DARK PATHS
Weighed down,
dragged down.
The dreary shadows of Hades.
Evaporated, become vapour,
a sigh, a damp complaint.
Tumbling or attaining
A natural level, gravity grave.
All the Wise Ones. Look! They have the heads of animals. All the guardians of the Hours along the River of Night, they all have the piercing eye of hawks, the sharp noses of dogs, the cunning of crocodiles. Look! The Sky Dancers, the holders of secret clarity, flying cloud-free, singing rapt with heads of horse, lion and vulture. Elephant-headed is the vast Remover Of Obstacles, librarian of memory. This is the meme, the clue, the thread. ( this thread, shallow steps into dark cornered gloom, where the monster, of course, is waiting, of course, with bull’s head.) Follow the dream meme to the shadows.
Six weeks respite
from relentless rain.
Now it drives down.
Wherever it falls:
the same streams and rivers fill.
They brim and gurgle
above the howl of wind
in their long, worn familiarities.
The waters rise up, and I am sunk down, becoming nothing. Abandoned. Lost. Forgotten, misplaced. Having lost the long lists, the fabricated descent, step by step, blindfolded, to here. In sepia, well-presented, motionless, in Sunday best, they are staring out nameless. Forgive us our forgetfulness as we forget those who are silent. Forgive us or forgive us not. For it is only the slicers, the severers of arteries, the disdainful destroyers, the meticulous murderers whose names we remember. The blameless, the harmless, all failures unknown. It is to the entrepreneurs of tyranny that we look up adoringly. Those who lead us to the precipices of dogma – it is to their simplistic gravity we tumble into darkness, grateful for the black and white of damnation.
These are the dark paths
through the deep forest,
shadows cast darker,
deeper by whatever light is shone.
From here, from there,
those shades cannot be driven.
They adhere to form and fact,
for that is their way.
However bright the light,
though they may shrink and shirk,
they spin and do stretch to find the corners.
Only if they should self-ignite, bloom,
flare up in glory of their own natures,
ceasing, then, to be the other,
will they become all radiant.
Each speck, each curse,
each scar luminescent.
Offered a single choice, here or here, we set off down the wrong path, at first hopeful but soon abandoned, suspicious of irredeemable error, fated, doomed. Each turn incised, carved in those shadowy lanes, brushed by insect antennae. The rasp of quiet, scaled, coiled flanks. The drip, slow drip of cold poisons. The hero, the fool, the hermit, along the path of crushed bones, dry, marrowless, to the castle of skulls, cemetary of good intentions, of careful planning.
No matter how one thinks of it. How eloquent, how elaborate, how sapient. They will become expunged. The soul is woven from these dark paths, these cul-de-sacs, these alleys. Even, even, without a name, without a body, their tracks will whisper that same pattern, draw along the same lanes, the familiar valleys into oblivion, the pathways of your soul. The slight impression of each signature, the names chosen to be ours. Mind matter cascading along, funneling down the worn crevices, fingertips wearing the print from crumpled maps.
But that is not all. There is no simple black and white (should you still think it so). These dark paths are the roots that feed us. Now and ever. The strings that knot the random into puppet dance.
That shadow identity.
There it is:
that, and this,
shadow
identity.
Vast and strong, stronger even than seems goodness, than polite graces, than washed out, mealy-mouthed heavens bright with weak wonders, bloodless fancy. Left behind to thrive, to wait, to build armies of reasons why: the roads that were rejected, the masks felt to be inappropriate, the behaviour reprehensible, the lusts out of step, the loves and hates unjustifiable. Building our building on the dead, who live yet, who live in the corners, the alleys, the shades, who steer us showing the way ( for they know the light so well, where the limitations dwell). And should you think yourself attempting holiness, or at least well-intentioned, trying hard, socially responsible, you will ( and this is most certain, most true, most shocking, rocking, roaring your slick foundations, my dears), run most, run fastest, run longest, deny the most vehemently what is also the golden, radiant best, the limitless possibles, the unfathomable depths of glory, screaming from it as if it were utter darkness, an ending to, a melting of.
Haunted will we be, relentlessly, drowned in guilt pretending to be good intentions
will we be. Hunted, will we be. Slain over and over.
Dark paths.
Visit the interior
Of the earth.
There shall be found…
There all shall be found.
The source, the spring
That can flow pathless,
Requiring no other truth,
No other choice.
A silver cup
On a fine silver chain
A dip, a sip,
To become
Unchained, dreamed, folded, woven, returned, unharmed, whole.
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