What Moves You?

Prologue

An Address to the Sun:

one of twin beacons,

brightest of all stars—

look kindly upon our

labors, our straining towards

the sky so that

our fingertips almost reach

the clouds, your heat

engendering our growth,

verdant-green, crisply

new beneath

blue skies and

bless us with those

golden rays that draw up

flowers from the tiniest seeds

Part I

  

The New Eden

  

a-tilt we go, into the

wild blue, speeding to that

new Eden promised us in

papery tracts, rocking on

the green salt ocean, the snap of

the sails a crack punctuating

thoughts of her future, the

past

her hands separating the seeds

to be planted for the first

harvest, the smooth-milled tears

a promise of their daily bread

and deep the furrows that

were dug in the black

earth, after disembarking

on the rocky coast, the

switches of trees talking

amongst themselves in the wind,

swaying, and the bird on the wing

sees all

the land parceled out, stone bound, towns

sprouting up to receive tall ships

carrying silks, tea, china for

our tables

further, then, into the woods

and the trees shuddering

with birds, the sleek cats

screeching in black night a foreign sound

and she set her hands to

carding wool and his to carving

stone, building up a new

world with the memory of the old still

within them, the cock’s crow stirring them, each day

to their daily labors, the oxen and horses graving

the fields into the lines from which sprout

a new language

embracing the strangeness of this

new, brave world, hemmed in by

green, the mysteries beyond still

unknown, banded by tributaries of rivers yet

to be crossed, mountains still to

surmount, and we, ever-

expanding, push to their

furthest limits our tools and

simple words, seeking succor in

this new Eden, winter-harsh,

the wind blowing off  the

water and still we

endure to make our mark in

lines of black and white,

ebony ink staining vellum, the

songs and stories breathed

into life around the fire,

enlivening the hours until the

dawn chorus and the

rosegold glow of sun in the

east rises

marking out more fields for

corn and wheat, those to

lie fallow, too

we learned the rhythm

of the land and

we were one with the land and

she one with us, our mouths

filled with her fruits, our

granaries bursting in autumn,

after the seven lean years came

the seven fat—and so, we gave

thanks in music and dance,

raising our voices ever and

again, shattering silence

  

Part 2

Ever-Moving Westwards

digging out deep veins of

black and silver

ore and the

siren-scream calls

men-women-children to

work, the insistent machine

driving, driving, driving,

humming a second heartbeat,

larger, louder, piston-shiny,

as grey smoke muddies

the skies and sleek

metallic rattling creates the

din we cannot talk

through and river-streams are

silently befouled

our timecards punched, the

teeth tearing through stiff paper

to mark our hours of industry,

the counting of the beads of

sweat on our brow, the

saltpearl crown, the

bottom line, the

treasure stored up,

thick reports of the exquisite time and motion

of expedient and efficient production

the electric light switches on,

crackling filament

brightening her way to an

early shift, her coarsened

hands enclosed in gloves,

hair netted, the machines

clack-clack-clack induces a

fever, at first, until the

girls are used to it, the

bobbins spin, multicolored, rainbow

cottons

producing miles of textiles, flower-

spriggged, for curtains, or

thick-tufted carpets, these

buildings casting long shadows,

narrow alleyways through which to

run, hoping

for a glimpse of sun before dusk

spreading, so, westwards we

went, erecting in stone, metal

concrete, these cathedrals

of industry, pouring molten metal

into forms, a righteous and

proper use of resources, the

metal spines holding up their

bodies of cement and brick,

shining rails along which

the trains sped, smoking black,

across fields of corn, cotton,

wheat, past heads of

complacent cattle led to the

slaughterhouse,

killed with sleek efficiency, sinew

riven from bone, wrapped in paper

for the ever-hungry, ever-growing

mouth, never satiated,

always talking, talking, talking now

on the radio, the voices

borne as if by magic through

the air, the electric

thrum-hum of music, too, shimmering

through the long afternoons

of

the steno-typist, listening

to her dictaphone, tapping out

the latest orders,

describing

the recent improvements of their

most durable and

popular models

guaranteed to

give satisfaction

while he toils on an

assembly line, one small part of

a process, working towards a

specific, streamlined end,

the final, shiny product is

(for your approval)

