LE MAL DU PAYS

Gottfried Helnwein

LE MAL DU PAYS

We find evening wandering among

The trees of the park: taking

His name slowly from the late

Afternoon as she slips into

Shadow, stretching a bit, easing

Her language of birds and insect sounds

Toward evening, offering them as gifts.

Lights begin to blink on

Across the valley. From here

They could be angels who, having

Heard the vespers bell, hurry

So not to be late for the last hour.

We can want no more than

To be here together, a witness.

Perhaps it is only that we have

Chanced to find ourselves surrounded 

By the hour that moves this feeling

Through us and into the landscape.

Perhaps it is a knowledge of something

We had not anticipated understanding

Quite yet and so are still unable to

Name it properly that does this.

We stand together here a long

Time. Finally it becomes so dark 

I can no longer see you clearly.

Stars begin to blow across the sky.

FRAGMENT FROM THE HILL JOURNALS

fabres-insects

FRAGMENT FROM THE HILL JOURNALS

The clouds were dark that evening.

Seen from the window they could

Have been thinking, brooding, but

Eventually the stars climbed to their

Places and waited once again for

The cool flame of the crescent moon

To remind everything its light touched

That it was the most powerful beacon

For this time, that anything the night

Might lack could be had in her light.

The table was already set when we came in.

The walk from the villages had seemed

 Inordinately long.

Water had found its way inside my boots

Making a squishing sound as I walked 

To the bench in front of the fire, removed

Them and began drying my feet with a soft blue cloth.

‘I am never coming that way again.

It looks too much like earth

With its meanness and killing.

I was struck with flying things more

Than a few times.   The houses were

Hovels and one of them, near the 

Cliff edge looked to be in a state

Of constant flame but never

Seemed to burn.  Flames out

The door.  Those horrible people

Gathered round, all talking and

Gesticulating.  I hate the way they

Talk.  It isn’t language and

That horrible stench. God.’

Ramon poked at the fire.

‘You’ll feel better after you have

Had something to eat.  This is 

A safe place.  no one has even

Ever heard of these white caves.’

I knew it was true, that if we

Had to be anywhere, this was the

Best of places to be.

‘I did manage to bring two of the horses

And there is enough food for a 

Couple of weeks in the packs.’

‘We will send someone else

Next time.’

I rose, walked across the room

And sat heavily on the bed.

The next thing I knew, i was

Waking.  She was kissing my lips

And making a little morning song to me.

‘You worry an awful lot too’, she said

‘You tossed and turned all night.’

‘These wars will be over soon.’

I said, barely believing myself.

‘I don’t think so.,’ she said.

‘It has been like this as long as

We have been here.  We keep moving

Higher and higher up these cliffs.’

‘Come here.’, I said  'I will show

You a very special dance.'  I rose

And bowed and began to move.

The smile on her face was better than

The dawn all that week, had been.

REFLECTIONS DISSOLVING

Wyeth - The White Company

Waterhouse - Wind Flowers

Bok - nude in design

REFLECTIONS DISSOLVING

It was as if you had just left the room.

If I looked hard enough I swear I could

See the imprint of your heel on the carpet.

The door was slightly ajar, being held

By a breeze for a few moments, sunlight

Leaking into the room to dress the walls.

I stood up next to the bed waiting to hear

A voice, any voice that would indicate you

Had actually been there.  I must have been

Sleeping, holding the ribbons of dreams

In my hands like precious myrrh or water.

When I looked across the room to the mirror

I could see you dissolving into its surface.

I must have been wrong.  Such a thing is not

Possible.

A VISITATION BY SEA SPIRITS

Waterhouse - Miranda

Illustration for The Tempest

Simi - 1910-Dreamer's Tale-Bird of the River

A VISITATION BY SEA SPIRITS

They were lighting small lanterns

All the way across the headlands.

Ships were coming.  They

Had been seen from the pilot hill.

Bright flares on the tops

Of their masts.  The lights

They carried were of many colors and

Occasionally shot bursts

Of colored flame into

The high atmosphere

Illuminating the bottom 

Of the clouds.

The coming of these ships

Had been foretold but

They were not expected

To arrive in the dead of winter.

The children had begun

Behaving strangely about

A month ago and the Teal

Gulls were seen on the 

Edges of the Father glade.

