What does he see where I see only stone?
The man is still, his gaze fixed on
the ground
but that gaze compels you to look
again;
in such moments a mind might overreach the stars.
I see my reflection, he says;
I see my hair no longer covers my
head,
its silver ring above my ears, he
says,
is like gorse cleared from a
hill-top.
And, he says, I see the child
struggling
in the young branches of childhood,
the school doors fanning him on and
on
through corridors of captivity, a
whirligig
through years, disremembering his own
footsteps.
I see the would-be lover, and he
loved his hair;
he put a shine in his eye like I
polish a shoe;
and his full bracelet of teeth; my
God, he could smile.
I see how time subtracts: aging
dreams
till they become hobbled old goats that
have outstared you,
till they have become unbelievable.
My young loves reflected back have
their young faces still
but I would be afraid to see them
now.
My plans and projects are shunted, rusting
old carriages;
I don't visit them anymore.
The old man's arms are folded so
fingers lie like stripes
on his right arm, forage in the dark
woolen sleeve
of his left. His head is slightly
forward,
his eyes unblinking as though
entranced
by weeds growing on the floor of a
pond.
I see too that I never held the reins
of a life,
that indifference is a colander,
indecision has the grasp
of a hand without fingers. Days are
punched down
like receipts onto a nail; named,
counted, collected,
they grow into months; life flitting across
the pages
of a calendar, falling into the holes between Christmases.
And I remember those Christmases
long ago when I was young, the
totting up ̶
over a drink ̶ of
departed faces and the wishes,
the wish-bone skinny wishes for the
coming year
that smouldered beside a glass of
stout and then went out.
I see those faces whose roots
entangled with my own,
how arrogance blinded me so I could
not see
it was the carpet of their roots that
buoyed me up
until recently, feeling them slip
away,
feeling the cold gaps they’ve left
around me, I discovered
it wasn’t I that put the colours in
my head,
and with that discovery much has
toppled
that hindered my view. I see, as
though from a height,
my head is indistinguishable from all
the others
rushing like froth from this life
that we call
living.
Now his face is raised, his eyes
red-rimmed
with the racing bobbin that’s in his
head:
I saw the ground and the scuffed toe
to my shoe;
a lifetime might have no other
measure than
its number of worn out shoes.