I have this really long poem which I have rewritten decisively – indecisively – thoroughly over about four or five years. It’s five pages long and it’s called Reaching for the Remote – about our longing despite celibacy for gods. Did I say celibacy? I mean atheism. This poem is one of three reasons the book I completed six years back cannot yet be published. It’s infuriating. I love the book. I want to hold it in my hand. Its title strikes me as genius, listen up: Comb the Sky with Satellites, It’s Still a Wilderness.
The other two reasons are a poem called We and Yet We, about colonialism, which I rewrote yesterday and think I may finally have wrestled to the mat, and the cover, which is made from salvaged cement bags, which I have sourced and designed and all of that only I cannot find anyone who can print in full colour on this brown-paper surface. Anyway today I dragged out all six major versions of the poem. I set them all side by side on my tiny screen. I made a big pot of tea and banished the cat. I set to work. Mumbling aloud and compiling slowly like an ant dragging large crumbs of earth these ideas which stand larger than I do, weaving them all in the way they seem (today) to best speak for each other. Like a entire school called before the headmaster and no one will dob anyone in. Anyway I’ve done it. I read it three times. My eyes are swimming, my brain is numb. I think I have completed it, I’m so pleased and relieved, now the book can go ahead. Or it could be just today. You know how you need to leave things several weeks to be sure they aren’t playing tricks on you.