GROUND RULES


The breeze radiates and sparkles and cannot be grasped.
You are in the middle, your tunic freshly washed,
like a messenger about to be sent on a royal mission.
But once on the path you reach a solitude that is not
in your control and cannot be sweetened

by the nerve doctor who emerges naked from behind
his door. You find you have learnt a lot of his books
by heart unintentionally, especially the beginnings
of paragraphs. He shows you real things, drills you
and gives you an overcoat with a different plot to it,

more than mere protection against cold air. But that puzzled
manner he has of peering often changes to a shrewd
and thrusting glance, the end of his road plain before him
When two little brooks come together they make a real run
he says, blocking your way. He believes in you as a bridge

between two states of being. He cannot clasp enough shadows
and dust. It is terrible the way he nuzzles you
and makes you lonelier still. In the end you are forced to fight
like a barefooted urchin scrambling for an unexpected prize.
Although you look much the same when you emerge,

things unknown have a secret influence, such as great gasps
of river air at night. Laying down your life takes on a new phase
of meaning. You have no impulse towards death but you understand it
now as if light were turned on a picture and what
you see is worse than featureless dark. The accident

of sex has made you remote and the signature
of your thesis is the basis of a duality as absolute
as an empty, clean-swept house, the nearest
to an authentic message you have come across.
Now your awkward body can move on, no longer

the external creature known to the world. Yet there seems to be
no way of escape, no opening into the professions or what
might be termed Progress Street. An old dog for once
stirs from the kitchen fireside to bark in your wake.
At night you light candles until your eyes shine.