The Mountain (1993)

The Mountain lies in the warmth of the valley
the wind had died many hours since
heat pressures lay on each
the hands of memory lovers

A Kirlian sky evolves and palpitates
it’s a picture brought to surface of mind
through the calling clasp of a lark
to the drifting long wail of the shroud:
grey, folded over like a paper sheaf,
the woman praying in the stone yard

For the words left became her husband,
and his remains now lost infusing black clay
the weakening of resolve leaching into soil
his influence below her spreading shatters her

The woman cries all the way to the market
where she buys green tubes and white lumps
and puts them home to dinner pots,
warm nights spent wisely, and saved in a cup on the highest
shelf, safe from the lurking fairies
in the furrows of the roof.

And the mountain lies in the warmth of the valley
under the green lights of autumn madness
and the
dancing of nymphs in the garden
before the rise of the sun
before the free thinkers
gave up their emotions

The woman cries at the village and sings her song
of stained annihilation of wrongs

and the precious acceleration
of entropic decay
ceased

and the day becomes long

And the mountain
lies in the cool
evening rust

So the woman
lights a candle
no mantle glow
her fragile fingers fear
a tear in the
white
filament wafer
the breaking of fabric

breaking
its precious rib
its pervasive slice into this sedate
luxurious dimension of space
where time settles down into
rhythms we can measure
with sound and sweep
running without feet
the mother of mathematics
drifts round the dark sky
and the mountain’s sighs
and the valley fills with
the sound of the night

All through the cool darkness she lies awake
and talking to her mind, searching for his aroma
in her rehearsals of the patterns of sleep,
awaiting the freedom of dreaming,
his impossible visitations kept her from sleep
with her nerves humid with honeymoon harmonics
hastening the pull into the shadow cast over her
now sleeping body, rolling on the sheets unaware
of the ominous threat of the mountain shifting
the night against the wheel of the moon

22 April 1993