Last Frame

(Hammill)
Pretty keen - yes, my hobby keeps me busy and if
I talk to myself, what's the crime?
In the darkroom
I am a dealer in space and time....
When all memory is mellowed, when the photograph is yellowed, still it never lies.
There you are, your eyes laced with secret pleasure, saying that you're on the way to change, devouring in inordinate measure every diversion that's arranged.
For every appetite, a cruel attraction, but there's a panic in your actions... oh,
I never saw you look so strange.
Fixing memory chemically, holding time on the stop-clock, hanging back from that last frame just in case it didn't show you in the way
I used to know you...
I thought you'd always stay the same. (But you won't.)
Oh, the red light, the silver, the black and the bromide; the silence, the waiting for overview....
The past seems under-exposed, low tide, but still the images ghost through.
And you're there in the bath, which is all this has led to, and
I can't say your path is a right one to choose....
But then I only have a negative of you.