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!