opposite day.

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest
loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again
and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must
come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again
and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself
down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, ‘Never have
I heard anything more divine’? ”

—Nietzsche

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi’s and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.

I have not padded through the Taj Mahal,
barefoot, listening to the space between
each footfall, picking up and putting down
its print against the marble floor. But I

skimmed flat stones across Black Moss on a day
so still I could hear each set of ripples
as they crossed. I felt each stone’s inertia
spend itself against the water; then sink.

I have not toyed with a parachute cord
while perched on the lip of a light aircraft;
but I held the wobbly head of a boy
at the day centre, and stroked his fat hands.

And I guess that the lightness in the throat
and the tiny cascading sensation
somewhere inside us are both part of that
sense of something else. That feeling, I mean.

—Simon Armitage