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
Saving
- 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
Any time there is a window, or a winter, or a news
report strung out to minute-by-minute;
Any time there is a letter, a philosopher, a question of
travel through time or Wien; any time there's a claim
we can learn to stretch our minds across the greys of this precise universe
which itself slouches in an infinite series
of likewise or elsewise universes;
Any time someone reaches down to pick up a copy
of the New Yorker, and it is March 2008, and this
gesture changes their whole-life-plan because of a poem
by W.S. Merwin which says (among other things) that all flowers are a form of water
and the whole world's burning;
Whenever our hands touch like swords
and we bow, either because we want
to obey the rules of combat
or because it might help to save our necks;
Whenever the blue hour;
Whenever fathers wait for children
to arrive on a plane
when even the 24 hour news cycle
has had to admit the story is over
with the wreck fished out
and no survivors;
Whenever I promise but send you nothing
what I am failing to say
is that some of the moments we cling to most
are the futures we never let happen.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Nowhere Nearer , pp. 1 - 2Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2018