listening, listening

The strange silence on the eve of events, revelations, decisions that may change the course of your present life - or simply turn out to be one more disappointment, another declaration of tragedy, or some stupid impossibility.

In any case, wary, you just lie down listening, listening. Not wasting energy with pointless speculation, just listening.

Your attention turned to the poetic possibilities: they shall never let you down, the strange worlds.

As though, as though... but not       quite          Yet...?

*        *        *

October night

"asleep among appearances"
Octavio Paz


Strange world.
The warbling and ringing of car and shop alarms in the street,
shadows on the ceiling.
A large mauve head appearing in an ochre background.
As though a dream landscape but not.
As though a painting but not.

Eyes shut
"you were in another day"
off in the distant mountains
where the darkness breathes
and the black silhouette of a hillside
edges a charcoal grey sky.
A seeming solidity, though thin as paper.

A near astonishment at the "facts",
the surrounding sounds and sights.
The "what is this?", "who is...?"
No step back possible

But a step towards?   out?

Behind your grey eyes...    These surfaces

A watchfulness, the distance between,
all words probing towards this puzzle.
The possible bridges?     in a clash of dreams -
though that too poetic and abstract to grasp,
shake with your hands.

A past "real", memories haunting amongst reality;
the present so...?       dazed?    startled?

The colours of the dim light
projected through blinds onto a ceiling,
the feel of a cotton pillowcase on my cheek
And beyond that?

Not avoiding thought by a fence of questions,
but somehow unable...               to move

Clinging onto the rock face
The rain beating on the skylight
Clipped on
Floating like a sleeping angel
who then wakes touching the softeness below


Lee Harwood, from Morning Light: 1989-96 in Collected Poems (Exeter: Shearsman Books, 2004), pp. 416-17.