A cigarette and a flame’s flare. In the daylight no less.
Must be careful in crossing the road. Traffic. The many lives about me -- how shall they be named? By fire or by cloud? Clouds above me like puffed meringues. Tasty. A good bakery will have them. Time to stop and eat soon -- but with what coins my brethren?
No matter.
Melt in the mouth and are gone. Coins gone. Had so few paper notes to begin with. Had. Not now.
No matter. Something will happen. Something always does even if not the desired. That’s the future. That’s the certainty of the uncertainty.
A saint’s dilemma? Or a fools?
No matter. There is now and for the moment that is all that matters.
Though it might rain. White turn to grey turn to black clouds. Then darkness with no fire before me. Fire within. Best place to have it. The only true guidance. Albeit for forty years I will wander.
No sailor I -- landsman. Breugel’s offspring with a Dantesque touch. But this is not hell nor am I in it. Would be according to his definition. Should be according to another. But this is not hell nor am I in it. Nor paradise for the soul’s delight.
What is my soul’s delight? This here, this now, this unfolding future.
You will die alone was her prophecy. Four coins in her hand placed to be told this. A cheap wisdom I bought. Yet have paid more and bought less.. Often. Too often. A double poverty. Yet not to my soul’s penury. Not that. Though Midas in reverse they call me.
Biblical facts that are not facts and yet are more than that. Names. Sticks and stones to beat a dog with. Will not break me.
Cross the street again. Dart down this lane. Emerge into the flushed silence of a square. Yes I am flushed. Of pocket only not of mind. I don’t mind. My future will replenish me. I the replenished. Now and in what will yet be. the future’s shadow already upon me. The shadow before me circling to become the shadow behind me.
That future has passed.
The particular not the general. That still waits as I stride to meet it. Street after street. No somnambulist I. now in my future’s beginning.
Now by water and weeping trees.
I will not weep. Didn’t when it was required of me won’t do so now. Not mine the tear-drenched eye-lash. Clear-eyed to the world.
Not for a pittance will my soul lie down. Neither by water nor pasture nor bridge.
Bridge I must cross. Uniting what it separates. Another symbol there if symbols be needed. A bakery. No meringues. How fortunate that my poverty is not emphasised by abundance. A small good-bye before the larger goodbye. A promise to the future.
A promise to the self.
-Yes he told me he met you -- last Tuesday it was, outside the post office, and that he saw you later that same day by the main door of the library but he didn’t know if you were going in or coming out as you didn’t appear to have a book in your hands -- if that was their only purpose I said but as usual he didn’t know what I was talking about so I left the matter stand as it stood and was on my way.
Hosannas for the new entrance. Laurel not palm. About me in the glittering (I will give new answers to the old numbered questions spoken, and answered, by rote). For mine is the arrogant pride of a maker: so be it so in the world; word, tone and undertone, semblance and shadow (how real now these shadows as I cross them and how insubstantial as I cross out of them and leave them behind me).
Will there be a gathering? Yes there will be a gathering Will there be a reckoning? Yes there will be a reckoning.
I will gather and I will reckon. Soft seepage and hard judgements -- I the castigator! (yet a certain form of love abides in my harsh words which those who listen to the undertone will hear the tones of).
But softly, softly now nor bitterness claim me nor dark light issue from my eyes. Like a tailor I’ll thread my needle with a fine thread to make a rich brocade which some mason at his stone might be able to measure. Measure my steps and they are equal to my needs. No more and no less. A completion in themselves.
Yet if there is Alpha where is Omega?
Greek again, as all my dilemmas are. Unending, unending. Resolution for a time only, not for eternity -- or is time eternity’s undertone? Riddle me that my sweet believers and doubters. Or shall I say the question is purely semantic?
Purely?
Purity of self and implication?
It matters, it matters not, or is the chapel perilous that must be entered. Grail of the word and world. If I am well then all is well (I have asked the question and I have given the answer) so softly, softly, let no black fire issue from my eye nor bitterness fill the emptiness of my purse -- so with what shall I pay the ferryman?
Amen, amen. Vivid on those lips I cannot see. Vivid pronouncement like a question asked of the accused. Ask. Ask and answer. One question leading into another.
Junctions and joinings.
River into river from the bright pebble emerging. Where if not for the lyrical impulse…
Ask and answer again. Question into answer into question again. Like in the old days. Discussions on the rialto and agora. But the cup was handed to him and he drank -- what cup will I drink to its fullness of sweetness or bitterness?
Stance and precondition condition me. I am not other than what I will myself to be.
Meanwhile, on the agora… As if in that gathering something useful might be said and adhered to.
Like the condition of a new preamble. (I will begin, I am beginning) river into sea, sea to the rock’s resistance.
Yes, I like that: resistance. If that is not what I am then what am I? riddle me that out of confusion. But no confusion today.
Clarity of light. Clarity of thought all be they many and varied: I am a swirling eddy, I am a thicket in which a stag is tangled -- see the freeing of the stag. See him who sees himself as an Abraham unto a people but there are no new lands for the old prophet and so pity the prophet with a broken crown.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Already he is a shadow disappearing behind me, going to where I’ve come from but without the same starting point. Already he is a shade out of Dante’s rounds slipping back into his old condition. Already he is behind me and I will think of him no more. Already he is slipping out of memory like water escaping from a stone only to be lost in the ground. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
Soft light on the froth of the sea. Soft froth of thought and sound. The world is an audible bell. And that gull also -- he of sound and echo and soft swish? Bell and bell-buoy. A music for transcription. Mine will be the transcribing. Soft, softly now. Low light and far light. What sound has light? I have lost, I have gained. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.
The stag has cleared the thicket and recovered the sword from under the stone. The stag has cleared the thicket and is now in the clearing. Let the horns blow, let the chase begin, I shall not be trapped. I am thicket and horn and stag. I bid you all goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.