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It's cracked; smashed and bursting over you,
there was no reason to expect such disaster.
Now, panicking, you burst for air,
drowning, you know you care
for nothing and no-one but yourself
and would deny even this hand which stretches
out towards you to help.
But would I leave you in this moment of your
trial?
Is it my fault that I'm here to see you crying?
These fantom figures all around you should have
told you,
you should have found out by now,
if you hadn't gone and tried to do it all by
yourself.
Even now we are not lost: if you look out at the
night
you'll see the colours and the lights seem to
say
people are not far away, at least in distance,
and it's only our own dumb resistance
that's making us stay.
When the madness comes, let it flood on down
and over me sweetly,
let it drown the parts of me weak and blessed
and damned,
let it slake my life, let it take my soul and
living completely,
let it be who I am.
There may not be time for us all to run in tandem
together -
the horizon calls with its parallel lines.
It may not be right for you to have and hold
in one way forever
and yet you still have time,
you still have time.
In his wake he leaves scorched earth and work
in vain;
smoke drifts up behind him - he is free again,
free to run before the onslaught of a deadly
foe,
leaving nothing fit for pillage, hardly leaving
home.
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
Charging madly forward, tracks across the snow,
wind screams madness to him, ever on he goes
leaving spoor to mark his passage, trace his
weary climb.
Cross the moor and make the headland -
stumbling, wayward, blind.
In the end his footprints extend as one single
line.
This latest exponent of heresy is goaded into
an attack,
persuaded to charge at his enemy.
Too late, he knows it is, too late now to turn
back,
too soon by far to falter.
The past sits uneasily at his rear,
he's walking right into the trap,
surrounded, but striving through will and fear.
Ahead of him he knows there waits an ambuscade
but the dice slip through his fingers
and he's living from day to day,
carrying his world around upon his back,
leaving nothing behind but the tell-tale of his
track.
He will not be hostage, he will not be slave,
no snare of past can trap him, though the future
may.
Still he runs and burns behind him in advanced
retreat;
still his life remains unfettered - he denies
defeat.
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
Leave the past to burn - at least that's been
his own.
Scorched earth, that's all that's left when he's
done;
holding nothing but beholden to no-one,
claiming nothing, out of no false pride, he survives.
Snow tracks are all that's left to be seen
of a man who entered the course of a dream,
claiming nothing but the life he's known
- this, at least, has been his own.
Feet against the flagstones, fingers scrabbling
at the lock,
craving protection.
'Sanctuary!' croaks a voice, half-strangled by
the shock
of its rejection.
Shot the bolt in the wall, rusted the key;
now the echoes of all frightfull memory
intrude in the silence.
What a crawl against the slope - dark loom the
gallows
One touch to the chapel door, how swiftly comes
the arrow.
"Compassion" you plead, as though they kept it
in a box -
that's long since been empty.
I'd like to help you somehow, but I'm in the
self-same spot:
my condition exempts me.
We are all on the run on our knees;
the sundial draws a line upon eternity
across every number.
How long the time seems, how dark the shadow,
how straight the eagle flies, how straight towards
his arrow.
How long the night is - why is this passage so
narrow?
How strange my body feels, impaled upon the arrow.
Senses dimmed in semi-sentience, only wheeling
through this plane,
only seeing fragmented images prematurely curtailed
by the brain,
but breathing, living, knowing in some measure
at least
the soul which roots the matter of both Beauty
and the Beast.
From what tooth or claw does murder spring,
from what flesh and blood does passion?
Both cut through the air with the pendulum's
swing
in deadly but delicate fashion.
And every range of feeling is there in the dream
and every logic's reeling in the force of the
scream
the senses sting.
And though I may be dreaming and reality stalls
I only know the meaning of sight and that's all
and that's nothing.
The columns of the night advance,
infectiously, their cryptic dance
gathers converts to the fold -
in time the whole raw world will pace these same
steps
on into the same bitter end.
Somnolent muster now the dancing dead
forsake the shelter of their secure beds,
awaken to a slumber whose depths they dread,
as if the ground they tread would give way
beneath the solemn weight of their conception.
I'd search the hidden corners of all this world,
make reason of the sensory whorl
if I only had time,
but soon the dream is ended.
Tonight, before you lay down to the sweetness
of your sleep
do you question your surrender to the drop from
Lover's Leap
or does the anaesthetic darkness take hold on
its very own?
Does your body rise in service with not one dissenting
groan?
These waking dreams of life and death
in the mirror are twisted and buckled,
lashes flicker, a catch of breath,
skin whitening at the knuckles.
The army of sleepwalkers shake their limbs and
are loose
and though I am a talker, I can phrase no excuse
not to rise again.
In the chorus of the night-time I belong
and I, like you, must dance to that moonlight
song
and in the end I too must pay the cost of this
life.
If all is lost none is known
and how could we lose what we've never owned?
Oh, I'd search out every knowledge that I could
find,
unravel all the mysteries of mind,
if I only had time,
if I only had time,
but soon my time is ended.
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