…
A skater cruises, slouching, to a step,
ollies onto the platform behind it,
pumps hard with his right leg,
ollies up and over the next step,
then leaning in and carving a semicircle
across the polished flagstones
before relaxing
as gravity takes him
back down, to the flatness
of the square. His friend
shadows his every move
as they begin a slow circuit.
…
Workers stride through
to the bus station, to central station.
Flanked by two large carrier bags,
a homeless woman sits on a bench,
not far from a tourist
posing for a photo.
A man, speaking earnestly,
gesticulates to nobody
in particular—
I do not see a phone.
The clocktower, gothic-looming,
begins to chime.
A tourist group stops walking
to look up.
I look at them.
There are eight sober tones.
They reverberate through my body—
then elsewhere.
The sound dissipates,
the tourists start walking again
and I see the man,
stock-still now, west-facing, dishevelled—
he claps in a rapid burst,
too quick to count,
and I sense—unheard—
a reverberation
from the clocktower.
…
The skaters stop
and one of them smashes
the tail of his board.
He goes to a bench
and sits, looking at his phone.
His friend leans,
looking over his shoulder.
They look for a long time
and he puts his head
in his hands. His friend
just stands there.
I want to look away.
I don’t.
The man goes to a new spot
and walks in
slow circles.
He stops, but his mouth is moving.
His arms are by his sides, palms up,
then he moves them up and out.
Is it a prayer?
He is facing west again,
I think—his shadow
stretches behind him—
I look over to the skaters,
but they are gone,
there is only a shard
of splintered wood
on the ground.
…
Time passes,
the crowd thins.
The sun is low but its heat remains,
radiating from the flagstones
into the humid air—
a visitor from the tropics—
sweat pooling
in the small of my back
while many false suns
shimmer on the dark stone,
cast from the mirrored blue surface
of an office building.
The clocktower tolls again,
this time the cycle
is twelve tones,
each of which vibrates
through me and departs.
I try to count
but cannot hold them.
The man claps
a rapid staccato
of threes or fours.
The crowd returns.
commuters hurry through the square.
The man faces west,
his shadow stretching back
to the bench, where the skaters
are again sitting,
heads tilted down
toward a rectangle
of light.
…
The man,
eyes closed
against the afternoon glare,
raises his arms
to the sun.
…
[start here] next: [after the storm] [sine qua non] [final instructions]