Institute
On the ending edge of Friday
You brush past me on the street opposite St Pancras Station
But, stop! It’s dark and I don’t seem to have this right.
Maybe it’s me who is peripheral passing,
You are still.
Yet you seem to arrest me from every side
With your solid see-through faces.
I turn towards you
And the evening slows.
I no longer want to move.
So I stand, minilithic next to You, in my camouflage coat
Belittled to blobbiness.
Already tonight I noticed how, lost in the station crowd, I was
Hardly there, bare-faceted as I queued
Between blanking strangers.
Here, in comparison, it’s worse. I might as well be
Amoeba.
Away from its home.
I cosy into my hood
Draw my breath from the faux fur on either side,
But I’m still uncomfortable…
It’s as if you’re trying to scare me
Grey Monster
With your Presence and the Grandness
Of your Cave Curves.
But then, Sweet Relief, People I’ve met before
Surround me on the pathway.
I still have the power of speech
So I ask them
“What is this building?”
A man doesn’t meet my eye,
but says he’s sure it’s something to do with
DNA
It seems the sculpture in front
Reveals some sort of Mission:
To unpick, unravel and untangle
Slice and Smash into shards
Melt and then reshape Large
Leaning out towards me
Looming Babel.
More precise please!
I search my tiny screen and find the Explanation
Designed
For bio-medical research, You just cost
£700 million to create.
Even so, someone writes, you amplify the noise inside
So more than 1,000 scientists find you
Hard to collaborate within
I read you harbour a Pathogen 4 which, fatal to humans,
Has no cure.
The thought leaves me dawdling…
Through the valley of shadow and evil
Like death
For all humankind
Looking at Mirror images of each other
But seeing only cell deep
Fearing fearing fearing Not
To find a cure to every thing
I must remember if I can
I am.
Or, if God, as they dictate, is dead,
Are you, Institution, their new god?
This: in another London attempt to Keep Together Calm
They may, these
Different bits and pieces assembled in certain patterns,
Explain it all away this way:
To disinfect the dust
Heal the detail from the sick
Walk beside me on the puddles through to the spaces between the concrete
All those scientists expiring so I need not suffer
To rise from the dead.
Under the dim streetlamps on Midland Road I wonder
What would become of me if I got
Dissected into the minutes left?
You’ll have to wait forever to find out.
It’s the end of the working week anyway
And I am moving on to morning.