Untitled
I have erected a peripheric monument of air
a medieval soul of healing celestial anger,
the light crushing the oil out of the life
below. Wait for me, we'll walk, the three of us,
to where the ramparts chain the ecstasy
down to earth. I'll meet you at the appointed
plain, along the road of many lorries, of much
traffic of unholy pilgrims. The greyness
of the stone deepened the chasm, oozed the soul
of millions out of bones dancing madly across
the summer tide. In this darkness, in this
lightlessness I rest, I pause surprised, I trust
I see your motherly traits, and know the fracture
is the crack in a wall that can withstand
any amount of pressure. You have made a line
stand between this union. I have met you across
the days, just in time each time, the line
made the union fierce, the chance made the choice
not only further removed but more inevitable,
more willed. More walled, more welled up against,
I find we owe them this sense of equilibrium,
they are our fourth dimension, the non-tottering
leg of our elan, they have mutinied against
the would-be mutineers that kept falling back
to evade commitment. We are prayed for. We have
been made line up with them to see the light
of autumn flect the day, and
we argue against numbness and dumbness.
Wind, warm and blustering,
tore along the overcast sky,
river, grey and mortified,
soured the embankment, rain
iridescent and slow, spluttered
on the slate flags. This is
the geographical target of a long gone
temporariness, bracketed intensity
of circumstantial density. How
did it happen why did it happen
did it have to happen.
To the north of the southern continent
pocketed in the winding four times per year windy regions
of high peaks, snowy serrated chasmatic,
sometimes cornered sometimes blowing up
the powders and the dusts of Europe, never
self-content (open to one-sided invasion) never
self-displeased (loth to look over interlocutors' shoulders),
a pouch of physiognomic distinctive traits and distinctions,
from the Mediterranean, from Africa, from the very far east,
via a meandering line, from Spain perhaps,
forehead spared straight, nose short
and squat (slightly), lips fairly full
smile linear, face steep and unattainable
chin unprotruding firm rather well
designed, hair dark crispily straightened,
figure sturdy, gait (unscientifically) funny
lovable slightly slouchy to fascinate those
the other side of borders, naive all
considered and unexpectedly innocent
and defenceless eyes;
and, from over the sea, moors of all religions
face paints, unreflexed gestures and reflexed
implements and clothes, voice peaks
that cut across biological millennia of
civic frames. Now come together, with mystery
and distance. Now interlocked, now unbolted.
You went through a maze of human shapes
and cultivations, east come to west
south to north and gone to further north.
Page(s) 60-61
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