Intimation

Can this write
the future,
its ooze and
stiffening. With

whom am I
speaking.
It sounds like a receiver
off the hook

a long time. It’s
weeping. And you can’t say please
stop to the
future, it will not

stop, it will
not stop
listening to you as you
approach it,

always clearer always
louder – please
stop listening
future, but no it does not

speak, it just
leans in a bit & hears us
as we come
towards it – & once you

think it you must
think it – there is no way
to recover what we were
before – it will not fade – it’s only a

thought but it will
not fade – unnerving me, its only
witness. I can touch
its grief. It’s cold

inside. Greetings it says. I’m
the next‐on thing. I’m already in
you. Don’t
worry. I think that’s it

opening its mouth
down there,
blurred,
awash in lessening,

green too
in spots,
make sure u find
the right spots,

sluiced-in, low,
envisioning rough air,
also less and less
wood water light …

Die deeper into it, I think,
every instant u must think
it, here it is
now, look

up, we have always
only just
arrived here, only
here, so what do you make of

it, this passage of
time – think it
gingerly – it’s
all we

have. All.
Now the bilge on the
dying water
makes its usual

rainbow & we
who are so used to the
damage, we
no longer see it, its

pot‐of-gold look,
its astonishing
benzene
making of this once‐clean sea

a softly roping
flower, a mouth of
pinks, where all
grows dead – sugary

uncoiling of molecules
where sultry greens & golds
write a message
on the waters

the waters cannot
receive.
Ooze the minutes.
Waste them. Be wealthy with

Lost time. The wind picks up.
Close the door.
Fall is slipping in. There is
still Fall. It shakes out

the air which had
just a moment ago been
midsummer-still.
And now here it is, a thin wire in it,

the tendency towards,
so faint, a smudge that also has
drive in it,
coming at you full steam like

a gash of
water burst from
the future,
pointed right at you,

aiming to wipe the place which is you – it is not
tentative –
completely clean
of you.