The Song of the Scans
This is the song of the cells’
soft throb, the quivering coherences,
their shuffling the profit and loss
of life, to have and to hold.
This is the trace on the scan,
clouds, miasma of tissue, the ghostings
of bone. And this is knowing what
I know: that these shadows are you.
And this is the song of the fidgeting
molecule, shunting the code
that says Be, says Be This, says Be
More, says Be other to else.
And this is my own – the whisper
of weakness in the bone mass, flecks
of lack speckling out as if
to disperse me, to drift me away.
And this is the song within songs,
of the orbiting near-to-nothings
of the atom, mere points of purpose
in their whirl through unthinkable
distance, each its own universe
in which, between, within (love,
listen with me, now;
it’s where we live)
is silence. And the silence sings.
Philip Gross’ Thirteenth Angel (Bloodaxe, 2022) was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize, which he previously won in 2009. www.philipgross.co.uk The Shores of Vaikus, a creative re-inhabiting of Estonia, his refugee father’s birthplace, comes from Bloodaxe in November: www.bloodaxebooks.com