simonhlilly

SUNSET 4

It is what prayers are for
And the memories of drunks,
The dear, tattered fragments of stones.

It will take no longer than the words to describe it.
A moment’s graceful decline as if space were brimmed with light,
As if matter were always blessed in glory.
A graveyard of poet’s eyes, their stumbled tongues,
Overblown or stunned to silence.
Do not take longer than this:
A breath deepened and slow.
One hill, then another, turns golden, then fades.
We become pictorial, the tattered end of day,
A blush of its colours remembered one last time.

Blink the eye, scar the memory, stain hearts with fire
And rekindle love of life.
It is what music is for, to taste the nameless moments,
To delineate the tides of between.
It is not for words that so wrap themselves tight
To squeeze out reasons and meaning.

A sigh to the west for the forlorn and forgot,
A pellucid madness perfected for sinners
Each breath shackled to an infinity without eternity.

It is always somewhere, this passionate moment, rolling westwards
An irreducible heartache, cast clods of cloud and colour
As it skids its wheel in the soils of the next horizon,
Slides through the octaves of light.

—

Another of the ‘sunset’ poems. They mostly cover the same concepts in differing proportions and different tonal voices. As I re-read and make some slight adjustments I feel slightly more kindly towards them…