THE VAPOURS OF HEAVEN
Shall they stray far,
These wandered thoughts,
Drenched with the vapours of heaven?
Shall they, distilled, sublimate,
Take new form, grow winged
Then smiling, dissolve?
Shall they, folded,
Nest upon timeless light.
Sleep, and wake golden,
Luminous, singing?
Shall they, without surcease,
Dance eternal energies,
Still named, at home
On vast, breathing cascades
Of space?
Shall they, (these thoughts),
Turn swallows, spin as swifts,
Light as thistledown, rise
Like willowherb, weightless,
A drift in summer,
A slow gentle breeze
Bird-filled?
Shall they stretch, sprout nerves,
Become sensible, grow good souls
With new names, find mouths
And lips and tongue
And sing their own song?
The vapours of heaven:
A saffron casket, rainbow-locked.
Small whispered bells,
Honey-lipped bees.
A sky stretched
To blue transparency.
A tent with purpose,
An unseen sea,
Scaled skin of cloud.
In amongst and between,
Within cloud and moving mists,
Droplets suspended awaiting surface:
To acquire direction, to know gravity,
To locate tidal choirs.
It is all music, all music,
Nothing but song.
These images are taken from a series of ink drawings, scanned and photographically enlarged to reveal strange details. The revealing of other structures formed a parallel word stream imagining thought/word becoming sentient of themselves, hence the text, as one possible accompaniment to the images. (Other possibilities included star names or quotes from the works of John Dee). Some of the images are pixelating because of extreme enlargement, so these I may remake as pencil drawings…
simonhlilly 