CAFE SANS OLE
we drank tea
swopped mythologies
shared
what we could
across the table
noting up close
and personal
though our
toes once
did touch
perhaps forever destined
to look at each other
from opposite sides
two
parts of
a Hegelian dialectic
an
unwinnable chess game
on occasion we would
take a Hellenistic turn
explore the logos, and all its
vaunted -ologies
but try as we might
there was no
undoing of the done
nor the shutting out
of the looming demolition of the world
as pure hypothesis, abstract indulgence,
speculative fantasy
wistfully,
you did ask
(a note somewhat
off -key) whether
star is
etymologically embedded
in disaster
our contribution to the atmosphere
already heavy
already
all the barometers sensing
a downturn
towards the existentially fraught,
cosmically absurd
as if
the spirit of the place
feasting upon the dystopia
and apocalypse
in our eyes
or perhaps
just sipping, hellcat licking
hard to avoid this
since we speak as we write
act as
we are written
reaching the boundary, singularity,
event horizon of our characters
about to strip
and consume matter with
the weight
of our gravity
where once we might explode like a
Supernova, all light revolutionary
the last word
of our physics will
be very
dark I fear
***
and so,
talking of endings
here we are
already
quite beyond ourselves
our narrative
thread lost
two creatures
worth forgetting
Oh were
this meeting, this cafe
metaphor of something
greater than
fear of finality
of
endgame and
nihilistic creator
not
something you might show
up on a Sky Sports screen
(ending
of everything Plato
every
last Olympian dream)
