Philip Gross Poems

It's not exile, homes and families behind
us, where we meet. It happens anywhere,
now: a stateless
state of no name, quietly seceding
...

The count of cappuccino,
the marquise of meringue,
all the little cantuccini...
...

sings and hums and talks and whispers to itself.
It never sleeps.
It groans, it shudders to the rhythm of the waves.
...

just clangorous muting. Then, by degrees:
‘an expressive
aphasia,' say the doctor's notes. Too true.
...

Home, after too long
in hospital, your each
step hesitant
...

Sunup in the financial quarter, sheer
mirrorglass empires lit each by each other's light
...

Flat earth: how
could they have thought it?
Where did they imagine that the sail
...

It's not exile, homes and families behind
us, where we meet. It happens anywhere,
now: a stateless
state of no name, quietly seceding
from the crumbling empires round us,

without stamps or Eurovision entries.
No-one does it with a rough guide in a week.
You inhabit it
or nothing. Like this: in a pavement cafe
you blink and you seem to surprise them,

the crowd, all its separate faces at once,
coming out of solution like crystals,
like a rush of starlings
or the breeze that lifts the canvas awning
now and dents your cappuccino froth

with a crisp little sound. And that's it:
between breaths, just between you and me
as if; yes,
QED. You are received. This is
the freedom of the city, and the key

to the kingdom, and its borders ripple
outwards like a frill of breaking wave
onto flat sand,
a wavering line already fading leaving
spume-flecks high and dry,

a prickling on your palm; you're five
years old, looking up at the whole sea,
unsure:
will you laugh or cry?
...

The count of cappuccino,
the marquise of meringue,
all the little cantuccini...
and what was the song they sang?

Oh, the best of us is nothing
but a sweetening of the air,
a tryst between the teeth and tongue:
we meet and no one's there

though the café's always crowded
as society arrives
and light glints to and fro between
the eyes and rings and knives.

We'll slip away together,
perfect ghosts of appetite,
the balancing of ash on fire
and whim—the mating flight

of amaretti papers,
my petite montgolfiere,
our lit cage rising weightless
up the lift shaft of the air.

So the count of cappuccino,
the marquise of not much more,
consumed each other's hunger.
Then the crash. And then the war.
...

Jigging the text, the torn tracts, till they slot
and settle, the inscribers of the coming age
lean back from the table. One folds a page
down, crisply. There'll be i's to dot
etcetera after lunch. Black pips of shot
in purple pigeon breasts (bred in the cage
for shotgun wars the house-guests wage)
are spat discreetly out, bones picked, and what
shudders of moon cross the lawn, what steel
zinging of bats as they stuka the lake . . . ?
The spoils of peace: the drafts and maps discarded,
numbers estimated who will wake to feel
the margins closing, run, sleep rough, take
their chance, ford rivers; the bridges are guarded.
...