We say we are ready to be eaten by the music
but have scant idea what that entails,
what fire those geometric petals conceal.
In need of advice, we turn to the dead:
their eyes are forests, they cannot speak.
This room begins to seem a temple
raised to a pixellated god,
to the warp and weft of that ultimate blaze.
Did we never think that the light’s envoys
would be our furnishings and our toys,
that a wild grin of insect glee
was waiting outside the dormitory?
Phantoms are urging us to panic
but the whole city’s a sounding bell,
the mind’s ancient everglades
flourishing at last.
Ned Denny’s debut collection Unearthly Toys was published by Carcanet in February 2018.