Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Saving
- Out of this World
- Observatory
- Zentralfriedhof
- How to Remember
- Europe
- What's Gone Blue
- Plain Tongues
- As the Crow Flies the Sun Rips Day Open
- Boy
- The Roof
- Eva Braun in Linz
- Yellow
- My Girl in California
- St Peter
- The Soldiers
- Palace
- Outside Vienna
- Neutral Air
- Woman
- How to Forget
- The Sound
- In Time
- The Lever
- Fourteen Mistakes
- The Fall
- The Hold I Have
- Centre Strange
- Born Breathing
- The Heads
- Home
- Epilogue
- Maker
- Acknowledgements
Observatory
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Saving
- Out of this World
- Observatory
- Zentralfriedhof
- How to Remember
- Europe
- What's Gone Blue
- Plain Tongues
- As the Crow Flies the Sun Rips Day Open
- Boy
- The Roof
- Eva Braun in Linz
- Yellow
- My Girl in California
- St Peter
- The Soldiers
- Palace
- Outside Vienna
- Neutral Air
- Woman
- How to Forget
- The Sound
- In Time
- The Lever
- Fourteen Mistakes
- The Fall
- The Hold I Have
- Centre Strange
- Born Breathing
- The Heads
- Home
- Epilogue
- Maker
- Acknowledgements
Summary
Across from the observatory,
under cream cloud, what is it
death does when it undoes–the gradual unravel of a brain,
or a switch's flick to click off thought?
Before me, I love the muddy canal,
love the fact that before Dante
enters Hell he meets a leopard.
I see leaves and a giant lamp
made to resemble the moon. Hung above
the observatory. Clouds pull in more clouds.
How easy it is to glance and see nothing. How easy to spend
our time puzzling how to spend our time.
Young boys run past, serious for their bodies,
and in a breath of heat and sweat they're gone.
Night comes for the ten thousandth time, sky growing
muddy with cloud, light squeezed out.
Are you there, a man says into his phone.
A magnificent storm is coming.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nowhere Nearer , pp. 4Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018