1.
Soundtrack: surf music remixed by The Bomb Squad.
A rope swing hangs from a fragile branch
over a quarry pool.
Two who from this angle
appear to be man and woman
or boy and girl
but could be otherwise
obviously feel safe enough
to be tearing now
at each other’s clothing
and falling together
to the patch of soft ground
at the base of the granite wall.
2.
Soundtrack: mbira, kora, pans, a dictionary being beaten.
When there were still laws,
when there were still boundaries,
when there were so many people elsewhere
who wanted to be here —
when this was an active quarry
they pulled the stones for the pedestal
of the Statue of Liberty
from that curve in the far wall —
there, to the left of the loving couple,
there, where the kids are jumping
from the top and somehow not dying.
See them huddled up there before they leap.
See them — yearning? Not certain.
They might already be satisfied.
3.
Soundtrack: electric revolver, blue cement slammed by a hammer.
Under the thick black quarry water
are cars resting where they fell —
some holding, perhaps,
the bones of lost drivers.
Too far down to reach without gear:
we see them when we dive in,
just before our lungs blow up
and compel us to rise to safety.
Crimes in the cold cold pools! We’re
shuddering with delight
at the proximity.
4.
Soundtrack: a clatter of unimportance, uneasily played on massed fiddles.
We’ve learned
that if you come to the quarry alone, silently,
it will swallow you.
We always approach in groups
making a lot of noise. It soothes the ghosts,
if you want to call them ghosts.
They move like ghosts
but might never
have been alive long enough
to be unquiet spirits.
We’re unquiet spirits.
Maybe we are ghosts?
ah, who cares; the important thing
is not to be silent
and never be alone.
5.
Soundtrack: blues and police whistles.
Once they built a pedestal for a Great Lady
using stone from this old delinquent hole.
Can’t they do it again?
Can’t we, if we skip
the brass band and the various evils? Or
does quarrying a home like ours
require evil of us?
I see, suddenly, that the rope’s
got a body on it.
Something’s stirring
in the water and
I can’t hear music any more.
Dark Matter 