At night the booming 

Of the fisher bells

Could be heard at

Curious hours of the night.

There was a hesitant

Music coming from the

Taverns that was neither

Joyful nor sad.  It held a

A great sense of longing in its notes.

We were unable to determine 

If there were words to the songs.

The crowds grew well into the night.

The ships arrived much past midnight.

Were these sailors Gods

Then, plucked from the night

And to be proclaimed

Throughout the land?

Their garments were magnificent.

Some of us could see 

Them, some could not.

Quickly there were stories of them

Before the morning came

People were waiting upon

Them for answers.

The ships glittered with lights.

In the morning they were but

Hulls abandoned and gray.

Peopled by shades the same gray

As the forged bullets with which

the world infects itself.

There was no conversation.

There were no oracles.

Glimmers ran softly up the sails

Like fairy lightning and

Nothing was forthcoming.

All day they sat in the harbor,

A kind of fungus on the water.

By nighttime fires were

Started on their decks.

They burned with sickly

Colors and drove flights

Of dark birds around

And around their sails

Even as they burned.

On the following morning,

Ashes on the water.

The children packing 

Their lunches and

Heading off for school

Whistling tunes and

Singing songs we 

Had never heard before.

By the end of the week

We were once more

Upon the beautiful

Hills gazing out to sea.

RIVERS OUT

This poem is from THE DIMENSIONS OF THE MORNING originally published by Tom Kryss at BLACK RABBIT PRESS. San Francisco 1969.  In 2009 the book was re-published by RATTLESNAKE PRESS, POLLACK PINES, CA. as Rattlesnake reprint #1

RIVERS OUT

She was thinking about the sky again.

All the sky things: clouds, tall horses

with silver manes and breath the temper

of all winds, stars and their small brothers,

rain and its sister sea, jewels and the

hopes of endless halls, of fish in them.

She thought the sky around and the spirits

of earth came to her, colored robes whirling,

speaking strange tongues and fishing out the sky

with questions of themselves, clicking and hammering

like typewriters, like men in the streets tearing

holes, like gunbursts that slam into the page

and die there, never showing their ugly faces

to man as more than words.

The sky changed, the robes descended and

long rain, the time of unrest, the gathering

of ways to one way began and she was sea

in herself, her many arms depending.

THE HARP IN THE CIRCLE

THE HARP IN THE CIRCLE

The hard songs come through

Holes in the night sky,

An impending electricity of purpose

Gathers into patterns, constellations

Remembered from dares we took

As children, stories around 

The night time fires,

The stars, reminders of our bone

Dust congealed within our sorry bodies.

Touched with grace for a moment,

They are able to form a mouth,

Then a music, then a welter of instruments.

We hear them as animal voices,

Frogs and loons, crow talk,

The coughing of a cat,

Slap of fish on quiet water.

Oh let us sing the hard songs.

Songs of goodbye and of parting,

Of winds on the moors and

Mists moving across bogs

where plants eat meat,

Dreaming they are gods,

Where love flees a room

Dense with violins and clarinet

Laments.  Pieces of loves across

Ages of time, dead ancestors

And friends turn from our embrace

To ride the night sky forever,

To pour through shining holes in the night sky.

THIS ROOM OF BRIGHT MORNING

Scott G. Brooks

THIS ROOM OF BRIGHT MORNING

This room of bright morning,

Full of the drift come down from

The ways we have learned to speak with one

And another.  Oh yes, there were times

When one could stand upon the ramparts,

Whistling the rain down the windows, not

Caring what might be blown in to our

Sad feet.  Now, it seems things are different.

The cat crosses the alley.  It has no mind

For the dealings of man.  It has

Seen the light of oceans of fish.  They pour

Past its nose and fill the doorways of the piers

With a kind of knowledge you and I can only

Dream of; a wishing for the smells of our ancestors.

Oh sweet burden of standing this way

Before the morning.  Full of each other, the way

We want to be, I look out past the rain and its pools,

Past the drift of song caught in the puddles.  I am

Here with you once again.  We seem to understand

The language all this world noise makes.

It has a clarity known only to those who have

Loved a long time.  I do not recall any time ever

Being like this one.  Perhaps I am mistaken.

Perhaps this music is only the sound of being

Ignorantly profound, listen to the heart.