Grez-sur-Loing, France, 13-11-14
I’m by the river chucking bread at
grunting ducks, when suddenly a panicked breeze
disturbs the shrubs & on the water there’s
a brief & blinding sunless spark,
blisters of ripples, feathers on the Loing.
The Techni-Quarks have landed in a whirl
600 trillion trillion trillion strong, their song inaudible
to all but cats & alcoholics.
They’ve flown the coop at CERN, escaped
domestic violence, spiritual unease,
are heading, my friend tells me,
for the sun-kissed shores of southern seas,
Bali, Australia, The Maldives maybe,
where they won’t be shunted, battered, kept
like lab experiments, can spread their
tiny, non-existent wings, form colonies
a billion trillion googolplexes strong,
swim the lost soft currents of liberty.
Meanwhile, they’ve slightly lost their way
& settled instead on a French duck who,
quite rightly, cares nothing for such things,
looks for bread, finds only shimmering
eternity where yesterday’s baguette should be,
brays her crazed displeasure down the universe’s
open microphone. Such are ducks.
In the language of Techni-Quark
there’s no such concept as `Get to fuck`.