At Lake Level
 
America’s babbling Babels have collapsed
and the colour of the world has suddenly
changed and down at lake level, the water
has gone all milky. The stars are dissolving
in their thousands like small white pills.
 
Autumn’s leafy tonnage
flakes overnight.
The sun
pokes at
my cold shoulder
as I fall
into a cliff’s crease.
A prophecy
breaks down
old barriers
and for a  while
no one will ever be
the same again, no one
will understand
the grief
of many languages
talking at once.

Men in helmets rush in, rush up
 
Auckland’s burning
the sky’s a hot grey cloud dragging its belly
across the peaks of buildings.
 
Like London the bakery’s on fire
and the smoke
is popping windows
 
men in helmets
rush in, rush up
hoses blazing.
 
I don’t hang about staring at flames
sizzling through the navel of a Bendon anorexic
peeling off the wall.
 
I don’t tap toes to an inner guru.
I retreat to the library
ride the escalator
 
lose my structure
amongst the cosmopolitan skin variations.
Smoke thickens
 
like a dense squall
all silent flashes and sparkling neon.
Auckland’s burning
 
and a Polynesian god has placed his hand
on the skull of the city and burnt bread
is being broken up for the masses.
 
There is hunger
in the eyes of this evening’s lucky ones
hinged to their books.

                         Copyright © Iain Britton, 2008

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