Watching you on the pier
as the ferry moved out to sea,
your face
your waving arm
you in a cluster of people
the cluster of people
the harbour
the town
the headland
the coast
and memory
like looking into a lighted grotto
seeing the tableau receding,
becoming distant
becoming a light bulb
eventually a star
among all the stars
identical to all the stars.
People:
we may, indeed, pass each other unaware.
Fish:
be that close, but almond-shaped sleekness,
pass on, never know.
Murk:
in which we swim and do not see, search
but not find what is all around.
Rows of empty seats, regimented,
plastic, steel legged,
but one, my mother watching me
signing books
with pride as I continue.
Years on, my mother among
those empty rows of seats,
smiling,
dead
but her smile remembered;
memory precarious as steam;
memory that fills purses
money can never reach.
Parched landscape;
a sandy wilderness
deeply gorged.
The geologic processes
ended now;
his eyes,
dried up water-holes,
partially filled with
some long-gone personal tragedy.
I found his heart,
a rusted old truck, abandoned,
curiously distant from any road.
All the days that have ever been;
the flowing rivers,
the dried-up rivers;
the old bones,
the new bones;
the grain of all our songs:
with this map you understand
this is the place that we are,
topography of our souls;
we tramp it living and dead.
Her body is pain;
birds flap inside that mesh;
she won’t entertain it, but
a facial alphabet pinballs momentarily.
Her eyes give her away;
corundum-hard crystallised agony;
beautiful too,
bullet-like.
Snow, it seemed to me, had the power to take away the sins of the world.
With that dazzling perfection, men’s minds could only be turned to the glorious
and beautiful; their hearts becoming salmon, medallions reflecting magnificent
light, must surely leap from the curve of their every-day lives.
Snow made the world pristine as Heaven is. Shining, peaceful, flawless;
to walk on fresh fallen snow was to walk an unsullied landscape; to walk in its
unearthly glow, which had the power to make even winter’s pitch black nights bright,
was, to me, a miraculous restoration of sight.
When the snow started to fleck the air outside our classroom, we all ran to the windows;
it was to be expected, even the teacher stepped towards it, allowing himself to be
mesmerised by the slow climbing down of billions of spiders; nature’s most astounding
coup, as the earth was prised from the doings of man, wonder restored, the opportunity
to write ourselves afresh on the empty canvas of the world.
A track into the woods,
turning out of view in the distance,
dragged me from the road
to the mysteries hidden in the shade
beneath trees,
in the darkness of tunnels.
That still flickering excitement
of childish adventures,
those reached only
through almost invisible entrances,
lightened my steps,
trimmed my years,
diverted me from the endless trudge
along those roads straightened by habit,
paved for safety.
I haven’t kept mementos;
memories decay with time’s mildew
and warmth becomes cinders eventually.
Love does keep calling,
but its voice ever more distant
is faint now.
If only your face was beside me,
just for this one moment,
I could chase away callous time forever.
Swans’ furious wings
in millions, in violence,
landing at graphite bay
sunder to a feathered lather,
light as beer’s head,
on the strand.
And so it is,
the fury of nature
that batters and drowns
next day
is a plaything for children,
froth to blow off their palms.
Her breathing
shallow, laboured;
life hanging
from a fraying string
and I searching for the right words,
the last words.
What are the words
that should sail the auditory canal
into her final minutes?
What can I say
into the turbulence of her breathing
to repay her love,
allay the fear,
lessen the hardship?
And now, years on,
trying to remember what I did say
as she bobbed on the tide of her dying;
moments when loving care
was reduced to the most caring words;
trying to remember if I had the words.
The wind from the west made the trees uneasy;
a glowering sky heaving pent-up violence;
the people on the seashore shrinking
to tiny letters in black print under Himalayan sky;
the ocean stepped backwards into distance.
Cracks of lightning shattering heaven;
fish, metallic splinters, breaking the ocean’s hide,
falling back, fragmented anger;
the bellowing cumulus thunder;
a hole in the far horizon where the sun hides down a burrow.
On this empty page,
I suddenly see your face,
a watermark.
Time-drained,
blurred features, mute;
loved face.
Memory,
a boulder dragged behind,
still sweeter
than vacuity;
so smile,
holographic smile.
I put my back to it, push the boat onto the limestone-coloured sea,
where the water takes it onto its own shoulders and I,
with feet firmly dug into the ribs, can row into the eternal.
The sea slams against the hull with my every stroke:
the clockwork of the ocean, of the universe,
inseparable from my blood’s tides.
I trust its speech resounding in the hollowed chest beneath me;
I believe in the anointing of my face with brine;
I get the measure of myself from none but the ocean.
Her eyes bombed out,
mouth a crater,
rubble her skin.
The war on her face;
no matter what face,
this face will always be beneath.
These, millions,
devastated landscapes;
and hers, to have and to keep.
