A Disturbance In The Air

 

I.

I AM, a disturbance in the air, a flutter in the heart,

Collector of shadows

Gathering darknesses,

Haunter of forgotten byways, the vast vaulted forests, the hard fierce fastnesses,

The rocky glen,

     THE BASTARD HEATH.

   Clouds occlude the sun

Life is

A Lapse of Memory.

Every Mask hides another, snarling in turn when uncovered-

What if, beneath all these masks, lay, not a face, but a hole?

What if everything revealed so far was just a series of increasingly desperate diversions?

Each one a masquerade, Enacted to safeguard a secret

           too terrible or too wonderful to bear.

     As the Secret is approached it emanates visions, as the sun, heat and radiance,

 each more opulent and grandiose

Than the last.

              Here, I am god, at the centre of all things, all things abiding in me.

Or

What say Our

Secret is squid and

Every god and devil, each chamber of heaven or circle of hell, but

 a cloud of ink, opaquing the waters

And every Answer ever given just

            A blackening of the blue.

Every Enlightenment, every vision vouchsafed by heaven, and every single word

Angel ever spoke to man-

 a ruse, or feint

And every saint

A species of Dupe.

     And yet,

         is this not triumph?

To have come close enough to the sun,

                   that it burned?

II.

Purge my meaty grossness, like an airy spirit go.

The world is dreamed into being,

Is

Airy nothing,

And Life, a

         Lapse of

Memory.

The Path is

The place where the buttercups

Don’t grow-

Follow path

Through field of flowers

Rabbits

Run

Away.

Stalk the sun,

From East to West

Till the great beast bleeds

on the

           far horizon,

                  gored on the

                  horns of the hills.

III

I AM the machine operator.

I and an I and another I,

Mudlarks,

Plucking treasure from The Silence,

A sword, a cup, and a jewellery box

From

Airy Nothing.

The tree holds birds to its bosom

She is the patron of that School of Music.

“he never missed a day’s work. That’s what was bred into you.

You must work for a living.”

    We carry others with us. We hear their voices commenting on our thoughts and actions, on the scene spread out for the senses. Looking out through our eyes. Squatters.