The Point of No Return, c1984, 213 x 180cms, oil on canvas.

VII. The Point of No Return

What dark Seigneur will harvest the hot dream sheaths of night?

Hear the rush of that tenebrous bloody descent. Loop upon loop of Moebius lassoes these bushels of purpling darkness. They mark the zone where Proserpine pines. Seriously long in the Underworld she’s longed for Ceres.

In dream I hitch to my shouldered pole a fruit tropical and gorgeous. I fade before my commodity, and parade her likeness modestly so you don’t see her bearer – only her hoisted singularity, her crested prickliness.

In the underworld shadows speak with more resonance and less realist pretence. A pineapple crown descends in nuanced ghostliness as I cast the dice of failure – I could never have you taste her searing sweetness. To chase the phantoms of that painter’s hubris is my success.

And feel how Hades’ night unravels its gift in great scrolling loops. Darkness pours festively upon us, but is corrosive on the gallery walls.

And all the while, hitched only by wild hope and daring, the pineapple parades its sure crown between the realms of Hades and Ceres, buoyant and weightless.

The whole window sill and pillar are by greedy darkness gobbled. Triumph of the tropical, trope of my dreaming desire! In the passage of my dissolution I am most joyous – look to the lower left and see the glory of my illusion’s demise.

Icarus could not have bettered this sunset.