The Hollow Way in the Dark Wold > This: The Supplement  

VIII POEMA DE LA POEMA

WHAT WILL EXCUSE US ALL
When the light passes
express pain. Stepping down
will not be likely
nor reaching the seas.

But we wait, love
past & then wave:
each one mudded, hopeless
it held us here.

Silence is chosen: noise
chooses us. No, sound
cry, up, start to
build – it does happen:

despair talking, floating open
away bright into this
& lighting it. Here
is the grave secret:

Waste, loss, loss, nothing
can repair us. Loathingness
& a brief self-maiming
silently, a buggery, please.

The bus draws off.
The light goes red.
It is windy, dark
forgotten, the colours rising

as through dark windows
something fades. The ink
can't record everything. Dear
this is near it

already perfected & enfolded
closed, still, sweet, sorrow
oh! I feel that
the sense of death

Love is near faded.
Oh I wait! Something
sweet, unforgotten, grave, that
will excuse us all.

LA POEMA DE LA LUNA
It is as if
nothing is empty
only that

& the sky opens out where
no reason to hope it isn't anything but
to call out so clear
no one will know.
One experience turns
as day starts to dip in &

no one really knows much more. Faint voices
above on the sign, dark on the wet road where
they made us all. They
slowly fell. He stood above it
like an open bird's bill
for there can't be any new impediments.

The clearing —
& sense rises up somewhere.
We are lovely, & we rest, ignorant.
We shall walk unharmed
you know, like we can't be.
I wrote no poems.
It's like that:
the words might save the place but they'll have to go louder.
Not until you've forgotten:
this is rain, this is sudden appearance.
I was the light shining through that dew
too, a love, a moving to
& in the silence
in half-light
sweet luscious ooze within the silent wood.
The whole lot resolves to nothing else more, now does it?
It is the light itself
to treat such loss. We burnt
that composes us.

Like.
Eating an ice-cream I was at peace & at one.
They talk of truth or lies, or of
"antel' alba sa, la luna".
They don't fit simply into words.

Not from devotion but from despair, to another night, another night, another day.
No poem, no pattern of it
in the darkness.
The good result of its completion
will excuse us all.

LA POEMA VERA
No sooner does someone say, 'I am this or that,' than desire is strangled.

What we love we hold—
flesh is clumsy but we're not:
every time we're different, better every
time, oh like rain, like muddy puddles
under yellow lights.
Believe in nothing —
be swept over by clouds, birds
swept up, it must be
as if
nothing is empty
only that
the sky opens out
where there's no reason to hope it isn't anything
& call out so clear.
Delicious dear white page, oh reader, what
fibrous blank net can hold us now?
I see a man whose head is made of stone.
I see nothing in the dark.
No one will know.
One experience turns into another
as day starts to dip in &
no one really knows much more. Faint voices
above are the signs, or dark red stains on the wet road where
they made us all. They
bore us into it dumb but so loud.
We slowly fell
crossed over some line.
There can't be any new impediment.
Under the trees a heavy moisture
& sense rises up somewhere else.
It is the forest, the dark one.
We are lonely, & we rest, ignorant that we are given what will nourish us.
We walk unharmed
you know, like we can't be.
I wrote no poem.
It's like that:
these words might save the place, louder
but not until we've forgotten:
this rain, this sudden
appearance
of angels hidden in the light
shining through that dew
too, a loss, a moving to
& in the silence
in half-light
honey oozing, silently within the wood.
Death, it is
best & least, some friendship awakening.
The whole lot resolves to nothing more, but
isn't it? What was in that light itself?
The energies, shifting, are disease:
disease, what is that immeasurable light?
Slowly we are thus consumed;
the broken stones that compose us
compare us
like old banal's dear empty turn.
Please talk of truth or lies or of
loss, of silence, truth.
Forgive? Forgive it nothing, no, mouths
alone, always alone
the places we're on swept off, like
like dirty waves.
What we are brought to is this:
just silence
untranslatability flowing
slowly like flesh
the flowering, green
immense & dumb.
You will have to start again.
It's what we lost
at the very dawn, la luna.
She will come to us tonight.
Things don't fit, follow
they are just lost. We age
not from any devotion, despair
no poem, pattern of it
just it
in the darkness
completing us
again in the night when stars are blind
& your absence shines
in the distance, over the hills.
We rest in this dark
& are open to all & nothing
like a dead baby which
the good result of its completion
will excuse us all
here, at this place
never
again never.

WHAT FOLLOWS AFTER
Two men in black came out we told them I was out.
No sir, Mr Apol said, no sir, I won't buy that.
We are your true salvation, & we don't expect any.
Tell him he is damned & will not escape. Goodbye.
I went back to writing: if the poem runs long enough then
I thought I might get lost. Winter became tight: wind, rain
but at last, the cold. Attacks came, a big car cruised behind:
we're waiting said the message, for just one slip. Child
of loss: you will not know your true home. Child of a vast abyss
child of the rhyme & of red clay. Child of man: who is
your mother or your father?
                                                          Not you I do believe. The rites
are difficult of access: at each station spirits will await you.
Delusions. You must do it in unbelief. Blake was wrong: no doubt he knew
that everything must be doubted but what you know. He knew so much.
I know nothing. If the rites falter, I shall fall into my perception.
I trust luck as I believe ill-luck. What is seen are what follows:
                                                                                                                            After
the dead are forgotten they don't cease. The light strikes us all, for in
even the mud, the white mud there is life. There isn't any loss nor
any return. It is gratuitous. A line of cowboys. They'll save us, or not
or a black stallion on a white beach. He is the desire. What
old men think under a bright cold sky in Beijing: I have lived it.
Or you, beautiful brownish girl, scratched but clear, delicate
as a woman laughing, scrubbing down, her teeth shine, are big
casual & unplanned for. Trust memory, do
when she sings to you when she wants, not the white nun
offering her crucifix but a laughing daft man suddenly heard. Every Sunday
walk along a metal bridge beside the railway.
Sometimes lie. Sometimes pretend to lie.
When you are that old the past floods into you like disease: die
or don't. Haunt the young & make them crazy.
When you come to a sober man: leave, become a rabbit.
Become nine. Always more. Don't be yourself
or they'll have you kneeling in the desert blind & starved.
Rot into wood rather, & rot beyond. Then you'll live, escape.
When they offer you cities, remember they are full of lines.
Machines are different. You may desire them.
But desire more to play with flesh. Its fierceness
will bring the buildings down. The free fall of brick
or of light & inert beneath the bridges. When you
are ruins, golden, scattered on the bareness
laugh, laugh a thousand times, and you can climb
under some protection down to the shore
& plunge into the moving muddy waters.
Wait for autumn. You will be gold and brown, a little green
like a man, like a woman, like a woman armed
like the poor person throwing the first stone at the passing limousine
like the cripple smiling by the seashore.
When you smile, age.
Change sex. It is yours.
                                                 Mr Apol came back & said
what I had forgotten. The Universe had gone.
There was not a poem. Noise, noise
only. It was removed. In the dark
I'd like something wonderful – only duty
constrains me. I want to turn
& be embraced. Wanting negates: Mr
Apol wants me to want, that I should
want & be in loss. He wins: I am
in this in this one, this one
this one here
there is
in this one
here

Here is the end of loss, a limit. There is some,

exit