for Matthew Hall, after reading ‘High Pink on Chrome’ by J. H. Prynne
 

Light glancing off polished steel.

                        Steam, petrol, adrenaline in the air.

            Surfaces – skin, metal, language – 
                                    all the muscle implied by them.

This wreckage of disciplines –

                        impossible to tell which vehicle 
            is which, and if this is a problem

                                    of language or vision.  The perspective

from within a dim, unplaced room.  
                        The “accident” glimpsed through bent

            horizontal blinds – lines of poetry

                                    from 1975, still warm. Tucked into 
deep folds of grammar – knives.

                        You could have but didn’t call

            the poet ‘seminal’, the word too much
                                    rooted in the historical, sexual to be

of more use than the impact itself.

                        Reading a photocopy, I’m jolted
            by the motion of the last train

	                        home, someone shouting into

a mobile, another – one bare foot – 
                        burping through three litres of cola,

            the rest of us facing each other like in-

                                    determinate alternatives, swaying
and blinking into the night. The edge

                        of the palm of your hand that keeps

            appearing in the margins is 
                                    to me the key to the long poem.