I.
There’s a lightpoint behind each stark bridge of despair
As though a blinkered sun, unmoving, unmoved, lives there.
Steel girders thrown into sharp silhouettes show up
Transmissions of wave-like movements that heave and stop.
Cautious caterpillar trails of faint hopes and crippling fears
Etching their own slow ways in metal over the years.
The sharp recoil of flesh, the sudden dives and swoops
Of organs swept off their feet or left out of the loops.
There’s a darkpoint beyond every bridge wherever I turn
And every bridge leads up to the places of no return
Unnerving that there are no clashes, no terrible conflicts
Between the lightpoints and the dark ones that seem to exist
Emulsified into each other at the ends of bridges. Love and despair.
Immiscible dark. Mixed up so that I can’t quite see the layers.
II.
Things that I didn’t know existed, and without that knowledge
One step after another led to the mouth of the bridge
And even then I didn’t know, I didn’t realise
All dark and light, all love and despair emulsifies
Drip into each other on bridges, over rifts, everywhere
Even when we don’t know that we love, or think we don’t despair.
The loves I didn’t know I had, didn’t know I’d loved, even then
They oozed into the dark and despair and a blinkered sun.
So here I was, and there was the bridge, and there the ooze
The slow furry creep along the slats, those diffuse
Trails that petered out when the dark dripped into the sun
And also when the lightpoints jiggled the emulsion
The seep of love into my days, the creep of despair
The drip of light into the dark. Mixed-up immiscible pairs.
III.
A darkpoint slowly made dilute with the steady drip
Of an amorphous light and an amorphous love and friendship
The bridges built with girders of grace and then wrecked
To make way for some other far less lofty project
Each lightpoint dribbles inevitably into darkness
And yet the light and dark are themselves, not a bit less.
Nudging each other at the ends of bridges, over great rifts
Playfully serene, without any significant conflicts.
Without my knowing, without my being remotely aware
All my loving has come to dilute every despair
Each time I’ve loved, a little of my self has slowly bled
From me into the being or thing I’ve loved instead.
And I am still me, and they are still they, no more no less
Immiscible all, but emulsified. Love and despair and us.