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Nicolas Spicer

WINTER BOOK, IMPERFECT

…connections proliferate apparently at random, that is to say with equal verisimilitude, apparently in response to some ferocious ordering principle, not controlled by conscious intention…

(A. S. Byatt, Possession)

               There would have been things to say, quietness
                   That could feed on our lust, refreshed
                   Trivia, the occurrences of the day;
                   And at night, my tongue in your furrow.
                   (Geoffrey Hill, ‘From the Latin’)

This nakedness on its original ground
duplicated, given removed precision,
sensations close to sacral dimples, lower
                     edges blurring, other zones;
that is, the prospect in the apparent frame
outlined by fingers made it an art, that’s nice,
returned from delighted to taken that’s a
                      touch, reduced to a system:
beauty makes no promises it can believe
in windows, forgive the intrusion, I was
remembering pleasure like pain, not at all
perfectly honest you wouldn’t like it much,
                       so when this is fading, say
that; because we can only be so happy.

(3-11/10/09, after Magritte: ‘La condition humaine’)

¶

I breathe on you for a reason not to talk
clearly the weather is changing, might as well
command the clouds conceal your automatic
language of contempt,

up there where the climate happens, if you would
listen to what I mean not what I’m saying:
most people want tomorrow to be about
the same as today.

(11-13/10)

¶

You might wake up in this dream unable to remember what it was
                         leaving the city for, certain a reason exists,
and get on the train for the motorway services at the border
                         when all I can do is explain, the shopping got done,
although only less silence would make it any more than a gesture,
                         somewhere, from that other world of order, there are doors.

(14-15/10)

¶

after our holiday developing each
black and white negative / absolutely is
           fixing on a promise to forget
           it all / the exact circumstances

being different then I would never / it is
vitally unimportant then I would not
          necessarily declare myself
          thoughtful / enough to be alone with

a sense of touch complete with no pictures / please
remember sometimes the camera shakes and there
          goes focus / your posture discomposed
          limits the ambiguity is

(15-21/10)

¶

Otherwise, we would perfect
angles of speech at evening
and curve towards dawn, making
lurid sleep
coincident with the frame;

but enthusiasm can’t
replace pictures that useful,
beautiful,
something said, if, as it were
for writing not for reading;

a script about distances
                       brought in close.
No discernible pattern
organised our seeing as
ever, there are rules for this:

                       what happens,
happens; what has happened stays
happened. Whatever happened,
I was unaware I was
                        the author.

(27-29/10)

¶

Brilliant mistake, that nonsense for today
means to keep a circular reading polite
cadences show it is better to be kind,
not easy: to open breathe in error and
                     I have a little nothing
speaking for myself, settled at would it bear
silver and gold or singular fruit, but weigh
around an unexpectedly small amount.
                     You are exacting I am
occasional, we make our distinctions, not
                      real in any useful sense,
when truth is a question, as inflections are
answers we act about their absence, what
becomes of the content lying in our gift?

(29/10-5/11)

¶

This is what I do instead of communicating
            anyway, touching on you in the blind room
to ask about later; are we then so tentative
           a device to create unexpectedness

You wouldn’t even notice if you were someone else
           participates in a metaphor, mutters
everything remembered; and the answer, the answer
           flirts with sentiment. With incoherence. Flirts.

(25-26/11)

¶

Somewhere this is snow

down gravity when
           you are
just disappearing
again and always
           I say
past contradiction:

what forces involve
          you come
here will be a cold
time for everything
          I know
about music, dumb
past stupid o’clock.

           We turn
past keeping and freeze
on impact, singing
           was I
present, no damage
done without silence
        you said.

(1-7/12)

¶

            The surface renewed with signatures
posed against it, professor of languages
            not mine, but in a few sentences

my name and your name erase themselves, printing
            bodies without recalling their heat
to the screening process christened memory,

            teach us in silence a quality
less than we wanted, as for appearances
            the tongue was granted revelations;

now it is cooler I do not understand
            better than that exposure: come here,
bend over this, put your hand there, use your mouth.

(11/1/10)

¶

so I can’t see the shadows for the patterns of light
and you advance / a new way to be invisible
blocked out / this to remember / memory is a lie
distorting illumination by incremental
principles of leverage / now another final
moment twisting / over power / at crooked engine
time machines at the rate of a second a second

(12-14/1)

¶

I have an affection for
the grey days, when it’s warmer, and consider
fog an essential blanket (story-shaped
towers and alleyways starting out of it,
expressing their lean vernacular that has
no use for a winter sun), spreading diffused
light on divisions of style so all the buildings
appear in their simple forms.

But then, the elements shone:
frost was blossoming on the windows, glinting
icicles grew on the cars across the road
like I was telling this story, and then like
a simile it came to me: I love you
means that I want you to flourish, whatever.

(15-17/1)

2010