PAUL MOOREHEAD

In this downdamp, the season
hardly matters, invierno 
or inferno. Confined by endothelial rings
of grimetiles, we are swallowed.
This creature has a chimera’s innumerable 
mouths — uttering names like Angel, 
like Ravenscourt, like Waterloo — 
empties us into echoing veins. We rush
audibly here and forth,
leeward and widdershins. Along
the line we shuttling corpuscles know
that we are dissolved. Where
is this monster’s mutant heart? A murmur,
but mostly steelscreech and neonflicker.
And some other whisper
we scarcely hear above our feet.
Louder now. We flow,
neither laminar nor turbulent,
in some labyrinthine direction.
Louder still. And there
a practised girl     stringy yet unbowed     plays 
as though under sky,
as though undissolved. The only sound
besides our respiration. The train
arrives howling, a grotesque 
within a grotesque.

Teratology Underground