Issue 3: Peter Middleton

The Struggle

Spell heaven.

He heave end.

Heavy induction’s

time spent waiting.

When is when?

Inequality is salad

for the staff

of life, or

mental activists.

Then’s then.

We shares in the market

fall into habits

of deferred grace.

Almost a vegetable?

Pause after pause.

Do many names

make precision?

The word is para paradise,

brake cable.

When whenever.

Helping out hope

with small improvements

lightly sprayed oil

and mouth joy.

Whatever.

Northeast Spain

We have to climb up to the ruined monastery,

it’s on the same track as our rented house.

You can feel the allegory in the tractor road

turning to narrow path, gulley, slick rock,

the dumb place doesn’t care, out of sight

your heel might turn, mist fall, anything.

LCD landscape disappears in sunlight,

we grip straw, gravel, branches, then walls.

We believe with cameras. The eighth century

was no specific time to itself. Crypt, 

nave, apse, dortoir, all heavily restored.

First oaks died then the vines, the peons

left empty terraces to dust. Back at the house

orange stars mark switches in the dark.

Peter Middleton is the author of Aftermath (Salt, 2003), is director of the Centre for Cultural Poetics and is helping to build the British Electronic Poetry Centre. He is Professor of English at the University of Southampton.

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