Which?

 

Which?

The film strip of my life:

the constant change, albeit slow:

was I all of those?

That youthful face, hardly;

neither lines nor traces,

none of my history there.

Or the newly married

with all his questions answered

before most arrived;

can he be my truest self

before he has questioned yourself?

And then, with the first signs of grey

and a modicum of success writing poetry;

was he the arrival; I suspect he thought so,

though the years were already picking up speed

and his dreams beginning to look ragged

in their flight.

Now this face, growing gaunt,

age seldom recognized in the mirror,

but seen with shock in the updating

of passport and license photographs.

Time sculpts beauty away, individuality too;

but stripped of self-importance, pride diminished,

there, at last, inside the scribble of age, is my bared self.

Face

 

I turn my head as a child, look back, see nothing.

When I turn forward again my face has been gouged,

there are splinters from the corners of my eyes,

my mouth is a mean line.

My eyes are pools;

their former blue submerged,

indistinct as dapples are in the shallows.

I turn my head as a child, look back, see nothing.

When I turn forward again I have my father’s face;

he is staring at nothing;

life has grown quiet inside him.

Mirror Image

She looks at herself,

and, rather than passing on,

remains in front of herself,

returning her stare

returning her stare.

Time has scribbled on her face,

the script has halted her;

intrigued, horrified,

she has stopped to read

she has stopped to read.

Time’s graffitti has betrayed her,

she sees her story on her face:

time vandalised her beauty;

she turns away

she turns away.

Homeward

In the beautiful days of childhood, I was a kite

filled with the exhilaration of blue skies;

trees I climbed presented their branches

with the sweep of the grandest stairs;

clouds stampeded across my heavens and the road

was a flowing tide beneath my feet.

In the beautiful days of childhood, coloured umbrellas

rolled me onward

with smile a scarf, waving over my shoulder,

trailing back into the years;

like dreams, like smoke from an old train engine

dissipates in the attempt to go back.

What Does He See Where I See Only Stone?

 

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.