A Poem by Rachael Boast

The Infernal Method

'Enough! or Too much!' 
– William Blake

It all boils down to a chalk seam, 
duress of minerals, the wrong kind of rain. 
Jupiter gives, Saturn takes away.  
Your aggravated skin grows at a rate 
envied by the best amphibious relative –  
salamander or frog, eyes popping 
into fresh sockets, the lizard bingeing 
on its own calcium deposits, sometimes 
in pieces and sometimes in one piece.
You walk along St Swithun Street 
signalling nonchalance, a need not 
to have to explain the inexplicable hell 
of circles, and then loop back to a bench 
by the cathedral, hoping no one's noticed 
the colours of ordeal, the hot and dry 
cartography of scars. To no avail. Start again. 
You're learning the infernal method:
how to treat fire with fire, if all else fails;
a caustic pilgrimage 'salutary and medicinal, 
melting apparent surfaces away' – except 
it doesn't. Stop. Start again. Jupiter gives, 
Saturn takes away. You continue along
the perimeter wall by the Itchen river, 
her green curtains closed. How to hold fire
and keep moving? Fire on fire, cancelling
itself out. And round again, assuming 
a measured pace as you pass back 
through the city gate to College Street
where a fine dust spreads over the books 
in P&G Wells and you pull out a copy 
of Answer to Job with the god-awful
cheese grater on the cover, 
sliding it back into its capable abyss. 
Jupiter gives, Saturn takes away everything 
except for the catastrophic weather of skin.

Rachael Boast has published three collections of poetry, which are all available from Picador. Her fourth, Hotel Raphael, is due in May 2021. She is co-editor of The Echoing Gallery: Bristol Poets and Art in the City (Redcliffe Press, 2013) and The Caught Habits of Language: An Entertainment for W.S. Graham for Him Having Reached One Hundred (Donut Press, 2018). She lives in Bristol.