Saturday 7 May 2016

from Blackwater Quartet, selection 98



Speed of Sound

Invent the day. The cirrus tendrils, miles
high over London, replicate a Crick-
and-Watson spiral. Fisheye lens profiles
the sky’s effect, compressed, a wide-shot trick
that squashes the horizon, pulls cowlick
clouds tight into a future weather. Days
of anticyclone spin spin-out. Clichés
of barometric
Zeitgeist pepper streets
from Islington to Peckham. Take my hand:
in us a chain of circumstance completes
a journey hailed from taxis in the Strand.
In forty-four the V-2s’ tons of canned
explosive showered in from Europe— bright
light, followed by the sound of rocket flight.

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