simonhlilly

VOICE AND NAME
(Says the yew of Llandovery)

A song uninterpretable.
Vast as mind.
As black and white,
As dark,
As ocean elided.
None of the small, bright words,
Clear and ambiguously bright.
No fluttered pennants, simple and gay.
No battle standards, maces of cerebral dogma.
No knife-edged brilliant certainty.

It is a howling void of the real,
Resolving in beauty only on fullest surrender.
What is your name?
It would take an eternity to say it,
And then nothing would be unknown,
Nothing left out.

Dark time, invisible to counting.
Inconsequential moment
By-passed, mistaken, overlooked.
A beggar’s bowl by the roadside,
Never full, never empty.

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