You were seven and hadn’t askedfor one in months, but the salt windhad whipped your energy away,before a piled-up plate of squidat our favourite place on the promhad left you sagging in your seat.Even as I threw you overa shoulder and braced for the trudgeto our house, my back was hintingat a future without your breathtickling my neck, at you walkingbeside us if we were lucky.
After a note by Jules Laforgue The melancholy of Van Goyen’s pale autumn marines.Sad, eternal wind – life in monotone – boats loaded to tipping point, drowned banks where melancholic cattle, submerged to the knee, nose for grass – windmill struts emaciated against the hills –the little village of thatched cottages on stilts where we sleep outside to the eternal lapping of dirty flotsam and a thread of chimney smoke. Fish stew boils muddily, rascals whine. Wide skies where heavy rainclouds pass eternally overhead – white storks flapping to other countries. But how to grasp the heartbreaking melancholyof Van Goyen’s stained, sad marines?
Life has changed into a matterof keeping an eye on yourself.What stage are we at?Should you be holding onat all costs, to your sincerity?When you close your eyes and catch upwith a sort of accelerated film,moving you in the direction of a bad end,is that what’s heading your wayor something remembered,or the memory of somethingyou only thought?Maybe you’d prefer to be someone else,someone who doesn’t exist,such as Colonel Rolleston,collecting his Irish Times at the pier.Preparing for another trip to the refuse centre, it’s as if you are standing behindyour own shoulder,witnessing the levers of your armswork to fill black plastic bagswith books and clothes.
He’d reached the wood scrubbed up and clean,still drinking as a late sun flaredon windows like acetyleneas if the dusk could be repaired,while further in, turned submarine,thick shrubs clung to a footpath wherehe passed out as the pills kicked in,a dead man in cheap summerwareamongst the crows that kept an eyeon all such things that fall behindthe wood’s last bits of tattered skysnapped shut in its ramshackle blind.Dried berries, ivy, roots and stoneswere mixed up with him long beforea fox on heat nosed out his bones,a cold-snap broke his brittle jawswung open now to grin at fliesor, chin up, take a swig of rainbefore the tides of bluebells rise and, sober, he goes down again.
the volcano I’d christened Mont D’Espoir or Mount Despair ‘Crusoe in England’, Elizabeth Bishop The twin peaks of Mont D’Espoir and Mount Despairkeep changing places and are hard to tellapart, with their simple binaries of sol y sombra. Relentless weather treats them both the same – clouds gather at their summits and disperse.Sometimes the clouds speak dragonish, and sometimes human. The twin peaks are made of the selfsame stuff – a composite of jet and alabaster,ground down at the same rate by the same blasts.
Before I arrive, I begin to walk.Early morning. The steps above Rosairedamp earth held into place by iron pins,white beads of water on the harbour’s crane,a milk churn cooling on the farmyard stone.Where were we? Up over the island’s spine, smell of the pines on a hot dusty track,travelling as she did, turning her backcurled up in bed, away all afternoon, facing the wall, better to concentrate.She swings on a gate opening to a path, empty. Also the heat, also the dust.Before I leave, I follow, as I must.
I was raised in the sky. For playmates I chose magpies and sparrows. On the high-wire I learned the language of clouds, of wind, and the balance of all things being equal. It’s where I found my feet, toed the line, while the butterflies and rain gave uptheir applause. I followed in her footsteps,heard her call my name from the other side. But only when she left, did I glean her gift of light, her lofty plans for me – to dare thin air, refuse the earth and turn down the invitation of gravity. I never shared thetrick that kept me on the wire: with each step I pictured my mother, holding my hand.
For once, I’ve written on the reverse where and whenthe photographs were taken, the biro showing through on your lapel and down my cheek. It’s about a yearsince we met, we’re there in black and white, smartly attired after the wedding of friends east along the river, now launchedinto their life together while you show me where your career will begin, same suit, the railway bridge behind you, the strandagainst the shine of water, tide out, your wavy hairline barely in retreat. And I’m pellucid eyed into the distance,the corners of my lips lifting. I might be sighing with sudden wonder at no longer being alone, standing by the railings,watching something float away from me painlessly.
One more dream – and may it prove the last of its kind to haunt me –where with a split-reed squawkI join a marching bandtowards the graveyard. My bent backleans earthwards, and notesno longer rise to a perfect pitch. At least I keep in step. Soonwe shall play The Saints, my restless feetBojangling, the big drum’s beatmy heart’s defiance. Not yet, Mr Bones,not yet. Let all be carnival,death’s dream deferred, and at this point,the jazz gods willing, I shall wake.
The little dictionary lies open at A for Applewhere it all begins. I want to turn the pages, but the vitrine is a border crossing; my ageing face, stamped on its glass and my papers way out of date. Moths have been at work along the faded pink of a rabbit’s ear. It’s swiveled to catch lost sounds. A big, red button reads: PRESS ME. So I do, and the little train clatters along N-gauge tracks –disappears into the papier-mâché tunnel. A long heart-skip, before it emerges still guarding its secret: the dark curved space, a pin prick of light dilating like an amazed pupilat the approaching world.
Hold on tight, they said, but you have moved on,way beyond that. After a life on swings,look – no hands; they are folded in your lapquietly. Everything is quietly,the air quietly sifting over your skin,the bend of your knees imperceptible,slight; the movement is all from the core,from the torso. Forward, back, forward, back,become almost bird-like, sifting the sky on the stillness of wings, no more than thoughtdrifting there. A pigeon comes into sight,flung from a tree with a burst of applause,clap, clap, clap, and stop, before the swoop and drop.Your next ambition, that exquisite pause.
I spoke to you again last night – usual time, about 2 a.m. I know you don't mind. You're always awake. Probably sitting at your desk, fully dressed. You don't know it, but it's you I call most often. I admit, as a relationship, it's a bit one-sided. Possibly I amuse you – all those symptoms, such anxieties! I try to imagine you saying Nothing to worry about! in your most re-assuring voice. Some nights I do both voices – only ring off when you start on about a camera down my throat.