Christopher Kelen
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A Cemetery in Macao downwind of the confusion in
words everything forgets itself rhythm slips adrift of a
passion beggars by the walls burn
time rattle their cups for a part of the
mechanism * is there an invisible
world? today there’s fast food in
Elysium you queue through the
smoke the inmates here like
postage stamps (heroic commemorations each unique of other world
that was) black and white each life as an unanswered
question as the past must be for we who live beyond it
this was their country we are the patriots now though only in the odd
moment chosen in which they keep, we
are kept like so many clocks which have stumbled from
time * you’ll say each death must lie in open arms read over till the book
lulls sleep but they are the market
crowd arrested unspeakable alone the single bulb which lit
their stairs now guttered lies where everything is full of
gods * past doddery
last days, grown dim a ghost will follow its
own belongings I
imagine the lost here on the bus with me crossing the bridge these
thousand years wherever I lead all bloody brides, grisly
artisans purveyors of trinkets can’t be retrieved it’s habit brings them
back to the picture back through the smoke to
the colours we see this whole land
an altar at the gate of the kingdom mirage like the petrol smell of
new places *
when I get off the bus the rain waits for me I
must as I am bid accompany rattle of the coffin or mocking gods’
orchestral works everything falls out clouds are broken
the old ships sweat home the street is a cauldron to these tangents people lie under the
singsong sea these credulous we love and whom no argument
requires once they cared
and made their difference now we do it
all for them
where curses lie heaped but harm’s past
intending now they obey, and if not,
does it matter? feel the gentle
rocking of the wash
under all traveller, be wearied the country of the
culpable is far across the border |