And
even could I adumbrate, in signs,
a model
of the world, its spectrum, spectral,
I could
not sense it, much less visualise
(space-time’s
leaf mould, the end ground of things,
the
beauty and horror of being—being here).
I’d
have to make up yarns, figured less strangely,
cut from
known creatures in the layered cliff,
a gouty
literature of gods and heroes
to people
faults in the cathedral dark.
And
worse: my legends, trolls and minotaurs,
would
just be sinewed of old family feuds
and
natural news-disasters, heartburn, pity.
A lust
for life?—Yet still an opera buffa
stitched
up in rags of psyche, nothing more.
And
were I given to analysing myths,
squeezing
my eyes like a keen neophyte,
doing a
kiddy-crawl between the legs
of Isis,
Urizen, Hamlet and the rest,
toddling
under the rant and shirts of fire
on broken
knees dug deeper than belief,
I would
learn not to care, burrowed down
and
twisted like a joke or paradox,
a maggot
dreaming in abstraction’s core.
Would
this be comfort? Would I cease to care?
Better
with open eyes shake off the crust
of netted
dreams, hypotheses, and stand
like a
new child in a garden; turn and see
the
violent petal, veined, for the first time;
touch
half-flayed silver birch for the first time;
smell
consciously July’s own smooth, warm rain
for the
first time; hear crouching in the wind
animal
pain; feel the heart of me involve;
and chew
wild herbs for the first bitter time.
So find
my way around, after a life
of
finding and forgetting. Better I see
a world I
had not recognised before.
Until
the ungentle hurricane
and
cliffs of mud come boiling to my door.
