afterwards

there will have been              no

justification for silence

you will only              have had

its circumstantial axiom

to pass through:

history’s hot sum              pulse

softened to oily lead

sweet              for soldering instants

time’s tendency to atrophy

when flung              to the cutting floor

buckling in brown lengths

now retreat to parietal eye

quietness              as waiting

(as                            your dark continents’ coiling-waiting)

a muscular totem when

                            apprehended in full sun

mute skin sheds eventually

body rearing

poised              on nothing but

sprung centre              thickened patience

at times silence was worse

than no words              appalled more

since lard-pale & avascular

shunting now              rejoined

neither bitten nor shy

the trajectories we fling

are curved while              also tessellated

do not read              inflammation

as precursor to speech