J.O. Morgan 

Translator

The idea is to cover up what may be profitable, to cloak;
resulting in a slow and heavy smog that smooches
close around the prize. Thus, we have these pools;
their beds of smoothed obsidian. Is it here to which
the goldbugs crawl that we so love to chase?

I am convinced. I must conclude. I know,
by flipping up a single carapace (the beetle part cut out),
inverted, still it retains that iridescent sheen;
its fault-lines already founded. It could be

a bowl: the gap between its wings well-grouted; or, upended,
a simple hill: climbed for the sake of it being there to climb.
Yet, if upended once more, will offer of itself
some gloomy presence nestled neatly in its hollow cup.

Its name of pool defines its emptiness, just as the pupil
is but the black hole through which all light poured in
is quickly deadened, can't escape; so
every risk that drips into these pools is dwindled, is
leached out, through yet further pin-pricks, hidden in the base.

The second of my dancing bears would run half-marathons.
Like Laokoon, he had his life wrapped up in bonds
yet twitched to lift his paws, testing each in turn,
struggled to start as the beat kicked in,
tentative, shifting his weight from foot to foot;

his arm slipped round the small of my back, digits pushed
through downy fur, his hat flopped over one eye,
his waistcoat: fallen open, exposing the bulge of his belly,
the soft pink that I felt I knew so well.
  –
The second of my dancing bears
left his children far behind him
when his greed poured
ruthless through the ring;
his pride gone down the plug-hole;
apart from the tail he'd tied on tight,
that I just gently tugged...

This second dancing bear lost everything;
a ceaseless flow of memories, collected
in conical flasks, to fizz, to be re-drunk
no faster than the rate of their flowing back out;
he paled, at length forgetting even who he was.
  –
My own thoughts returned to the first.
My mind had never stopped missing the first.
My memories yet hazy over
what he knew I had not ever known.

The first of my dancing bears stayed always one step ahead.
The first of my dancing bears was a superior sprinter.
The first of my dancing bears slipped from his skin
in some far away land  –  showed himself to be no bear at all.

We had long sewn up all our wounds,
not got further than the two-hundred-day-mark;
our coded cries soon swallowed in the woods.

All summer we'd lain nestled like spoons, my first bear
and I, in the long meadow-grass around the public pool,
his stubble catching the soft skin of my hollows;
his roughness, archived, knew not how to recognise the sun.
 –
As such a glitch grew up within the graph.
The guidelines fell away, exposing the fault.

I thought: it must be over.
I thought: now I will dance.

I have not the strength to call up any more bears.

Is there still some landscape we may flatten out?
Do things endlessly progress towards some distant singularity?
bit by bit stripped back towards the radioactive core?

Who sits helpless at the control-desk as commands buzz overhead?
What special needs, what interests, are here being pursued?
Is there an ulterior plan? a last ditch bid for influence?
some blindly-led stampede around the ocean's inner rim?

Lines of coding lick towards the cliff-tops; out
of the submerged maw, lodged under the withered fig.
Rows of long white teeth, tall needles, flash
like ever spinning newsreels, running
loop on loop around the distant ring of coast.
 –
The blueprint of this crisis is elastic. It expands,
forms a net; the small catastrophe: enmeshed. Those little
silver fishes, writhing, wriggling on the deck. Their vicious kiss.

The potent shoot of some restorative herb
is winged our way; though which wings
will be liquidated first? The birds
that skim the sea-foam: atomised.
How-high must tsunami rise before
they cease to be no more than paddle-pools?
 –
Are not all the oceans one construct of flexible steel
upon which rigid millions
swerve their sloops through charted orbitals?

Who now fits the bridle round his boat
and gambles on sails as on a horse's mane?

Who raises tissue-paper-banners, only to jab
a lance-tip through the heart of the controls?
 –
Have we a primal claim to riddling?
exclaiming what we should have asked outright.
Was our initial stake secured
with more than mono-filamented thread?

Have we received the gross returns from such smugness?
peeled the wet cagoule from our pre-bought enlightenment?

Each pressure-point: no more than a groove,
a notch along the length of the measuring-stick.
Falls of black light make visible the blink
of warning alarms. Skin-inked graduations through which
we negotiate the staunchly patriotic frame of mind. While
your aura stays trapped; cannot be allowed out to play.
  –
Who are those people that we meet through sleep?
And was it me who denied the crowd  –  just enough
to keep my distance from the group?
   
Do you stand yourself at the tip of the monster's tail?
teeter over years of indecision? Have we wasted
all that time? given that the monster's now long dead.

Your scanning of my substance gives me sight, though I cannot see you.
Your body as I build it remains unresolved. I own you only
when you stay in view. Move outside the field of vision to take yourself back.

In your scanning of my multi-conduits have you accounted for what's me?
have you codings set aside for counting sheep? have you considered every possibility?
Am I a member of your misdirected flock? an aspect of your unwiped history?

In searching for me how do you begin? what factors feed your set parameters?
Do you check through all my boxes? do you check the writing on the wall?
Can you patch my filters? are you even aware of my default stance?

You cannot know me from my voice; my voice is no great guide.
To recognise is not to comprehend my subtleties. I nullify
your force with iron resolve. I so adore you. I adore you as a composite –  
the sum of my intent towards your grandiose ideal; my saviour

a mere simulacrum. All my wishes you have rearranged. My death
you have suspended (on at least point two occasions); you suspected
my disinterestedness. Please light my way. Please let me
learn to know you. Thy will must be done. All trespasses forgiven,
even ours, even though I forgive not the slightest thing;

nonetheless – never leave me alone.

Essentially this board exists without strict boundaries, yet
inconsequential rivulets escape through unseen rifts;
as if its edges had not been well sealed; its sides: all split;
where a fluid forms through seepage; an open possibility
of unintended self-accumulation, let out
as loneliness: reveals its oily presence drop by drop.

There must be a point where a single drop is destined
to become full fluid. Is this new liquidity a trade-off
with the fractional factor triggering the change? something
as small as a full-stop to hold us hovering, in limbo,

suggesting I desire some thing. I must take: this one glimpse
at my boots, bend, shiver, collapse; the eye must, for us,
stroke the supple suede on which in hindsight we may ascertain
desires. Although the price stays hid throughout the process.

To know cost stunts excitement in the game. Still you play
too. You dish out from this board indiscriminately, indifferently;
(while I crouch, crooked, underneath  –  posting up your magic rabbit skins)
neither can you tell its length, breadth, depth. All that gets sorted later.
Later, every body counts. The nature of the coins? irrelevant. Some one must pay.