Distance Swimming
In her mirror
She feels illumined by an accelerating process
Initiated by the 20th Century.
A darkening fog.
Klee-song,
Cocteau,
de Chirico,
Arise from her in swirling, serpentine eddies. A ventriloquist.
She unties a boat on the shore. The underground river.
Languages of illumining clarity speed into each other like blood in water,
As vast and translucent as the Northern Lights.
& For reasons both utilitarian and mythopoeic
The face in the mirror anticipates leaping.
& Distance swimming through shadow-lands,
Beneath the precipice of shallow, atomic time,
Within and without darkened chambers & coincidentally
Light reflecting upon ancient vials.
& Our spines an unbroken chain of receptor cauldrons.
& Her gift. The mirror.
Paul Klee catalogue (1951), Giorgio de Chirico painting ‘Song of Love’ (1914), photographic still from Jean Cocteau’s ‘Orphee’ (1950), pictured: Jean Marais and Maria Casarès
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