is music. In fact, the Paying Guest rises in the middle of the night

to turn off the radio where no radio exists, a storm imminent over the sea,

no, the lake — where we are will come clear in a minute —

and when the furnace knocks twice

then hesitates

the Paying Guest lying in the lettings

remembers the old joke about the drummer

and now the Paying Guest is laughing on the inside.

TIME AWAY WITH THE ERROR

I need to call it something, if I’m to curse it.

I am known by many names, it intones in its fake voice

as I bail out the drum of the rental flat’s unfamiliar

AEG 365 washer/dryer, whose manufacturer is not responsible

for its misuse, for any use contradicting its natural purpose,

but how can one use improperly an appliance

whose purposes are contradictory?

Never has the manufacturer been more remote.

I am the have-been-made-in and the-potential-for. I am

the wayward wind. This speaks to the heart of the problem.

One of free will, adds the AEG 365, with

sublime neutrality. I hear the northern waters walk toward me.

Not in my ear, in my wishful thinking.

I hear a message composed across the Atlantic, made possible

by way of the fact that this hour accommodates all hours,

the way of the fact not as straightforward as it seems;

and maybe the message can’t find me in my patience,

where the subcrackle of May Island interrupts all signals

from its station in the firth’s hard chair, in January’s basement light,

big head bent over its transmission, face

scribbled out. When a bond is broken, energy is released, disperses

and is lost, offers the electric fire, whose switch

I’m unable to find. No operator’s manual for the long night either,

no troubleshooting tips for those of us

who truth can’t stop from going

where truth isn’t. But that’s what I love about you, says The Error,

how you really get into it. As if it’s the last stupid thing you’ll ever do.

TWO CHAPTERS ON ANCIENT STONES

1.

Such is the nervous power of life. Symbols,

allegorical forms, language

signifying less and less

though very slowly.

Water freezes in the pore fabric of the sandstone.

There are various physical openings-up.

Also powdering, topical growth,

chemical aggression from the carbon of the country

and an all-over blurring of features

in galleries of the fields.

A wedge knocked from the upper face

of the Aberlemno roadside stone released its serpent

back into groundcover of the late 6th century.

2.

Standing stones at Callanish

stare over the head of time, minds

somewhere else.

Arranged in cruciform, an inner circle

from which expanse flows.

In their presence, we are like grasses

at the two-leaf stage, whose eyes

are only beginning to focus,

faces wet, light rain pattering our jackets,

and where we saw raw land off the A858 is revealed

a framework for acknowledgement.