for Arjen Duinker
 
1
Christ Child with Whirligig (Bosch)

twirling until Kingdom Come.
The Word is like the hold of a ship:

Heemskerck, its timbers
shivering in a spring tide, heavy

with antiques from the New World.
 
	*
 
Batavia – a rainstorm drowns out talk of borders, where

fungi phosphoresce for our Lord.
Horses lose their shoes, carts

capsize as we ford the Almighty’s deeper
meaning. Wood holds onto the nail’s faith, wood

splinters on the nail’s dogma.
Paradise is here, between the thighs of a slave,

the taste of sea mixed with sky …
 

	*
 
Existence is useless

unless you are a hammer – still
you need someone to pick you

up. The hammer ignores the nail –
they both rust but not equally

because nothing is equal; they are still
becoming nothing.
 

	*

 
Absence makes the heart go

nowhere. Near the clearing, never
in. To revere is to fear

the empty
when all’s said and undone.
 

	*

 
The hand that grabs at air

vanishes.
A net of names

drops into the illiterate sea.
The ambition of blood to overcome

ambition.
An arrowhead of cormorants

strikes the horizon.
The hand that grabs at water

evaporates.
 

	*

 
The waves are available to all.

They do not discriminate.
The king also goes

under
for the third time, three

being the number of the unseen
One who wills but will not

intervene –
even to direct the dove.
 

	*

 
But a wing must scan the air,

counting
time. And the sky is held

accountable
by the wing, as the sailor

and the wave
beat one another.
 

	*

 
The ship needs the sea.

The sea does not need the ship.
The bird needs the mast.

The mast does not need the bird.
 

	*

 
Atlantic, rain on the palm of your hand,

salt in the crease of your thighs.
Pacific, the palm of your hand salty

in the crease of your thighs. Rain.
 

	*

 
Father is away on business, Mother

late. The birds are not of this world,
you hear them when you stop

listening. Every ship that ever set
misread the sextant, steered

beyond the known, the named, making
landfall on a beach of bones.
 

	*

 
The solar system is a bangle

on the ankle of a god. Shells

inlaid on its rim, our hopes

shine for half the time, time
being illusory yet

divisible. What will we find, losing
our lives to endow museums?

“Provenance unknown.”
We thought of ambition as our rudder,

it is an anchor that drags …


 

	*

 
The Word was not ready yet

the devil was a tailor
double-stitching Dutch sails

with Cain’s sinews.
A dove is not a god but

a dove with a sprig is godly.
The explorer draws his chart

on water, concentric
circle after circle …

In the centre his ship of bones.
 

	*

 
To port the sign of the fish

rather than fish.
A wreck becoming coral,

the cross on all fours.
 

	*

 
What was horizon presses

blood from the genitals.
This is love, the last

commandment: the tongue of a bell
fracturing air. There

the promissory note of the choir,
the cry of the godforsaken gull

swooping on a fish-head
left in the wake of a waka.
 

	*

 
The sea monster was Appetite: it annexes

common from sense, stripping
prayers then oaths from master and mate –

they go down before the roaring
lord of savages, hermit crabs, and vitrines. Heads cracked

open, hold the Great Southern Land.
 

	*

 
There’s a lot of space

left. We claim that space in the name of.

We use the voice of a futures broker –
it is an anachronism

and we own that anachronism.
When we said bread we meant hunger.

When we heard men we thought women.
When it grew dark we cried
Hallelujah! the night is ours.

Soon the stars will be beneath us.