Crystal Avenues

Look. Regard. Behold.
Observe. Inspect. View.
Look at this picture of alignment.
The way light travels along a row.
That’s row as in a patient queue
not as in row a boat
or row as in disagreement.
But a perfect row
down the crystal avenue.


Picture yourself on a boat on a river.
No, no, no
that won’t do.
Picture yourself in a vineyard.
Long corridors of green
for almost ever
wherever the vines align
and light bounces between.
Light can also rhyme.
The way light rhymes in emerald
is a kind of habit
the light maintains.
A refrain, you could say.
Along a plane. Yes, planes
that repeat in space.
So not a boat at all.

Look. Regard. Observe. Inspect.
The deepest silence
along these vines.
Veins. Crystal avenues. Which repeat
the way an artist might sign
a name. Or the way every brush stroke
is a signature. Of a kind.

Hard as diamond promises.
Diamond futures.
Bright and open. The opposite
of a boot stamping on a face
forever. Like a nice quote that quotes
another and another and another
till eternity.
Look. Observe. Behold. View.
The way light goes herein
and on.

The signature of the earliest poet
was ever the same.
Ever anon.
A metre so regular
it almost disappeared
into matter.
A coherent scattering of waves.
Hello. Goodbye. Avenue
is Latin for to come towards.
A hailing of a kind. This way, light.

Diamonds can write
on glass because
diamonds are harder, right?
Right? Look. Observe. Glare.
These carbon atoms are so tight
The paths of light
Are packed along planes
And angles that repeat
harder than consonants.
protect a vowel within the bright halls
of a word and hold it soundly
but harder and longer than the p in plaque.
Crystal avenues are
something like that.

Any crystal will mind its ps and qs
as in the hard p and q
of a remembering plaque.
That patient q – as in queue in a row
not row as in a pictured boat
on a pictured river
but as in a crystal avenue.

Picture a pick
coming down in a mine
fracturing crystal halls of light
and picture an x ray
picking out intimate patterns
no longer opaque.

as a plaque
that marks a name.
A realisation. A binding reflection.
A vision.

Illumination. Radiance. Glow. Glare.
Look. Observe. Stare. Enter the chambers
Of a word. Complicated crystal halls.
Inner building.

A building is a set of materials, right?
Right? It’s also a thesaurus of light
with crystal avenues everywhere
and corridors wherever
there are walls.

Zaffar Kunial