the true one

The world is away on vacation and friends have withdrawn into themselves, somewhere I don't know. The sky looks so blank on these nights, neither starry nor cloudy, just a deep, indefinite grey. The moon doesn't help either - reticent, reluctant. She only half-shows herself, just like you.

Maybe I'm waiting for something to happen, which may or may not. Suspended somewhere I don't know; reading in the water, as usual. Some habits don't change but are different every time. A mystery.

And then the wishful thinking: things will fall back into place, they will. That at least I know.



Walking the night valley
under the moon, all the flowers
hidden away all the colours
departed, the colourless wind
falls in the grey slopes, the stream
crashes down the rockface


There is something in us not in the least
concerned for any present want
but working only and constantly against
the shipwreck of an entire life


There is an elegance in it, a music
continual, relentless as if
it need never stop and then
smiling turns to its close, under
no constraint


This is the valley, the true one
very difficult and at night
full of strength



Peter Riley, 'Valley of the Moon', Passing Measures: A Collection of Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 2000), p. 89.