Internal evidence suggests that this was written by someone obsessed by
+The Second Life+ -- but there are also concealed allusions to a time at or
after +The New Divan+. Make of it what you will ...
KATACAT, OR THE ENCOUNTER
(for Edwin Morgan)
In the surprising space which rests in the angle
Between a minute and an hour, the louche cat of cosmic aspect
Concatenated herself.
Fluffed up some protons and an anti-meson,
Slung her tongue round three galaxies, considered the cosmos
Through the face of a black hole, then launched down reflectively
Into earth's gravity well.
She confusedly ended up walking along the wall
Behind a Glasgow tenement - any common-as-dirt black moggy,
You'd have said, seeing her sleek her whiskers and girn
For mice. But try to make mink mittens out of this kitty!
Lazers back of her eyes, microprocessor nesting just to the left
Of one chewed ear, hirpling along on four gammy legs concealing
Intergalactic jump-boots.
Nemo me etc. written all over her -Don't mess with me, Jack.
Set off, sensible intergalactic feline, for the wilds of outer
Glasgow - dodged the bewildered ghost of Sillitoe
Eternally kicking the razor down a stank,
Nodded intimately to a telephone left off the hook
Since the day Marilyn died, chatted briefly with a white rhinocerous
Come to Glasgow (where else?) to die;
Knew she was near the spot when she heard the wail
Of basset hounds mingle with the chatter of mad computers
Delousing the aether of cosmic interferences;
Came to a court called Dick's Place, slid round the door
Like the shadow of Mayakovsky's scream,
Strode unnoticed past a porter glaze-eyedly watching
A child play consequences with lead soldiers, heard an apple
Sing as she crept up a flight of stairs bannistered with
Frozen moments swept away as the small change of an editor's mind;
Right to the door of the place she thought she sought.
Psyched the doorbell so that it rang with fear. Waited.
Till he came, bespectacled and emeritus, bomb in one hand,
The other picking a Persian fudge sandwich from his teeth.
'There's a geist on me, Poet, trapped on this stinking ball
You love so much. Release me now," she snarled.
(Cherry-pointed lazers glowed behind her eyes,
Microcurrents churned, spat, and rebounded in her skull,
Legs flexed like a fist raised in anger.)
And behind the spectacles and the teeth and the irony, the mind
That had imagined once and held her now
Considered accepted understood and cherished:
Seeing his thought writ concrete on his doorstep,
Had no more use for it.
The Poet stepped back and closed the door,
The cat imploded pop like the weasel,
Half-turned the corner of a lost dimension, and shot
Hot foot and enormously relieved towards the Hyades.
And apart from a burnt patch outside the door,
A Glasgow drunk leaning bemused on the side of an amiable
White rhino, and a half-suspicion in God's mind
That He had forgotten something,
only the Poet knew.
And he didn't even consider it
Unusual enough to mention.
-- Robin Hamilton
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