| The Poetry of Richard Sansom Published by The British Sansom Society | |
 
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| The Great Machine To be fodder for the great machine, you must be well mixed with time and grief, the oils of living, new born or facing a white ceiling with numbers around your wrist and heart, alone in the wracking, cold and snowy halls, side by side with mixtures of genius and simple reflex, molested spirits chained together as inmates, a long line of moving eyes, moving hands and inchoate mind, a long line of conceptions and passion. Winding these onto your spindle, you must wind yourself as well. II It doesn't matter what you try to sell to yourself, or others, to your past or future, It's what you don't sell, what's not for sale, what can't be sold, what has no price, what's left in the room after the door is closed, what you think about most of the time when you try and think about something else, the obverse side of what you pray, the inside-out of the whole day, the inarticulate pain that follows the first pain, the burrowed tendrils of the dream you forget, words you cannot write, dead leaves that appear just after spring, covered up footprints leading to sin, the beat and throb of fears that submerge like anvils sinking in the ocean. III As a boy I walked down a wide road leading to the city, lined with doors always closing like smirking mouths, and the sounds of humanity fell around me, hitting my face, making me cry. I saw a man dying, but did not know his spirit hovered, waiting for something. I saw another crawling without legs and did not know his legs were orbiting the sun, waiting for something. I saw an old woman, bent with invisible burdens, waiting for something. I saw the cold skein of streets at night reflecting reds and blues, golds and ambers, biting the darkness, carving me up like a ribboned doll, waiting for something. I went further and further down the long streets deeper in the belly, deeper, so that I could not see out, and did not know I was waiting for something. IV You must be fodder for the great machine, but you have a choice. You can be dead in the moment of invention, and vacuous in your intentions, and flaccid in the way you touch, and hopeless in the way you see your reflection. You can play the hero but know in every scene, that once your face is wiped off, and the door swings open and the old visage of what you truly create stands waiting, you will once again slink home to the old trough that is your bed, and sleep in the catch-pan of deceit, so easily. So easily that you see nothing is amiss. That is the other side of your night. The great machine rolls on and you are not in sight. V Carry me home in a quiet spacecraft, curled up, fetal and sleeping, essentially wounded but not dead, wounded from feeling lips upon my eyes and tongues and the invaders of life abounding like savages across my body, making me live. Carry me home, back to where the first starry explosion filled every heart, well in advance, with all possibilities, shooting out new braveries and new dimensions, infinite, past numbers and symbols, past thinking, to where I can rest and savor my warmth, touch the bloody heart and spleen, organs of the great machine. | |
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