Jo Shapcott

Can the bald lie? The nature of the skin says not:
it's newborn-pale, erection-tender stuff,
every thought visible,—pure knowledge,
mind in action—shining through the skull.
I saw one, a woman, hairless absolute, cleaning.
She mopped the green floor, dusted bookshelves,
all cloth and concentration, Queen of the moon.
You can tell, with the bald, that the air
speaks to them differently, touches their heads
with exquisite expression. As she danced
her laundry dance with the motes, everything
she ever knew skittered under her scalp.
It was clear just from the texture of her head,
she was about to raise her arms to the sky;
I covered my ears as she prepared to sing, roar,
to let the big win resonate in the little room.
...

I'm not mad. I just seems that way
because I stagger and get a bit irritable.
There are wonderful holes in my brain
through which ideas from outside can travel
at top speed and through which voices,
sometimes whole people, speak to me
about the universe. Most brains are too
compressed. You need this spongy
generosity to let the others in.

I love the staggers. Suddenly the surface
of the world is ice and I'm a magnificent
skater turning and spinning across whole hard
Pacifics and Atlantics. It's risky when
you're good, so of course the legs go before,
behind, and to the side of the body from time
to time, and then there's the general embarrassing
collapse, but when that happens it's glorious
because it's always when you're travelling
most furiously in your mind. My brain's like
the hive: constant little murmurs from its cells
saying this is the way, this is the way to go
...

Indoors for this ash
is through the bark:
notice its colour - asphalt
or slate in the rain

then go inside, tasting
weather in the tree rings,
scoffing years of drought and storm,
moving as fast as a woodworm

who finds a kick of speed
for burrowing into the core,
for mouthing pith and sap,
until the o my god at the heart.
...

It's a hot night. We walk the highwalk
from the tube. The concrete walls
seep warmth and we smell

garden flowers, hear city church bells,
loiter in the odd sweet spot until
the sound of water falling

tugs us on. Lakeside, we know
if there's a muse
of concrete, she lives

here, inside these buildings
made of crushed Welsh
granite and of rain. Through

the doors and now our ears
are caves, our minds
cathedrals of flash and glow,

until we are beside ourselves and
our hearts have softened in our bodies
and when we go back out the street is silk.
...