trace the water courses, mark the passes

and the gorges, plant and farm the ocean,

mow the steppes and fens and string the bridges

out between the contours of the ridges,

pick and pluck the cobweb of the matrix

of the districts, fly, align the air-strips,

take a section, make a transit, chart it,

pan the Gulf Stream, dive, way beneath the hull,

then rise towards the light until the head

comes up against the ice-cap of the skull …

But we have given all of what we own

and what we are, and it has come to this:

this spot, this date, this time, these tens of us,

all free but shadowless and primitive,

no more than silhouettes or negatives

or hieroglyphics, stark and shivering.

A half-life, heat-loss at a rate of knots,

an hour at most before the very last.

All lost. Until it dawns on one of us

to make the most of something from the past.

He walks us to a garage, picks the lock

and pinpoints with a torch a heavy cloth,

asbestos, woven, terrible to touch,

then covering his mouth against the dust

that blinks and glitters in the beam of light

he drags the cover from a wooden cross.

No time for measuring the shortest straw

or drawing lots. There’s mention of a name,

and singled out the strongest of us bends

and takes its length along his spine, its frame

a crude flying machine, as someone says,

and takes its width across his arms and neck,

its point of balance bending him double

with dead weight as he walks, or rather wades.

And children point and poke fun at his shape,

this tottering man, like a living grave.

Even the dog at his side cocks a leg.

An aeroplane mimics him overhead.

We guide him to the left towards the site

through ginnels where his wing-span clips the sides

of houses, makes a xylophone of pipes

and railings, drum-rolls on a picket fence

and likewise once again along a length

of paling, then through parkland, puddles, sludge,

the tail-end ploughing, paying out a groove

between his footprints planted in the mud,

then onto concrete paving where he halts

above a hopscotch pattern sketched in chalk.

And there he falls, but stands up straight and walks

beneath a window where his mother waves

and calls his name, warns him to tie his boots

or lose his feet. He climbs a dozen steps,

then rests, by leaning with his arm outstretched,

hand flat against a wall. For a short while

we take the strain, but he loads up again

and makes for the faint light at the far end

of the lane, where a woman seems to wait

to produce a handkerchief trimmed with lace

from inside her sleeve, and to wipe his face.

He drops a second time and then a third,

but rounds the final corner on his knees

and kicks for home when he sees the remains

of the light and heat, and raises the cross