“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”

What is a place, a thing of space, a singularity?

The stair, the chair, you creep on, sleep in, what is it?

Out in the air we place our strength in cards and money

How much can bear the marketplace – that extra penny.

Air we have not ‘made up’; the winkings of the bellied dew

That drops its power the bell to flower, the limpid tower of blue

The sky; all these comply, supply a surplus, add to place

Even the hardhead-blind surround their pounds with these

Sure we can see as o’er the lea come cattle bumping home

Or quartered in dark towns our traffic signs which do our thinking

Design to designate us, living this contextual matrix

Observing rules, discerning roles, the serial surface pros

We think that ‘that there’ is secure, nearby, and next to ear

And eye, etcetera, no question; as like history’s lessons,

Somethings long done somewhere, but where; a supper’s puppet show;

Leftover hangover, hidden-happened - yet foursquare

Pop-out, find in your pocket, that late docket for your tasties

Comes hunger again, that last marchpane - again - digested,

Pull out a wallet, another packet, pay nonchalantly

Paper or metal absurd to settle incumbent splurge for sweeties

The theory’s here and now and what we are we be

With Norman the normal and Susie the same contentment satisfies

Legless the running inquiries divining what the measured frame

That holds the picture, weaves the image, inheres in the seams

Made-money is more real than mobile phone glows in the dark

Solider set are expectations directing in our heads

Holiday cornucopias, Acapulco when we’re wed

A scholarship, home-ownership; our forward figured schemes

How much is here unclear? The whole pantechnicon

Thin wraiths of faith, plate served as solid silver.

And yet together give the measure of our common life

A home, an education; a big honeymoon; a wife.

And money as a construct to reward, affords it

Sloshing about the dollars credit, in the whirlpool mind

Having no being before our senses, merely passion’s shrines

As thoughts embedded; promised in ledgers’ bottom lines

This faith then? Why all this phantom pantocracy

Of dreams, and constructs; mulligatawny pickles

Dare you to stare and long enough, so go behind

Facades, beyond our dinner parties’ handsome marinade,

Were we to know indeed, we would be gods, but we are children

In Plato’s cave, where shelter saves us to remain unbroken

And catching shadows passing to and fro against a wall

We warm our hands on the selfsame flames which throw the very pall

Upon our eyes, contend half-lies, deceits we see as sure

Half-life‘s pale satisfactions, which permit but of one cure

The wrapper on the marchpane once slid off, turns in good faith

The marchpane pure of trust to grace a someone other’s plate

All eyes’ pouris of hotchpotch, half-imagined; all ‘not-theres’

In our own terms read as figments, were they justly tried

Proverbially swallowed camels - and the grievous strained-at gnats

Words of our Saviour, rescuing you to knowledge,

His trade in hapless souls remakes men reckless brave

Neighbours who climb a highest insubstantiality

Nor seen, nor sensed, but blest celestially;

Four winds, a fecund ball, from splendid casements seen -

Insets of fleshly wineskins - with those splendid oceans

All things Terra Marique vocal answer witness to

As retinue of claimant depositions

Authoritative; restoratives for wished for shadow-sheens

Put by your pounce-for-money baits, the keep-count-of-your-beans

The stolid rest-on-real-things tags, with failsafes your machines

Accord your banknotes blasted, windbreaks broken, empirically

And seek for grace like antelopes, renew space spiritually,

Comes fining validation; _nothing made that was not made,

‘Through the dear might of him that walked the watery waves’_

A testament by which all worlds transfigure, and are saved

We people, our unequal dreams, rinsed out, are new arrayed