MELANCHOLIA VS SEIDEL

I paused Melancholia
With Kiefer Sutherland watching Melancholia grow
Inside a helix made of nothing inside a piece of wire
Inside more nothing.

I went outside to smoke
And the moon was the size of my garden.
All over it like a sun.
The light not like a sun
But more like an energy bulb pretending something else’s light.

I made a circle with my fingers
To go round that part of skies
Where the greatest concentration of nothing lies.
I waited like Kiefer Sutherland to see it grow,
But what it seemed to do was slowly shrink instead,
Swelling like some newborn nothing in my head.

I lost the backward horse I’d mourned in error at the start.
But what stays and doesn’t go is how I’d switch the art on show:
I’d pick Hill’s flowering fruit trees in a cave and hide the crying deer.
I’d choose a planet I could steer.
I’d choose to smile while I am here.
But there’s no choosing, so I’ll go make a wooden cave tableau
And use that Kazimir Malevich for my UFO.

When I get back to the film everything is the same.
Unwatched, no one moved and nothing grew.
Kiefer Sutherland’s John has not yet gone
And the birds and the horses are not yet through.
But a slingshot orbit has the planet on a diet,
And the garrotte is slowly tightening without a human hand.
“Depression is the inability to construct a future,” said Rollo May.
Which is not the same as the future’s choice to up and go away.