centre of each lane at the pool with cock and balls? Three round strokes with a texta, then the slit for the glans, over and over. Why no vulva? A shimmer of amazement when the sun comes out, filling the blue water with gold spangles. I don't know where you are, just somewhere in America. I don't know when you are. The day after tomorrow feels too long ago for wonder; yesterday like a future lost forever. Now is only a breath after all. The wine … the smoke that drifted up from cigarettes … smell of pine mingled with nightsweet, with frangi-pani … dumb shouts in the street … health that is like an affliction, affliction that is like memory, memory like a stone, stone like water, water like … nothing. Sometimes at night, when the small brown stars wheel overhead, I rise above all this and see the brightdark line of sun shadow fleeing towards us, gold spangled, across the blue Pacific, leaving America with all its yesterdays and tomorrows dark and bright behind it. Then day arrives, an absence enclosing a presence, waiting to be called.