qarrtsiluni

by Dick Jones

They will require,
should I return,
that I give name
to all the things I saw.

Even as I feed back
voltage, trickle chemistry
past their electrodes;
even as I share

my heartbeat with their monitors,
my blood with their microscopes,
they will question
in quiet voices,

seeking out new nouns
with which to corner
the ineffable, new verbs
to charge the immaterial.

As now their aerial voices —
filtered through ionosphere,
the shingle-clouds of asteroids,
across these tideless oceans —

whisper insubstantial, needle-thin,
scratching their need to know
the unknowable onto the mighty
silence. I trail interrogation

like a shower of sparks.
But from this eminence
I no longer heed
their eyes that scrutinize,

lidless, unswerving. This dark
accomodates a billion eyes, speculating
my parabola by day, by night, probing
for my tiny skidding light.

Implacable, incurious, I navigate
the brilliant wastes — long black
sargassos drifting, planet wrack
and flotsam, dereliction.

And beyond, always beyond,
the bright flying splinters of the stars.

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Dick Jones blogs at Patteran Pages and has placed poems in such magazines as Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Ireland Review, Westwords, MiPOesias, Three Candles and Other Poetry.