After these years

of trillion transformations

I'll find myself wandering,
seeking a new form.

My bodiless eyes
will grow accustomed to phantoms
and colours that don't exist.

I'll wear the ghosts of my hands and hair.
I'll walk on the ghosts of my feet
along immaterial highways —

counting as I go unearthly trees
that flower and fruit
berries embedded in whorls of thorns.

Will I meet ogres? Angels? Stars?
Spirits from abandoned temples?
Megafauna of unborn planets?

I'll taste the fruit of the ghost thorn tree.
Its juice runs redder than my dead heart.

I'll remember it beating
the measure of my years
in my evanescent chest
at the centre of my flame.

Illumination

Un verre d’eau éclaire le monde

                                          Jean Cocteau 

A clean gleam —
the world is washed
upside-down in a tumbler.

A branching tree
climbs and delves
a perfect round.

A sheer aubade —
a host of parallels —
hallows the sky

and still I rise
up among the steeples,
gleaning meanings

and mirrored vigils.
All the streets and buildings
are jumbled sigils

swimming in a tremble
on the table-top.