THE IDEAL STAR FIGHTER

                           l

Now a slight meniscus floats on the moral

      pigment of these times, producing

displacement of the body image, the politic

      albino. The faded bird droops in his

cage called fear and yet flight into

      his pectoral shed makes for comic

hysteria, visible hope converted to the

      switchboard of organic providence

at the tiny rate of say 0.25 per cent

      "for the earth as a whole". And why

go on reducing and failing like metal: the

      condition is man and the total crop yield

of fear, from the fixation of danger; in

      how we are gripped in the dark, the

flashes of where we are. It pays to be 

      simple, for screaming out, the eye

converts the news image to fear enzyme,

      we are immune to disbelief. "If there

is danger there ought to be fear", trans-

      location of the self to focal alert, "but

if fear is an evil why should there be

      danger?" The meniscus tilts the

water table, the stable end-product is dark

      motion, glints of terror the final inert

residue. Oriental human beings throw off

      their leafy canopies, expire; it is

the unpastured  sea hungering for calm.

                           ll

And so we hear daily of the backward

      glance at the planet, the reaction of

sentiment. Exhaust washes tidal flux 

      at the crust, the fierce acceleration

of mawkish regard. To be perceived with 

      such bounty! To put the ring-main of

fear into printed circuit, so that from the

      distant loop of the hate system the

whole object is lovable, delicious, ingested

      by heroic absorption! We should 

shrink from that lethal cupidity; moral

      stand-by is no substitute for 24-inch

reinforced concrete, for the blind certain 

      backlash. Yet how can we dream of

the hope to continue, how can the vectors

      of digression not swing into that curve

bounding the translocal, and slip over, so

      that the image of suffered love is

scaled off, shattered to a granulated pathos

      like the dotted pigments of cygnus?

                           lll

What more can be done. We walk

      in beauty down the street, we tread

the dust of our wasted fields. The

      photochemical dispatch is im-

minent, order-paper prepared. We

      cannot support that total of dis-

placed fear, we have already induced

      moral mutation of the species. The

permeated spectra of hated dominate

      all the wavebands, algal to hominid.

Do not take this as metaphor; thinking to

      finish the last half-pint of milk,

look at the plants, the entire dark dream outside.

- J.H.Prynne, Brass [Ferry, 1971]