against the dark, leaves them stripped and lost
to reach ever further into the nowhere of air.
Darkly, the horizon, grown into light
holds back the swell of land astray at night.
The streams that flowed with ease from earth to dark
arrive helpless against day’s transparence.
Stones lost from pockets of night wince on grass.
With the light comes the distance that divides
the sleep of land from torrents of dream
that drive the ocean; the tribes of night at play
from the face where a life is known by day,
colours distract the rage and grief of dark.
In rooms sour with breath, lives begin to stir
soon they will emerge onto streets that wait
all night to snare them with habits of light.
Each one hurries in its own direction
filled with darkness no dawn can threaten.
Voices at the Funeral
It is an old habit to praise the light,
naively name it the mother of life,
let blue of sky keep heaven innocent
and green of grass quell the darkness of clay.
• • •
Their voices splinter; the silence thickens.
The covering of light falls from the dark.
I cannot move my lips or stir my tongue,
the relics of their hands fill with distance.
I know the feel of cold that slows blood,
cold that chokes the life of every limb;
ice has entered me; my skin turns blue;
things petrify in the caves of my bone.
• • •
Neighbours lay her out, wash beads of life-sweat.
True to custom, don’t throw this water out
but distribute it to plants she grew;
her hair combed she is ready to view.
Left unto itself, the earth is one field.
Walls cannot reach below grass to divide
the dark substance of clay, glued to itself
in a dream that is black and always cold.
The remains of lives in timber interred
are lowered into this field of the dead;
old stones cling to each other in the wall
that makes this the loneliest field of all.
Under grass a net of soliloquies
strives to stretch into the fibre of earth
as prodigal clay returns out of skin
and headstones sharpen the mourning of wind.
A silver blade sped through the sod, three men
broke into this underworld yesterday
to open a space to fit her coffin;
they kept talking to keep the dead away.
Light smuggles in a brace of thistle seed
and the breath of the sea alert with salt,
the scent of grass and taste of rainwashed air
until the grave becomes a trough of sun.
The undertaker has a low, slow voice
without echo and immune to sorrow,
that fits itself to the silence of death
will not alert the mourners, lets them feel
secure in the script of the funeral.
His live palm of soft, pink hand lands on me.
I am described in clean and solemn word;
some cluster of taggled voices agree;
money is mentioned, I am suitable
to be chosen for someone called Déirdre.
Cold and bare, the morgue stencils her farewell.
Weeping heads dip deep into her cold form.
Hands enshrine her face, lips tip the forehead
as they inter whispers in her thick sleep.
A son sows a locket under her neck.
The lid is brought down, the light sealed out;
the screws with crucifix heads wound down tight.
A twitch arches her corpse against the dark;
its veneer of make-up begins to fray
odours start to gather on her cold skin.
From the net of soil insects creep, amazed
At a buried cathedral of timber;
patient pin-claws scrape to test the varnish;
from the depths damp invades my soft-wood base
above a cargo of clay pushes this space.
Once, my oak roots searched this underworld
and pulsing with light could feed from this night
a tree proud with branches, leaves and colour.
But what falls from light earth turns to clay
buried timber turns sour and flakes away.
In the beginning
is
Nothing.
I am the oldest voice of all,
the voice of absence,
sister of silence.
Let nothing bless
the human head
that climbed so high
to praise itself.
It thinks
it is the face
that life
would wish
to take.
Nothing could settle
in a nest of bone
only images,
the pilgrims
that hold
a moment
out of the blue.
Centuries sleep
in the blood
damn the heart
with longing
for what
eye has not seen
nor ear heard.
Beaks of air
scrabble the skin,
stagger the walk
and clean
from headstones
the rib of name.
III—Clay Holds Memory
Intensity is silent. Its image is not.
I love everything that dazzles me and then
accentuates the darkness within me.
RENÉ CHAR
Exposed
November’s hunger strips the fields, its thin light
rifles the web and warmth of every nest,
allows the cold day to invade each secret,
absolves the ghosts of leaf that outlast autumn.
Now I can depend less and less on the grace
of spontaneity, talk quickly tires,
words become contrived as the eyes of others
notice my mind unravel in this sallow light.
Intense with silence my room waits for me,
the paintings and open books grown distant,
its window one huge eye on the tree outside;
in the mirror the glimpse of my face draws tears.
Origins
The clay
first breathed
a light
too new
for shadow.
From a wound
in the fresh stone
came the man.
