Next come the perforated pages
This then at the end
Of the certainties so to speak
On a blue sky day
Yet without the bands of joy
Instead the notes
Fall, one by one
From Vienna or Havana
With summer coats
For the one by one
From Sienna or Copacabana
Next come the perforated pages
Pasted down through the ages
With the sure-fire certainty
Of a blue sky day
As you have been there
To have tasted the fruits
Of lascivious love
To have dwelled
As you have dwelled
On the mound
Of stupefied love
To have lain there
As you have lain there
In the sensual silence
Of the submission to love
To have smoked there
As you have smoked there
In the wondrous aftermath
Of the engagement of love
After a long time away
And with ink on my fingers
After refilling the pen
I feel a need to consent
To complete this book
Before I set out on my travels
Such that I might
Take the third book with me
Second is an odd place
Not a cherished space
In any of the sports
Which I practiced
And so with this book
Neither one thing
Nor the other
Just more scratching
On the recycled paper
As one listens
To the angelic chorus
Nowhere is where I need to be
To find the nothingness
Which faces the life inside of me
Nothing sets me free
Such as the emptiness
Of simply being able to see
To see that peaceful calm
Which exists, as if by the trees
Out in the meadows
Or playing in the stream
Where light-hearted
Tenderness sets the scene
Finding memories, once seen
Never to be forgotten
What can it mean
This nothingness, filled
With the emptiness to be
I am that other person
Writing a biography
Of the life which I lived
If you wish to call that
An autobiography
Then that’s fine by me
But don’t go on about it
Because there isn’t time
Not even for those of you
Who were inkwell monitors
Or those of you who remembered
Using inkwells, to make
Blotting paper bombs
For shooting across the classroom
On to the teacher’s blackboard
Whilst the teacher’s face
Was focussed on the chalk spot