Quittance
Poem by Karthika Nair

For your skies
For my nights
For our trees
For the streets
You will.

For Manhattan
For Macau
For Avignon
For Antwerp
I will.

For time
For space
For words
For dance
We will.

For your skies walk unwashed, their clouds matted with doubt
For my nights shiver in damp alleys, seeking fallen stars
For our trees purple city walls with fresh hurt
For the streets flee sightless, fugitives from home

For Manhattan always blitzed king-kong
For Macau in May became a tower of anger and chrome
For Avignon’s arches curve into questions from dead kings
For Antwerp reclaims the tracery of your limbs

For time dyes me sooner: I grow old, and eyes fade from black to brown
For space lunges sideways, smothering truths in your thorax
For words now wear armour, bear tridents and strike at the first sound
For dance, for dance – your earth, my air –, for dance must survive

You will the sun and moon unhinged, you sever orbits with scarred hands.

I will futures to a bonfire: words, kindled with music and memory.

We will renounce hereafter: hold no wakes for dead constellations.

All photographs from the series…Or Not To Be
October 2009
35mm black & white negatives