‘NO SENSE OF an overcrowded nation at your back as you stand on the shore, gazing at
the sea’s horizon: only the love of a continent.’
A private island you can walk around in a morning has come onto the
market. One tree is a famous visiting book. See the earrings screwed into
the bark? – that one was Taylor’s. The beach cave is a movie theatre, airconditioned.
Scallop shells in the boathouse conceal speakers: the ocean
was recorded at Clint’s place in Carmel, four thousand miles away.
1st – The Island on the Ring of Fire
The plate is pushed over a hotspot in the mantle beneath – an upwelling
plume of magma where a volcanic island flowers, reaching up to air from
the ocean floor, a marine lotus, entertaining new flora and fauna. Then off
it slinks, usurped by a younger sibling right over the stable melt source.
2nd – The Island Indoors
Rum punches are handed out to the audience. The plantation owner binds
his daughter with tarantula yarn. The black slave, cutting cane, resents
the whole colonial catastrophe. Prophetic strange fruit hangs in the brief
twilight. Ariel flies down the centre aisle, exulting in the mind’s freedom.
3rd – The Prison Island
Waves are playful in the bay of storms. A cell phone is akin to a conch, an
attribute of power secreted in one’s fundament. A pirate was shipped in,
prompting hilarity: a hoarder of britcoins, buccaneering in cyberspace.
Self-help is obvious: imagine yourself on a ship or a flight to the stars.
4th – The Sinking Island
All the parrots are in aviaries abroad now. The few mammals have a
hangdog look, as if they smelled the coming inundation. Among them are
a dozen skinny cows, and each one has a name, a charm against loss. In
this place of apparatus every catamaran has a net of fine mesh amidships.
5th – The Rock Island
Music rattles the mainland – promenade guesthouse bedrooms. Fans who
can’t be squeezed into the field moan into their mobiles. Fireworks over
water image a guitar. Interviewed in the telly tent, the professor hypes his
new history – locals buying guns, Morrissey signed up at a boat show.
6th – The Invisible Island
Although herring gulls’ calls evoke the wrong hemisphere, the sleepy
lagoon is as blue as the Führer’s eyes. Our presenter is defensively shifty
– too many recent guests are from his native Illyria. The grand piano is
totally taboo: it might be used for shelter. Luxury? A six-way mirror.
All six – The Island of Rest
In a nondescript vessel for the train, her ashes are stolen by a junkie who
mistakes them for cocaine. They were meant to nurture roses on Tresco.
The daughter browses shelves in a retail hangar. Tresco’s head gardener no
doubt has potash; but she needs it now, for comfort on her trip.
♦
Introduction to Six-Way Mirror | The Index of Hexagrams and Cantos
