The Results
Matthew Hall (University of Western Australia, Australia)
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My wounds, she said. There is no mercy here. Is this a song of Innocence? Or a paregoric song? Under these sedative skies I wander the banks of the Nile. I have forgotten my daily preparations. I have lost the clothing of my rituals. The sky is as blue as the ceiling of a Turkish mosque. The water distils on all sides of me. Dear companion, I have rediscovered dirt and the fragrant possibilities of growth. I am laved by birds, and am prepared to die with strangers. I have forgotten everything I knew about music. I am going to blow until the reeds break. Is this the world? The results are devastating. I have learned from you about pain and walk with a limp down wind-blown streets marked by the riddle of other firing squads. Did you swallow my image? Blurred and slowly fading into white Polaroid halation, torn. We are strung over rivers by the foundations of further palisades lost in the reflection of minarets. Divided by more than borders. We dispel motion. I find the mark. I take my aim.
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Commentary on The Results
It begins as a black crevice and comes on in a sharp white light. I will stop trying to convince you. I’ll admit I am too selfish to understand your mercy. I am not the man would wish these words be read by the eyes of his daughter. You spoke to me in many languages though I only ever heard translations. I am released unto you. You are no exegete, though I am beginning to understand the grace in which you died.
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Matthew Hall has recently moved to Perth and is working on a thesis on J.H. Prynne and the ‘Cambridge School of Contemporary Poetics’. His poetry and prose have most recently has been featured in ditch, Misunderstandings Magazine, Science Creative Quarterly, Cordite Poetry Review and Foam:e. He is working on a book of poetics and a book of poetry based on the radical pastoral. The small, but irrevocable, Brutal Tender Human Animal: Reflections on the Photography of Roger Ballen is available from Trainwreck Press.
