Attack

And it is the act, the will
channeled through fibre to impact;
this is history as king hit.
Imagine your own bedroom as nullius,
adding extra dizziness to any fall.

If pain, as is said, cannot be remembered,
only the having been hurt,
then where does the pain belong
that comes out of the blue ocean
into a void? History as bruise?

Smashed capillaries will water the seed
of a dark plant for generations.
Behind the blow there is no reaching,
no plan. It is the immediacy,
the confined 'now', that is worse than the strength.

When the Age of Enlightenment
needs a burglar's flashlight and even then
can't see the future or the long, long past,
whose role is it to ask the questions?
Whose answers are to be heard?

All that can be known is the instant
of impact, the non-dimensional point,
and it is on this absence, out of it
the attempt was made to build a nation.
Jesus and the three little pigs knew better.

Tim Thorne