William Direen
Vertebrænd

Now I am with numbers opposite and inverted.
Now I am with windows waving inwards.
Now I am with this myself leaving messages for him.
Now I am with clay pots plastic and earth dropping seeds and hoping.
Now I am with nothing and the colour of an overcoat reproduced in a building.
Now I am with the odour of a car interior aroused by the sound of a door closing.
Now I am with handwriting to decipher.
Now I am with the whistle on the footpath, an unknown tune, a gathering of cloud-birds of an unknown continent.
Now I am with the two-tone of emergencies.
Now I am with and without, I see and am impatient to know.
Now I have little to give under the gaze of hoardings.
Now I hear in one day from the three people who will read this.
Now I now you now him now her unmeeting.
Now knowing no knowledge but common.
Now avoiding mishap.
Now eating this journey of ours.
Now only actors know our words and speak them out of character.
Now we both have noticed something that shouldn’t be here.
Now is saying the first thing that comes to mind.
Now is flower and receptacle.
Now the slow-burning the efficient epistle.
Now latefulness punctual.
Now no need to speak we have all of a life.

Vertebrand

The town has shut up. It’s too early to open.
The need to forget the stories of our lives.
The slow-burning passage to your door.
This is the flower and the receptacle.
Now we are saying the first thing that comes into our heads.

Now I am with numbers opposite and inverted.
Now I am with windows waving inwards.
Now I am this self, leaving messages for that one.
Now I am with pots plastic and earthen.
Now I am wearing nothing, an overcoat, a building.
I am the whistle on a footpath of an unknown tune.
A gathering of cloud-birds above an unknown continent.
Now I am two-toned like convertibles and emergencies.
Now I am with child, without you, without a clue under the gaze of hoardings.
Now I know!
Now I know—
Now I know three people!
Now I know three people.

Now a day of mishaps eating our journeys.
Now our actors are speaking out of character.
For this is the flower and the receptacle,
The slow-burning passage to your door,
The need to forget the stories of our lives.

_ _

At the editors' invitation, the author allowed us to print both an earlier (“Vertebrænd”) and a later (“Vertebrand”) version of this text. He writes:

It may be that the earlier version of “Vertbraend” is better than or preferable to the eventual one. There may be no resemblance. The later one is in a chant format, and I remember reading it to live music once in the Patchen/Ginsberg way. I live with a painter, and regret having “lost” many of the versions of her paintings, the ones that lead up to the final version. In fact, we watched Jacques “Rivette's La Belle noiseuse” (based loosely on Balzac's “Chef d'oeuvre inconnu”) not long ago (though the dialogue was difficult for me). Some work we hide from the public, and some work we hide even from ourselves...

William Direen is a New Zealand writer and performer. His writing ranges from auto-fiction to science fiction. He edits the magazine Percutio; manages the music group The Bilders; and lives in Dunedin, New Zealand.

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