Peter Boyle #3 'Translating the floor' Response to Jean Kent 'Who is Margaret?'

Peter Boyle #3 'Translating the floor' Response to Jean Kent 'Who is Margaret?' 

Translating the floor

A slight gash to the skull,

the earth up close,

sharp pain in the wrists and hands,

dull pain in the lower right leg,

I am translating the floor.

Lying on my back --

the stars have penetrated my skin.

Mould and specks from the skeletons of ants

have begun to colonize my dislocated elbow.

I am translating the floor into the sky

and the sky into the floor.

My body is in one moment

the shared terrain of meaning.

There are dints and scratch marks,

rigid lines and balls of fluff

like the floor, vast mottled

surfaces and moon-like craters

that dot the sky. Through me

floor and sky are devising

a brief moment of shared dialogue --

a snatch of universal history, the final

language that perhaps forever now

will (as the wise have often said)

go over my head.