We think the line ahead
catching the sun’s glancing blow
is a pathway, leading
somewhere, a definite
place, with a start and a stop.
We imagine the gates
standing proud in the sunlight,
declaring completion.
But as the heat of the day
turns to dusk, and the cold
mists of night gather themselves,
the line dissolves, leaving
us alone in the moorland,
no landmarks or signposts,
following the hope within.
What use is the branch, discarded
in the unknown moments of night?
The beetle may hide in its shade
and find some kind of merriment
before the rains fall or winds blow.
It may trip the heedless runner
seeking strength in the morning mist.
Yet time ticks inexorably
and righteous and unrighteous sit
on the roulette wheel unconcerned.
Only as the sun sets and red
fills the sky, shining through the clouds,
is the question dazzled to death.
and did you feel the wind
stroking your cheek in the late afternoon
its cool breath recalling
the purity of the morning sunlight?
We have watched the green flush fall from the leaves
inside Winter’s grey coat,
and heard the owl’s shriek in the dark hours.
Touched by the breeze we felt
the warmth of our lives just as the blossom
cuts into the blue sky
of Spring and bleeds on to the shining grass.
The crowds of the city
crush the unfolding petals to nothing
and we hear the pure notes,
the sublime illusion of holiness.
After Yukio Mishima…….
The tower drew him from his reverie.
He felt its dark shadow reaching for him
across the city, painting the worry
that furrowed his brow with darkness. The slim
stillness cut through to something within him
something wordless, known, but empty, alone.
He stood and left his room, feeling the pull
of the tower’s certainty until he stood
at its base by the blue vandalised door.
There, an angry omnipotence declared
its dogmas – ‘GS is fucking OR’,
’Jane loves Dick’ – he shuddered but only stared
helplessly at his own timidity.
He pushed the door which creaked and moaned open
and stepped into the darkness. The city
became mute. He breathed the stale air and then
began to climb the bronze rusted staircase
that clung to the tower’s rim on its dank
cobwebbed brickwork. A cold wind brushed his face
and his steps clanged and echoed. The air stank.
H ehsivered as he rose through memories,
blurred, ill formed, recreated by the lies
he no longer noticed. He reached the top
and looked out, shocked by the lure of the drop.
The city in its barrenness twinkled
mechanically, cleared of the personal
a wilderness, all pock marked and wrinkled.
Here at the top, he stood apart. Only
rough man-handled and machine shapes
surrounded him and the air was cold steel.
Below were cubes and corners, a grid cast
over the land as far as he could see.
It was in its own way magnificent –
the walls of the tower allowed for no doubt.
The ruins in the desert forgotten,
dismissed as poetic sentiment,
charming but unfit for reality.
Realitty was things, it was power,
it was competition and selfishness,
it was corners and concrete, dirt, data,
dominance. He stood here on the tower
as the student faced tanks with his shopping.
Above it all he cringed in the sharp wind.
Yet he continued to look down, seeing
in the geometry, movement, disorder,
the stumbling efforts of man to progress.
It was as if the sap rose towards him,
a pulse touching him through the machine grid,
and he opened his arms to soak it in
and flew, with all life in his embrace.
Beyond the dark window of disbelief,
Shards of shattered lives catch the light
Of fire and destruction; they lie bloodied
On highways, swept into disregarded
Shapes by the tide of events, providing
No witness to the hopes of tomorrow.
Their virtues are crushed, they join the silence
That haunts, from which we run with guns blazing.
Here is no rhythmic nuance, no subtle
Obliquity of cultural reference.
Death in its cold simplicity has stalked
The pale corridors of anonymity,
Whilst, sitting above the carnage, a bird
Sings his living to the far horizon.
Coming upon the shining stones
Given life at the ocean’s edge
By the steady breathing
Of the waves, we stoop to possess.
Seeing within the glittering
Yellows, blues and the pearl greys,
In the boiled sweet smoothness,
Reminders, a hint of childhood.
Urgent to hold the imagined
Magic that we think we recall,
The days of bright eyed love
Enchantment at the dewy dawns.
We know the shine fades to dullness,
The ordinary reclaims us,
New possibilities
Become at best a compromise.
But we must still stoop to possess
The shine, the glister, the dreaming;
Still hope to see the shine
Through the matt coating of routine
Below where the stars are shrouded in light,
rendered invisible by the city’s
illumination, we create a stage
curtained off from that which we cannot bear.
No more do we lookout to the angels
but create small lives in a confined space.
The red wheelbarrow, the jar on the hill,
the immediacy of the domestic
pay no heed to infinity’s magic;
we trap northern lights in digital code
and reduce incarnation to gossip.
We do what we can from this inward place –
small acts of love, the odd sweeping flourish
of exploration, even poetry
that stretches beyond the solar system.
But we soon close the gap in the curtain
and return to the familiar chorus
– the glow of our artificial light.
Shepherds and wise men walked in ignorance
to kneel beneath the star, th earthbound star
confined now within our curtained drama,
catching a whiff of myrrh’s oily sweetness,
and we wait for the curtains to be torn
by the unfathomable expanse of death,
the infinite darkness in which stars shine.
