True Belief Belongs to the Realm of Real Knowledge

After Idris Khan

I believe our lives go on inside a tesseract.

In dreams we make love & amnesia stops me wanting to stay.

I believe if I wait long enough, till the end, you’ll return as a saviour.

I believe in Orphic descents, & dreams are encrypted, & dreams
are between here & the place we belong.

I agree with Bohm: that the Andromeda spiral could be curled inside
one of our teardrops.

In the realm between quarks, everything occurs.

I believe this room doesn’t exist till we look at it.

I agree with Augustine: that time makes sense till we think it through.

If time’s a river, how do we know the water moves?

If we’re not flesh & something else, why choose Earth?

Why is the Moon in just the right place?

I believe in leaving our shadows to step outside the cave.

I believe that death means falling out of time, & living the same life
over & over again.

Seascape

The sea has no reply—& I’m devastated. The sea is easily equated with God. It ushers the waves towards me. I want to know why the sea is reticent. Even the sea won’t accept my roses. Each year at Perranporth it’s the same. I lay out the roses & the waves don’t seem to care. I can’t say which way the tide is turning. My fingers are dinted by thorns. No, even the sea won’t accept my roses. It keeps giving them back, each wave returning the gift—like she often did. Was that generosity gone too far or a kind of self-hate? A dozen roses on the sand. A grief unresolved since God has refused to bear witness. Are you not yet ashamed? I am stood Canute-like. I am a dolt. How can I expect to shame the sea with my tears?  The sea is making me wonder if the sky & stars are really the inside of my brain. In which case she’s out there, I think. Why do we say the sea is blue when it’s really grey? It recedes now—one immense field of consciousness. I ask the sea again to give her back, please. The plea of mortals in their millions. It’s familiar to the sea. I believe the sea will make an exception. The only way to know for sure is to wade out & find a rip current, evade lifeguards between flags. The surfers are souls having a near death experience. They’ve risked jellyfish & sharks, joyous in wetsuits, halfway towards the empyrean. A friend says my only hope is immanence. I am privy to the knowledge of what’s happened. Ashes in the mica. While she’s in everything—from beach huts to kayaks to Alsatians on leads—while the sea is a sadist & says: now it’s time to leave.

—

Patrick Wright has a poetry collection, Full Sight Of Her, published by Eyewear Publishing (2020). He has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at the Open University. He is also currently finishing a PhD in Creative Writing, on the ekphrasis of modern and contemporary art, supervised by Jane Yeh and Siobhan Campbell.

Photography by: Kris-Mikael Krister