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 Dustsceawung (Old English): contemplation of the fact that dust used to be other things – the walls of a city, the chief of the guards, a book, a great tree: dust is always the ultimate destination Such contemplation may loosen the grip of our worldly desires – ‘Untranslatable Words’, The School of Life, 2018   *   my living is thick and filthy   I start the day by reading obituaries like I’m smoking a morning cigarette, ash in my one eye, the other tucked under my pillow   this is the crap I breathe to dust absurdity over everything   I saw this coming in my periphery I’m short-sighted, so never wear my glasses   I’m a painter brushing a wash for the background, everything atomised beyond a point   *   making coffee, drinking water at the sink, an evening with dear friends: the warm up frames in the comic strip, the montage of my trivial activities before the incident   the creak on the stairs in the new house is a home invasion   the click of the boiler, like someone striking a match, foreshadows a gas explosion   well someone is going to stop breathing   *   the german word for hoover is staubsauger, lit dust sucker and you may call a baby säugling – little suckler we call them tot, resembling das deutsche wort for ‘dead’ staubschauen, like the old english word for the contemplation of dust, might be translated as ‘dust-gazing’   sounds irritating on the eyes   *   brambles tumbled over the back wall overnight I pick the berries bunches of black balloons leaving the infants and the mouldy ones grey and puffy like a bulldog’s face   I make a crumble and give it to a neighbour I think this is living but my mind sees through it   there are hundreds of berries along the main road   I wouldn’t touch them   juicy with fumes and roar and residue from discarded drinks bottles each black bubble filled with cola and stout   *   squatting on low stools in a pub full of lungs we proclaimed we’d started