I visited it once.
Thought I saw a fox leap the barrier –
Crafty fellow,
Still carrying something – hounds following.
On the platform celebrating
A dance or something.
Bank can be like that –
Packed and bloody.
The burning of earlier life,
Its smell hung in the air like life.
Still I kept moving not looking back –
Was I fleeing?
Waiting for the dark to guide me
To another clearing
Neither disappeared nor disappointing
Where strange creatures gathered wailing
Like demons for night to pass.
All mutant and bird eating
Such as a schoolboy’s mamouth,
A pig with the head of many,
Even a twelve foot snail mating.
So it was as I walked
My hand was taken by you, father,
Into light without form or smell or touch.
Firstly, I want your kiss.
Your dancing touched me though less secure that other women –
dazzling, it was dazzling.
It conjured a look I had once through a window (at our house),
waiting.
Now I write your name on my skin!
Now my hands are cold and my body hungry for return!
(Some element supposes you will return and I, forgiven.)
Press on with happy lips – lips that dissolve at the moment
we meet them.
So turn again.
It is all to frequent that we wish it well for others –
So believe ourselves this once!
Dance is best but what of afterwards?
There can be little more to say except return.
What moves slowly, moves well and by every kiss
a second second of
you.
Must I live under the volcano?
Muscular, reserved, performed,
Even perfected –
I gesture to the world
And he to me affords a laugh
As to what’s coming.
So I was early, of good stock,
(Pronounced early as ‘the one’).
Sent bravely into the cauldron
To make sounds,
To talk of heading west
Into the eye of God.
I am before the wind of a storm
but also swept into its path.
Be it. Light, persuading.
At a loss. To its heat.
Light loved as Christ was but lost.
I have a place, I have a house.
Here in the changing light each moment
We sit ‘white’ –
Still and different to ourselves
And more completely
than the last second taught to us.
Blinded, we see every day our death
And ask that man we passed
‘He reminded me he was a ghost,
He was alone and had no need of me.’
He bid me goodbye.
It is the unknowing I like first
At dawn
And then as the sun sets
The thought of a ghost greater than
light
That began each spell and rhyme
That our friend seemed
To know whenever he passed.
It is the pattern that you may expect (following starry things), so
that we may be exact. The sofa was our crib and I imagined
you on it – all perfect, all ready. Each second planned, kept
quiet and the travel woke us, the carriage shook and we were alive "please
email me, to tell us to…, right round
the back of", we were lost again and these shall be
the seasons. Spring warmly welcomed; outside the window
the ploughman busy in his field (fulfilling his task faithfully).
God is thanked. The summer – at first refreshing (the views
of
The seas are wonderful, wonderful) but soon clouds gather
and a storm breaks over Brighton – an imported electrical
one ( I think) from the Caribbean: all soft and
sensuous afterwards but in the heat alarming to us and we pray
together. But soon these same clouds (the ones I wrote
to you
about) charged in front: it was quite beautiful, we felt above
them, circulating, travelling by air and not seeming to pass
anybody (just flew around in circles), the light playing on
their surfaces. My thoughts were never far from you and I hoped
you would be waiting when I landed. "Dispensing
love that all
should be calm when I awoke." Autumn – a dog prowls, horns
are blaring (we are confused!), prey pursued by hounds and hounds
pursued by people, saying to somebody "we’re not quite
sure
who except they should leave us". Winter – it is precisely this:
that London is foggy, sexy, difficult and people cough
unnecessarily on the underground tho’ better to be below
because above it was icy and through a tunnel came rushes which
which bowled the lovers over, made it difficult to stand in
the
Winter fury: Spring will soon return and we shall be married.
That is my hope. She brought me life and her eyes sparkled in
the night as jewels that spoke. These were secrets that I
sought in unobtainable code while we drank and laughed in
pauses that stretched from Cornwall to the present English;
and in a moment I turned and she was gone to magic seas
where music plays – and the shadow ("he got rhythm")
is like sunlight on the massive swell of our meeting.