overhanging the turbid water
of the river behind my school seem
suddenly weakened, no longer capable
of supporting me;
cruel noiseless impotence
of those highest raking canopies
- something like the alphabet scratched
by rosella claws, and nicknames scrawled
on branches strong enough yesterday
to cradle Vinteuil's piano and sonata books
and fool's gold leaves -
too weak even to contemplate
scaling them now, my hands in any case
too weak to suffer the splitting bark,
the sharp nodules of unformed limbs;
and hanging slackly halfway up,
eyeing the artichoke farm, eyes stuck
on the light-towered cusp of the ridge
before the thorny scrub and the sea
I can go no further;
on those days I peer through the green ceiling,
goosefleshed by the afternoon cool,
and bereft of the body
I'd have needed to climb,
become only a pair of eyes
watching the windswept clouds move.
...
thundercloud walker, fleet-footed
on the path of the furore
of the sky;
like salt poured
ceremoniously over snow,
the chalky residue of dried
raindrops does nothing
to disguise the reticent steps, or
sheet lightning
the pale flash of ardour in your eyes;
dilated world, yawning world,
world a crusty clam shell prised
open, world pearl-less - you
moving, moved by the dimmest
memories of rainstorms in your mind -
why, in those imaginings,
is it always dark matter
being bestrode?
Do you ever dream of the sun?
Or is it that joyous signifiers
need no conquering, only
to be stood beneath;
is it that only the foolhardy try
to over-top light?
...
slanting like sunlight through the mangrove trees
a scission; no;
a collage, an interweaving of seagulls
swooping to feed and storm cloud-
-filtered moonbeams;
spotlighted, every moment transcends
its own momentariness,
every flap of wings
a diaphanous flash - and silver water
roused to coy shimmers
alive and yet still pristine;
even when hundreds of submarine
beaks latch onto death
a huge hidden halo appears,
fixes those last writhes in my mind
and anchors them in eternity;
the night cannot blacken souls -
the moon's birds indivisible
from the moon, that matchless white -
the birds who live closer to heaven
than us, backlit spears thrown from oblivion
as a sleeper's mind throws dreams
