Emporium by Ian Pindar Page A

life
    incomparable.
IV
    (So much leads to thinking otherwise.)
V
    The rubble of sundown is
    more than a way of commenting on
                the disease
                of civilisation.
                             In those long
    shadows I lost my voice. I
    lost the argument. My fingers slipped
    You lowered           so that
    The touch was
                                         and it excited us
VI
    Rooms and passageways.
    We need to find somewhere
    they cannot search –
    the provocation of
    a fire escape takes us
    down
    across town and
    away from the losses of the day
    the loosened thought of heat and
    nothing to say.

ADVICE FOR TRAVELLERS
    So she was left to dissolve under a starless
    heaven, reduced by perspective to something like
                 a stick,
    no ordinary suffering. 
    The machinery of mud is good at living
    with dead things. Bog angel with borrowed teeth and stones
                 for eyes,
    which close and listen for a voice 
    that doesn’t cry out. I don’t know how she got there.
    Did she even visit the nearby city,
                 each street
    arranged according to the movements 
    of celestial bodies, where twin pyramids
    keep twin volcanoes company? The sun rises
                 every day
    behind the temple, rain falls on
    the ancient mud gods and the locals hunt or make
    fire or love, depending on their fancy. It’s a
                 great place
    to shop for traditional items –
    necklaces of human teeth, the sacrificial
    harvest – and it’s fun to people-watch. Those people,
                 for instance,
    being led in procession:
                 at noon
    their blood will run in the streets. 

POEM
    When one god
    claimed to be
    the only god
    the other gods died
    laughing

WHAT IS THE MATTER?
    What is the
    matter?
    To speak of
    matter
    To speak in
    matter
    matter-word
    word-matter
    in matter
    matter speaks
    the Word 

ARCHAEOLOGIES
    Shell holes and standing water
                 Brown metal open to
                 the elements
    Empty barrels broken pails
    Corrugated iron weeds and silence
    The silhouette of a man
    hangs from a telegraph pole against a sky
        the colour of bile
    Silent electric wires lead
        nowhere
        and in the distance
    Rusted armaments puddles
    Train tracks
    Mud sucks on raw heels
    The distant waterfall calls us
    The constant sound of running water
                drips
                echoes
    Everything sweats
                with moisture
    In a clear stream
       a pocket watch among pebbles …
    ‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’
    Warming ourselves by this brazier
    Rolling cigarettes under the ruins drinking
               rosehip brandy
    Gold has no meaning any more than
    Charity
        We don’t drink
        the water
    Goldenhair crawling with lice
                              This leech on the back of my hand
    woke me I need a piss
    A woman cries out in the night …
    ‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’
    White stones worn smooth
    Smooth humps of vegetable matter
                                steaming from afar
    Weak sun of celebration
    Late flowers among nettles
    Pulling potatoes out of the peat
    Salted herring at noon
    This awful coffee
    Yesterday the heat
    The light receded the shadows tapered into long rays …
    ‘Hey you, do you know where we are?’
    How comforting a light in the darkness
                Any light
    Every fire is a woman – remembered desire
    We got the headlights working again but
    Nothing else then the headlights died …
    At dawn above the trees a
    Helicopter
    Doesn’t land
    Nor do we hail it
    Not knowing
    Where we stand

SNOW
    on a metal contraption of some kind
    erected in the woods, the height of a man, 
    can be knocked off with a black branch,
    revealing tiny rivets, a bolt or