Transit

Transit
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video: Transit
video of Alan Dunnett's poem, Transit

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Transit

There was a starting-point... but before that?
There must have been arrival.  They want to search
my retina for old prints and I allow it.
Maybe some record or perhaps a curse

exists that proves there was life before life.
I cannot remember any pre-birth
and that is why the beginning seems brief
and sudden, a low gasping into earth

like a new planet, molten then cooling.
I take shape in spite of myself.  I feel
the lines of other things, commit to falling
into sense through context.  It is not real

to dream.  I touch, therefore it is.  I build,
I destroy, unbound by history -
at first.  Time brings a weighing and the wild
singing stops.  I am no longer free

to be born but all men see their last death
and I am no different.  An ending
of sorts is apparent... but, after breath,
when the brain is no longer sending

messages and essential services
have stopped, is it possible to speak
of departure as movement that presses
on again?  I referred to going back

because there might be a record or curse
behind the eye, in dreams, lost in waking,
a proof of something before; or, worse,
of something after.  No, I am not tasting,

not even with a long spoon, that dictum.
You may find a piece of me in amber.
Could I but speak, I'd say a continuum
was manifest, I glazing above anger.