The following poem was written by Timothy Thornton in response to the works in Night Glyph. It was published in an accompanying book by the gallery’s imprint, Brewer Street Press.

The title of the exhibition was taken from Thornton’s words.

1.

How then at the harbourside did we end up

shouting such demands? What if even now

in the garden everything is dead still

and the weeds persistent, gangly, all this shit,

fish heads, unidentifiable plastic full of holes

Sing then. Shepherds fall naked as gems.

First there was a spin of fireflies, then

a brace of ravens, shadows glowing

like doves, and a rising spiral

of damp leaves. Nothing yet has a name.

*

The angle, every angle, ranged there

with careful art is itself a vigil

is to be held in a vigil

a certain lazy watchfulness

Objects alive to each other,

tender care, flecks of darting

sunlight from the buffeted spider-web

we’d turned upon the world

*

I met a boxer under

The pier his name was

Jake he gave me a look, a leaf, he

Fucked me it was nearly morning

*

appearing in ribbons a layer of so sound

flecks of impossible immediate starlight

for anointing vaults off the ground

our ceremony rotates, cathedral bright

for the forging of a heavenly lock

alive just back from the water’s edge

in cairns of marble-black

you will need to bring a torch

box glyph

bird glyph

fire glyph

holding,

2.

Crust on the roofed skyline the sweat

of men who fucked you in dream so slow

to crack and curve upward in the pink sun

and so inevitable, orange lichen

crowning satellite dishes before the sky

Briefly catch the end of the street as

waking from a warm sleep into

a sharp sadness the length

of the opposite of a blink,

one golden panning shot, dusk

*

Note down the codes on the containers

can you imagine the ocean they never

reach, melt into deep black sweat

under the carriage Saint Francis pinned me

When the weak sun rose I was oil

in an estuary. A small piece of metal,

reed warblers. A silver pool

of curves and wolves the moonlit skatepark and

*

I met another under the bridge

His name was Will he gave me

A glance a catkin and

Fucked me it was absolute night

specks magicked each into a shared extent

such entities as cra their own vanishing

safety against becoming death, death congruent

with silence, yet the inner absences, this

whole unhaunted desert then, not yet happy

but compulsory, the airy healing stillness

does not contradict change, but becomes it:

against hurt, against further hurt

night glyph

lamp glyph

night glyph

transponder,

3.

Take this paper flower and fill it

with nests: I want to go to the water

I could lend you the water, the wind

the weather. Are you a small god.

What the shimmered forest seemed.

Because it began to rain exactly

the moment his dick was hard we

went from shirts to skins by the river

some old pretend ceremony, all this

we’re covered in conducts lightning yes

*

Repeat this procedure eighty

one times and the swan’s wing

swings out. Swap it over and repeat

on the le side. The swan will sing the empty sea.

I would drive to your doorstep

and set fizzing there a small fire.

A fox and a flower; a boat. Do we

remember the ocean, and not to anger it?

*

Night by day with all our skin

We held hands like a hymn, fell

And naked as the shepherds swam

Are we still by the river now

*

inland, the river spirit pulses, so many silver

chirrups every second, is an almanac

per wag per wagtail of the sunset’s

every angle, as it lozenges back:

the waterfowl leave trenches, vanishing,

fowl deep; always again as vaster

things rotate the deepest Thames

achieves the soundest sleep

moon glyph

fox glyph

sea glyph

love,