Glancing Obliquely into the Future
Even now that tomorrow has become bent
Out of shape and the hours do not run smoothly
But flutter by unevenly and sometimes
Disappear into the shadows or the corners,
The birds still clamour for their breakfast, peck
At the kitchen door, and the tui couple swoop
Down from their perch, admonishing the one
Who scatters crumbs and crusts; and thus next week
Seems a million years from now, although it taps
On the window and demands its due: “Put the rubbish
Out, pile up the papers, sweep the entrance,
There is no time to dillydally, you silly fool.”
When I awake it is always yesterday’s
Today, the crack of dawn before the storm
Is blown away, the time of doubtful dreams,
Waiting for the siren to shout: “All Clear. Come home.”
Have I already passed this way before?
Has someone left a parcel on the stoop
But it has been wafted by the winds into the night?
Can anyone untwist the threads of fate?
A cat is lurking in the corner of the garden, ready
To pounce, so that my sparrows will not feed,
The white eyes scatter nervously, the black
Birds hop insanely under bushes, who fear
The end of the world, and the tui screams “Beware”
To its mate, who already has flown away too far
To hear, back, it seems, into the season
Of its birth, in the night of potentialities.
We two speak to each other in our loneliness
In a jargon only we understand,
Mimicking the feelings we cannot otherwise express,
Caring nothing for tomorrow’s empty aspirations.
Time is bent out of shape forever.
Time is nothing in itself. Nothing.
Between the Seasons
There are times when the mountains stand out sharp
against the sky,
When the blackened clouds relax their heavy hold and
drift,
When rivers untwist themselves into powerful streams,
But not today, when there is no difference between the
mist
And the force of the rain, not even when the sun thrusts
Its poisoned arrows in my eyes: everything is flat
And dull, pointless; and the watercourses disappear
In invisible underground caverns of muddy sludge.
Such moments are not rare between the seasons: spring
Takes ages to know itself and cast off winter’s
Pall, as autumn will do when it feels ashamed
Of drooping, dropping foliage, and dares in vain
To wrap itself in crisp white snow.
Between one thing and another, straddled precariously,
My identity, that plaything of destiny,
Will soon be splayed and split, one soul asunder,
Made useless and meaningless, like a thread swept
Across a vast abyss by a befuddled spider,
Unable to manipulate the system or toss aside
The whole endeavour, so hoping against hope
With a thousand subterfuges, dream against dream,
Waiting for what it knows is impossible, the calm
Interlude between opposing forces of nature.
The other soul, no less wan but wrinkled,
Worn with age not pride, will no longer hold
In silence that which must be said: the world
Is not with us, against our deepest essences,
And that my voice cannot articulate—
So what is heard now will never be understood.
When the pleasant, eager agent asks me for my name,
What can I answer that is not absurd, that it is all
I have and yet no longer my own, and if she
Goes off with it, what is left for me; or should
I say, return it to me when you are done,
But, please, if you can, enhance its status, grant
The integrity it once might have had, or wipe it
clean,
A tabula rasa, a new beginning, even if
After all we have gone through together (I speak
To the fading shades) metaphors no longer work
And metonyms disengage from reality: Farewell!
