Nothing from the old -
Is that what I’m to learn?
That the old pages must be burned
and I must step out new
onto these harsh white spaces
held only by the thin grey feint?

Not held.
But swinging out, over the caverns
of all the people I ever was.
Not knowing if the rope will hold
into who I might become.

Lift me up.
Absorb me.
Soak me in inky questions.

Somehow I need to climb down
from the parapet of ambition
into the cheese factory of my life
where the tea-cosy sheds shreds of faded silk,
the gas fire hisses
and the traffic is a distant roar.

8 March 2004