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HOW IT IS
It begins as words
with the beginning of creation
and cows and flutes and stars,
it is the promise given just to you,
you recognise the scar
because it is your own
(you celebrate it with trees and lights).
You lose a heart and find a heart
and say ‘I will’
or else ‘I do’.
It’s about Soul, the disease of the planet,
people in ordinary circumstances,
betrayal, assassination
escapades of naughty princesses,
brief encounters and crazy heroisms,
the possibility of poverty,
the prisoner of time and its needle
and the horse that is heaven
with fire in its mouth,
it happened in Antiquity,
it happens now
as crack-ups in the heights of vaults above.
It is about sanitation.
It’s about exact duplications.
At a stretch, it flies:
it turns on its heel
like a plongeur before a plunge
and moves by hesitations
from domestic flings
to the complex sense of a future
where the sun goes out.
It posts a letter to itself.
It used to be the speaking
part of the divine nexus,
now it’s just speaking.
It is the transitive part of the transition,
it’s 25 violins,
it’s useful for an outing.
It’s the jar that contains grief and outrages,
loss of authenticity,
lost combinations, found combinations,
disappointments and smiles
and the road of next year
which we face dauntlessle
though it goes on for miles, it’s respect
for all the dizzy creatures
who live with us as Family.
It arrives from mouths that puff
with clouds that give delight,
like the day of Days
it ends with the night of Nights.
It dignifies us
when we are left alone, it offers
instauration in the epoch
in which we are abandoned. That’s how it is.
From Step This Way (1996-98), an unpublished collection.
© Alan Brunton |
