Building (December)

December, reading old issues of Max Richards’ Cambridge Quarterly on the train, this from John Berryman: “Images, buildings, of a lonely and ambitious young alien./ Buildings, buildings & their spaces & decorations/ are death-words & sayings in crisis.” (Vol.8, No.2, 1978). I look up as I travel early to Cheltenham (the Melbourne suburb). “Death-words” cover bases of walls speeding by, “sayings in crisis” spray-painted over hoardings, under bridges, across platforms. Their own performance, their own cry rises from the ground to challenge slick walls of developers. I return to Berryman, young and alone in Cambridge (the English town) circa 1936.