When Two Worlds Collide
Poems by Michael Symmons Roberts (2005)
Civilisations swell and fall. They know this.
Cities burn back to the earth’s rind,
or blow empty in a sandswept waste.
Some fold into the oceans as they rise.
A city’s soul – its ether life of voices,
texts and images – dies when it does.
Sun plays with angles on the ruins,
but not a scrap of matter will be lost;
all weight returns to light, dust, heat.
And somewhere underground great silent
halls are stacked with airless jars of gems:
the crimson ones are skipped beats,
blues are held breaths, vows magenta,
curses curled like gold leaf, delicate as flames.
When we broke the paper walls we fell
and knelt before an army set in glass.
Men had been scanned - scalp to sole,
a hundred slices - cross-sections
as snapshots of a moment’s heat, flow, beat;
each image set in plate glass, then the men
rebuilt like spectral mummies, packed in ice,
held captive in an agony of light.
Some said this was a tomb of kings in vitro,
others said a freak show or a temple.
In truth, these men were killers,
and their colours are a road map of the soul,
a hall of infamy that shows – if only we
could read it - how evil prints into the body.
So this is beauty, beyond sleep, her lovers
long since forked into the soil. Her bed
is dust, but she has cheated death, distilled
into a thousand drops of sweat. Some magic
holds her prone in air forever,
like a photo of a chandelier in free-fall.
She hangs – a conjurer’s assistant - weighted
to perfection, waiting for the trick
to end. Clad in aqua binary - space, drop, space -
she once wore finery, perhaps a crown.
A single touch could break the tension
and reduce her to a pool. For touch, read kiss.
Her heart – a rare black truffle -
Is a paperweight on some remote king’s table.
Failed Knowledge and the "Respect for Otherness"
in Marilène Oliver's "Le Grand Jeu"
Essay by Jeanette Winterson (2003)