With a shake of the rattle and roll

the perambulator takes a morning stroll.

Just popping out. Back in a bit.



Small plastic nubs on the pavement

harness in place for a safe enslavement.

Just popping out. Back in a bit.



Off for the paper. And a carton of milk.

Sit still will you, sit will you, sit will you sit.



Hard, hard wheels with no fancy hydraulics.

Not like the umbrella carriage for Miss Mary

Poppins. A lesson is felt in every vibration.



Along with the frolics, it's a bumpety road.

And the researchers are saying, This is

not good. This is not good for children to know.



They need pumpkins and feathers and tyres
 
of sweet pleasures before they're too old.

Silence is the sound of space expanding.

The sound of fibres stretching, myelin sheathing.

The quiet retreat of hurry.



Silence is the slow heart-beat.

The rendered heart being stroked. The bass notes

of the cat indulged.



Silence is the creaking hammock.

The heart swinging, held between the veined hands

of the walking trees.

 



(Photographs of Castleward House, 1767 in Alain de Botton's:

The Architecture of Happiness. p44-45)


For the art of artful compromise, take note

of the aristocrats who put compromise in stone.

With equal wills and equally opposite tastes

they would not agree on the style of their home.

Arms crossed, neither would budge - and in their

equal and opposite force a balance was struck.

The architect bowed to the force of their wallets

and the force of their will. And gave in. Cooked

up a plan never seen before in any book north or

south of Strawberry Hill. He designed a two-faced

mansion joined by dotted lines along the scalp.

The join visible only by parting the hair. Taste

for two sorted in a carnival of artful compromise.
 
She got her way facing the back. The pinnacles

and windows making their most triangular point.

The roof in the style of a castle. (So fanatical

was she about the gothic look). He got his way
 
facing out. With columns in classical proportions

and bays and the roof on his side (the front) in the
 
style of a roman villa. The verdict? A distortion.

An ugly monstrosity. A waste of good money.

Viscount Bangor and Lady Blithe agreed to differ

with public opinion. The house was perfect for their

conditions. (But what would they have for dinner?)











Eighteen years after the barbed wire was

cut down and the spiral curtain erased


the red deer from the East stayed in the East

and

the red deer from the West stayed in the West.



Not even a single nostril hair, an antler tip or

inquisitive tongue, not even a wayward fawn

 

strayed to the other side. Not once. Not ever.

The side that was no longer the other's side.



In the new born snow, nothing visible remained

of this harsh boundary. But their iron memory



keeps the map afraid.

Jonathan Trappe had a dream, sitting in his office swivel chair,

gazing vacantly out of the window. He imagined taking to the air.

Just taking off; buying fifty-five huge helium balloons;

a fantasia of reds, whites, greens, yellows and blues.

And he saw himself in slow motion frames, inflating each one,

tying each with string, hefting a huge clod of a stone to put on

the swivel seat, so that the balloons wouldn't lift it away,

not yet, at any rate; not until all fifty-five were tied in place.

A cacophony on the arms of his chair, a bored filing cabinet grey.




And then he imagined easing the stone off, right down to the date.

He could see it now. Raleigh, North Carolina, June 7th, 2008.

Early morning, commute time to work, half past eight.

And that was it. He decided this dream could not be late.

And so he left for a coffee break and walked at brisk pace

to a shop in the town centre, staring at his reflection facing

him in the window, beyond to the bright glare of party games;

striding in, he picked fifty-five huge helium balloons; matter of factly

paying for them, with no fuss, like it was an everyday activity.




The next day, he left work, and took to the air, in his office chair.