--- G I L E S   G O O D L A N D

We explained slowly a word from a language 
we could not be sure existed, 
made from twigs and bailer-twine.
So go into the rain, its adjectives 
will refresh you, but the lightning 
is made of imperatives.
Do not go there.

These things we tell each other 
are the kind of lies that taken together
make up an important precondition
for regular arrival at work;
start with the one about the person ending
where the skin does.

Each morning, I know a routine
called the laying on of clothes
while the words let me sing a few notes 
of a song called the music 
of the containments, in which
we are only jealous of other people 
because their skin contains
a different space.

We eat breakfast with a sense of foreboding 
matched by the snarl of morning traffic.
There’s always someone up before you,
busy adding extra yards to the bar 
at the crematorium, to open in time for 
you know who and his funeral. A happy hour 
all to himself.

In one room the clock was interleaving seconds 
with silence, in another the colour was
measured in television hours. Sometimes 
the front door opens onto a lane to 
the land of the dead.

In this film, we’re all trying to help god 
understand something as blindingly obvious 
as sunlight. We’ve had to crawl through 
so many windows to get here, 
each one was a day. All this time 
the violins had been working away, but 
it was important we should not have been 
aware of them.