I thought of the possibilities as I left the station without a compass.

Walk straight enough, said Gandhi, and you could walk into the sea.

At the wharf, the sailors’ wives were keening together:

they were singing the last songs of the whales.

I was their brother and I had killed them

with my broken harpoon and my rusted smile.

IV.

Find affection, I told myself. That’s fundamental.

Find a voice that doesn’t draw blood

each time you hear it. I walked past myself,

I rippled across lean men and sleek women

laughing behind plate glass, their hands caught

in pools of light, wine gleaming in brittle flutes.

V.

Birdsong disturbs the king of incomplete lives.

He wakes up in the middle of the novel he’s writing

in the Midnight Hotel. His eyes need shielding

from the raw clarity of neon. He is back

where he began, with a plate of waxy grapes

and a blunt silver knife on his bedside table.

VI.

Break, ice, for me.

Let me fall through stinging water

in my skin of rust and flame.

I’ve jumped from a tree

that’s branched into the clouds.

It’s sucked up all the reality

I’ve watered it with.

Its fruits are red and wrinkled.

I plunge into drowned gardens

where I walked once.

Sinking, the water stroking

my crown of leaves

as it comes apart,

dark tribune, archaic clown,

I open my eyes.

The Map Seller

for Nikola Madzirov

The roof’s dripping with pigeons and I’ve just escaped

the worst of the sun, strapped on my scuffed leather bag,

and in a moment – this shade’s delicious – and before

the pedlars start shouting, Say your piece! Say your piece!

I’ll start calling out names and pulling countries from it:

big countries, small countries, countries broken in two,

countries the size of handkerchiefs and countries engorged

with other countries, buffer zones jostled by failed states,

island republics sinking by degrees. Even nuclear powers

that started as papaya plots or guano archipelagos.

Whatever you like, I’ve got a map that looks like it –

and you can have any piece of my flaking jigsaw atlas,

if only I could reach you across this accordion sky

that’s billowed open to rain on all the hats I wear:

tribune of nowhere, midnight’s newscaster,

out-of-work weatherman, all-terrain refugee.

And across this trench that a JCB’s dug along my street:

tomorrow’s avenue, today’s wide sludge grave.

The Atlas of Lost Beliefs

Without waking up, turn to page thirty-seven

in the Atlas of Lost Beliefs

and surround yourself

with apsaras, kinnaras, gandharvas, maenads,

satyrs, sorcerers, bonobos, organ grinders,

stargazers, gunsmiths, long-distance runners,

gravediggers, calligraphers, solitary reapers,

beenkars, troubadours, rababias, ronin,

nagas, pearl divers, Vandals, Goths,

mummers, snipers, collectors of moths,

hobos, dharma bums, bauls, drifters,

djinns, mahjubs, marabouts, qalandars,

griots, mad hatters, speakers in tongues,

trippers, star angels, batmen, punks,

eggheads, buffoons, lay preachers, agitators,