It’s gonna rain It’s gonna rain It’s gonna rain noon’s salt flare the tide roars out from where the ocean’s sucked its breath in sharp and spat it out so wide the boom and every boat every corvette every frigate every destroyer is spinning out from where the shudder of foam is rising booming hurling itself across the fractured horizons these lines so flat so flat the sands sinking tide roars on tide that baldachin of milk-white smoke you can’t hear the runes the gulls the curlews the propellors the countdown the levers pulled the buttons pressed there are no shores for the boats that are spinning out in every direction chased by bursting clouds the blinding ocean turns eyeward

*

You are the company the name is you poisoner you cannot pretend you cannot hide you cannot swim in these neon currents I am become Death the destroyer of worlds this ocean one open mouth swallowing islands this art of making things disappear in a glow that throbs in the eye that cannot sleep this frame that’s come apart leached the colour from every drifting current this voice that shakes the continents no earthly thing trembles on its breath this baldachin of milk-white smoke has nothing to hide no crystal globe no night of mean knives no shallows no depths all ploughed bare all punctured all furrowed It’s gonna rain It’s gonna rain It’s gonna rain

*

Stop for the gash in the water’s white and trembling skin stop for the broken prism stop for the compass bird that’s out of control and doesn’t know where to point stop for the canoes wedged in the mouths of rivers stop for the traffic of dead fish and silenced pigeons stop for the wood fibre cowrie-shell stick maps of swell and wave crest stop for the eddy stop for the black hole untie the sticks lose the shells there are no islands there to map stop for the emperor’s fleet dredged up from the ocean’s floor stop for the gash in the water’s white and trembling skin a baldachin of milk-white smoke watch for the boat that can knife the twitching tarp watch the rip lengthen in what was water and fade

*

Lord of lost perspectives,

this might be the wrong prayer:

Give me back the untroubled pleasures

of the sovereign eye.

Track your camera across

the last sand-bagged line of clouds.

The continents have escaped the net,

leaving an island of pearl-eyed gulls

and bomb-crater pools to keep its drifting tenancy.

Spell out a lease of hazy sand and churned riptide

where the palms hold barbed souvenirs of rain

and the children who pick shells and bomb casings

have no memory

and no sight.

That’s all I can promise

if I let you play

with the forest fire of the sovereign eye.

*

What would you cast: a spell or a stone?