Voices

It is in the nature of voices
to reach across this baffling world.
They are at once distant, yet within us.
So I give thanks to you,
O Holy Word,
for your invisible bonds,
for your sustenance of understanding.

Poem - untitled

Childhood is light and wisp-turned
its vapours waft and whirl in eddies at
the base of life, dwelling as a current which only occassionally
brushes the hairs on our forward striding calves.
The voice of childhood is dim, nightblown -
one might easily mistake it for the wind
it plays against the cheek
with the
softness of a mother's hand
and whispers to us
with words
we no longer possess -
Sometimes, photograph in hand,
the child smiles up into our chest
our lungs fill with mornings,
crossed distances,
we grow luxurious
in our being and feel ourselves infinite
draped across time
like a satin sash in the breeze

but then

when our eyes truly meet those of the boy
we exhale all connection
and there remains only the sound of our own breathing
carrying our consciousness onwards
away from all form and beginning.

Poem - untitled

Poem - Untitled

in this vast universe
there is room enough for songs
which twist and turn
like reeds in green molasses rivers
there is room enough
for slow walks through the multicellular trees
and headless bamboozling
in the dark cavern of music

this universe which refuses to speak
waves millions of fingers in the fluttering breeze
ignoring the thoughts of poets and priests
silent
uproarious
let it rain down into the wriggling gutters
and make you laugh.

Poem - "And"

"And" is the subtlest beauty
Its pale hand entwined through
The elbows of this multifarious world,
like the hand of a cardsharp in a
Velvet suit ...

Where before only
The THIS and the THAT of life
Shone forth into my face with imploring eyes

Now the armadillo

The number 3

And the billion blades of afternoon grass

Collude
In chattering circles behind my back, laughing at
The false singleness of men

Everything walks with everything else
The left eye winks at the right -
And even the last scribblings of doomed lovers will be lightly
Brushed
By the tiny feet of innumerable beings
Feeling their way
Through the corridors of Night ...

Beautiful "And"
Spanning the abyss of thing and thing
hold up to our eyes
multiplicity multiplied !
Reveal to us
At the cascade of dawn

Many clouds
Many stars
Many things ...

Artists

All artists are angels -lift us up out of this heavy dream, you wondrous beings! - It is your madness that makes you strong. Lift us all above the clouds, so we can see the Sun.

Last Words

A fragment of a short story about the last man alive (never completed)




Last Words

I decided to come back to Earth after I projected Ayla's coffin into Alpha Centauri. There was no flash at all, no consummating spark, only a brief reflection before I lost sight of my wife. I sat there for some time, watching the green yellow disk of the sun and the other points of light through the viewport window. Some were brighter than others, and some seemed to be of different hues, but they did not twinkle or gleam or flicker - there being no atmosphere to animate the light before it entered my eyes. They existed and hung in the blackness unlike jewels or eyes or tears, unlike any worldly thing at all in fact - as if in space, their masks had become mathematical rather than aesthetic, simplified - now they were simply points of coloured light in the unending darkness. I turned away.

So it was over and I was the one. I had always known it would be so - the thought of it being otherwise was never even a consideration. She had accepted her death as a gift from me - it was all I could give her - To not be the last. After she had drank from the cup she had looked into my eyes with a kind of wonderment - almost as if she was drinking me in as well. I had let her touch my face as she looked, and I clasped her hand tightly in mine, enclosing the warm fingers. I wanted her death to be bounded by me, by my love for her, an envelope of love saving her from nothingness. And in those final moments it really was as if our love existed tangibly, corporally, between our fingertips, filling up the space between us with a warmth that smiled into us both and drew us together. I only realised she had gone when her last glance never ended - it simply continued on in its own motionless fashion like one of the points of light outside the ship. I brushed her lids shut with a stroke of my hand before carrying her to the Escape Pod.

When my solitude began the love that had existed between my wife and I became something different - as if it had become fused with the past of all things, appropriated by them, as it were. I felt it was now the property of the universe itself, or of time or even the stars- no longer ours, no longer mine. In that sense, I lost her twice.

....

Of course I have not mentioned the others before her. Their goings had punctured the years like sharp needles at the time , but there had always been Ayla and the sweet enveloping mist of our love to fall back on. And those others (who were not really just others, but my dear friends) - they too had their own subterfuges and lies, and life sustaining pockets of love to reach into - but at least, so it now seems to me in my solitude, the truth was they died well - that is, in the manner of all previous men. They inherited a purely human death. We were a race of men, and the death of each of us was absorbed by the humanity of all the rest - and that humanity had proven infinitely absorbent, infinitely capable of taking death into itself and going further. Our own existence testified to the sinuous, winding victory of the human. It answered death with new life. Death was carried as a burden but our eyes continually found each other in the darkness and we walked on, together.
Why then, was it to end with with Ayla, with me, I cannot say. When I was a child I played with my companions like any child , teasing them and making stories, laughing too - and their faces were just as ignorant and joyful as my own. The hope in my parents eyes projected me forward into a universe of life, not death. I mistook love for the world, like all men before me. I was even an optimist.
Yet it has ended, afterall. Now I have to be the last man, and my merely personal life has ended. In allowing my love a human death I have ceased to be human myself. I have to take up the duties of my station, i feel, duties which are cosmic, rather than mundane. I feel that I will go to Earth, not because the she is my mother - but because she is my greatgrandmother. I was born on board ship - its white interior is like warm bed linen to me, it is my true home. But i will go to earth.
The phrase " to pay my last respects" comes to mind, even though this isn't quite right. I want to see some sand, I think - from the ocean shore, I'm not sure why. I will be with my greatgrandmother while I write what there is to be said.
And then I will die.