On A Photo Of Two Boys Diving Into The Thames
by and published in Edition Eight of Pomegranate
The first was tilted. Still earthed, you could tell, to the world
Of teacakes, cold towels and be-a-man-my-son. It surged
Through each independent foot that touched that lamppost,
With its limp fantasy of intertwined dragons
And a rose or two in pig-iron ripples
Bickering back to nothingness under the light.
Yes, he was not departed. He was still there.
You could tell in the haircut, the blatantly burgundy black-and-white shorts.
Fistfuls of his time and place that kept him so clumsy:
He kept his legs cutleried, made his back a camping-trip hillock.
But most of all in the sheer vagueness of his outspread arms.
Was there the hint of a pincer? The terrified embrace of some ferocious aunt?
Or a holy but empty-handed benediction,
Threatening a thunderous clap that wouldn’t come?
The comedy sidekick, the tagalong kid, of course, more in need
Of support of those on dry land. But still it’s moreÉ
It’s as if, for his cowardice, he was becoming some sickly amphibian
As grey as the name of his marshland genus
And whose gulp had already begun in the bulge round his trunks.
Already in formaldehyde. Suspended.
The second, above him, the first airborne. Level
With the Westminster Clock itself. Something else
In all senses. He’d equipped himself with a slickly primitive ivory scythe
Of well-run legs and ten fused toes. He sliced himself a wingspan,
Became a marble crucifix caught mid-breath, stretched
Into a curve, as if from a thumbsworth of pressure on his back.
You felt that from his stillness any destiny could spin.
Arion. Perdix. Narcissus, Icarus, Ganymede. Him.
Of course he separated light from dark: his back a blessed valley and
His chest colliding blacknesses of night. He made it seem like sacrifice;
His very self was caught up in the splice. He was the nucleus of a swoop,
That grand Gedanken model of how everything’s meant to fall.
And what he’d become was unnameable and whole,
The sole thing that was not just stained reflection.
He had oozed beyond parts into a molten glimmer
That would make you believe that the base of all matter
Is mercury. He was caught in that flicker between lives, or incarnations,
When you’re precisely neither one form not the other and clock
You’re a milky droplet with a moment in the sun.
Jack Belloli
Jack Belloli is 18 and not quite sure why he’s writing this now, when he’s got two A Level exams left to revise for. He considers himself a bit of a novice and is inspired by staring at the photos in the cafe of a certain central London bookshop. But he’s not telling you which one…