A poem for my good friend Jo, who deserves better. Watch out for incoherence. |
Here they lie and stay, lying, telling us all tales are false. It is locked, beyond them, and I Slip And in slipping find my way barred. I bore the way for you. Pity that I found it barred to me. Forward, then. Forward and, in moving forward, an apology I wander now in strange places I wander and cannot afford your presence. Seducing in its sarcasm Sultry in its sardonic sutures Self-indulgence made seraphic Spoken sounds and the sound of singing you Recreates me now, A slavish, sibilant snake This is overdone This is not done I leap across the gate Across, beyond, below and through And whispering (a secret, a secret!) I do not belong here. I do not belong but I walk and in walking I Lose Myself and it is a grateful loss in which I am Sure That I will like what I find once I find it but until then I Walk. Walk until walking loses all meaning Walk and find I could walk forever. I have not found myself I have not even, poor poet that I am, Found you. I was looking. Believe me. I was looking. Then! The sudden fear that looking would bring no solace The fear that in finding myself I would find nothing Nothing of import, anyhow Did you know this? Did you find this truth and flee it even as you fled yourself? Are we manifested in our absence? Fear emboldens me I cut across the lawn Not my lawn and not my grass I invite the owner to kiss my…well, it is crude, but as I said Fear Made me bold. I leave that field. I will find you elsewhere. Suburbia now. Homes empty save for mothers-stay-at-home A dying, yes, a dying Breed. This, you say, is for the best. No children haunt these streets God, we like to be kept. Passing a blue car with blue men in blue shirts Smacking At a blue sky Passing them I am Not. I am not and in being nothing I am becoming Something Something I don’t know And nor do they, these too-blue men Who eye me, wondering why- -I am the wrong shade of blue. The wrong shade and fading Fading and in fading Finding I am gone Just in time, For there is a GARDEN I am vanished before it. Humbled, amazed Made small. I would give you this garden. I would steal the stones and snatch the petals Pilfer the foliage and lay these at your feet Like pearls. But this would be a mockery A mockery unto you as my hands were not the hands that wrought these joys My hands That are not my hands The graveyard, the church, the field, the neighbourhood and now This The garden. Oh God, the garden. Pity that I travel so far and suffer so much to find nothing Nothing That is of you and for you, alone. Nothing that I would not taint The garden is vast and deep and even You Who disdain the Sun and find it sordid Would love this garden For the shade is a living Shade And lying on its dark jade bosom would bring you a sort of peace It is too much for me Too much! Too much meaning and too much beauty Too far away and too apart I am made lonely I am alone. Too bad, I know, because it was the perfect Perfect gift for you I’d give it to you But my heart would break And in breaking, die another, another, another… I will be immodest and think that you’d not wish my final Death. But it’s okay The Garden ends Ends and opens Onto a narrow, familiar street Green grass mottled jaundice yellow And cars parked every which Wrong way Just enough beauty for me to bear Too much beauty bleaches, blinds Destroys We can only see the pieces and in pieces find our peace You know this all too well You who are the maker made of pieces Sheltering us from the whole of you My flaw was in trying to see you in one try You are facets You are more I will take pieces, instead The purple, pilfered flower (It is your eyelids/they are your eyes) The sparrow song (Laughter, your laughter) The gravel ‘neath my feet (Imitations Intimations? Friendship unsullied) The breeze and the heat (Words and scathing and humorous and-) England and the summer (Disappointing and Grand) You; the English summer (Disapproving and Great) I should’ve made a cake. |