Speechcraft by Cristina Newton
I write his speeches for him.
He can sleep in peace – he knows
he can leave the rigmarole
of fetching metaphors to me.
I slide current notions into a sleek-swung sling,
and lithium phrases broadcast their buzz
on the see-saw sways of counterpoised analogies.
I set them to a mnemonic beat
that he wears well. His voice melds
the scores into a corollary that just slides down.
He memorises lines like lyrics, lists,
rehearsing as he shaves, mock-lecturing
the mirror in the lift, self-addressing
safety-glazed reflections in the back of cars.
He beats himself to it; in record time
he digests the cud he chewed, while he chews
the turf he grazed. Now it's his role to stand in the red-shift
of public light, and distill the logic of stellar parallax.
The words I wrote and he delivers have become
himself. The world spins, tilts on a blunt axis.
The picture is now the eye
that shuts down for the night.
In his sleep, I edit his peace speeches.
