i choose to take this risk of writing

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I Choose To Take This Risk Of Writing
(for Francis Bacon)


Those arms I felt:
softened they were by Death;
but sorrow warms them too,
and I could feel your strength coming through.

In those arms.

When it happens, nobody understands.
The anchor in the heart
suddenly pulls tight as
the ship draws away,
and great steaks of flesh and rib
drag pumping down the pier.

Now the cables are drawing tight.

The garbage men are banging in the street.

It’s not so much the muscle that goes,
but the bone.
Eaten and eaten and eaten.
From the arms, I mean: the loving arms.

The bastard sits there smoking,
nonchalant, on the bed,
while the bone goes out of your arms
and your chest is dragged pumping
down the pier.

He puts his hat on, jerks down his cuffs,
and stalks out,
swelling thinly against his shoulderpads.

Leaving us.

When you curl your throat like that
And I’ve got my fingers soft in the back of your knee,
That’s when we pull the wadding of the sky
back into the wound and shoot those
stainless cables down the marrow to the future.


Philip White












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