1
          And what of the cessations

the early heart never saw? Saying nothing

of the quick brown typist nor with curly hair

if possible. It does not so become him these

days, that constant glow, the moments

here of silence    there of tacit after-words.

Pull free instead the door    inside the door

pull free the view    a page down  with the

glimpse of her (just faintly underlined) as

far as, still, so far   his dreams once more

these distant, beckoning visions of will be

stretched across the oblong frame. Nothing

likely soon enough who sees his studio,

          his single bed, how apt.
                              He moving back to

                    the misery aspect of

                              the lyric poem.
          2
          Drift back to Ada

the imagined palindromic act.

His face pressed hard against the

she reflection—a mirror once

pertaining to his life. He taken back

again to poetry    words coming

back to him, like has to be, like

words that lie beneath him pressing

forward gently in a not too quickly

saddened love.    She nestling in

the countryside accelerator.

The poem, yes. Confessions in

a half-filled room.    A superfluity

          of like and as.
                              Not like now, those days—

                    long conversations in smoke.

                              Blue-grey exchanges.
          3
          He repositions himself,

ahem, bound with Anna’s hair.

Your hair, he says, is wicked, as

they say. In fact it’s been a wicked

evening. Or as they used to say

a the evening. Though you being

young may not remember  as,

these days, no-one recalls Ava’s

feather trick. But take my word, the the

was the look then, among the attributes

of the 1960s. She has the    the the girl

embodying the article as once did

the pronoun it    and he suddenly unsure—

          was his, the his?
                              Had she ruined him?

                    Was that it? Who had seen life

                              come to him, poor man?
          4
          And then the sudden

Eve idea—a they. And then

the sudden library. A room

whose shelves hold an equivalence

of silver-fish. So where does he

stand now? A Nightwood caught

out too late for the truly Modern?

Hears himself, says, I can only

say that I had the, then feared the,

was brought low by the. His hopes,

who gave his … his own, something

from the anything. The machine

silent again and the little his

          fallen just like that.
                              More so than ever

                    it had vanished. Everything

                              suddenly ago.
          5
          with she already late, having

‘slept’ till three because of ‘dancing’.

He realising too late he was yet again

on a beginning he should not have been.

Words come to him from earlier speeches

words like has to be, words that lie beneath,

laid bare, pressing forward, an example of,

a case of.    With the forgotten silverfish

well into Remembrance of Things Past

and she too young to remember. Voices

calling from memory an imagination of

found her at the nothing of had. Besides.

His answer still that she    the tiny noise

          hidden in the ball of twine.
                              These imaginings

                    linked together long enough

                              to become history.