wrapped in tissue,

sent out to the four corners of this

earth, contracted now

by telephone and telegraph,

cables sending news of

birth, death, and safe

arrival on foreign shores,

of battles won and lost, of

joys and sorrows, the papery slips

saved at the bottom of a bureau drawer

these territories crackling with

electricity upon metal, the

ever-expanding grid of brightness encroaching

upon dark, making night day

again for all our

entertainments, celebrating a new

age of industry, self-improvement,

endless possibility

these birds stretching their wings

so that they fly faster, straighter,

truer

smokestacks belching fire and

staining the sky, a curving script

disappearing as it appears, melting

into the blue, signaling

patterns of production and

mass consumption supporting

mass production

as liquid glass is molded into jars

for canning the last vegetables of

the season, the

viands that will see them through the

winter, set aside with careful hands, metal banded,

dark-cellared

refrigerated boxcars of flowers,

replete with snowy petals

destined for the florist’s

deftly working fingers, speeds eastwards,

emerging from that land of

milk and honey we

so eagerly anticipated, the

fruit dropping from the sky into

our hands, the earth yielding

all to us

Part 3

Into Blue-skied Tomorrow

into blue-skied tomorrow

looking on with the eye

of God as

invisible streams of

silent electrons

converge in

fluorescent laboratories

and we note down

celestial measurements

the dust settled from

our crowning glories

searing deserts with

their photographic flash,

stirring up cataracts,

undulating in glowing

circles, distant cousin

to the neon piped

the length of the

brick ballroom

calling us to dance,

shaking out our

crinolines, straightening

thin-seamed nylons

magic minerals

shingle our homes, the

chemist has created

the home of the future,

complete with backyard

fallout shelter and

tinned water, as new

highways snake ever further, thick

cement veins displacing green, black-asphalt tarred

and sleek sedans barrel along:

to grandmother’s house we go,

decked out in man-made fibres, bearing

wax fruit on a melamine platter

while grey-coated cryptographers decipher

the words upon the wall,

tapping out messages from one

side to the other, the

all-seeing eyes of cameras

trained on each other,

the snatches of fabric caught

on the wires stand out,

white hot flames dispelling night

as curtain-fabrics, newly bright,

unmuddied, prism-fine,

slip through the hand of

the decorator—no more the

durable, somber greys and browns—

now are unleashed the butter yellow and

vivid cyclamen to astound the

eyes looking out upon

the world, billowing, mad with

polka-dots, a breath of air

shuddering their underpinnings

and children’s voices lisp, in

unison, the common carols of

youth, and voices listing, in double-

column type, names,

addresses,

associations, tapped out, black/white,

as casefiles, papery-thick, are

written by landladies

and still the world

contracts, copper-wired, shining back

at the sun, tying us ever more

tightly together, the

reverberation throbbing into a

starry night as

music swells from a

jukebox

forward, moving forward

always (look back and

you’re finished) to that

shiny-bright-new

world always just

at your fingertips, as

he waxes out a scratch

on a tailfin

she smoothes the

wave of her hair,

the children veer and

sway, random isotopes

smashing the furniture,

rewriting their vision and

revisions, posting their inky-black

manifestos

on every streetcorner

beneath the coursing

satellites skirting the sun,

sending images of

green, blue,

streaking greyveins of

smoke, billowing, the

hue and cry of all

humanity wirelessly joined

at the hip, trawling through

clouds of data, number-thick,

at our fingertips,

flying, ever closer to the

sun, envying still that

thickatom brightness

smashing, generating all, only

to have our wings of wax

melt at an inopportune moment

yet still we try, and try

again to fly our own

course, right, straight,

aiming for that finest moment of

movement, capture it, if you

can, in the reflection of a glass,

before it, too, is relegated to

memory, the notes for the

trajectory filed away,

diagrammed endlessly, the paper

figures cut to our own liking

Epilogue

An Address to the Moon:

so our song ends as the

pale companion of the sun

looks down, counting the

coursing of the tides, the

ever-shifting forms that illuminate

and grace the night, half in

shadow, glancing in and

out of the sight of electric

lights blinking, marking time,

the streetlights, too, of milky fluorescence, at pre-

determined intervals, set to

light our way as we move,

ceaselessly, towards our

own ends and the next dawn