Archive for August, 2005
Poem: The No News News
The news came: uncertainty, overflowing.
It was no news at all in truth, only a postponement of knowing
and yet it threatened to swamp our existence, kill our sharing,
grind our bones into bread for the lighthouse keeper,
the visiting gulls who plague him, the hungry children by the gate.
Always late, I picked up my sword and slashed with it like a madman
while waiting for your train to slide into being, your presence to enrich
once again, the dream unfolding the necessity of you in my life.
Poem: The Lighthouse Seeker
The commercial scent of hypocrisy heavy on his nostrils, he turns away
reluctant at first to acknowledge the betrayal of a hen-based community;
but then he smiles as the dove-winged light takes him to the fairground,
the fairer ground where dreams are spun from sugar, no lies ever told;
where cities are made from green grass and orthodoxy is discouraged,
the land of milk-soaked villages so old they perspire with wise visions
of ghosts, of spirits seeking audience with those intent on solitary roads,
the living sensitives soaked in deep-held principles who refute allegations
that fortune only favours the bold, heartless, cold; he grew old, listening
to all that jazz, corporate ladder-climbing to spirituality transposed.
He is at home in Heaven, in the realm of fresh-fall snow ripe for implanting
with heretical yet firm footprints looking crisp and clean and new.
And he cries, realising with joy that the Lady is there, too, dressed
like a picture green and blue; the earth made garment, sky as well.
There is no Hell save that of man’s own devising, no lie worth telling
for fear of truth made real by lips parting, breath departing,
words emerging from worlds within untold yet one with everything
just the same. Nobody is to blame, he marches as we all do,
to destiny, to folly or success, the vagaries of paths none can discern,
at least not clearly but only as a blur, a guess, an able leap into vibrant chance,
the power of remembrance running parallel with the power to forget.
What sterling work is man who dreams? He, strange engineering work,
forms the noblest sentience, the quirkiest intrusion, yet brought to birth.
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