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Posts Tagged ‘time and space’

CHRISTMAS NIGHT, CHRISTMAS MORNING

The moon strides through mist.

He is one: half-dead, half-reborn.

The garden is all jet and water –

The black shadow that is time and space.

There is no truth here but stories,

Is what we learn if we live long enough.

The river in its shroud, past the silent graveyard.

Nothing for you to do but weep and sing,

Says the sighing pines.

Nothing but to find beauty here and sing it,

Says the sighing pines.

And the stars look down in envy.

They would fold their wings and walk

These muddy, leaf-strewn paths.

They would feel the cold air of morning,

Let go of hope and fear,

Sing with sun and sparrows.

Would build their small fires,

Feast on emptiness and fullness.

Eternity weaving clothes for itself.

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PWLL Y BO (continued)

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There are streams and there are pools,
Gradients of speed, time and temperature,
A swelling and a cascade of moments.
Phenomena to clothe attention,
Voids to place memories within.

The paths of scent and heartbeat
Wander through landscapes,
Unseen but persistent:
They mould the seasons of emotion,
The tides of joy and despair
We think we seem to own.

How came the spirit to Pwll y Bo?
Born was it from scoured stone,
Water tongues speaking water language?
Inchoate become cadent rhythm,
Song become meaning become message,
Whispers mirrored, hollows filled.
There before, or only after, the wept
And lost wondering?

There is a quicksilver veil,
A something shimmer that,
Once touched, ripples forever.

So restless a wanderer,
The dew of his holiness on every meadow,
Churches sprang up in Dewi’s footprints.

This dream so unlike that dream,
Remembered backwards, becoming familiar:
His prayers, her tears, wellsprings,
Mouths of howling and hymns, stones with mouths.

Just so and more
The glow of set suns on warm earth,
A day begun and gone,
A day to come through long night.

We become our own pool, haunted,
Becoming vague, portenteous,
Oracular as thunderstorms.

Flowered feet, rooted stillness,
A mouth full of blossom.
His feet, our feet,
Her tears, our tears.
Owls in the valley,
Blackbirds amid cloud mists.

As every river knows,
We are not what we seem to be,
Not so steady, not so constant.
A permiable impermanence,
A vessel unable to choose its content.

To taste, shape and let go,
A flow of song, a chorus,
Cascades of little moments,
But enough to shape mountains,
Enough to flood oceans,
A silver rippled pool dissolving time and space,
A breathing landscape generating names.

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LONG NIGHTS

It is the very egg of long nights:
Still and black, a light rain falling.

The cats peer silent from windows,
The long fire slowly fades and whispers.

In the garden there will be slugs,
Stately, weaving their own fine galactic trails.

Beyond, in the meadows, glimmering sheep
Will nonchalantly chew, nod and say grace,
Nod and say grace.

There will be owls and a scurry of mice.
And there will be dreams sliding
Between the in and the out of breath,
A tower of worlds, made and unmade,
A cascade of tomorrows in dark and light.

For most, (but never for all),
There will be a slow dawn.
A new wind from the hills,
A resumption: nets and hooks set
Eager to catch time, labelled, minuted,
Used, misused, wasted.

But not now,
Not now.
Not in this one vessel of darkness:
One long curve holding curved void.

Not distinguished are the living or the dead.
All are quiet ghosts
Tasting the certain past
And this turning, rolling, cooling night air.

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DREAM BETWEEN DREAMS

It shall be called
The dream between dreams.
It shall have the sound of rudra veena
Howling the low, long song
Of mountains.
A doorway that vanishes
In walls and moments,
Hunters of persistence and cunning
That track betweens
With such eager precision.

A sepia lithograph of ancestors
Scattered with scratched code.
A stuttered sunrise,
A mumbled equation.
Fragmented, woven storeys.
Intercepted thought-
A patterning of stars.

It shall take beauty to itself.
It shall wear a body
Suspended and gently packed
With birdsong.
It shall have a sunrise
Located in a northern way.
Magnificence untranslated and untranslatable.
A verticality, a rotation, a specific gravity.

Freed from the body
It twists to a certain extent,
A mind will take colours to itself
As murmurs of joy.
A shuffled deck of cards
(Where all images are constantly changing),
Vapour words uttered to themselves and gone,
Drawn from all tomorrows,
A suffering of beauty.

The rudra veena says:
“Music is the very means
Ye shall venture through vastnesses,
The telemetries of time and space,
Control panel of deity,
Bender of physics, answer to worlds,
Mating call of galaxies.”

The rudra veena is an instrument of South India, a pumped up, pimped up sitar, more growling even than the surbhahar ( a bass sitar). It has two huge gourds at either end, that wrap around the person holding it, and a long,wide fretboard. It has a monumental, alien sound in recordings. Live, it probably vibrates bones and deepest soul. Beyond human, the rudra veena is the player, human being the instrument.
( search ‘rudra veena’ into youtube and give yourself a thrill!).

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One moment here,
Or here,
An instant’s presence,
Or, maybe, fever.

Not choosing,
Nor discarding,
An equipoise of breath.

This moment,
Or this,
Weighed,
Released.

A point,
(Time or space),
Within which to expand,
Relax.

A skill,
Or no skill,
To continue
Regardless.

Existence,
Or non-existence,
Tasting the same-
A sharp flow.

Words
Or no words,
Insignificant attainment
Of the one song.

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