Leave
of Absence
Windows
wide, the faded chintz
flaps
in upward draughts, hugs Elizabethan brick.
An
old quilt airs across the cill and pantiles, hints
of
spring as April clears late mists
though
winter chill persists until mid-morning.
The
rugs are beaten on the line, dust in bursts
sailing
over hedgerows
where
startled birds combust.
The
season’s pace is matched with small repairs
that
intimate recovery in those yardstick lives.
Reed-quaver
bundled into sheaves
turns
wind and rain, and time
has
pargeted the roughcast eaves.
The
light condenses on a scale I cannot calibrate.
Fleet,
greening on the chase and measured
in
the run of fences edging east, the woods
left
standing by the train move
relative
to position out of view. Space-time
wearies,
a milk moon through pines
pale
in brightening sky.
I
bought a ticket home
and
met myself returning, platoons
of
presences other than my own,
their
voices rising alien, stubborn.
There
is an urgency in destinations,
where
sparrows rise from stations
liquid
with the sound of wings,
on
twisting tracks the chromosomal spark.
In
my rehearsals of the past, a memory
of
time to come confronts each traveller,
defines
the present sense of things.
The
landscape spools crazily
into
the distance. I admire
the
painted weather.
Radios
leak unsettled forecasts
from
windows in the houses flying by.
I
stand separate in my life, burred with loss
in
that year the cold abraded, next of kin
awaiting
word of everybody everywhere,
the
lists prepared, the services secured.
In
the black plume of the monkey puzzle
invisible
birds anticipated dawn.
A
weather— creeks rain-peppered
beneath
the clouds’ dullness,
the
autumn boatyard sprung with masts
and
lanyards slapping where the wind slid
through
the corrugations—
a
sense of place, a local star
deep
within nine orbits shot through with time,
a
blankness hand-built, a hard life
the
wind cut from each stone,
the
names now rising, the sunk wreck lifted,
moth
wings touching flame: images
to
evade the daily disappointments
and
with infinite attention
recover
the discarded days.
Seventeen-below
and cars beneath drifts
like
Dutch bulbs set for April,
with
that leathery lizard look
of
birds new-born, you hugged for warmth
against
the windhowl chatter
of
winter on the pavements,
the
stairs exposed to happenstance of snow
spiralling
to firefall in her room.
The
pot plants thrived near window rads.
The
knock of steam through sculpted iron
sent
scent of wet wool rising in a mist.
Her
books, selected Donne
and
Seven
Types of Ambiguity rescued
from the stalls,
propped
the table legs, righting listing coffees.
Walking
barefoot along your spine, small heels
digging
deep to rooted pain, an exquisite brutality
commandeered
to tractor poses, she stands naked
above
you in a world without shadow,
inheritance
of light in migraine flashes
wincing
upward in her laughter
where
the heating bangs, and breath
drifts
thinly through the winter room.
In
this memory the living touch;
they
dug you out in sixty-nine, a cold spring
waiting
for bud-break over burns of dirty ice,
watermark
lives folded, unfolding
with
a clarity that recalled
the
long nights and pain’s shining perfection.
You
stood unsteady in contraband lives,
still
fragile as the equinox drew deeper breath
and
warmed the avenues, a leafy promise
parting
to a bruise of syllables goodbye.
Time
passed featureless as pearls
through
napalm peninsulas of soldier gods,
the
peacock brightness of the agent light
boiling
through the slipstream,
and
duty too remote to recognise
except
in postcards stamped but never sent.
There
was no Second Coming, blameless nonesuch
worked
into a sustenance of passage and return,
drifting
as a generation burned, clouds
of
picture shapes and loss no love could compensate.
The
Mekong rotated through the evening news.
The
peace sign on your helmet glinted,
a
hen’s-claw brand assuming new significance.
A
draft card lit illuminated all our lives,
at
Kent State later the republic
scattered
in a mist of gas grenades,
a
sense of honour in sharp relief—
parade
ground shadows in the afternoon sun
angry
for orders.
We
named the apocalypse for those we knew,
for
freaks without flags, for the disbelieving dead
in
a village without vowels
where
AK-47s aped a chorus of the Doors.
She
was shopping when we met, thirty years
and
no word but the sound our lives make
like
ships breaking up; we said we both looked great.
She
remembered her hair in beaded plaits
and
that everybody died, gone to hell
or
working in computers.
We
stood on ancient ground, in aisles of bread
and
six-pack Coke, converts to a toothless time.
We
spoke of everything but you, yours
a
life denied, carved in stone in Washington,
a
vacancy without consequence.
What
do you want, ghost among a snow of ghosts,
that
we should remember? We bear you through this cold,
this
broken weather, as a spirit recognised.
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