Dhrupad 6 (May river)
They will fall down into their own rivers, these words these sentences finding their own surface will settle for a familiar winding light in warm beds slowly downwards to their own sighing roaring silence. Though they are not nor ever have been mine to give, you have them now flowing on from this to that a single seamless thread gathered from the highest open grasslands, gathered from just below the sky the slow drip down the vast vast vast drip down of water towards a centre of word, towards a winding tongue a weaving mind weaving sky and sound, skin and sky a story river sky river down to story silver river….
Only there, there, where the people have sunk into the land singing their stone memory bones, grey weathered on ridge shrouded elder clouds, something home death something home small cooing death, nature death smell, cream smooth death mother humming bees smell, humming stars death smell, secret curve woman death star bone smell, life death star death cooking smell. Only where the words have turned to winds and wind to rain, and bracken shields the adder’s tangle in the warm vast moist morning, the vast mist morning of the criss cross and spiral morning, of the tangled spiral adder’s tongues honey soft morning. Only where the red kites wheel and the buzzards on their watching posts watching down the old quiet roads, the rocking cracking moment by moment roads footstep views and sound sound river bird and breeze roads, the sudden view shift roads, the next last corner roads, the lost remembering roads.
Only on the beginningless roads beginning now now again sprung from grass now flowering grass now cowslips now bluebells now now the white sprinkled roads and the naughty weighted scented hawthorn heavy aired hedged about and field threaded and in the shades the holy blue the holy white the holy blood pink campion splatter and the enunciation of curly topped fern fingers finding licking tasting airy edge and warm soft soil and all and a round world edge a round world edge a round sun filled edge honey edged May in lanes and long low spiral lands and lolling loping hills folded around the fingers of the oak oh the old oak uplands upwards old and upwards the silence and psalms of spiral havens daylight to dusk to stars lit to keep off the cold cold space of silence somewhere else somewhere other rivers fall slowly down slowly drift and they will fall down too into their own rivers, these stars bright hiss finding their own surfaces, winding light just as if just as if and the adder’s ridge and the elder’s curve and the bones of morning in the warm beds of May and the mother humming and the vast, the vast the vast
