at noon

A scent of sorrows— three hundred thousand summers old. The breath of pain preserved— stagnant emptiness. A string of pearls offended, melted—wine of guilt. Hideaways stung by light— currents of coolness. A scent of sorrows— three hundred thousand summers old.

After a time… rain. After a time… silence. What slips away is leaving. Guiltless dripping eaves— transparent necklaces strung out—innocently centuries drain away. In the beautiful gardens of warm countries, dreams have made their nests beside springs of light. White-winged hopes drift on, monotonous. The horizon absorbs the breath of every impulse. ———————————— And in the morning flares a word-sound from a harp. Into the eyes of night light looks back. Down the furrows of the day the dripping eaves make haste. After a time… a day of dream. After a time… a dream without sound.

Hidden by chance behind time and lace underwear, smiles meet me— detached and dazzled… After the flicker of an eyelid, an awakened eye gathers from the world a blaze of light. Hopes cradle a luscious fruit, the tendrils of spring sway, I catch a sound—a breathless leaf— and life embraces me again.

Dream behind the curtains, alone among the terraces of hanging gardens, lost… calm… imperishable… A dream behind the dream, through stained glass in the cathedral of golden threads of dust. Restful are the whispers spilled into silence, wings of night fallen into sleep. Within muted stories of stillened tremors, a dreamed world dreams the World.

* * * Spatium /Interstice/ I am the child of a wandering dream, father to unfathomable thoughts, and the free urge outward is born of the nymph “Immensity.” Fate played a joke above my cradle on a fogbound night; she misled the fairy godmother who, lazy, forgot to count my days. Death will not find me, turned her gaze away forever, and this most wondrous gift to all (immortality) is a curse to me. In vain I cast my nets into Acheron—the idle river poured from tears— and old, familiar Charon, astonished, sends me back to Earth. I roamed every known universe. I loved every unknown maiden. I met each one I had sent away. I forgave… I accepted… I let myself go… In my hand I hold a watch, long since no longer of use. I rock upon an ancient chair. I do not think, I do not die, I do not live.

Departed moment— whose contempt will trouble you, departed moment of awaited, longed-for caresses? Whose blindness will wound you with indignation—an awakened dream? With longings free of pretence, a departed moment of prodigal dawns. Newborn tremors left alone, subsiding into echoing hollows. Universes scattered into dust will dissolve within the chaos, and drowsy, timeworn impulses will turn from words to earth.

A tale of the scent at the fingertips and the glove that left them. Captive, the glove is absent— an appendage to a hand. Its hope—empty, five-fingered— is born in contact with the flesh. Carelessness, a style of fragrance, speaks of caresses lying in wait. Cold, the glove, alone, along his fingers slips away.

The rain has changed; it no longer falls as it once did. This morning I met the world somehow different, somehow estranged /from rain and wind/, somehow deaf to the noise of words. The otherness of the world did not summon my soul, did not awaken senses lying still. The rain has changed. I no longer await its rainbow. Within the sigh silence sleeps.

The streets ran past, carelessly hidden from his attention—those wanderers forever circling the same place, doormats beneath his feet. The gaping windows—“mirrors” of shadows—envied the shopfronts and their counterfeit contents. And within this inhospitable estrangement, a flock of thoughts nested in his mind, intending to stay for a long while. THE IMAGE—not from outside, not out of his soul—the “image” of doubt, flown in from self-arising nothingness, had put on familiar masks so it would not be recognised. A cuckoo brood laid its egg in his consciousness: swollen, cracking doubt. Streets, windows, shopfronts—none remained. He wondered whether they had ever existed. Memory was absent; his gaze fled. Could he be someone else? He fell asleep and woke inside doubt. Whether he was alive seemed as uncertain as whether he was dead. Hatched and swelling, the cuckoo chick pushed from his mind everything he doubted, leaving only It—doubt. Who is doubting? Unfixed, impersonal, he wandered away… In vanishing, he had become an expert tracker of himself. There were no doubts in the past; the present did not exist. Walking backwards, he tried to peer into the future. IN VAIN…

Still she sits alone in the small corners of despair. Still she seeks an excuse for every pause of falling. And drifts autumnal through colours dreamed— beloved of our longing, a mute immensity. We scarcely sense her, yet, her captives, held within her arms, we sway with grief. And we wait in the small corners of remorse. And seek an excuse for happiness.

Ever more alone and blind, the river and its bed merged into one. And it is quiet. Quiet— no one hears the sound of water. Taller and taller the reeds grew. It is quiet, behind the silence…

You seek the silence fused with the scattered things of morning. Thoughts gathered along the road, having found no bounds. Into you rushes the solitude of those left behind yesterday, undiscovered scents, an estranged boundlessness. You seek the scattered curves in the whiteness of transparent thoughts. And you will wait to turn the next blank pages.

Day will break; hidden worlds will race down endless boulevards, and behind the beats of your heart, intimate secrets will tremble. Day will break, and in an awkward silence you will turn, alone meet the face of an unknown shadow. Within those few steps of solitude you will hide your timid hopes— thin straws. Day will break, time cradled by your attention. Within one stifled cry the smile of a new desire will be born.

She wakes: “outside, it rains.” And the drops, clearer than tears, murmur… Their breath is trembling gilding: dream-mirrors of falling colour. The “water” round dance has begun. The leaves play as woodland spirits. Marsh spirits whistle in chorus, and a blessed silence breathes. She tells herself: “outside, it rains.” Somehow her speech falls into rhyme. The dashes gleam like daggers, and the full stops ............................. points................. e m p t i n e s s