5 December 2023
‘these last strands’*
A brain the size of a peanut is better than none.
– Charles d’Appal
camp carrion
where new lives gender
squirming soil
with all the wants you could
predict
not wrought nor
contorted
nor thought
through
honey
nor a song
as from a stadium of tenor
robot choristers
nor from an island glimpsed
twixt sheeted sails and some
torn by the storm
just gone
dreadful as it was
for those who slowly
turn below
but we
from herculean exigency
bless the breeze that now doth stir
and breathe in deep before
we up the ante
* from ‘Carrion Comfort’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins