brought from the sun in the beak of a wren

or got from the glint in a precious gem.

Or fire snapped like twigs from red-berried trees,

bought from the otherworld, sought in the hearts

of warm-blooded things, under the stoat’s tongue,

pulled from the nail of an old woman’s thumb.

A distant cry from this surplus of heat,

as easily raised as falling asleep.

But then by one degree the brightness fades.

A fraction at first, it has to be said,

but then again the sun must pass its best

and move through noon the second that it strikes,

and in the space it takes to check a watch

another inch of time gets dropped, slides by,

is lost. The way it is with peaks and troughs—

that’s how it goes with energy and clocks.

So we look to ourselves for something to burn,

to slow up the countdown of Centigrade,

but come up with metal: bedsteads and prams,

chains and a kettle, a bicycle frame.

A team of brothers walk further afield

to check the meadows of the north-north-east,

to comb the copse to the west of the creek,

to trawl for driftwood on the lakeside beach,

to haul the sunken jetty from the tarn,

then make a final circle of the town

and lift the stacks of litter from the streets.

They amble back with the following things:

a sack of potatoes going to seed,

a peacock feather, the skull of a sheep.

Thrown on, the feather shrinks then disappears,

the sack of spuds rolls over, waters, weeps;

with flames for eyes, the skull keeps its own shape.

Someone has to be to blame, so a man

who hasn’t pulled his weight, who feeds his face

with coffee and cake is taken away.

Midnight is closing in. In steel-cap boots

and a boiler-suit, the friend of a friend

turns amber embers over with a spade,

splits wood in search of heat, looks for a pulse

within the charred remains of logs and stumps.

A girl who is said to be deaf and dumb

comes forward with a pitchfork and a brush

and turns and sweeps the margins of the flames

for seeds and knots and crumbs, chippings and thorns

that fizz and fry an inch above the heat,

then stops, then looks, then javels both the tools

into a fire that isn’t hot enough

to detonate the bristles of the brush

or separate the two halves of the fork

by rapidly unseasoning the splice.

She backs off to a darker, silent place.

We stand in profile, figures from an age

before the dawn, paintings on a cave wall,

a people waiting for a word or sign,

one of the tribe to whisper something like

when one thing dies begin again inside;

look for it in the heartbeat of the tide,

wade in the coves and bays along the coast,

between the toes. Plot the zones and borders,

map the suburbs, boroughs, claim the polders,

sift the rapids five or six times over,