You kiss me on the platform
And the world rights itself;
In the time taken for my breath
To escape into yours, the two
Are inseparable.

There is an interlude where the trees
Suddenly discontinue, the land you had half
Interpreted is transferred from behind glass
To brickwork, a liminal point
The engineer has created without knowing;

Each window becomes a screen trained
Inward, our responses reflected for observation,
Though we are no closer,
Waiting for a cue to enter
Back into the shift of ignorable country,

A sloping bank or cluster of mountains,
The biggest of the pack, whose name
We would not care to remember,
Continuing as a constant to link
Us back, or suggest home.

Already the features have exchanged
Accents, a switch at the border,
And language moves from hand to hand,
Remodelled with the speaker’s preference,
An interrupted call is re-established;

The train frees itself at the same speed,
Returning to the set-up you expect,
But it tricks you; in the dark so many things
Altered infintiesimally, here and elsewhere,
With the echo you have always been listening for.

From above, one bulb can measure the zones
Left empty, inactivity making them cold to enter.

We tell more than either can know,
Relaying signals from one point of intersection

To another, informed of each tremor made
By our own scale, the proximity

We focus toward
Or distance we accept;

Any night, one might face the blank wall,
Following a single crack escalating

Like a fracture, as if searching
For something unexpected;

Laid parallel, another is opened to the outside,
Guessing the furniture out of the dark,

Though each is found equally alien,
Equally unreadable;

To attempt it, both can turn
Inward, the decision leaving

Two columns unoccupied for the centre
Mark of sheltered heat,

The willingness to know another
As you scarcely know yourself,

And like this, by instinct,
You find my hand.

We walk together,
Reaching a stony watch-point,
Unfolding ourselves.

At intervals along the drained shore,
Settled to stasis between tidal shifts,
A vacated shell suggests a little
Of the life that gave it up,

Materials bartered for a slow flame
Exhale finally, having collected something of those
Centred around their debris and smoke,
Clinging to fibres, singling them out.

A switched perspective lowers the landmarks
To a framework, allowing us to isolate
The stretch of beach where our
Footprints shorten gradually,

Marking our transience
In a network of shingle and stone,
Where all points here;
To what we are, or might be.

I have made my report;
And each recipient, in a singular way,
Has become responsive to you,
Can listen for your breath,
Its slow distinctions and variants,
Or expect a look I know you by
To greet them at the crossing,
On the platform, at the door.

You’re circulating from synapse to synapse,
The reader using up their guesses
To flesh out a detail, to pinpoint you
As you were then, rendered in symbols
We understand separately;
Rebuilt on each self-sustaining word,
Two likenesses, vulnerable and open as we were,
Will occupy a room that is nothing like ours.

Through my eyes or yours,
The rain sways above water,
Seeking completion.

I turn my pockets onto the table,
Going about making myself transparent;
Restless as a book of matches, struck in order,
Their bright fulfilment following one
After another, or as water in its single-mindedness
Turns the rocks onto their backs to see under.

There is no merit in disguise;
I open my hand to face you,
Its breaks and lines knotted
To a cohesion, a print becoming
Recognisable; you will decide
If it is full or empty.

I listen for the lives acted out above our heads,
Loosening the snow into narratives,
The sky projected, white on white, developing
The city from its side like a print.

I search the arch of your back behind one window,
Drawing out its firm certainty, a point of contact
Indented like brail, learning each hollow syllable
To retrace and repeat; and everything other continues

As it does, on to outcomes we might guess at
Or worry over, carry like a secret weight,
Until the palm opens, and the chest,
And your place in their focus keeps us linked.

No longer an ‘I’,
All past and future dissolves;
We live breath by breath.

Like an instinct hushed under the everyday,
It leaves you as simply as anything is glimpsed,
Not as reductive as pulling one fractured
Suggestion from any other, or the eye
We take as an instrument, its gradual decoding
Amounting to guesswork; head out, intrigued,

To the re-reading of an upturned mirror,
Where the stones mark the shore
In their stoic poise, allowing you to fathom
Their cool firmness, the tide beating and always
Without motive; be mindful that this cannot outlive you,
The water and the light returning you whole.

We set out into the an altered geography,
Reclaiming terrain with the imprint
Of our broken down shoes, their steady caution,
If only to show someone had stirred,
That tracks could be followed,
Then or later, to the same place.

Our feet took to the firm bonds of its surface,
A white density packed tight,
Except at a contour point, giving way
To the pressure of human weight,
Leaving your gloved hands outstretched
Into emptiness, forgetful of feeling.

Pulling a self from the buried ground
Is how this has become, my strength with his;
Then, it was simple, we sculpted loose layers
Of snow drift to a spherical wholeness,
Which always found its target, and, for a moment,
Was like holding the frozen world.

‘The proposition is a picture of reality.’ - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Pinpoint the readiness of a public place
To extinguish us from its habit,
Noting how simply we are removed
From its changing register,
Our inferences preserved longer
Than we were ever there.

*
Have her leave, again and then again,
Fabricating a response to that final
Fitting release, before the slammed door,
The clashing of her footsteps prolonged
On the absolved stones, so that the street itself
Seems to continue, solidified at second glance.

*
Find the exposed warmth which fills your own,
Recognisable as what the concept, when learned,
May have meant, in that crossed divide
Between one self and another;
See how the word is secondary, testing
The weight of your breath, and circling upward.

continued as if photographed;
A light had grown steadily at the window,
The outlook blurred by rain.

The birds furthered their exchange,
Their dipping pronouncements
Understood as belonging.

There is a trace, becoming tactile enough
That it is almost held, or brought out,
Clinging to the lives of objects.

All the time, our movements indicate
A separateness which is never grasped,
But stretches and stretches,

Until, with the room ordinary and
Undisturbed, I remake the imprints
The bed keeps in our absence.