Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

For three days we had held hands

watching the forest slowly burn,

spew its secrets of tiny creatures

onto the shoreline:

flycatchers, trogons, nightjars,

scuttling of unwanted lives through the grass,

and the endless fritterings against the air

of tiny insects. And once a boomslang,

its one green side burnt to a crisp,

seemed to stare through us without expression

from a smoking eyepit.

At last you turned

towards and then away from me

as the wind died, your hair

a rope of soot heavy on your throat

and said, ‘come, we have done enough.’

It was the beginning of a silence

maggoted deep inside us.

Though still

we will slot our souls every morning

into the machine and press the digits

which make us work, eat, defecate

smile at those fated to return

into our lives with the force of habit

who want to smile at us. But a gear

somewhere has slipped its ratchet.

We never seem to be alone: naked,

you wear your skin like a costume now

with crotch, hair, nipples painted on;

turn your eyes up show me the whites

each time I enter you.

And our bodies reek dank and strange

with a memory of forests.