Follow, follow, the trail of the enlightened ants over the hill, over the sweet prairie grass and the smoke of it burning, over the rocks and ruins that I cannot name, deplorable stone reeking of secrets and you can never, ever know, not this far in advance, not in the beginning, the taste of a tongue of stone. Come, come, over the lips of a hundred grails slick of agate and crocodile egg, and A is for alligators, too, child at your desk full of pencil shavings and thumbscrews.

Let us go then, let us go into the black and the red, all the crimsons and carnelian the shimmer-flow of blood down the wrist, down the lip and don't you want to taste it, child, to taste the marsh-blood and the delta-blood falling like a stream of flapping salmon? Smile for the camera, lovely, show me your milk teeth so I can measure our time. Let us go into the black and the red, the bold legs of letters and the smacking void of the spaces between, let us go onto the papery Map, the estuaries of spaces between word-islands, stepping stones, brambles and leaf-walls. Let us go for you will come whether you will or no. Let us stand tiptoe on the spires of minarets, we recalcitrant stylites, letting the wind from my father's dripping curls hollow us to empty cypresses, holy and pure at the crown of the world.

Ask yourself this: will you commence that descending column of muscles, enough to step forward, into me and out of yourself? Will you cut your own shape out of the air, will you melt into me and drink the waters of the reed-cups? This is how we begin to suffer, together, you and I, how we begin to breathe the wind, how we close our mouths over her cerulean breast like an infant. Does her nipple cut your tongue like a record-needle? What does she play within you, in the grooves of your mouth? I will play louder. I am jealous, I am tooth-bared, if the wind will whistle in your bones, I will eat them, to joint and marrow. This is the letter I inscribe on your tongue in lacerations of honeycomb and sashimi, this is how I open your secret mouth and compel.

It is the beginning, it is all things, the aleph and the alpha, the beauty of the gnarled foot of the mountain. I know what crawls beneath those rocks like knuckles, I know how to love what lies there. The slip of slime on the stones and that one step down, that one step into the black and a wheel is set in motion. This, chestnut-cheeked child, is the grinding of the wheel and the hoaring of the trees; the first shuddering frame. Grind down the bleeding frost and find beneath your fingers a paste smeared on the face of the stars, the blind and the black and in the end I will have you, for in the beginning I speak, the first word, the first glyph beaming. The mouth opens and there is a moment before the creak of sound, pregnant and leaping, and it is that moment that we touch with our toes, the water is cold and we devour it, the water is warm and we inject it into us, the finger crooks inwards and you follow the curve of the scythe through the wheat.

Give me your arm and down we go, falling through the dark like a hand. It is there and gone, raise your arms as we fly, so that the air can get the sense of you, can measure your reach, so that you will fit into me, my dear, snugly and well. Open your mouth that your teeth may be counted, open your mouth and swallow the dark, open until your jaw snaps, and I will continue to scrawl with the tip of your incisor in the taffeta mud. I will dance with clumps of it, earth and phrases of apple-flesh, under your demure eyelashes, and the lizards will bite at my breasts, all for your amusement, all to draw back the curtain and begin the salivating chorus. Come and I will paint your face with clay, come and kiss my cheek like a good child.