1.

What we are most

easily seduced by must

tell us something

about ourselves, but what

if it tells us only

about everyone else?

If you want to get

to know someone (tweets

the prolific Kelly

Oxford) argue with him,

and I considered

that wisdom, considering

my recent disagreements with you

there reading this.

Let me here drop too

a word on Arthur Conan Doyle’s

surrender to the disciples

of Madame Blavatsky,

or some cognate matter

acting as foothold.

Let me be the last,

in other words,

if you can arrange it,

the last of the last

to plead the colourless

autonomy of language

houses a will as acquisitive

as ours, if not more so,

gripped by daydreams

of description, unmitigated

description even unto

argument, argument

so humourless it teeters

back into the realm of description

and drops its mask

and spits in every dinner plate.

The last, I said. For who

would call that seduction?

2.

Thinking of Benedict

Cumberbatch and his mind

(stay with me), I resolved

on the importance

of character, specifically

as a function of the celebrity

interview: that it’s not his face

propelled him into the skin

of a matinée idol but

his quips and winning

earnest wish to answer

every question,

and be very very nice.

Just so

the novelists will not

hazard any but the finest

manners in their prose, no

they won’t, they won’t,

they’ve shown

they won’t for two

maybe three generations,

those maestros of exposition,

and that may be what’s driven

the poets to this bluff

of severely impartial

impudence.

I was thinking this walking

home in the dark, the too-early

dark of November, shivering,

towards my apartment

on a promontory,

fingers stiff

hauling staples,

wondering if it was the kind

of thing that, were I the second-

last person at a party

with Benedict Cumberbatch,

he’d find worth debating,

call a very good question,

before proposing we spare

each other the embarrassment

of being the last

to leave and leave in unison.

Goodness that shows

every sign of being also

resourceful has always been so

difficult to refuse.