What bright tumult of sound,
a fanfare for the uncommon courtiers
who sing and dance along this platform
merry, merry in their rags of mourning
all lords and ladies a-leaping
Doors thrust apart, the dance explodes,
dark atoms loosed upon the world,
multiplying and dividing their sins
A trek like no other, this
journey through trough and tunnel
over bridge and under green transport
of road and meadow greenly growing
Thrown onto morning’s harsh fashion plate,
here’s no feast for any man, the subway
wheels singing life’s thick chug-a-lug
of melancholy, the ungodly workaday rhythm
of each swaying lurch that
brings another jostling of sulky looks
and contemptuous stares
No gods and goddesses these, but
the remnants of creation,
after-thoughts in a bedraggled couture
where life’s drabbery finds fecund state,
goading the day with sterile
contempt for life’s fertile waste
Another stop,
the courtiers leap and dance anew,
drawn to this hub of great metropolis,
this grand hubbub of life, like the
once useful drones of summer, now shucked
unwelcomed from the hive, dishonoured, loosed
directionless, upon the noble world
Blue speck, the horizon is lost to clouds,
ancient deities peering down on earth
in feathery palisades and festive
trumpet calls. Way out there beyond the boats,
beyond knowing, where the tide embodies
its motionless motion, birds hang over
wave and cloud by the force that drives the flower
to bloom, the bee to suckle, suspended,
infused by all that is life-giving, life-
affirmed.
The eagle soars, validated
by its unquestioning quest, its fervent
thirst for wind, tide, cloud. The cautionary
light at the beach’s end heralds doom—doom
and a crashing spume, time’s glorious end.
The sun goes down like blood on the horizon.
Whatever you are seeking, whoever
you are calling, he is not here, not
here, but far away, out beyond wind,
tide, clouds, and the formless mind of the sea,
the beating hearts of young lovers, and the
sun’s talent to convey an aura of
timelessness.
If only we would hold on
or let go, to look it in the face or
turn our backs—whichever it took—with
intensity, until we could breathe into
ourselves the unfathomable silence of
the wind, of the waves, of the soaring bird,
to be one with all there is and let it
carry us out on the tide, the rising
tide of humankind, till there is no us
or them, no separate or together,
only the fall of light on the fathomless
depths, the beat of the waves, the way that
is earth and sea, cloud and bird, death and birth
unending, with that feeling of, ‘If I
can be all this, then I can never die.’
And so when I am gone, I will be signpost,
a beacon, beckoning lullaby,
a caution light at the edge of the sea,
saying, ‘Follow me—you already know
the way. Let me be your guide into this
oneness that we share, follow the beam
through the darkness, empty space and discover
what you are.’
The shirtless soldier on the
beach and a red-haired girl, hand planted on
the small of his back, as though holding back
and urging him on at the same time, the
baby with the pink sunhat laughing at
you, these three boys playing at stones and a
puppy running along the shore, all vanish
before your eyes, eyes that see beyond
them into the quickening recesses of
time—in a flash they are gone, the tide recedes,
the waves swell and retreat, swell and retreat,
until there is only sand and the
solitary beam of the cautionary
lighthouse echoing its call: we spin
and toil till each day is spent. The soldiers
grow up, raise children, love, eat, defecate
and die. No matter—the solitary
lighthouse beam shines on when we are gone.
White and black flash the beams—signal and night,
dark and light—into eternity, the bright
beam that never dies, over this soundless
surf, this endless wind and green, green waves rolling
after one another.
What hath time
ever wrought for us but grief and a handful
of dust? What we have wrought of time is
this: an endless succession of lovers, this
dance fading in the dusk, a moment’s delight
followed by the long trek home. O, my
darling, Do not trade one ounce of your timeless
beauty for all the gold in the sun.
December 15, 2008
Goose Lane Editions Launches New Online Media Resources
December 15, 2008
New From Gaspereau Press
