simonhlilly

MIND STREAMS

(for ‘Book of Voices’)

There is a landscape
Knitted over with slim streams.
Bright and dark, loud and whispered,
Each, eternal threads worming
Stories of thought and thoughtlessness,
Stories of song and reasons and whys.
Whole histories, whole epochs, whole aeons.
A continuity of dream, a muttered heart.
A thousand voices vying for eyes,
A turn of attention, an immersion in,
An interpretation of, an affirmation.

Some sing, some skirl, some shout.
Golden chained, ear to tongue,
A merry dance, a forced march.

There is a dark, tangled tree.
From my tongue it pours sap
Through throat and lung,
Wrapped to rooted loins.
A lean language, tango Argentinian,
A whipcrack thing, sinuous sine,
Insinuous, inescapable, one
Of a number of souls.

(On the black hill, a scattering of snow,
The bare trees spell out the names
Of distant saints born from rivers,
All borne to the sea, a tidal deity
Coming and going, coming and going.)

I carry with me, pelican-like,
All the souls, black and noisy as jackdaws,
On the tree from the mother inhabited
Down to now, a flock of sharp eyes
And voluble tongue……

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