Work out of Progress
David Russell
I suppose it must all go on indefinitely –
Just when I thought it had all been played out,
All become superfluous.
I am at the stage of universal discarding;
I suppose that many people see, through several decades,
What I pushed aside in a matter of months.
Discarding is basic to life: I am not dead,
So I must keep on discarding indefinitely;
It is also what keeps the others going –
Writing is a sort of discarding –
Some sense comes from putting something
Out into the void, the negative black
It may after all come to something –
Though not necessarily –
Not really necessary
Though nobody knew how to say so.
***
Childhood was a waterproof lining
Imprinted with the patterns of crossed fibres
Making jagged scratches on him
Who would have the perfect inside out
After folding it tidily and putting it in a drawer –
So many repetitions formed a furrow
In the musty darkness.
Wisps of ivy demarcating what was to be the next door
Levelled under a rubber cork corrugated roof –
All climbable, unlike the ivy climbed over.
