Fictions of Surveillance

For Harun Farocki

I.
If a tree falls
and the only witness
is the image
of the tree…

If the image
itself is rootless
where fantasy doubles
and emerges…

II.
Disaster mark
The lip of mouths unseen
Shed not light but shed
Light ideally

In idols the trains of doing
And the trains of fate, the trains of not
Doing, that the little oar blade
Is there, and there in the

Big wake
Of time that is us, we are the question
What the mouth discovers and
The eyes cover, what the veils eye

This distance our blade knife
Blade night
What occasional claims in idols
Occident and gas shed

Not light but shed
Visions a glass to stimulate
Flight simulator of proven movements
War exercises are practical truths

Perspective doesn’t complain
Of camouflage and the false
Cross red
Illusions of truer

Trees house gods men
See from space nightmarish
Project measuring man
To man.

III.
If a tree falls or night
Falls on eyes shades
Dark shades a wake falls awake

If a tree falls like the
Solipsist’s body a common
Sense that each picture pictures

If we sing ourselves we must
Sing of other men this too
Must be a picture

What light breaking into song...

IV.
Not on
my life

the cross
is born

of night
and night

not dark
separated

by a whim
of creation

an image
after

ascension
descending

V.
For the eyes too are products of light
Made of beams if you will
And human beings a research into
The sound of waves the wood pushing
A lapping furthermore and whereof

One image arrives without explanation
And another its shadow, and sanest
Words the shadowless discovering
Of veils and veils for veils sans eyes
A cropped mouth identifying the police

VI.
This too the world’s invention
This inversion, this Roman pack
This peace without peace.

Images outnumbering the soldiers
Bodies outnumbering measure
Photographs outnumbering the real.

VII.
Burnt as eyes withdraw from eyes
Sense grace withdrawing
Eyes from eyes graves burnt

As eyes withdraw from eyes
Sense grace withdrawing
Eyes from eyes graves