THOSE OTHERS
for Joanna & Jeffrey & Ingrid Magdalena
1
The sea does not
meet the sky. They kiss only
in our minds. They are priceless
in that space
which recedes forever
where we make them lovers
forever
O my dear friends I reach out
as though across the sea
to embrace you
between sea & sky
or between earth & sky, that space
where the imagination feels your warm
breath upon its cheek.
2
Teraweka, Sleeping Indian, Signal,
Flagstaff, Cargill, Saddle,
& those other
nameless hills
just beyond the public ridges
which frame, as it were,
the world we can admit: we come upon
those others
as we come upon certain ideas,
a hinterland, that we know
but pass through always
going to somewhere,
a friend’s place, say, or a place
where friends were once –
‘those others’: ideas
like the idea of an endless space
where sea
& sky kiss,
ideas without names,
beyond the frame of the world.
3
This is a letter
which must travel through that hinterland
without knowing its destination.
Or perhaps it is returning
by way of the same
anonymous familiar hills,
a sign
that friends have gone, that the house
(on the cliff, by the small lake, in the meadow,
in any case
there, there, stop!)
has been drawn into that hinterland
where we cannot stop, because the space
goes on forever,
the embrace goes on
forever, as the horizon,
which eye & mind
unroll a highway
leading
forever to where you are.
4
How can I speak of the
sadness in this? The infinite
regression of love? The weariness
of that distance?
In that same space, in the
imagination, you are embraced!
By way of those highways,
of the heart, you are always closer.
Day by day, more of the hinterland
is named:
Communion, Love, Imagination –
these hills are dark,
wooded, sometimes alight
with yellow flowers,
a dogged clasping
of gorse, barberry, kowhai, broom, lupin, ragwort.
The road follows their perfumes.
From the summits of the hills
we look out at the sea
turning forever to the sky.
From SPELLS FOR COMING OUT
Auckland: AUP1977, 43-45
© Ian Wedde |
