simonhlilly

WRAPPED (PALM SUNDAY)

1
Grey dawn,
layered in layers of grey cold,
slow long air from the east settles tasting
the heroic snows elsewhere.
Here, silence wrapped desolation descends.
A wan swirl of dun dreams.
A melancholic unpeeling of histories,
numbness, evaporated intent.
Childhood construction,
scattered pieces welded to a subtle unclear meaning:
The familiar dream city, desolate, bomb-cratered, boarded, arising from the ashes. Municipal pride shipwrecked in a desert of red brick dust and scaffolded projections of glory. The old world left two-storied, terraced, patiently queued by the cemetary gates. Buses wandering aimlessly down side roads. Lost, left, making wrong choices.

I do not desire
The dead, fish-eyed aspirations,
The autoqueued stumbling rhetoric cajolling
Of roll-sleeved leaders seeking voters
For their own small glory,
Their usurping family line
Estated and jodphured,
Upholstered and devious.

Slap down the earnest requirements, the limp wristed excuses, the exhortation to be more do more cost less pay more work more aspire before we expire. Ask not, just ask not, it will not be given away, it will not be forthcoming. Fire and fuel vapid contingencies flushed into space, down to earth bigotry, simple minded catatonia. The pioneer spirit ( you are on your own, no one watching, no one interested, investors elsewhere).

As ever, as ever, they are
Looking too large,
The vast distances requiring maps,
knowledge few possess,
stamina and drive this cannot sustain.
A glorious expression,
a summit,
a validation of effort.

All thought, an ornament of silence.
All action, an ornament of stillness.
All dreams, an ornament of the sun.
This night, an ornament of day.

Await. The ripples of despair dissipate.
Await. The certainties of revelation dissolve.
Look closely
And more closely still.

(Quick wren, brown as a nut,
Small as a mouse
Flits between
New skullcap leaves, tightly green.)

The breath, a means to attain stillness.
Stillness, a means to attain space.
Let the roar of despair flow through
The agitation of aspiration,
expectation, required value,
Desired worth,
The whining, wanting,
The acquisition of merit.

(I have spent the hours
Of all this day
Working smooth the white grain,
The holly, dense and silk.
Time accumulated emptiness,
A weight of seasons.

Its berries, dust
That staunches blood’s flow.
Red on red, drop congealed.
Sharp edge a sign, green bough
A promise,
White heart purged of roughness.
Content in the wood’s shade,
A straight arrow tip in sun and openness.)

The only rope preventing us from drowning in the past is the awareness and attention of the present. The past is not gone. It is our blood and bones, our footprints, our shadows of solidity. It is where our thoughts arise, and where our moments retire to layered wrapped story. It is not possible to rise above the past. Present and future are weavings of past matter. Present and futures – the past forgetting where it has come from. The past lost in its own convolutions. Active convolutions of the past, those we call ‘present’, those we call ‘future’. The present, the future, simply forgetting what it is, where it has been. ( Here already). There is no today, but a weave of threads coalescing for a short dance of now, then disintangling and holding new combinations.

Once trodden,
Grass becomes path.
Lost,
We are all lost
Following the lost
Before us.
Weaving backwards,
Forgetting and constructing
Limbs and hearts as we go,
Forgetting, remembering,
Breathing in, breathing out.
Looking backwards – the only way to see what happens next.

Sunlit road,
A dusty street,
One clear way.

2
Palm Sunday
Grey dawn wrapping grey dream.
Sound dulled, distant.
Long, cold air cooling
Any urge to grow.
Most of the land
Draped in snows, swathed in ice.

What the world wishes of us:
Indwelling silence.
The bare bones.
Focus on smaller,
much smaller horizons.

Here, the dead have been
Called from tombs,
Unswaddled,
Sunless flesh wakened,
Thoughts silent,
Unformed
Waiting for
Reasons to weigh
And qualify,
Reasons to care
Once more.

All the city streets
Deserted, unmapped.
Their names:
Keys to the past
Histories of empires,
Fictions.

It shall distil the dregs,
dream tales lost among dark, familiar paths.
This street somehow connected to that street, this world to that world.

Cascades of this and that memory,
Some are planets solid, planets vaporous,
planets ephemeral and singing,
all wrapped in weave of gravities,
disallowing other orbits.

So they pile and coalesce,
a story of maps,
place, striving, failing.
Yearning wrapped in reasons,
the goad to leave for more.

Overlain, overgrown,
traced on translucence,
prone to misinterpretation,
authorised blueprints,
the unmistakable smell of museums,
of school dinners.

Haves and have nots
all equally stretching thinly,
extending, for more, more of this
more of that
more of what we have
more of what we do not have.

Pulled thin to whistling, sighing dust. Dream wrapped in dream. Insistent of beginnings, insistent on following the path ahead, not dawdling, not noticing, not wasting time.

Apples of dust
in a Hell of drought-wrenched thirst.
Escape velocity is what we seek.
Wrapped in flesh,
expecting the earned right of wings:
for trying hard,
for believing,
for not becoming distracted,
for not asking questions.
Even the wise,
wrapped in that gravity,
reaching for the thin gruel of more.

The roar of crowds,
Full of moments.
Missing the weight of purpose
Missing the clues.
Choosing someone else
To be the victor
To be the hero
To be the sacrifice
To walk the road.
Wrapped.

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