Clio at the film festival

This is a small thing, wound down to a few
inches, running across your life on the screen
you stare at when you have nothing else to do.

It’s a little grey patch no more than that, the scene
of one of a million crimes that are over
in a blink of Clio’s eyes, Clio who does not mean

to get personal with you, or to blow her cover
as an allegorical personage by engaging
in dialectics or gossip. You are not her lover

after all, merely a figure she meets while staging
one of her periodic out-takes in an ordinary place
on cheap location. She does not go about raging

or tearing her mythical hair. Her peculiar grace
is inimitable in its indifference. She does not
believe in getting involved. As for your face

that’s your own business: profile, mug shot
the whole Boltansky effect, it’s not her bag,
she’ll not light a candle for you, or reserve a spot

among her unnamed extras. You can’t blag
your way onto her payroll by telling it as it is.
It’s what appears in the movie that matters. You drag

your small space with you through the various cities
of the imagination that she has filmed to scale
complete with a starry cast of iconic celebrities.

Here we are, says Clio. This sad square of pale
grey is yours, set the figures in motion. Write
your own script as the lights begin to fail.

Go on working in the dark, in the long night
of the empty cinema, I’ll leave you to it now.
I must catch my beauty sleep. I have an early flight.

From The Burning of the Books, 2008/9