Monday's Fall

third-floor study, summer’s evening, st. anne's college, oxford. there, at the old big window, warm sunlight shafting through, like a bright-rod set against the dim-distant bookshelf, our student standing naked: smooth as a just-stripped birch to the hand; sharp as a new idea to the mind. asking how. how does it happen - how does…? close-up - student’s left-thigh. I reply, imagination: which is everything:- the everything. I say this before a pause. close-up - student's left-shoulder. see, through the window to that oak, see how it imagines the sky with its leaves? see how its branch imagined the feet of that bird, perfectly down into place? and how its flight imagines the bird now, perfectly to the roof of that church, which will not just imagine the bird down into place, it will imagine the sound of this evening’s hymns into our ears. close-up - student's neck. yes, yes I…. imagine now a fall of legs, down to our dusty rug