Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

because it is
     hidden,
secret (geheim),
                  & all traces
of it
     impenetrable,
           distant,
like sirens
          blissfully
                         sounding in the dark,
what enters
              so assiduously
                            broken
is also
              what ends—the enforced meaning
(Stop! Police!—how it enters the fray)
              after all
                            no one really knows
                                          what words want
                                                      (these songs wearing peasant shoes
              on strange stumpy legs):
the scattering
              random, bloodstained
                            & everyone running in the streets

as someone
              hears it
                            once again
(the unluckiest brightlit arrangements
                            of burnt ships fired into flame!)
              as it enters
                            the bones
                                          like a harmony
                            that awaits
              you
                            & everything
                                          just chokes
the world
     assiduously
   gasping for
                            air
                                    amid the noise
                              of infantries
                                          (clouding
                                                      all sense),
the unbridled rush
              to find them
     assiduously
   gasping for
                            air
                                    -     like barricades unveiled -
     on video
              after the briefest
                              command – Run –
is impeded
     by the wild,
              intemperate
     meandering
              of silence and sex
   & the big foaming
              mouth
     announces that every rib
              is cracked
                                          again
                            by the haute volée
                                          of each utterance
              when being
                            human
   involves just listening
     to the rain (the revenge of elegies),
              & mastery is just
            the impermanent, briefest
     of rests
     in desperate resorts
where we know it all ends
   & I am you
     & each wishful
moment
            is a decapitation,
              a thought
                            that twists
              because what it notices
  it no longer lives,
& it is impossible
     to say
          no, too soon
& how
              suddenly
                            (the sea burns,
drowned
   parched by flame), & someone beckons

   & reminds you
    that each gathering
      is a celebration
     of the already dead
and
 each word
  matters
less than
 it should,
  (the hard facts
   fluttering
    like banners
     over bloodsoaked pavements)

& methinks
  there are years
   here
ranged like so many antlers,
 memories
  of cognac & latin,
as anarchists
  start slashing
 at pictures once again
  & you cut here and here
   the asymptotic glimpses
 of the dark fluent sequels
    in Berlin, London,
      & at the great gates
         of Ishtar
where all the shrouds
 are veiled -
   which can only mean
      that life is a Fälle (a theatre)
or that someone
   (the wealthiest art lover)
has reached
  down
   into each word
and cut out
    the name of each cameo
or is it simply
   because I miss you
running
   through the rain-drizzled streets
  and all I have
   are
(clouds
  rioting
in dark, ancestral languages)

                 i.m. Sean Bonney