There’s a strand of string stuck to the fast-spinning blade on the ceiling
of the Dutch beer-house down Deptford High Street,
it’s stretched in the slipstream and follows a forethought and forenamed
pathway while the blade keeps out dry heat.
This strand of blue string swirls about, unswerving, flapping flat and
rabbit-tame as, maybe, it dares
to wish that the laws of the world could fulfil dreams of rash reckless
wrecking, all Einstein-might-care.
The blade swirls about like a fighting-tool, spins fiendishly, never falters
or halts in its chopping
lest the string should straggle, stroll straight in its own stride or think
of the thirst-quenching outcomes of dropping.
John Bevan Esquire, who had squeezed through life squatting in squalor,
sits and stares at his lager and sooner
or later he sees bubbles break forth, build a broad bulwark and skate
over the skirt of the schooner.
Some fling to the rim skimming bunched in packed pockets, other
bubbles break free and flee to the middle.
They all crash and burst bleakly on the beer’s edge in the throng of six
thousand thousand thousand little
followers in death. Bevan sighs, shrugs, swigs down his lager, sidles his
eyes up to the ceiling,
sees a strand of blue string in a blur of a blade. Now Bevan will long link
that sight to the feeling
which wishes the laws of the world could fulfil dreams of rash reckless
wrecking, all Einstein-might-care.
Mind stuck to that fast-spinning blade now, he thinks of the thirst-
quenching outcomes of the day when he’ll dare.
