THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
By Kit Brookman
Published 1 January 2021
1.
Stars
hang there
like broken glass in night’s gut.
They are slick along the sky,
the night is choked with them as a city is with light.
The dead grass is made metal
by starlight,
my shadow batters the earth
when I had been ready to put it in my back pocket
for the night, but the brightness
demands it show its face.
The wind presses on
like a weary muscle.
The crunch of my boot
is that of a man
making himself real by noise.
I realise that I am borrowing
a stranger’s night, one that’s silent
and chill and marked by signs I don’t understand.
I half expect
to see my double wander out
like some shredded wraith
from between the silverskinned gums
and shake his head,
his hair slick with dew
and a face made deadly by secrets
I should not have tried to share.
2.
Saturn
is a bright toy
engraved, silver-shot on the blank lens.
Its rings are sharp as eyelashes,
they hang there perfectly,
like someone had dropped a spinning top
and left it whirring for a few billion years.
3.
Sun
is a red razor it
splits night’s eyelid
and the starred iris pops, light
gushes in
and swallows the broken pieces of night
with blue-sky daylight.
The charred body of a log
still smokes in the concrete pit.
Coals
have crumbled to red ruins –
when there’s nothing left to burn
carbon burns at last,
burns slower, duller; red burning.
Stars do the same. Red star is dead star,
nearly.
Red is for endings.
Slow feet around the fire
as eyes are put away for the day
before the frost settles, before the fog
steals up from the valley to mist us in.
The earth has a sick look to it
after so long staring at the sky
what will we do
now the night has ended?