Mark Wilmot
The Lock-Keeper
They say that fish means this, and gardens that,
houses one thing, chasms another.
But what do you make of a lock-keeper?
I awoke persuaded of our immortality.
Of course, with the morning, I became
a stranger to my dream and faithless.
But in the darkness afterwards tears mingled with my hair.
Even now the lock-keeper’s face, his voice,
his situation, touch me a little.
Nor do I need to understand, only to remember:
When we die he said we go just beyond
the furthest stretch of the imagination;
and then return, and no-one knows us.
I don’t know why I woke up, but there was
a noise in the sky, as if there were a hole somewhere -
it must have been the slightest sound but seemed great to me,
a perilous inarticulate complaining -
and I clung to the lock-keeper’s words.
Page(s) 34
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