This poem is taken from PN Review 230, Volume 42 Number 6, July - August 2016.
At Hollow Ponds
Epping Forest
‘Where the chimpanzee is able to recognise that the mirror is an epistemological void, and to turn his attention elsewhere, the child has a perverse will to remain deluded.’
LACAN
1.
A cold grey day in early March.
Travelling with a swarm of them
We’re two of the conspirators
While these implacably cheerful children
Cross the bald ground. In the bushes
The five-year-old finds a dead fox:
‘It smells like rotten fish.’
Hanging back, watching, and hearing their voices –
They arrive as if from nowhere
Travelling over the threadbare carpet of sound.
I wasn’t sure I was still there beside you,
Flying apart we flew along together
As if caught in the same storm.
Much later we’ll return to the grove.
...
LACAN
1.
A cold grey day in early March.
Travelling with a swarm of them
We’re two of the conspirators
While these implacably cheerful children
Cross the bald ground. In the bushes
The five-year-old finds a dead fox:
‘It smells like rotten fish.’
Hanging back, watching, and hearing their voices –
They arrive as if from nowhere
Travelling over the threadbare carpet of sound.
I wasn’t sure I was still there beside you,
Flying apart we flew along together
As if caught in the same storm.
Much later we’ll return to the grove.
...
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