(Cinema)

In the film that doesn’t begin and never ends, a man

wakes, drives to a country farmhouse where he finds

the guests he knows from his recurring dream, each

telling their own strange tale to him, the architect

called in to pitch his new design—a fratricidal son,

that ventriloquist whose dummy mouths his life—

progressive horror, till from his nightmare the man

wakes, drives to a country farmhouse where he finds

the guests he knows from his recurring dream. . . .

So with Dead of Night, Bondi, Gold, and Hoyle wake

to their design, the universe a Steady State, a cloud

that never moves from its mountaintop, one droplet

added for every one lost. Or like our own bodies

freshened cell by cell, creation continuous, God-less,

and atoms bred from atoms from alchemical stars.

You drive with Hoyle in the hills above Montalcino,

the cloth merchant’s son, outspoken, caustic, truant,

who would label you comically “The Big Bang Man,”

arguing the probabilities: “What matter, Fred, creates

itself?” “Nothing, my dear Georges, then in an instant

a universe?” All that is, is, is spinning on a pencil point.

And you in his dinner portrait of you, a Friday fast,

coveting his steak, the enormous, undesired fish

appearing to stay the same size however much you eat.

Source: From Nothing (Four Way Books, 2016)