V
O Bougainville! Flying foxes plentiful as copper, gone in a waste of tailings from the Island, forever. The most pure black race on earth in jungle fatigues armed against the ravages of the Corporates, wading the chemical rivers, a cackle of gunfire to make the ABC stringers dispatch. But not the words of Randolph Stow: VISITANTS: My body is a house and some visitor has come. My house is echoing with the footsteps of the visitor. My house is bleeding to death. O Bougainville! Your burnished blood flows from the split chest of Treasure Island. An opencast land and an overcast sky. I think of my mother and her breastbone snapped back. A row of Xs marks it.
The sky: one vast, curving blue wave. Blue was; then painted itself into Time, sang Rafael Alberti to the Bay of Cadiz. The day a slow melting cube of ice. Bright coldness of frost on the window, in the silence, late at night. The level rhythm of the taxi down the street of streaming lights.