pathetic fallacy
All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things" - John Ruskin (1856)
I sit in the kitchen lazily killing ants, dishing out epic proportions
of death by bug spray, hot water, even organic bergamot.
It's pointless, of course; the damn things come back every time
like an insatiable tribe of lemmings, cruising off the cliff
of my formica table to certain doom, leaving broken scent trails
everywhere like desert ruins. Spiders and geckos
are of the same blind gumption, again and again they brave
the inevitable lightning of my cats' claws; the only
forensic evidence, a perfectly clean skeleton
between the cutlery drawer and the tea towels. Downstairs
my neighbour is shouting until her son remembers
to stop bawling when his parents fight. Another's dog cries
for pity and affection from the one human too busy to care.
Just as I now refuse my beloved felines their treats, while
scanning the headlines for fresh tragedy. A young woman
preparing herself for a night of slow passion found
her husband inexplicably lost between the dishes
and her evening shower. Two cars kissed, head-on
and it broke their hearts, no survivors. Summer and skirts
in England, it seems, are getting shorter. Florists are dying
out because of the internet. I think of young snow,
so innocent it has never touched
the ground, growing slush-grey on our burnt tarmac,
how daffodils would curl and fester in the ordinary cruelty
of this tropical heat. Enough sorrow for our poets
to put down their lattes, grubby notepads,
trample home through discoloured grass. Figure
a new way to count dead ants, rate winter
and traffic, weigh silence against loss.in memoriam 2001-09-11
25 September 2001 21:30 hours
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